I wish I could get paid to peddle ignorance. (Hush, you.) Seriously. Douthat wants American Muslims to recognize that to fit into the American Protestant religious model, they must reject radicalism in favor of bland assimilationist piety consonant with Western values.
I have an idea! Maybe one of those moderate imams, you know, the trusted sort that Bush’s administration could consult with after 9/11, one of the good guys, should start a, what should we call it, maybe a Muslim Knights of Columbus or YMMA, a-a-a cultural center! and put it in a modest, nondescript building in a major metropolitan area. That would be a good way to show willing. And they shouldn’t name it something foreign-sounding, but maybe pick an easy-to-pronounce Western name that evokes a place where scholars from all religions could come and work and learn together.
(I wonder where Opus Dei’s NYC offices are. Christ on a cracker.)
Update: To be clear, the problem with this is that it’s pig-ignorance wrapped in delicate language:
During the great waves of 19th-century immigration, the insistence that new arrivals adapt to Anglo-Saxon culture — and the threat of discrimination if they didn’t — was crucial to their swift assimilation.
Of course, one can’t write the simplified version and be published in the paper of record as a nuanced conservative:
Many immigrants to the U.S. in the 19th century were met with violence and legal discrimination. That is what is missing from our treatment of Muslims today.
Douthat’s whitewashing the past and ignoring that what allowed immigrants to assimilate despite horrid treatment was the very commitment to liberal ideals that he sets to the side in his first paragraph. Does he think that Little Italy and Chinatown are there because it was really convenient to put all the restaurants together?
22 comments
August 16, 2010 at 7:42 am
Jay C
Actually, Opus Dei isn’t hard to find: their Press Office is on NYC’s Riverside Drive, their main office is, I think, on Lexington Avenue.
No info provided about the relative “hallowedness” of those locations, though….
August 16, 2010 at 7:57 am
politicalfootball
Lots of good stuff in there for a history-oriented blog:
August 16, 2010 at 7:57 am
dana
You mean we allow Catholic sects to use LATIN in AMERICA?
August 16, 2010 at 7:59 am
dana
Yeah. I might do a post later, but, basically, it’s not so much prodding the church to recognize democracy (is Douthat seriously granting that old slur as true?) as it is there being enough Catholics that they were a constituency that it was unwise for a politician to ignore.
August 16, 2010 at 8:27 am
Charlieford
“… they’ll need leaders who don’t describe America as “an accessory to the crime” of 9/11 (as Rauf did shortly after the 2001 attacks), or duck questions about whether groups like Hamas count as terrorist organizations (as Rauf did in a radio interview in June).”
You have to admit he’s quite right there. One of the things about the old, pre-Islam America you and I revere, is there wasn’t ever any discord over how to interpret the world out there.
Yes, we had our arguments. “It’s white with red stripes, you scalawag!” “Fie upon thee, it’s red with white stripes!” “We’re raising the duty on cuckoo clocks!” “Oh. No. We’re. Not!”
But when it came to the English vs. the French, those restless (but loveable!) Germans, the Israelis, whether to support Saddam against the Ayatollah, the Ayatollah against Saddam, or both against each other, WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN OF ONE MIND!!!
Yeah baby! We got UNUM out the wazoo, so suck on that, you diversity-loving liberals!
And until that imam Ruff-Ruff gets on board with not a smidge of daylight between him and the GREAT AMERICAN OVER-SOUL, he’s not a TRUE American, and I won’t thank him for being one.
August 16, 2010 at 9:04 am
jazzbumpa
As a fallen Catholic, I feel obligated to point out that Latin went out DECADES ago.
Cheers!
JzB
August 16, 2010 at 9:10 am
Charlieford
The Society of St. Pius X begs to differ.
August 16, 2010 at 9:17 am
NM
Oh, Ross Douthat, and his banal thoughts run through a pomposity-generating translator.
Here are some pictures of the neighborhood around ground zero. Hallowed street vendors, hallowed fast food, hallowed bars. I think it would be wise of people about to fly off the handle about this to visit google earth and look around the street view from park51.
August 16, 2010 at 9:18 am
dana
jazz, there are places in the U.S. where one can attend a subversive LATIN Mass! In America!
August 16, 2010 at 9:45 am
Vance
The idea that bigotry is justified by supposed good long-term effects on the victims is worse than banal, NM.
August 16, 2010 at 11:00 am
politicalfootball
Wikipedia has some good stuff on nativist opposition to Catholic illiberalism:
Presumably, unquestioning obedience made them more effective fighting the forces of illiberalism.
And:
It’s the killings that let you know that nativists weren’t messing around in their opposition to illiberalism.
August 16, 2010 at 11:14 am
JP Stormcrow
The pogroms will continue until assimilation improves.
August 16, 2010 at 11:36 am
JP Stormcrow
A good read from Justin Elliott at Salon on some of the “pre-history” of the controversy. It is a good corrective to the woefully lacking Times story from last week. I’ve been following the thing fairly closely and knew Pam Geller was all over it, but did not appreciate the extent of her early involvement.
And now Newt is Godwinning it up and preparing to appear with Geert Wilders at a 9/11 rally.
August 16, 2010 at 12:04 pm
dave
*ahem* Know-Nothings then, know-nothings now…
Just surprised I’m the first one to say it…
August 16, 2010 at 1:32 pm
politicalfootball
“It’s not nutpicking if it’s in the NYT” would probably be a good tag for posts here.
August 16, 2010 at 4:56 pm
elizabeth_d
Thank God the nativists were there to beat the Papist ignorance out of my and Douthat’s ancestors!
I mean, I know conservative and liberal Catholics don’t like each other, but I thought at least we were in agreement that the Know Nothing party were douches.
What’s really amazing is the incoherent concept that people have to be oppressed to make them accept freedom.
August 16, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Vance
elizabeth_d, I believe that “incoherent concept” is also frequently encountered as a justification for war.
August 16, 2010 at 6:07 pm
elizabeth_d
Oh, yes, of course. Remember when we liberated the Philippines? Good times.
I was actually thinking of it in relation to false consciousness – you’d be really liberated if you just accepted everything I say!
August 16, 2010 at 7:27 pm
politicalfootball
Sure, Vance, but elizabeth_d is merely describing an aspect of Douthat’s incoherence.
As far as I know, nobody involved with the Know Nothings – either as perpetrator or victim – argued that the goal was helping Catholics – and Sarah Palin ain’t pretending that she’s got the best interests of Muslims at heart.
That bit of historical innovation belongs entirely to Douthat.
(Upon reflection, it seems that I have to be wrong about this – after all, even Klansmen argued, at times, that African Americans were better off in slavery, or under Jim Crow. But unless someone provides evidence, I’m going to assume that Douthat’s narrative is even more ahistorical than that of the Klan.)
August 17, 2010 at 12:49 am
Herbert Browne
“Illiberal/nativist/know-nothings” and I couldn’t get those Connecticut Casino Indians outa my head… nor Iroquois democracy, neither.
“Bless me, Father, for I’m about to sin again..”
^..^
August 17, 2010 at 9:28 am
elizabeth_d
politicalfootball: no, I think you’re right. The Klan, Know Nothings et al. mostly talked about how what they were doing was in the best interest of their own community. Their concern was solely with the Protestant white man and they were quite proud of it.
August 18, 2010 at 1:53 pm
Charlieford
Douthat pushes back on his blog today.
One small thing: he says “But the anti-Catholic case was ideological and cultural (think “rum, romanism and rebellion”) as often as it was racist, and assimilationist as often as it was strictly exclusionist, and the two tendencies consistently overlapped.”
This is passing strange. Yes, there wasn’t a lot of racist animus against say English Catholics, but the assimilationist response DID involve their abandoning Catholicism.
The other odd thing is that he refers to Rev. Dr. Samuel D. Burchard’s remark as if it’s somehow relevant, when Burchard was actually describing the Democrats, and not saying anything about why Catholics are a problem. He just assumes his audience will understand that they are.