Ethics Bob

CNN last week ran an excellent documentary about the controversy over a planned new mosque/community center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. It’s called Unwelcome: Muslims Next Door– Soledad O’Brien. The video runs 42 minutes. An excellent summary of it is here.

It’s upsetting to contrast how ordinary American are the Muslims of Murfreesboro with how fearful and suspicious are the mosque’s opponents. The idea that the American Muslims are “other” is reminiscent of similar arguments made about African-Americans, Japanese-Americans, Jewish Americans, and, much earlier, Irish-Americans.

We Americans take pride in our diversity, and in America as a melting pot, but we still have the capacity to summon up a layer of hate and suspicion from just under the surface.

Tags: American Muslims, anti-Semitism, CNN, diversity, ethics, hate, intolerance, Irish-Americans, Islamophobia, Japanese-Americans, melting pot, mosque, Murfreesboro, other, Soledad O'Brien, suspicion, Unwelcome: Muslims Next Door

This entry was posted on April 1, 2011 at 8:45 am and is filed under Ethics-general, Religion, Tolerance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.