“We know the dangers of demagoguery and demonization,” said the headline over Joyce Altman and Elana Kahn-Oren’s opinion article in the October Chronicle.
The authors claim there is a “wave,” “rash” and “rising drumbeat” of “bigotry,” “stereotyping, scapegoating, and violence,” and “hatred” against Muslims, for which they present zero evidence.
But the authors are demonizing a large swath of the American people. They condescendingly lecture those of us who express our suspicion of Muslims about our supposed “prejudice, intolerance and ignorance.”
Well-founded suspicion is not the same as bigotry or prejudice. As Judea Pearl, father of slaughtered journalist Daniel Pearl, has pointed out in his column in the Aug. 28 Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, American Muslim leaders have had nine years to publicly condemn terrorist acts committed by entities like Hamas, and to issue fatwas against them.
Where are the massive demonstrations among Muslims that you would see among Jews if 95 percent of the world’s terror was being perpetrated by Jews? Instead we get slanderous accusations of Islamophobia despite the documented paucity of hate crimes against Muslims.
The authors declare pride in being part of the community-wide interfaith statement, which they initiated, condemning this alleged widespread anti-Muslim bigotry.
When they approach Milwaukee’s Muslim community about an interfaith condemnation of Hamas suicide bombers, the prohibition against synagogues in Saudi Arabia, or the proposed ban on Jews living in a future Palestinian state, perhaps it will be time to take them seriously.
Loading ...