When it comes to Islam, the GOP is letting the folks in the tinfoil hats steer the ship. Discarding the Bush-era "religion of peace" rhetoric that helped draw socially conservative Muslims to the GOP, Republicans have settled on a political narrative that implies any religiously observant Muslim is a potential domestic threat.
The resistance to the proposed Islamic community center in Lower Manhattan is hardly an exception. Protests against proposals for Muslim religious buildings are happening across the country, fueled by conservative writers intent on convincing their audience that Muslims are secretly plotting to end the American way of life and replace the Constitution with Taliban-style Sharia law. By treating all Muslim Americans as potential terrorist sympathizers, anti-Muslim conservatives strengthen the extremist narrative that the West is at war with Islam and further isolate Muslim citizens from American society.
These fears couldn't be more overblown. A 2007 Pew Study on Muslim Americans found "them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives, and moderate with respect to many of the issues that have divided Muslims and Westerners around the world." Not only are American Muslims better integrated than their European counterparts, the possibility of America suddenly tossing out the Constitution in favor of Sayyid Qutb's greatest hits is as likely as President Barack Obama publicly converting to Scientology to prove once and for all that he isn't a Muslim. Integration has always been the American body politic's best antibody against the virus of radical political ideology.
Still, the political benefits for Republicans in demonizing Muslims and forcing Democrats into the uncomfortable position of defending them are obvious. Americans as a whole have very negative views of Islam. According to a recent Pew poll, the number of Americans who view Islam favorably has gone down 11 points since 2005, from 41 percent to 30 percent. A plurality of Americans, 38 percent, now see Islam unfavorably. Americans' deepening suspicion of Islam likely has multiple causes, including the emergence of Islamophobia as a political tool and its ongoing association with long and unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It's important to view these numbers in context, however. Despite their negative views toward Islam, other polls show that most Americans think American Muslims are patriotic and hardworking, and a majority of Americans in the Pew poll still support the right of Muslims to build houses of worship wherever they want even if their neighbors object. That's good, because one of the things Muslims can do both to stem domestic radicalization and calm American anxieties about Islam is to build more mosques. A recent joint study conducted by professors at Duke University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill showed that mosques can be a deterrent to domestic terrorism. This isn't mere coincidence but design -- the Duke-UNC study found that following the September 11 attacks, Muslim leaders made serious, sustained efforts to combat radicalism. Muslim Americans, the Duke-UNC report says, adopted numerous internal self-policing practices to prevent the growth of radical ideology in their communities.
Radicalization is a complex process. While the months America spent debating whether or not Muslims should be prevented from building religious establishments near Ground Zero will undoubtedly be formative for some young Muslims, blaming any future instances of homegrown radicalization on the Islamophobic undertones of the debate over the Park51 project would be like blaming Marilyn Manson for the Columbine shootings. Mainstream Muslim religious institutions, however, help address a number of the factors that can lead to radicalization -- the development of an anti-American Muslim identity, social isolation, and extremist misconceptions about Muslim religious obligations. "Muslim-Americans with a strong, traditional religious training," the report concluded, "are far less likely to radicalize than those whose knowledge of Islam is incomplete."
Some mosques have proved to be hotbeds of radicalism, but these are few and far between, and as the manufactured controversy over the moderate, Americanized Imam at the center of the Park51 project shows, judgments about who is a public danger are best left to national-security professionals, not angry mobs or cable news hosts. Mainstream religious institutions give frustrated or alienated Muslim youth a community to help them express their grievances constructively and access to elders who can help stop them from falling down a dark path. Being part of a congregation also places them within a concerned community that can notify the proper authorities if necessary. According to a recent study by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, nearly a third of homegrown terrorism plots since 9/11 have been disrupted with the aid of the American Muslim community.
More mosques wouldn't just help deter terrorism. Americans' negative views toward Islam aren't just the product of opportunistic political demagogues and Islamophobic conspiracy theorists; they're a reaction to the fact that Americans don't really know many Muslims, and just about the only time they're hearing about Islam, it's in the context of terrorism and violence. According to a recent TIME poll, only 37 percent of Americans know any actual Muslims. The construction of more Muslim religious institutions in the United States would provide opportunities for building relationships between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans and go a long way toward mitigating the ignorance that fuels Islamophobic rage.
Nevertheless, acting out of fear almost always produces the opposite of the desired outcome. The protests against proposed mosques and community centers are blocking one of the most useful tools for preventing homegrown radicalization. The worst way to fight terrorism is by being terrified.
