Rambling notes on Islam, America and cultural synthesis

This MSNBC story implies an interesting question: Are we pushing American Muslims toward the very behaviors that we accuse them of engaging in?

The gist here is that Muslims are starting to ask what it will take to be accepted as full partners in the American project. How much effort must be expended by a religious, cultural or ethnic minority for that acceptance to be had?

The answer is complicated and a bit disheartening. The process of Americanization takes time — too much time, unfortunately — and it is a two-way street. Minority/immigrant groups identify the best parts of their heritage and incorporate them into their new identities, while taking on the best and worst of America’s cultural identity. At the same time, the larger society must make its own transition, which is where problems arise. The society as a whole resists these new elements, push them to the margins. Over time, hopefully, this changes and the outsiders are brought inside, or at least are no longer looked upon with suspicion.

At the same time minorities of all stripes tend to remain outsiders to some degree forever. My Jewishness no longer prevents my participation in the larger society, for instance, but it does create some degree of separation in some people’s minds. There remains a far more significant portion of the population than we would like to admit who carries with them the harsh stereotype of the Jew as cheap or obnoxious or what have you.

You can hear it when people speak in what they believe are closed settings. Sometimes you’ll hear someone use the phrase “jewing him down” or make some other ugly remark. Or, and this maybe more common, you will hear someone praise a member of a minority group for being unlike the stereotype — I was told, once, that I was a “good Jew” (meaning I’m not cheap or bossy or something like that, I guess). Joe Biden, during the 2008 campaign, remarked that Obama was the first black candidate to be a legitimate candidate, because he was eloquent and clean-cut. The implication was that most blacks are otherwise, a kind of soft racism that continues to plague this country.

It is ugly, but not overt — though, it carries with it the potential for a fuller, nastier racism — which we have been seeing directed at the president since it became clear he would be the nominee. (Not all critics of the president are racist, as I’ve discussed with my students, but there are criticsw who are racist and it would be naive to think otherwise.)

For Muslims — and many in the Asian community — the racism remains overt and dangerous and the “good Muslim” trope has yet to become common. It is evident in the controversy over the Islamic cultural center proposed for downtown New York (Muslims, as a group, can only honor 9/11 by staying as far away from the site as possible), in the attacks on mosques around the country and the easy way in which some take the actions of a small handful of Muslims and make those actions stand for an entire world community.

Islam is no different than any of the other major religions in its diversity or its insistence that it is the only path to truth. It is no more dangerous than Christianity, for instance, which has its own warrior history (the Crusades) and a dangerous subset of militant groups that attack abortion providers and have recast Jesus as a warrior king).

Does anyone think that the “Christian nation” nonsense pushed not just by the extreme right but by mainstream conservatives is benign? Having been at the butt-end of prejudice and bigotry as a Jew, I can tell you that you’re fooling yourself if you believe that.

Marginalizing and demonizing American Muslims is morally and ethically wrong — and also foolish. Sartre, in his biographical sketch of the French novelist and playwright Jean Genet explained Genet’s criminality by saying that he lived out the lifeplan others had written for him; Genet became a criminal because it was the path created for him and one of the few options he was given.

Are we doing the same to American Muslims?

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