Society & Culture - Posted by Sarah Galer-Chicago on Tuesday, July 31, 2012 9:14 - 7 Comments 
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...Book: Fear of Muslims ‘disfigures’ the West
"If we don't all insist on decency and inclusion, the [United States] will subtly have become a different nation, one more suspicious of foreigners, more insistent on homogeneity," warns Martha Nussbaum, author of a new book on the West's irrational fear of Muslims. "This would be a tremendous loss." (Credit: University of Chicago)
U. CHICAGO (US) — The West, battered by fears of terrorism, needs to turn a critical eye inward to stem an irrational suspicion of Muslims, a new book argues.
Share this article
Email
Republish this article
The text of this article by Futurity is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivatives License.
While fear is an important natural emotion, its self-centered nature makes it susceptible to irrational distortions that are harmful to others, writes University of Chicago professor Martha Nussbaum in The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age.
“Any self-knowledge worth the name tells you that others are as real as you are, and that your life is not just about you. It is about accepting the fact that you share a world with others, and about taking action directed at the good of others,” Nussbaum explains.
In The New Religious Intolerance, Nussbaum explores religious prejudice through the lens of philosophy, literature, and history. She argues that in order to “uncover the roots of ugly fears and suspicions that currently disfigure all Western societies,” Europe and the United States need to reassess the strength of their principles of equal respect, evaluate their narcissistic responses, and develop “inner-eyes” to more easily imagine the lives of others.
Fear with no basis in evidence leads to dubious exclusions, she writes.
As examples, Nussbaum questions the logic behind Switzerland’s ban against minarets in a country that has only four; European bans that single out Muslim headscarves and burqas from other religious dress; and the fervent resistance to a Muslim community center near “Ground Zero” in New York City—although neither an existing nearby mosque nor the neighboring strip clubs, liquor store and off-track betting parlor have caused any uproar.
“It’s not rational to dismiss the fear of Muslim terrorism. That fear is rational in the light of history and current events, and that rational fear ought to guide sensible public policy . . . but it’s simply not reasonable to believe that all one’s neighbors are fiends in disguise.”
Nussbaum says that for the most part, Europe and particularly the United States understand what good political principles of equal respect should look like, but those principles remain vulnerable.
“They remain fragile, however, in times of fear,” Nussbaum writes. “Like railroad tracks, they guide the train well until some disaster, whether a system failure or an earthquake, causes it to go off the tracks. And today we see all too many cases in which panic is causing derailment.”
Nussbaum has seen attitudes toward Muslims spiraling downward in both Europe and the United States in the last decade after years of relative religious tolerance. Although Europe’s history has been peppered with events like the Crusades, the Wars of Religion, anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism and Nazism, and the United States has in the past been less than hospitable toward Native Americans, Roman Catholics, Jews, Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, the West had begun to pride itself on its openness and acceptance. That tolerance is now being jeopardized.
Nussbaum’s book grew out of a column she wrote for The New York Times on the proposed burqa bans in Europe and a later response to the hundreds of passionate comments she received. Her book, in addition to being an intellectual exploration of the subject, is something of a call to arms to recapture the ideals of the pre-9/11 era and to stop the current rise of intolerance against Muslims before it is too late.
These changes must be made not just at the political level, but also through individual reflection and imagination about the minority experience.
“That future is in the hands of the people,” writes Nussbaum.
“If we don’t all insist on decency and inclusion, the nation will subtly have become a different nation, one more suspicious of foreigners, more insistent on homogeneity,” she warns. “This would be a tremendous loss.”
More news from the University of Chicago: https://news.uchicago.edu/
Please wait
7 Comments
Raouf Mohamed
Brandon Anthony Sampson
Don’t forget about the people who built this country from the ground up without being compensated for it. That is still the defining issue of this nation…even though you acknowledged every other oppressed group without mentioning it.
James Acton
And what of intolerance in Muslim countries? Switzerland bans minarets yet you cannot practice Christianity openly in Saudi Arabia. Crusades? Well… Saudi Arabia had some of the earliest Christian churches yet most Christians were expelled or forced to convert.
And the list goes on.
This is yet another one sided anti west view.
The west can capture some of it’s lost tolerance… the trouble is with greater access to what else is happening in the world the west now has greater exposure to the extreme intolerance in the rest of the world. Perhaps if other countries became more tolerant… ?
K. Sweetman
But Saudi Arabia does not pretend to be a democracy. It is a monarchy. The United States of America is a democracy. The point is not what the rest of the world is doing, the point is what we are doing is inconsistent with our values. We can either ban all symbols of religion of any kind (which would be equal and fair) or we can allow all symbols of religion (which would also be equal and fair) but we cannot ban only some religions or some symbols and still claim to be a society that values liberty and freedom for all.
Anand
It has become a fashion of sorts to criticise open civilisations these days…you can’t downplay the enormous courage and will to accept democracy as a form of governance and run it successfully. All the democratic nations have to be uplouded for that. And as far as the fear/bias against Islam is concerned, it’s for their own community to introspect and behave in a more acceptable manner collectively as a community. It’s the law of the land which is supreme and above any religion. The conclusions of this article is totally irrelevant and misguiding.
Alex
Now one ever complains about Christian phobia . So if west is disfured by islamophobia , shouldn’t people also proclaim that east is disfigured by christian phobia . I still remember how my mom was forced to wear ninja suit while we were living in Saudi .
Islamophobia is due to over a hundred years Zionist propaganda .
Islamophobia in USA nd Europ is result of their media that keeps harming Moslim images before their citizens in addition to the clear ignorance of Islamic culture in the West .No best way to overcome this situation than read and reread about Islam and Islamic civilisation .Thank you for the subject .