Bigotry against Muslims in America, also known as Islamophobia, has been in the news a lot lately. Most recently, a Muslim teenager in Virginia was viciously murdered while walking to her local mosque. While it is not yet being investigated as a hate-crime, slurs against Muslim girls on a Portland train, vandalism of mosques, threats of genocide, and a rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes all point to a disturbing trend.
The rise in bigotry, intimidation, and violence towards Muslims is deeply concerning, and I do not want to downplay the devastating impact that hate and prejudice have on the Muslim community. However, I worry that the political dialogue in the U.S. is becoming warped by false perceptions of rampant anti-Muslim hatred.
Based on news reports and media attention, a casual observer would think that Muslims are one of the most persecuted minority groups in the United States. However, this is far from the case. According to the FBI Civil Rights division's 2015 statistics, 56.9% of hate crimes in the United States were racially motivated, while only 21.4% were prompted by religious bias. Even among the 1/5 of hate crimes that spawn from religious bigotry, only 22.2% were anti-Muslim. The biggest source of religious prejudice is still anti-Semitism, at 51.3%.
In light of these numbers, the Left's obsession with Islamophobia is puzzling. While Trump's harsh, anti-Muslim rhetoric may sustain the uptick in Islamophobic crimes, the numbers are still incredibly lopsided. Furthermore, Trump spills venom on virtually every marginalized group in society, particularly African-Americans and Hispanics. While the Left certainly worries about racism, the amount of attention given to anti-Muslim hate nearly matches these concerns. Furthermore, the Left's anxiety about racism is rooted more in concerns over police brutality and a broken criminal justice system than in harsh political rhetoric.
Now, this is to some extent justified given the U.S's long history with racism, Jim Crow, and slavery. Nonetheless, Trump's anti-black rhetoric could still potentially exacerbate racism from its higher baseline prevalence. Given this possibility, the focus on Trump's stoking of anti-Muslim bigotry seems oddly selective.
Now, maybe the media's focus on anti-Muslim hatred is benign. Maybe their fixation simply makes us more tolerant towards Muslims and less accepting of bigotry. However, I worry that the media's distortionary coverage has had unintended consequences, particularly when it comes to debating the ideas and beliefs of Islam. When the media treats the label of 'Muslim' like a race, it inoculates Muslims from having to defend their religious beliefs. To force such a defense would be a form of bigotry, tantamount to assaulting their personal identity.
However, Islam is not a race: it is a set of ideas. There are many Asian, Indian, African, and white Muslims all around the world, and the beliefs that they hold can be shed at any time. As such, questioning their views is not attacking their identity or personhood, because this 'identity' of being Muslim can be cast off at any time.
Conversely, attacking someone for their race is clearly immoral. Race is an unchanging biological reality (although the dividing lines are societal constructs), meaning that attacking someone's racial identity is a form of attacking them personally.
Furthermore, there is no logical reason to denigrate a specific race. There are no 'good' or 'bad' races.
However, there are good and bad ideas, which brings us back to Islam. As I previously established, attacking Islam is not equivalent to attacking Muslims, since Islam is not intrinsic to human identity. Furthermore, it may be a sensible enterprise: there are many bad ideas propagated in Islam that are worthy of critique.
For one thing, the truth of the Quran as the word of God is dubious. Muhammad dictated the Quran to a scribe, purporting that everything he was relaying was spoken by God himself. At one point, a skeptical local stole his manuscript and demanded that he reproduce what he had previously written. If he were truly a mediator between God and man, he could conceivably ask God to repeat his message. However, Muhammad was unable to fulfill this challenge.
The Quran also does not read like the words of an omniscient creator. It is scientifically illiterate and full of contradictions. For example, the Quran says that Muhammad was the first Muslim. However, the Quran also says that Abraham (who lived and died hundreds of years before Muhammad) was a Muslim.
Criticizing the Quran as a fraud is an argument all Muslims must face, no matter how moderate. However, specific ideas from within the Quran held by more conservative Muslims are also worth scrutinizing.
For example, both the Quran and most Muslim scholars says that the punishment for leaving Islam is death. While many moderate Muslims reject this belief, large percentages in the Muslim world do not: 86% of Egyptians, 66% of Palestinians, and 79% of Afghans support the death penalty for apostasy (leaving Islam). Even in 'moderate' countries such as Turkey, support reaches 17%.
The Quran's problematic verses deserve scrutiny when they espouse such illiberal, regressive ideas. However, the West's treatment of Muslims as a besieged minority shields these beliefs from critique. If we seek to uphold Enlightenment ideals of truth and reason, we must confront bad ideas head-on, regardless of those that hold them. However, while dissecting shoddy beliefs and destructive ideas, we must simultaneously protect Muslims from discrimination. It's a difficult task to protect victims of discrimination while criticizing some of the very beliefs that make them targets in the first place. However, it is a necessary one given the destructive influence of theocracy in much of the world, and given the vaunted position with which we hold truth in our society.
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