Today's New York Times carries a front page article titled
American Muslims Ask, Will We Even Belong?. It focuses on Muslim distress over the hostile reactions triggered by the proposed Muslim cultural center near Ground Zero. Many Muslims interviewed are frightened "to learn that the suspicion and even hatred of Muslims is so widespread." According to reporter Laurie Goodstein, American Muslims:
liken their situation to that of other scapegoats in American history: Irish Roman Catholics before the nativist riots in the 1800s, the Japanese before they were put in internment camps during World War II. Muslims sit in their living rooms, aghast as pundits assert over and over that Islam is not a religion at all but a political cult, that Muslims cannot be good Americans and that mosques are fronts for extremist jihadis.
Eboo Patel, founder of Chicago's Interfaith Youth Core, says:
After Sept. 11, we had a Republican president who had the confidence and trust of red America, who went to a mosque and said, "Islam means peace," and who said "Muslims are our neighbors and friends," and who distinguished between terrorism and Islam. Now, unlike Mr. Bush then, the politicians with sway in red state America are the ones whipping up fear and hatred of Muslims. There is simply the desire to paint an entire religion as the enemy.
