“Islam is not like other religions in the United States[;] it poses an absolute danger to us and our children unless it is monitored. . . . If America is to be safe, it must . . . institute serious monitoring of Islamic organizations.”
Astoundingly, these are not the words of a twentieth century European dictator or a Russian Czar inciting pogroms. Instead, they were written on Friday by Carol Swain, a professor of law and political science at Vanderbilt University. Such bigotry — and its call to implement a degree of fascism that would make history’s most vile despots proud — should give everyone who values freedom serious pause.
As a practicing Jew and the grandson of a Jewish immigrant who fled the organized massacre of Jews in Europe, I am extremely sensitive to comparisons to atrocities like the Holocaust. Replace the words “Islam” with “Judaism” and “the United States” with “Germany,” however, and one could be forgiven for mistaking Swain’s statements for something uttered by an early commander of the Gestapo. Although Professor Swain has every right to say such things, her despicable beliefs have no place in civilized society, and they should be condemned by all.
It is true that many terrorists who claim to be Muslims have invoked Islam as a basis for committing unforgivable atrocities. It is also true that many terrorists who claim to be Christians — Professor Swain’s favored religion — have invoked Christianity as a basis for committing atrocities like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, Russian pogroms, European colonialism in Africa, and continued terrorist attacks today by the Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda and by members of the American Christian terrorist movement against abortion clinics. The former of these facts proves no more that “Islam is a dangerous set of beliefs” than the latter proves that Christianity is a violent religion, and that churches must therefore be subjected to “serious monitoring” if America is to be kept safe. As most thinking people understand, Swain’s broad brush strokes paint nothing more than a masterpiece of ignorance.
Additionally, as scholars like Mehdi Hasan have noted, the real irony is that people like Swain and the terrorists who invoke Islam as a basis for slaughtering civilians have something in common that the vast majority of Muslims do not: both believe, incorrectly, that Islam is a warlike religion. Moreover, overwhelming evidence indicates that so-called “Islamic terrorism” is not even driven by religion at all. Although all terrorist attacks are indisputably cowardly, vicious and evil, as University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape — one of America’s foremost terrorism experts—has explained: “[T]here is little connection between suicide terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism. . . . Rather, what nearly all suicide terrorist attacks have in common is a specific secular and strategic goal: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory that the terrorists consider to be their homeland.”
In closing, when people like Swain call upon the government to oppress all Muslims because of the despicable actions of those who adhere to a sick, twisted and warped version of Islam, I am reminded of the words of Martin Niemöller, a Protestant pastor who spent seven years in a Nazi concentration camp:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out — because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.
Let us hope that all of us will be willing to speak out against such bigotry, lest those like Swain next come for you.
Daniel Horwitz is a member of The Temple Synagogue in Nashville and an alumnus of Vanderbilt Law School.
