From the "It Could Have Been Me (or Anyone Competent)" Files

About the only Hamline-related image
Curmie could find that didn’t
make him want to barf

Curmie’s profession being what it was, he applied over the years for scores of academic jobs all over the country in three rounds of job searches that culminated in accepting positions in Kentucky, Iowa, and Texas. He may have once applied to Hamline University in the Twin Cities; why else would he have heard of the place prior to the last couple of weeks, after all? 

If Curmie did apply there, they showed no interest, which, it turns out, may have been one of the best things to have happened in Curmie’s professional life. Sometimes not getting what you want is the best possible outcome. 

Curmie first heard about the recent brouhaha at Hamline, in which an adjunct professor was fired without either legitimate cause or due process, from a friend’s post on her Facebook page. She and another friend both described the situation as “complex.” Loath though he was (and is) to disagree with two of the most sensible and intelligent people of his acquaintance, Curmie suggested that there is nothing complex here at all, but rather that “Stupidity, laziness, and cowardice are in a death struggle to be the administration's defining characteristic.” Curmie stands by that analysis. 

On October 6 of last fall, Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor of art history at Hamline, showed a pair of images depicting the prophet Muhammad in her course in global art history. [Note: a number of articles Curmie links here show a photo of the Rashīd al-Dīn work mentioned below. Recognizing the possibility of causing inadvertent offense, Curmie does not include this image on the blog page per se, nor will it appear on the CC Facebook page. If you do not want to see this image, do not click on the links; if you do, then click here.] 

According to an article by Sarah Cascone on the Artnet site, “One of the artworks was an illustration of the archangel Gabriel delivering his revelations to Muhammad from a 14th-century manuscript by Rashīd al-Dīn called the Compendium of Chronicles, while the other was a 16th-century work by Mustafa ibn Vali showing the prophet with a veil and halo.” 

As is fairly common knowledge, some sects of Islam regard viewing images of Muhammad as idolatrous. But three points need to be made. 

First, as López Prater herself pointed out, “there is this common thinking that Islam completely forbids, outright, any figurative depictions or any depictions of holy personages. While many Islamic cultures do strongly frown on this practice, I would like to remind you there is no one, monothetic Islamic culture.” 

Second, an art history course which does not show images such as these could reasonably be said to be lacking in the “global” element advertised by the course title. Indeed, such an omission could legitimately be regarded as Islamophobic, as it would signal a disregard for Islamic contributions to world culture. 

Finally, and by far most importantly, Prater warned students in the course syllabus (see?), urging students who chose not to view the images to contact her (no one did). She also issued a “two-minute content warning prior to the artworks’ appearance, to allow students to opt out of viewing the potentially offensive imagery should they feel it was against their faith.” What more could possibly be asked of her? Wait, let me re-phrase that: what more could a sentient adult have asked of her? They are, as shall become clear in a moment, very different questions. 

By now, you’ve long since figured out where this sordid tale is headed, haven’t you, Gentle Reader? Student Aram Wedatalla, the president of the university’s Muslim Student Association (MSA), was a student in the class. Of course, she did nothing to avoid seeing the images in question, because that would have been the mature and intelligent thing to do. Rather, she claims to have been “blindsided.” (Pay no attention to the aroma of cow pasture here, Gentle Reader; it will pass. Eventually.) 

Naturally, she went whining to The Oracle, the student newspaper: “As a Muslim, and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.” Oh, no. Trust me, you narcissistic little brat, you don’t want to be treated with the same level of disrespect with which you regard anyone who might be sacrificed on the altar of your quest for victimhood. It really doesn’t matter if it was your petulance or just your laziness that is foregrounded here; the point is that if you want to see the culprit in this incident, look in a damned mirror. 

Of course, the student newspaper is complicit in all this, but at least the editorial staff there has a three-fold excuse: they’re post-adolescents, there are no longer many examples of journalistic integrity to be used as role models, and, alas, they’re being “educated” at Hamline. “Hamline teaches us it doesn’t matter the intent, the impact is what matters,” quoth one student. The real problem is that she’s probably right. 

Youthful impetuosity cannot be used as an excuse for the utter incompetence of the university administration’s handling of all this, however. The major players should never be allowed on a university campus again without a ticket to the basketball game or the orchestra concert. Nur Mood, the MSA advisor and Assistant Director of Social Justice Programs and Strategic Relations (is that title sufficiently pretentious?), blathered that “the harm’s done,” blithely ignoring the fact that his paranoid fantasies are far more responsible for “the harm” than Professor Prater will ever be. 

Oh, and speaking of ridiculous job titles, how about “Associate Vice President of Inclusive Excellence”? That would be one David Everett, whose email to everyone at the university declared Prater’s actions (he doesn’t identify her by name, but how many people at Hamline teach a course in global art history?) as “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful and Islamophobic.” Two responses: 1). Bullshit. 2). Do your damned homework and provide a little due process before you slander a faculty member, Davy. (Curmie sincerely hopes López Prater will sue the snot out of this preening twatwaffle.) 

This is also the same guy who was later to write that “In lieu of this incident, it was decided it was best that this faculty member was no longer part of the Hamline community.” (The school later lied about dismissing Prater.)  Erm… Davy… “in lieu of” means “instead of,” not “in view of.” It always does Curmie’s heart good to realize that illiteracy is no impediment to a career in university administration. (Wonder why Curmie is retired?) 

Most remarkable, however, was the outrageous statement over the names of both Everett and university president Fayneese Miller that “respect for the observant Muslim students in that classroom should have superseded academic freedom.” First off, there is no legitimate education without academic freedom (Ron DeSantis, please take note!). It would hold on any university campus worthy of the name, even if there really were something to get upset about, and even if it were intentional. 

To be fair, academic freedom doesn’t completely kick in until tenure, but Hamline (of course), purports to guarantee it. The university’s website includes this intriguing sentence: “The University embraces the examination of all ideas, some of which will potentially be unpopular and unsettling, as an integral and robust component of intellectual inquiry.” Wouldn’t it be fun if they actually believed that? 

Oh, Curmie nearly forgot. A Hamline faculty member who actually knows what he’s talking about, Religion Department chair Mark Berkson, wrote a letter to the student newspaper, too, pointing out that “in the context of an art history classroom, showing an Islamic representation of the Prophet Muhammad, a painting that was done to honor Muhammad and depict an important historical moment, is not an example of Islamophobia. Labeling it this way is not only inaccurate but also takes our attention off of real examples of bigotry and hate.” 

He also points out that, contrary to what Hamline seems to try to instill in its students, that intentions are irrelevant, “the Prophet Muhammad himself said that people will receive consequences for actions depending on their intentions.” Professor Berkson’s letter was removed from The Oracle’s website two days later; whether this was by an editorial staff longer on zealotry than on competence or at the insistence of the Stalinistic administration is impossible to determine. 

The hypocrisy, lack of due process, cowardice, and outright stupidity are the subject of a lot, and Curmie does mean a lot, of commentary. Yes, there are a few indignant whimpers from those whose lives have no meaning unless they can perceive themselves as oppressed, but—Allah be praised—everyone else is of a single mind. 

Curmie isn’t an art historian, but Christiane Gruber, author of an article titled “An Academic Is Fired Over a Medieval Painting of the Prophet Muhammad: The dismissal of an instructor at Hamline University on baseless charges of ‘Islamophobia’ raises concerns about freedom on campus,”  is.

Curmie isn’t a Muslim, but Aman Khalid, author of an article titled “Most of All, I Am Offended as a Muslim: On Hamline University’s shocking imposition of narrow religious orthodoxy in the classroom,” is. [This one may be behind a paywall. If so, trust me on this…] Khalid writes: “Barring a professor of art history from showing this painting, lest it harm observant Muslims in class, is just as absurd as asking a biology professor not to teach evolution because it may offend evangelical Protestants in the course.” 

Curmie is not a lawyer, but the folks at FIRE (the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) are. And they’ve been busy: check it out here and here and here and here and here and here and here. 

The American Freedom Alliance describes Hamline’s actions as “an egregious violation of academic freedom,” and argues that they “severely damaged the intellectual climate at Hamline University and told every scholar who sets foot on your campus that free and open inquiry is circumscribed by the sensibilities and sensitivities of the students.” 

The article on the National Association of Scholars site is titled The Death of Academic Freedom at Hamline University. 

PEN America’s article argues that “Hamline University has committed one of the most egregious violations of academic freedom in recent memory,” and that “Non-renewing a professor’s contract under these circumstances is academic malpractice of a type that chills speech among all faculty, particularly contingent faculty who cannot rely on the status of tenure to protect their academic freedom.” 

Hamline is getting hammered across a wide spectrum of outlets—Curmie hasn’t even cited them all. Good. Perhaps, just perhaps, the principles of academic inquiry and free expression will be upheld, at least at other institutions which would rather not have this kind of publicity. The Hamline administration, however, has proven to be not merely craven and ridiculous, but mendacious, as well. They need to be gone. All of them. 

Now, the Trustees have gotten into the act. Curmie has a distrust of such people, born of over four decades in the trenches. But they couldn’t be any worse than the administration. We can hope for the best, but admitting they’ve put the wrong people in charge isn’t what Trustees are best at.  Alas.

EDIT: For what is perhaps the best statement of support for Professor López Prater, check out what the Muslim Public Affairs Council has to say.

Flying While Islamic Is the New Driving While Black

One of the sadder legacies of 9/11 is the legitimization of cowardice in the name of prudence. True, both political parties are trying to out-macho each other with respect to foreign policy, but when it comes down to real, day-to-day existence, Americans behave like the schoolyard bully confronted with an antagonist who doesn’t just meekly hand over his lunch money.

We’ll drive way too fast for the conditions, even after having one beer too many. We’ll eat crappy “food” with levels of saturated fat, sodium, and sugar so high that just talking about them can cause heart attacks. We’ll swagger around talking about how tough we are because “we” managed to capture or kill the likes of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden.

But ask us to get on a plane that might also be carrying someone named Mohammed or Abdul, and we’ll cheerfully relinquish all our Constitutional rights and meekly slink into the corner with our proverbial tail between our legs while some idiot with a TSA (which, contrary to popular opinion, does not, in fact, stand for “Terminally Stupid and Arrogant”) badge ostentatiously goes through the motions of “protecting the public.” The agency does this by invading our privacy, fondling us, proclaiming our toothpaste a potential weapon, and generally doing everything possible to instill a feeling of Exceeding Great Trepidation.

Trouble is, it’s all a charade. The system itself acknowledges that all the shoelessness and shampoo confiscations don’t mean anything: what else is a no-fly list, or a random (or not-so-random) search at the gate if not a tacit admission that any serious terrorist with an IQ above room temperature can get past the security screening without breaking a sweat? I’ve been saying this for years, of course. Here’s me in 2005:

The idea that someone who can pass through security can still remain a threat is in fact an admission that the security screenings don't work except as a cosmetic deterrent. It is difficult to go a month without the news that some test of security at some airport has demonstrated conclusively that the average TSA screener lacks the training, the intelligence, or the vigilance to actually thwart a real threat. We'd be better off hiring out of Central Casting: at least they'd look like they might be able to stop a terrorist. Of course, news reports that yet another fake bomb made it through security at a major American airport are slowly gravitating towards the back of the newspaper, because it no longer shocks us that airport security is intrusive and demeaning, but completely ineffective.

But we continue, as a nation, to pretend that the false security offered by TSA is “worth it” somehow. It is not.

Of course, our collective cravenness is really a manifestation of xenophobia more than anything else. Homeland Security and all its various permutations exist for the sole reason of feeding the populace’s quaking terror at The Other. Oh, sure, they’ll annoy the rest of us—virtually anyone who has travelled very much at all will have been subjected to some form of humiliation to distract the agents from what a pathetic job they have re-affirm the security of the nation. But it’s the spectre of actually sharing an airplane with (gasp!) a Muslim that can be counted on to legitimize the most outrageous over-reach of authority.

I remember flying home from a conference in New York several years ago. As it happened, I was seated immediately behind two men who clearly fit the profile of a “terrorist,” at least as conjured up in the fevered imaginings of a TSA agent: young, obviously middle-Eastern, male. One was bearded; the other had a thick mustache. I don’t recall their names, but they were stereotypically Arab: Ali and Farooq, or something like that. They were laughing about the difficulties they’d had in passing through security, based solely on the way they look. And, hearing them speak, I can assure you that the fear and trembling of the security folks was entirely visual: two more readily identifiable New York accents would be difficult to imagine.

But the latest victims of TSA over-reaction weren’t New Yorkers. They were students from the United Arab Emirates who were removed from a Charlotte-to-Washington flight and questioned for nearly five hours, embarrassing them (despite the fact that they had clearly not done anything to deserve this treatment) and—of course—inconveniencing every other passenger on that flight, not to mention the family, friends, and business associates of everyone who should have been in DC in time for dinner but didn’t arrive until close to midnight. And for what?

Well, according to WSOC-TV, U.S. Airways is calling it simply a “security issue” that led to the students’ being led from the plane and all their bags being re-screened. (Again, how about we screen them right the first time?) The story says that “passengers reported they heard the group talking about airplanes and the military while on board. Sources said that's when some passengers reported them.” It’s unclear exactly who initiated the process of removing the UAE students, but it appears to have been the airline, whose employees are perfectly well trained to distribute tiny packets of pretzels, but perhaps not to judge the severity or likelihood of a potential terrorist threat. Forgive me if I don’t choose to live my life based on the prognostications of the most wild-eyed, xenophobic paranoid in the room.

I do understand that a student named Yaqoob Al-Shamsi is probably a higher risk than a grandmother named Cindy Robinson would be. But there are literally hundreds of millions of Muslims around the world who pose precisely zero threat. A little acknowledgment of that would not come amiss. What is troubling here is that the Islamophobia of the more ignorant members of society will eventually create a self-fulfilling prophecy. This seems to be the lesson of Guantánamo, which has apparently more than once transformed petty nuisances into card-carrying Bad Guys. And if we keep down the present path, the next Hadef Al-Dhaheri won’t simply be upset that “they treated us different than the others”; he’ll want to do something about it. It’s a delicate balancing act, and we need someone with a little more sophistication in charge of the operation.

Idiot of the Month: Amateur Theatre Division (Runner-Up and Champion)

Two amateur theatre productions in different parts of the country have been shut down this month for offending the tender sensibilities of idiots with the power to censor their enterprises.

Of the two suppressions, far and away the less troublesome is the decision by Wayne Garner, the mayor of Carrollton, GA, to overturn a decision by the board of the city’s arts center to present The Rocky Horror Show, long after the show was in rehearsal and a fair amount of city money had presumably already been expended.

Mr. Garner is a prude and an imbecile, of course, but at least it’s possible to see his point: while defenders of the production can quite reasonably wonder what the city was expecting when they booked Rocky Horror, implicit in that argument is an acknowledgment that the play is “risqué.” Indeed, naughtiness is no small part of the charm of a musical that features bi-sexual seductions, R-rated choreography, and song titles like “Sweet Transvestite.”

Still, Mayor Garner over-reacted, imposed his personal prejudices on the community, over-rode the board charged with making the very kind of decision he claimed for himself, and generally acted like a schmuck. In a normal month, this would have made him a contender for Idiot of the Month, Amateur Theatre Division. But he’s mayor of a jerkwater town in the Deep South: I confess I don’t expect a lot more from such people.

Besides, Garner’s escapades came before we heard about Thomas Fleming, Superintendent of Schools in the Richland School District in western Pennsylvania. He shut down a high school production of Kismet. Yes, really. Kismet. The quintessentially 1950s musical that gave us songs like “Baubles, Bangles and Beads” and “Stranger in Paradise”: that Kismet, one of the most innocuous plays ever staged. Ah, but (wait for it): the central characters are Muslim. Seriously. That’s it. That’s the concern.

“After reviewing the script, the decision was made to move on rather than risk controversy. We're in the business of trying to do what’s best for the kids—not to do anything detrimental if we can avoid it.” That’s the official declaration of the Superintendent of Schools: an ungrammatical (don’t get me started on that part) celebration of cowardice, bigotry, and censorship. Mr. Fleming may be incompetent, unethical, and craven, but at least he serves a function: definition by example of everything that is wrong with the nation’s schools.

I’m so old I remember when educational leaders sought to instill free-thinking, moral courage, and the values that made the country great. The Flemings of the world engage in pabulum-speak, capitulate to the most moronic elements in society, and stifle students while pretending to take care of them.

The correct response to those cretinous yahoos who believe that scheduling a production of Kismet “not long after the tenth anniversary of 9/11” is the slightest bit problematic is easy for anyone with a brain and a spine, two organs not prominent in Mr. Fleming. It would look something like this:

STFU. [OK, maybe that part should just be inner monologue.] Criticizing this play choice simply because the characters are Islamic is both an egregious misreading of the central themes of the script and an outrageous insult to one of the world’s great religions. To suggest that the Muslims of Kismet bear any real resemblance to the 9/11 hijackers is to say we can’t produce The Sound of Music in Oklahoma City because Timothy McVeigh was raised Catholic. It is an inane and illogical argument; it could not be advanced by an intelligent and rational person, and is therefore unworthy of legitimate consideration.

We seek to create young men and women who are empowered by the world of ideas and energized by the vast panoply of human culture, who view free expression as central to the American way of life, who believe in facts and reason rather than bigotry and hysteria. Such students, such citizens, cannot be cowed by the rantings of hand-wringing zealots of any description. Censorship of this musical, which, after all, won the Tony Award over a half century ago, and was produced at this very school without incident in 1983, would send all the wrong messages to our adolescent population: that being ignorant and loud trumps being intelligent and respectful, that capitulation to extremism is appropriate if it averts controversy, that the exchange of ideas should be subordinated to a doctrinaire religio-political orthodoxy, that the most innocuous of artistic events ought to be subject to prior restraint.

We do not ignore these arguments; we reject them as ill-founded, irrelevant, and repressive. Our production of Kismet will go forward as scheduled, and we have every confidence that it will be a source of pride for our students and our community. We’d be happy to sell you a ticket. Or you can stay home and pout. Your call.

Of course, as noted, such a response would require an IQ above room temperature and the leadership skills of the assistant captain of the 6th grade intramural flag football team: considerably more credentials than Mr. Fleming and his equally gutless minions have manifested. I offer best wishes to those student thespians unlucky enough to be subject to the pusillanimous posturings of Mr. Fleming. I hope they have fun and learn a lot on their production of Oklahoma… which will presumably be staged without the character of Ali Hakim.

All is not lost, of course. In a country as large as this one, there are bound to be some real idiots. I just wish fewer of them were school superintendents and principals.

The "Anti-Islam Backlash" That Wasn't There

Some regular readers of this blog may recall that I took a rather extended hiatus—three months, from November, 2010 until February, 2011—from writing here. There wasn’t a specific reason for what might as well be termed my writer’s block, and there was certainly no dearth of reasonable subjects to contemplate. It was just that nothing really seized me, and once I lost momentum, it became increasingly difficult to work up the ambition to write.

What gave me the jump-start was my felt need to respond to a piece by Jack Marshall on his Ethics Alarms blog, in which he described the New York Times as “perhaps the most egregious of the left-biased media.” I had been a regular reader of that site for some time, but had never commented. This time, I started to, but it soon became clear that I was writing a lot more than a comment. I was writing my own piece, and a rather lengthy one, at that. So that’s what it became, and it turns out to have been the first of over two dozen entries over the most recent three-month period.

The reason for this rather circuitous introduction is this: while Mr. Marshall and I may differ in ascribing motives—he is more likely to see creeping ideology, I to see sloth and garden variety incompetence—we share a contempt for bad journalism and an appreciation for those who show us what that profession can be at its finest (his excellent encomium in commemoration of World Journalist Day here).

Which brings me to this: a seemingly cutesy story from Jillian Rayfield of Talking Points Memo about Naqeeb Memon, who wore a shirt reading “I’m a Muslim—Don’t Panic” to the spontaneous Ground Zero celebration of the killing of Osama bin Laden. It is, to be sure, a story not much worth telling, but that’s a description of about 90% of what passes for news these days.

What really caught my attention was this:

Though the atmosphere at Ground Zero that night was positive, since the announcement there has still been some anti-Islam backlash. Right-wing blogger Erick Erickson tweeted Monday: "In honor of the death of Osama Bin Laden I'm eating bacon I cooked on the grill. Yummy." There was also an article on the Michigan View called "Payne: Bin Laden-loathing, Sharia-hating, flag-waving, horn-honking. . . Muslims?"—the implication being that it's a surprise that Muslims would be celebrating bin Laden's death. The link was tweeted by people like Saul Anuzis, who ran for RNC Chair this year.

Gentle Reader, how many examples of absolute incompetence can you find in this one paragraph? Here’s a short list of my observations. Your mileage may vary.

We start with the assertion, or at least the very strong implication, that Erick Erickson’s tweet qualifies as “anti-Islam backlash.” Horse pucky. It isn’t terribly clever (any more than Mr. Memon’s shirt was), but it hardly qualifies as anti- anything except bin Laden. Any Muslim who is truly offended by that line needs to try a more effective laxative.

More importantly, what is clearly intended to be a jibe at a terrorist leader is contorted into an affront against all of Islam. In other words, Rayfield is employing precisely the same logical fallacy—projecting to the general on the basis of the specific—that those of us who believe our country is under no threat from the American Muslim community oppose when it is advanced by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, or Peter King. There is, in other words, no substantive difference between suggesting that all Muslims are threats because bin Laden was and arguing that all Muslims will be offended because bin Laden was insulted.

The Michigan View article is especially interesting. Did Ms. Rayfield even bother to skim the piece she’s using as evidence? I actually read it, and indeed I did so before posting it to the Curmudgeon Central Facebook page several days ago. Interestingly, I found out about the article from the Facebook community Americans Against Islamophobia. For whatever reason, the post has subsequently disappeared both from that page and from the Islamophobia Today website.

Anyway, it’s extraordinarily clear to anyone who could pass high school English that what Henry Payne is doing is something radically different than espousing anti-Islamic sentiments. Rather, he writes that the Dearborn, MI, Muslim community’s expression of joy at the demise of Osama bin Laden “is proof (as if any were needed) that American Muslims are in the United States to escape Sharia law — not to import it.” The key words here are what Payne has offered only parenthetically: “as if any were needed.”

Payne’s point is not that he was surprised that residents of one of the most heavily Muslim areas in the United States would rejoice “just like their fellow Americans from New York to D.C.,” but precisely the opposite: that he wasn’t the slightest bit surprised, and neither should anyone else be, the grandstanding of Palin, Terry Jones, and “a train of opportunistic pols” notwithstanding. He grounds his point in the recognition that perception and reality are not interchangeable concepts, and that just because some right-wing ideologue says something doesn’t mean it’s true.

That there is Islamophobia in this country is undeniable. That it is almost entirely unwarranted, fanned by charlatan politicians (is that phrase redundant?) at the expense of the common weal, is equally demonstrable. That it is in any way manifested by the celebrations ensuing upon the death of bin Laden is at best unproven and more likely pure fantasy.

There is, of course, the further irony of Rayfield’s criticism of an article that (she claims) seems to suggest that Muslims might be expected to respond differently from the rest of us to the news of bin Laden’s death in her own piece which entirely lacks substance unless we buy into the premise that… um… Muslims might be expected to respond differently from the rest of us to the news of bin Laden’s death. Why else would anyone give a damn what a pedestrian thinker like Naqeeb Memon has to say about literally anything?

Ah, but in Rayfield’s world, Payne’s piece must have been anti-Islamic because, after all, a link to it was tweeted by a former candidate for chair of the RNC. That would be the Saul Anuzis who was accused by right-wing jabberer Debbie Schlussel of pandering to Hezbollah and Hamas. (Not that everyone this side of Bibi Netanyahu hasn’t been thus accused by Schlussel.) And, of course, we have no idea whether there was any approbation attached to Anuzis’s re-tweet of the story. More to the point, Rayfield seems incapable of comprehending that anyone in the GOP really believes that there’s an ideological difference between Islam and those who distort it to their own purposes (e.g., Osama bin Laden). Just wondering, Ms. Rayfield, does the name George W. Bush ring any bells?

I am not unaware of the rationale against spending time dismantling the argument presented in an entirely inconsequential article on a website that certainly cares more about its spin than it does about truly incisive analysis. (This isn’t to say I don’t read a fair amount of TPM’s content—I even “like” their Facebook page—but I’m always particularly careful about taking what I read there at face value.)

Here’s where we come back to Jack Marshall. He has argued a couple of times recently about the need to separate ethical and pragmatic arguments, with respect to releasing death photos of bin Laden and to the use of torture in interrogation of presumed terrorists. I agree with him in those terms, but he seems to be suggesting that one shouldn’t link together the two kinds of arguments in the same paragraph.

I disagree, as I shall proceed to demonstrate. Why should I distance myself from drivel like that written by Ms. Rayfield? Well, for one thing, it is drivel, and thinking people ought to avoid nonsensical allegations. Condemning this kind of sloppiness, then, is, to coin a phrase, the right thing to do. But I am not unaware that it serves me politically to behave this way. I’m not running for any political office (ever, I promise), but I do wish to be persuasive. And if I call out “my side” occasionally—and, let’s face it, TPM’s politics are generally pretty close to mine—then I have standing, a reputation for fairness, if you will, when I criticize the other side, which, of course, I do with considerable regularity. Being open-minded and being perceived as such are related but hardly identical ideas. Moreover, I don’t want “my side” represented by idiots. This is not, I confess, an altruistic position. So be it.

Alfred Hitchcock and Knowingly Knowing

Alfred Hitchcock knew what he was doing. His films terrify us for two reasons. The first is the quotidian quality of his characters and situations—there’s nothing exotic at all about the heroes of “The Man Who Knew Too Much” or “North by Northwest.” Nor did Hitch need creepy old houses or dense woods to create his worlds: a concert hall or an open field in bright sunshine will do just fine, thanks—but I defy anyone who’s seen “North by Northwest” to ever look at crop-dusters quite the same again.

Hitchcock’s other insight was just as simple: he understood that the human imagination produces horrors far more vivid than any film-maker could possibly create in a studio. The scariest moments in “The Birds” don’t come when the… erm… title characters actually attack, but rather when, seemingly innocuously at first, they begin to gather on the telephone wires. Similarly, we don’t know what’s waiting at the bottom of those stairs in “Psycho,” but we know to be afraid of it. This is why there is more horror, in any legitimate use of that term, in any of a half dozen of Hitchcock’s scariest films than in all the Dead Teenager flicks ever made put together. We are, in short, hard-wired to be afraid of the unknown. Hitchcock knew it, and used that knowledge to make great films. Alas, today’s right wing knows it, too, and they play on that fear to attempt to legitimize their own prejudices and paranoia.

It was probably sometime in the late 1980s, a decade or so after I graduated from college, that I first heard the term “knowingly know,” a term that refers to not simply the fact that one’s acquaintance is a member of some group, but that one recognizes that they are. I’ve heard the phrase most often with respect to homosexuality. Even if only 2% of the population is gay, if you know 35 people, the chances are better than even you know someone gay. If I recall correctly, there were 306 people in my high school graduating class: even at the 2% figure (certainly at the low end of estimates), the mathematical chances we were all heterosexual would be about 1 in 500 (.98 ^ 306th). Still, I didn’t know any of my classmates to be gay—a very different thing from whether they actually were or not.

In college, I had one gay friend and a couple of acquaintances—or so I thought until years later, when I learned that another of my closest college friends was in fact gay. When, at some point in the early 1990s, my friend and colleague told me that she and her partner had traveled from Iowa to Wisconsin the previous weekend to be “married” in a Quaker ceremony, it took me a little by surprise—not because I didn’t know of their relationship, or because I disapproved in the slightest: I simply hadn’t given the concept of gay marriage any thought. I am pleased to say, in retrospect, that it took me less than two seconds to move from confusion to congratulations. It was, in short, a no-brainer: of course Karen and Penny should be able to marry each other. The fact that I’d hitherto never considered the possibility said something about the time, something about the small-town world I had always inhabited, and something about my own egocentric but perhaps understandable conflation of my own lived experience and the normative.

I will, of course, never know if my reaction would have been any different had the concept of gay marriage been presented to me in the abstract, especially if I’d never “knowingly known” any gays or lesbians. And this is the essence of the “knowingly know” phenomenon: being presented with an impersonal, generic concept is a fundamentally different experience than choosing whether to endorse a policy designed to better the life experience of one’s friends.

Anyway, that college friend I didn’t know was gay until years later? I was privileged to attend his wedding—complete with two plastic grooms atop the cake—in the early summer of 1994. Now, of course, practically everyone not merely knows someone gay, but knowingly knows. And poll numbers reflect that change in cognition. A CNN poll released Wednesday shows, for the first time, that the majority of those polled said that “gays and lesbians should have a constitutional right to get married and to have their marriage recognized by law as valid.” While that’s good news from my perspective, other results from the same poll were more troubling. And that’s why this blog piece isn’t really about gay marriage at all.

What saddened me in particular was this question: “As you may know, a group of Muslims in the U.S. plan to build a mosque two blocks from the site in New York City where the World Trade Center used to stand. Do you favor or oppose this plan?” Over two-thirds of respondents, alas, opposed. True, there has been considerable fanfare about the opposition, not merely from the usual demagogues like Gingrich, Beck, and Palin, but also—chillingly—from the Anti-Defamation League, which issued what Salon.com’s Alex Pareene aptly describes as a “shameful, mealy-mouthed statement” about the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque”: touting religious freedom in one breath and then suggesting that because of “understandably strong passions and keen sensitivities surrounding the World Trade Center site,” the proposed site should be abandoned because “building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain—unnecessarily—and that is not right.”

Give me a damned break. First off, this is precisely the kind of namby-pambyism that used to give liberals a bad name. Someone might get upset? That’s a reason to suddenly forget the 1st Amendment? And who, exactly, would be “cause[d] pain”? In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush, hardly a hard-core Islamophile, said this:

These acts of violence against innocents violate the fundamental tenets of the Islamic faith. And it's important for my fellow Americans to understand that. The English translation is not as eloquent as the original Arabic, but let me quote from the Koran, itself: In the long run, evil in the extreme will be the end of those who do evil. For that they rejected the signs of Allah and held them up to ridicule.

The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam. That's not what Islam is all about. Islam is peace. These terrorists don't represent peace. They represent evil and war. When we think of Islam we think of a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. Billions of people find comfort and solace and peace. And that's made brothers and sisters out of every race—out of every race. America counts millions of Muslims amongst our citizens, and Muslims make an incredibly valuable contribution to our country. Muslims are doctors, lawyers, law professors, members of the military, entrepreneurs, shopkeepers, moms and dads. And they need to be treated with respect. In our anger and emotion, our fellow Americans must treat each other with respect.

Whatever may have happened later, and indeed whatever his motives may have been at the time—political calculation, geo-strategic positioning, or deeply-held personal belief—Mr. Bush, then if never else, said and did what was right, and it seems that most people listened. True, there were some isolated incidents of violence against Muslims, vandalism against mosques, and the like, but it could have been far worse than it was, and President Bush deserves credit for his calming influence.

Unfortunately, that dose of reality seems to have worn off, and there are far too many today who appear incapable of distinguishing Islam from a tiny group of radicalized adherents (if, indeed, the hijackers can be said to be Islamic at all, any more than Fred Phelps can be described as Christian). These, then, are the pain-afflicted victims cited by the ADL: people who can endure the empty chair at the dinner table or the hole in the ground where colossal buildings once stood, but not an expression of the religious freedom central to this country’s identity for well over 200 years.

But then I got to thinking about knowingly knowing. The CNN poll is national; The Wall Street Journal commissioned one last month of just New Yorkers. The headline reads: “Poll: Majority of New Yorkers Oppose Ground Zero Mosque.” If one didn’t know that the WSJ is now another Rupert Murdoch mullet-wrapper instead of the corporatist but reputable newspaper it once was, one might be tempted to stop there and conclude that the people of the area have a real aversion to the completion of the Cordoba Initiative, as the project is called.

But read a little further. Manhattanites actually approve of the construction: “support for the $100 million project appeared to be strongest in Manhattan, where 46% of poll respondents said they were in favor of it, compared to 36% who said they were opposed.” Now, I realize that there was a time gap between the WSJ and CNN polls, but surely the real difference between them is the demographic profile of those surveyed: most especially where they’re from.

Lost in the rhetoric is the fact that a major impetus for the “Ground Zero Mosque” (which isn’t a mosque per se, and which is two full city blocks from Ground Zero) is simply this: it’s needed. According to a WSJ blog by Aaron Rutkoff, “The project is driven in part by the needs of a growing Muslim population in Lower Manhattan. The nearest existing Islamic prayer space, the Tribeca Mosque, has been holding three evening prayer services on Fridays to keep up with demand.” In other words, there are a lot of Muslims in Lower Manhattan. People there know them, interact with them, in many cases are them. In other words, they knowingly know.

But, outside a couple of major cities and a smattering of other areas, how many Americans knowingly know anyone of the Islamic faith? How many folks in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, site of another backlash against Islam in general, actually have had a conversation with someone named Farooq or Mohammed or Amir?

Let’s leave aside the compelling arguments that the right’s outlandish rhetoric plays directly into the hands of radical Muslims by actually making the case that American foreign policy is indeed a “war on Islam,” when it plainly is not. Let’s also pass over the fact that dozens of Muslims died in the 9/11 attacks, that it was a Muslim man who alerted authorities to the bomb in Times Square in early May, that one of the prime movers of the Cordoba project is quoted as saying, “We decided we wanted to look at the legacy of 9/11 and do something positive,” and that she hopes “to reverse the trend of extremism and the kind of ideology that the extremists are spreading.”

Let’s just look at the numbers based on knowingly knowing, or, looked at differently, in terms of how much the respondent’s life would actually be affected by the completion or non-completion of the project:

General U.S. Population: Opposed by 39 points

New Yorkers (all five boroughs): Opposed by 21 points

Manhattanites: In favor by 10 points

If I didn’t know better, I’d say there’s a pretty clear correlation between knowingly knowing and supporting the Cordoba Initiative. Perhaps the right, erstwhile champions of local control, ought to STFU?

There will be anti-Muslim bias in some circles for a long time to come, just as there still is in some places against African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Jews, Hispanics, gays… But there is an antidote to this poison. It’s called education: not the teach-to-the-test crap advocated by many on the right (and some, truth to tell, on the left), but areas like critical thinking, argument formation, written and oral communication, multi-cultural experience. Ignorance doesn’t merely breed fear: it is the very essence of fear. Just ask Alfred Hitchcock.

This is a battle, but one that must be won. That’s why I’m still in the trenches. Unafraid.