Burqas, Baseball, and Apple Pie by Ranya Tabari Idliby

Author:Ranya Tabari Idliby
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 2013-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

“No Muslim Parking”

Let not hatred of others to you make you swerve to wrong and depart from justice. Be just: that is next to Piety.

—Quran 5:8

Colin Powell was too ambitious when he questioned what would be wrong with a seven-year-old American Muslim dreaming of becoming president. If you happen to be a child who is both an American and a Muslim, it is not only presidential dreams that can be curtailed: future athletes and scholars should also be mindful. If you are like Oday Aboushi, an American and a practicing Muslim who is also proud of his Palestinian heritage, your identity may make you suspect as a Muslim extremist and anti-Semite. This twenty-first-century Muslim Jackie Robinson is the Brooklyn-born fifth-round pick of the New York Jets. No sooner had he rejoiced in his successful professional career pick than he woke up to a hailstorm of fury and slander, as some wondered if he should be drummed out of the football league. Aboushi was even compared to those who traffic in “anti-gay, anti-black, anti-immigrant, sexist” speech, and the NFL was questioned on its desire to be associated with prejudice, violence, or fundamentalism.1 All Aboushi had done was talk to a group about how proud he was to be Palestinian and how eager he was to play in the NFL. But his identity was his crime. Jonathan Mael, Major League Baseball’s new media coordinator, compared Aboushi to Aaron Hernandez, the Patriots football player who is facing murder charges, when he tweeted: “The Patriots have Aaron Hernandez, the Jets have Oday Aboushi.”

And if you happen to be an accomplished and highly qualified scholar with a PhD in the sociology of religions, in addition to other graduate and undergraduate degrees including a master’s degree in theological studies from the Harvard Divinity School, and you end up writing a book about the historical Jesus, it is best if you are not a Muslim. Reza Aslan has learned this. His interview on Fox made for gruesomely uncomfortable viewing, as his interviewer relentlessly and for eight long television minutes refused to move beyond the incredulous idea that a Muslim, who is a gifted and erudite scholar with multiple degrees in religion, could possibly write a scholarly book about Jesus without having a hidden and nefarious Muslim agenda. Reza maintained his calm demeanor as Lauren Green of Fox drilled him on his concealed and true motives as a Muslim writing on Jesus: “You’re a Muslim, so why did you write a book about the founder of Christianity?” At one point she even brazenly and bizarrely accused him of having concealed his identity as a Muslim, forcing Reza to remind her that he is a well-known and prolific author who has always been transparent about his faith, which he even mentions on the second page of the book in question. To appreciate the degree of suspicion, contempt, and derision toward all things Muslim that forms the basis of such logic, imagine if a scholar who happens to

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