Unfortunately, the anger, pain and outrage over 9/11 was still too strong for the protests to have any affect on public opinion. Plus, there was a legitimate threat posed by violent, radical militants, motivated by their own anger and hatred, who were using religion to justify the murder of innocent people and to recruit others to join their cause.
Wait a minute. Did I just not call these violent radical militants “Islamo-fascist terrorists”? Oh my God, how will we ever defeat them?
I realized then, that progressives needed to do more than just oppose war. They needed to find a non-violent solution to the problem of Al-Qaeda. But other than ways to “contain” the terrorism, no really good ideas came from the left. We seemed content to just sit back and root for things to go badly in Iraq. I was really disheartened by this.
Fast forward to the present and the same situation exists. Fortunately, there have not been any attacks with mass casualties like 9/11 but these sporadic attacks by “lone wolf” actors who are seduced by the twisted ideology of terrorist groups like ISIS, is, obviously, extremely troubling on many levels. Besides the pain, suffering, loss of life, and the fear of future attacks, they give fuel to anti-Muslim hatred and support for Donald Trump’s call for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, a registry of Muslims in the U.S. and surveillance of Mosques.
In the absence of any positive response to this problem from the left, just scolding conservatives and others for being “Islamophobic” is as feeble as the anti-war protests of the Iraq war. It’s worse than feeble, it’s actually counterproductive. Also, like I said, “in the absence of any positive response to this problem from the left”, this political correctness leads to things like the neighbors of the San Bernardino shooters being accused of not reporting suspicious activity because they didn’t want to be accused of profiling Farook and his family. (This was actually what one of the neighbors considered a possibility for why the other neighbors didn’t report to the police. Trump, the King of Fake News, repeated the right-wing fake news claim that the neighbors saw “bombs all over the place” and still didn’t report it.)
I cringe when I hear that the Manhattan truck attacker was let in on a “diversity lottery visa.” Not that I don’t think that diversity is a good thing, I’m all for it, but in the absence of an effective strategy by the left to stop terrorism, this just makes us look really bad and gives the right ammunition to attack progressives and Muslims and the idea of “diversity.” (Apparently there is more to this visa than what the right is alleging.)
Diversity has become a vile and dirty word to the right, especially the Steve Bannon/ Breitbart/White Nationalist right. It is without a doubt the single issue that motivates them more than any other. Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and the other right-wing propagandists have flat out admitted that this is the most important issue for conservatives (anti-diversity). This issue obviously resonates with Trump and he has exploited it with his constant, repeated and outrageous falsehoods about the threat of non-whites.
To those with a liberal disposition, like myself, diversity is a beautiful thing. Love for our fellow man and woman is one of the few teachings of my Catholic upbringing that has remained as part of my spirit, my soul, my psyche. Who among us has not taken a sturdy dose of psychedelic drugs and felt the power and beauty of that emotion? The story of the evolution of mankind, out of Africa, we are all truly brothers and sisters — a brotherhood of man, a sisterhood of woman. These experiences taught me the meaning of these emotions and helped me to develop a theory of the motivations of human behavior. I call it The Cognitive-Theoretic Model of Human Nature. This theory explains why some of us tend towards conservative thinking while others towards liberal thinking. It explains the very essence of conservatism and liberalism. I believe it holds a key to resolving the conflicts of left and right.
What the hell was that last paragraph all about? I must have been having a flashback.
One of the biggest problems we are facing is that the terrorists themselves are using our openness and humaneness against us, too. They are able to pose as law abiding people in order to commit their heinous acts of murder. If these acts of terror increase it will become even harder to argue against Trump’s crackdown on all Muslims.
We all know there are good decent Muslims who have spoken out against terrorism. The left should be supporting and promoting these people. Zuhdi Jasser is an American born Muslim and medical doctor who has served in the U.S. Navy. He is an outspoken critic of countries and organizations that promote the kind of hatred that fuels terrorism. He believes that America provides the best atmosphere for Muslims to practice their faith. He says that the U.S. needs to provide alternatives for Muslim youth and promote reformist groups.
He has engaged in interfaith activities, organized Jewish-Muslim dialogue groups and is an outspoken supporter of Israel. This guy is a hero. He is exactly the kind of person the left should be promoting. But because he is a conservative and criticizes certain Muslim groups — that deserve to be criticized — he is actually attacked by the left for promoting Islamophobia.
So we hardly see him anywhere other than Fox News. And despite the fact that the right does promote hostility against Muslims with fake news garbage that The King of Fake News, Donald J. Trump, repeats to the country — they also do talk about the need for Muslim leaders to reform Islam, for the Muslim American community to become more proactive in countering anti-American propaganda and to be more outspoken against violent acts of terrorism.
Why hasn’t the left been doing this!? Bill Maher is the only person on the left that I can think of who tries. Unfortunately, because of Bill’s anti-religiousness, he tends to favor critics of Islam such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali who make harsh wholesale condemnations of Islam and have been accused by the Southern Poverty Law Center of being an “anti-Muslim extremist”.
This is the problem: in an effort to combat anti-Muslim hostility/hatred, the left sees any criticism of Islam as promoting that hostility. But as Maher points out, an ultra conservative interpretation of Islam is antithetical to liberal/progressive values. And Ms Ali’s criticisms of Islam are absolutely valid. But if we are going to change minds, which should be our goal, we are better off promoting people like Juhdi Jasser who is a devout Muslim and believes that Islam can reform itself and become a peaceful and tolerant religion.
I found a list of liberal and progressive movements within Islam on Wikipedia.
These groups should be promoted on every liberal talk show, or what’s left of them, every single day. MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Thom Hartmann, etc.
