British author and broadcaster Tariq Ali has observed that while Americans no longer keep House Negroes, they do cultivate House Arabs and House Muslims.26 So do some Europeans. And they are using them to lend a patina of credibility to questionable policies. In France, for example, the Jacques Chirac government rationalized its ban on the hijab (headscarf) for schoolgirls by citing the example of those women who did not wear one. That’s akin to banning the yarmulke (the Jewish skullcap) because many Jews do not wear one. In Canada, the province of Quebec used the sole Muslim member of the National Assembly to lead a symbolic vote against the ostensible introduction of sharia (Islamic religious code) in the neighboring province of Ontario. What had been asked for was not sharia at all, but religious-based family arbitration for Muslims, available to Christians and Jews since 1991. One can’t imagine a government anywhere using a lapsed or dissident Catholic to strip away the rights of practicing Catholics.

Critics of Islam are entitled to their views, of course. The media also have the right to quote whomever they wish. And governments may be excused for following public opinion rather than leading it. But our public discourse is dangerously distorted, and public policy badly skewed, when the only Muslim voices the public is allowed to hear are those of Osama bin Laden and other militants on the one hand and, on the other, those willing to mimic the prejudices of their benefactors. This leaves out 99 percent of Muslims, the very constituency that the US and its allies need to hear from, not only for a better understanding of Islam but, more important, to help marginalize the terrorists.

Not only are all Muslims blamed for terrorism, but Islam itself is held responsible for it. Franklin Graham, son of Billy Graham and spiritual adviser to Bush, called Islam “an evil and wicked religion.” Evangelist Pat Robertson called it a violent faith, and the Prophet Muhammad “an absolute wild-eyed fanatic.” John Ashcroft, Bush’s first attorney general, who, like Bush, is a born-again Christian, said that “Islam is a religion in which God requires you to send your son to die for him; Christianity is a faith in which God sends his son to die for you.” Jerry Vines of the Southern Baptist Convention accused the Prophet Muhammad of being “a demon-possessed pedophile.”

All this is neither new nor original.

Crusader Mentality

Anti-Islamic views were common in Europe during and after the Christian Crusades against Muslims (1098-1291). Islam was depicted as a religion of the sword, and the Prophet Muhammad was demonized as Mahound, the Prince of Darkness, or the Beast of the Apocalypse. Crude characterizations of Islam and the Prophet were recycled in more muted forms by European colonialists occupying Muslim lands. The bigoted imagery had begun to subside during our contemporary era of pluralism, only to be resurrected with a vengeance after 9/11. Now, instead of the scimitar-wielding warriors, we have “Islamic” terrorists. It is as if Catholicism were responsible for the Irish Republican Army, the Serbian Orthodox Church for Slobodan Milosevic’s ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, and American Protestantism for Timothy McVeigh blowing up a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.