As always, theocon-in-chief Robbie George is ahead of the curve:
Let us, Muslims and Christians alike, forget past quarrels and stand together for righteousness, justice, and the dignity of all. Let those of us who are Christians reject the untrue and unjust identification of all Muslims with those evildoers who commit acts of terror and murder in the name of Islam. Let us be mindful that it is not our Muslim fellow citizens who have undermined public morality, assaulted our religious liberty, and attempted to force us to comply with their ideology on pain of being reduced to the status of second-class citizens. Let all of us—Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of other faiths who “esteem an upright life” and seek truly to honor God and do His will—embrace each other, seeking “mutual understanding for the benefit of all men [and working] together to preserve and promote peace, liberty, justice, and moral values.” … It is unjust to stir up fear that they seek to take away our rights or to make them afraid that we seek to take away theirs. And it is foolish to drive them into the arms of the political left when their piety and moral convictions make them natural allies of social conservatives. (A majority of American Muslims voted for George W. Bush in the 2000 election. A majority of the general voting population did not.)
In case you miss the point, the piece is entitled: “Muslims, Our Natural Allies.” George cites the woman in the video as an ally. But that’s a classic piece of misdirection. I fully support a Western Muslim woman’s decision to wear the hijab as an expression of her religious identity. But I just as equally oppose the use of the civil law to combine religious edicts with secular politics. And the latter is essentially the theo-conservative and Christianist project. It sure will be fascinating to see if these Christian fundamentalists join forces with Islamists in the fight for a more expansive definition of religious liberty at home, along with bans on pornography, gay civil equality. George is onto something. Here he is, for example, on the role of women:
I admire Muslim women and all women who practice the virtue of modesty, whether they choose to cover their hair or not. There are many ways to honor modesty and practices vary culturally in perfectly legitimate ways. Men and women are called to serve each other in various ways, and women who refuse to pornify themselves, especially in the face of strong cultural pressures and incentives to do so, honor themselves and others of their sex while also honoring those of us of the opposite sex.
Let’s see: a global movement for religious fundamentalism and social conservatism, uniting much of the developing world with American Christianists (who have already succeeded in jump-starting pogroms against gay people in Uganda and Nigeria) and led, perhaps, by Vladimir Putin and his Euro-Asian community of despotisms. Sure there will be some pushback. But one senses that this transnational fundamentalism will be as tempting for the social right in the short term as it is doomed in the long.
The Dish 