Fear of a Muslim Planet by Arsalan Iftikhar;

Author:Arsalan Iftikhar;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510763630
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2021-04-21T16:00:00+00:00

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Sharia Is Coming!

Sharia Is Coming!

I believe Sharia is a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States.

—Former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich

During the first term of Barack Obama’s presidency, I was quoted extensively in a TIME Magazine cover story on Islamophobia called “Does America Have a Muslim Problem?” The magazine story dealt with the aftermath of the proposed Park51 Islamic community center in lower Manhattan (which was infamously dubbed the “Ground Zero Mosque” by right-wing haters seeking to block its construction). In addition to the Park51 controversy, the TIME article also highlighted nearly half a dozen other mosque projects across the United States which faced copycat smear campaigns and bitter opposition from right-wingers.

“Islamophobia has become the accepted form of racism in America,” I was quoted as saying in the August 2010 TIME Magazine cover story. “You can always take a potshot at Muslims or Arabs and get away with it.” At the time, a joint TIME-Abt SRBI poll found that 46 percent of Americans believe Islam is more likely than other faiths to encourage violence against nonbelievers. Only 37 percent claimed to know a Muslim American. Overall, 61 percent opposed the Park51 project, while just 26 percent were in favor of it. Just 23 percent said it would be a symbol of religious tolerance, while 44 percent said it would be an insult to those who died on 9/11.

The project was so politically radioactive at the time that Barack Obama eloquently defended the American Muslim community’s constitutional right to practice its faith—and by inference, to build their mosques where legally permitted—during a White House dinner. But the very next day, President Obama backtracked stating that he was not, he clarified, commenting on the “wisdom of making the decision to put the mosque there.”270

The heated debate around the high-profile Park51 Islamic Community Center in New York City’s lower Manhattan was a catalyst for anti-Sharia movements not just in the United States, but across the Western world as well. Both anti-Muslim opponents (and even well-meaning liberal supporters) inaccurately referred to Park51 as the “Ground Zero Mosque” and that only galvanized anti-mosque movements across the world. Yet the debates over this proposed space simply bore no relation to reality. The Park51 project was an Islamic community center created to propagate interfaith dialogue, and its location bore no intentional relation to the site of the September 11 attacks.

Yet debate over the Park51 Community Center quickly became absurd, with anti-Muslim forces claiming that it would represent an Islamic “victory” flag planted in the ashes of the Twin Towers. A proposed NYC bus advertisement objecting to the project actually depicted a plane flying toward the World Trade Center’s towers with a rendering of the Islamic community center on the right. It was clear that no implication, extrapolation, or exaggeration would be considered too absurd or insane.

The “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy was important because many other high-profile anti-mosque campaigns across the West still seek to use it as a model to chill the religious freedom rights of millions of Muslims today.

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