Thanks for posting this.

This is an interesting issue for me. Like Marjorie I have political, personal and tribal issues with certain Muslim schools of thought, and the actions of certain Muslim-majority nations. But I have enough knowledge of Islam and of Muslims not to conflate the Hamas charter, or the terrible human rights records of Saudi Arabia or Iran with ‘Islam’, nor to fantasize that the Shiite lady who runs my local Middle Eastern foods store is plotting the rise of a global caliphate in her spare time. I also know enough about both the history of religion and the current state of the world not to buy the notion of some sort of evil Islamic exceptionalism.

In the last few years, I’ve seen ignorant hate about Islam go from Freepers competing to see how many times they can call Mohammed a pedophile to presidential candidates openly saying they would demand loyalty oaths from Muslim government workers. Honda has his own memories—my community has ours. As a Jew and an American, I can’t look at this crap, and how fast it is spreading, and not feel deep disgust, and fear for the future. In the last few weeks I’ve been seeing speculation starting about how Anthony Weiner is also a ‘sekrit Muslim’. This is like McCarthy Meets The Nazis. And an enormous amount of work is being done to see that it spreads and goes mainstream.

I do not use the Nazi analogy lightly at all. I don’t want to use it here. But I’m seeing the slow creep of hate from yahoos in the street, to fringe bloggers, to respectable journalists, to academia—and the buck stops here. Not in America. I will not accept this sort of thing.

Story is that when Oswald Moseley led his British fascist group through the streets of London, the Christians in the neighborhood turned out, throwing things and shouting “Leave our Jews alone!” The great-grandsons of some of those people are now breaking the windows in Asian neighborhoods under the name of the EDL. I am very clear about whose side I am on.