This is a guest post from “Jeremy Menchik”:www.polisci.wisc.edu/menchik, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a fellow at the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration and Religion at Columbia University. (All links added by me.)
bq. Why have otherwise tolerant Americans faltered in defending Park51, the Islamic cultural center that is being developed two blocks from the World Trade Center site? The Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) National Director Abraham Foxman and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid’s failure to stand up for the rights of Muslim-Americans has come as a surprise to Americans accustomed to their being stalwart defenders of minority rights.
bq. Political science research on tolerance, however, suggests that their actions are part of a predictable pattern: even the most tolerant of leaders is likely to become a tepid defender of minority rights in the face of certain structural factors. Tolerance for minorities tends to wane when the country is at war with co-religionists of the minority group, during periods of economic decline, and during election struggles when politicians can use the issue as a way to mobilize the electorate.
bq. Periods of war with co-religionists of the minority group have long led to the breakdown of tolerance. During the cold war, Harvard sociologist “Samuel Stouffer”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_A._Stouffer showed that otherwise tolerant Americans were more than willing to bar an admitted communist from teaching in schools, to muzzle their voices from the public square and to ban their books from libraries.
bq. While Stouffer’s work — conducted at the height of the Cold War — called into question the degree to which Americans believed in the universality of freedom of speech for unpopular views, decreasing international tensions led to diminished intolerance. Subsequent “research”:http://books.google.com/books?id=c6Eci6D7SUoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sullivan+marcus+tolerance&source=bl&ots=yOAVZuz8ro&sig=d3H1wXGLS23njAOjKPi91sa7Elg&hl=en&ei=yzeETLjCAsWqlAflldkR&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false by political scientists John L. Sullivan, James Piereson and George E. Marcus showed that American’s intolerance decreased over the next three decades. Without the threat of the Communist Soviet Union, the public was more likely to extend the same civil liberties to American communists that they did to other minorities.
bq. That 30-year softening of intolerance is unlikely to be much comfort to Muslim-Americans today. Nor should it be. Sullivan, Pierson and Marcus have also shown that even the staunchest defenders of democracy can be selectively intolerant. For example, a defender of Protestant rights may be more circumspect when it comes to Catholics, especially if Catholics are seen as threatening. And thus it should come as no surprise that the Anti-Defamation League’s fervent defense of Jewish rights does not extend to Muslims in downtown Manhattan.
bq. Intolerance also increases during periods of economic decline. In research on another plural state, the Ottoman Empire, the historians Benjamin Braude and Bernard Lewis have demonstrated that during periods of economic downturn it was common for the government to increase restrictions on religious minorities. The state of tolerance in our own economic downturn is not so different. There have been widespread calls for subjecting Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf to restrictions that are not imposed on construction projects by other religious groups. The Muslim reformer Irshad Manji has even called for Imam Rauf to explain what activities will go on inside the mosque by using the question of whether women, homosexuals, and atheists will be equally welcome in Park51 as a litmus test.
bq. That is intolerance. Tolerance means allowing any American, regardless of their religious or political views, the right to engage in public speech and private worship regardless of the content of their views. The builders of Park51 must obey the laws of New York just like any other religious group: no more and no less.
bq. Tolerance is also likely to wane around election time, when political leaders try and alleviate public discontent by attacking minority groups. In my own research, conducted over the past two years in Indonesia, I have found that elections can become a catalyst for intolerance when politicians seek to mobilize their conservative followers. Senator Harry Reid’s failure to stand up for the rights of Muslim-Americans is wholly unsurprising given that his opponent, Sharron Angle, has tried to pressure Senator Reid into taking an unpopular stance. Doing so is a strategic move on her part: if he acquiesces to her tactics, she can claim credit. And if backs the supporters of the mosque, we will be hammered until November for taking a position that runs counter to public opinion.
bq. On a more positive note, political science research also suggests that there are effective tools for tempering intolerance. Political scientist James Gibson’s “research”:http://www.jstor.org/pss/4092220 (gated) in Russia suggests that people can be persuaded to be either tolerant or intolerant. Fareed Zakaria’s “repudiation”:http://www.newsweek.com/2010/08/06/fareed-zakaria-s-letter-to-the-adl.html of the ADL position, by returning their Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedom Prize, sent exactly the right message: Americans must stand up for tolerance regardless of the religion.
bq. Prosecuting attacks on Muslim-Americans as hate crimes sends a similar message. The recent “attack”:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/25/ahmed-h-sharif-muslim-tax_n_694789.html on Muslim taxi driver Ahmed H. Sharif demonstrates that intolerant attitudes, if unchecked, can quickly lead to violence. In a statement released by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Mr Sharif said, “I have been here more than 25 years. I have been driving a taxi for more than 15 years. All my kids were born here. I never feel this hopeless and insecure before.”
bq. Unfortunately, political science research suggests that as long as Al-Qaeda threatens the United States, the economy is weak, and politicians can gain votes by taking intolerant positions, Muslim-Americans have good reason to be insecure.