Is Islamophobia the New Hysteria?

SEPTEMBER 4, 2010, 6:56 PM

Is Islamophobia the New Hysteria?

By NICHOLAS KRISTOF

My Sunday column is about the long history of fear-mongering about newcomers and non-traditional religious faiths. As I write in the column, we have a glorious tradition of amity and religious freedom and tolerance — and also an inglorious history of intolerance and persecution. In the past it was directed most famously at Catholics, Mormons, Jews, Chinese, Japanese, Germans, Irish, Italians, Swedes, Poles and just about every other group.

In the past, fear spread in part because of misinformation. I’ve been fascinated to read the 19th century accounts, supposedly by escaped Catholics. “Hear the shrieks of helpless females at the hands of atrocious men,” recounted one supposed “memoir.” It told of young girls taken to dark rooms and “beaten and stomped to death by superior and priests.”

Likewise, I suspect that some of the fear of Islam today is driven by misinformation and a lack of familiarity with it. Many of the most ferocious critics have probably never been to a mosque or spent much time in a Muslim country. Often, their knowledge seems based on particularly inflammatory excerpts from the Koran. Well, Christianity and Judaism might seem pretty scary too, if you encountered them only through selected bits of Deuteronomy or Leviticus. Islam is a vast, complicated faith, no more monolithic than Christianity, and hard to draw generalizations about. I’d encourage people interested in it to visit the local mosque to get a sense of what they’re like.

When we’re scared, we do unconscionable things. It was fear and patriotism that led many Americans 150 years ago to persecute Catholics. Similar emotions were behind the killings of Mormons and the internment of Japanese-Americans. So before we plunge into a new wave of intolerance, let’s all calm down and try to be inspired instead by the strain of tolerance that also runs through our history.
I’d welcome your thoughts on the column.