Religion News Service: Whenever Muslims are involved in a terror attack, my Facebook page and email inbox explodes with people who live to say (and love to say): “See, I told you so.”
The latest was from one of my long-time correspondents who sent me a list of every member of the present administration who is a Muslim.
John Brennan, current head of the CIA. Valerie Jarrett. Homeland Security Advisor, Mohammed Alibiary.
“We now have a Muslim government!” she writes.
It reminds me of one of the most enduring lessons of American cultural history — the fear of alien invasion.
The Red scare, well, scared us — which is what made the various film versions of “War of the Worlds” so frightening (though the most recent one would most likely be a metaphor for the fear of Islam).
We could laugh at the Red scare, while watching “Rocky and Bullwinkle,” and realizing the not-so-subtle word play in Boris Badenov and Natasha.
We could shudder to think of how our minds were being taken over by foreign influences, as we watched “Invasion of the Body Snatchers.”
And meanwhile, my late mother lived in fear — that someone would come into our home, and see all of her books on the history of Russia, and decide that she was a Communist sympathizer.
Categories: Interfaith tolerance, Islamophobia, ISLAMOPHOBIA, The Muslim Times