How Do You Achieve Religious Rights, When You Ideas Are Judged Wrong?

The concern with the growth of “political” Islam is not new and over the last forty years, the rise of Islam and/or the Islamist movement as a political force across the Muslim world is a phenomenon which has been greeted with fear and trepidation by the West. Western scholars and government practitioners have not learned or have flatly refuse to accommodate it. The language of political opposition in the Middle East, then as now, is overwhelmingly Islamic; the question of the day is whether there are any useful distinctions to be made among the various Islamist divisions of ideas, and whether any will permanently accept a democratic model and adhere to a doctrine of "one man, one vote."

This tenacious democracy that once insisted that all; regardless of race or creed, religious rights and independent thought are more likely to secure peace, deter aggression, expand open markets, protect American citizens, combat international dissension and uphold human and rights. Then a tragic and unthinkable event occurs and the tragedy, itself is been overshadowed by the many tragedies of its
aftermath.

Loud voices that once spoke passionately for patriotic values are quieted. The American government curtails the civil liberties of its citizens and patriotic values are not inconsistent with the cultural
contradictions of the post 9/11 Patriot Act. The meaning of patriotism is relatively unclear. A nation which feels entitled to self-defense and even to vengeance willingly condones immigrant registration, profiling, no fly listings, and wide-range security clearances which have been declared by the conservatives as being meritorious. Fairness and reasonable seem irrefutable, regardless of its composition. Champions of the security issue were for the most, the ones governing the discussion. The Framers of an altered Constitution were government officials and they sat the policy for an entire nation. And so their actions, their behavior, spoke to something more than just one system of rights.  Many foreigner born immigrants were left legally vulnerable, because they looked foreign born. Their only argument was justice. But justice, poorly argued, is no match for the political ingenuity of the powerful.

Such a reaction should not come as a total surprise. politics from colonial times, right into the twenty-first century has been plagued by manic delusions. Local political “exaggerations, premonitions and conspiracy fantasies” have existed to complement the more widespread versions. With Armageddon around the corner, alien ships leaving there mark in corn fields, rays from space and the illuminati set to mastermind the events that will lead to the establishment of the new world for, what harm does it do to add another conspiracy to the mix?  Why not spout Islam at the evolving threat to democracy and world civility: a religious ideology thats been around for more than 1400 years? Isn’t it odd that no one saw this dire plot to control the world coming?

America has succumbed to waves of hysteria over various immigrant groups: Chinese, Irish, German, Italian, etc. Then came the Red Scares of the 1920s, followed by concentration camps for Japanese Americans during World War II. After that there was fear of communism and McCarthyite persecution. Then followed the paranoid reaction to the civil rights movement, and on it goes.

Every one of these episodes formed the basis for imagined enemies embedded in the homeland and seeking its ultimate destruction, alleging Orthodox Christianity, along with American democracy is to be destroyed and replaced with Islamic Sharia. Persons with a polytheistic outlook--with rarely an absolute truth associated with its thinking, Ideas of morality (notions of right and wrong) are relative to the individual or culture--are to be suspect as disloyal subversive traitors out to undermine national sovereignty and promote anarchy.

A very old game with a new group to name as the enemy. It’s been happening from the very beginning, since the first pioneers stepped foot on American soil and found others here waiting for them.

It would appear that people are most susceptible to these paranoid feelings and fears under conditions of cultural challenge and social uncertainty. In turn, such uneasiness is subject to manipulation by assorted demagogues, the media and politicians in general. This is particularly the case if outsiders are felt to be a source of trouble.