Another Global Warming: A Rise In The Hate Temperature
By Arshad M Khan
02 July, 2015
Countercurrents.org
There is something particularly heinous about violence in religious places -- churches, temples, mosques, shrines, synagogues, abbeys, monasteries. So the ongoing violence between Sunni and Shia and the bombings in mosques appalls; so the murder of 29 Palestinians by Baruch Goldstein, a man celebrated as hero in extremist circles; so the burning this week of the Church of the Multiplication, a Christian shrine managed by the Benedictine order in northern Israel, believed by the faithful to be the site where Jesus performed the miracle of the loaves and the fishes -- offensive Hebrew graffiti left on the walls made the crime just that much more painful; and so the murder on Wednesday of nine black worshippers in Charleston, S.C., where there is a tradition of Wednesday evening services. Why there? Why now?
With the election as South Carolina governor of Republican Nikki Haley, born Nimrata Randhawa of Indian Sikh parentage, the lines both political and ethnic had seemed to be blurring there, but certain hatreds simmer under the surface, percolating up when hate mongers are given freer rein. There is another kind of global warming -- a rise in the hate temperature.
In this country, a new book by Ann Coulter warns us of the impending takeover (cultural and worse according to her) by Hispanics hailing from "misogynist cultures". Her ideas resonate white nationalist themes like the "browning" of America. Meanwhile Pam Geller, the noted Islamophobe, continues her hate propaganda on buses and subways in New York. Once it becomes acceptable to hate and demean, reason and tolerance are blown away like chaff in the wind.
For both of them, Abdulfattah Jandali, a Syrian born in Homs would be unacceptable. And so he was by his girlfriend's parents. The couple separated and their unborn child was later given up for adoption. Who was their child? Steve Jobs -- the founder of Apple, now the largest listed stock.
Some Republicans might well follow the anti-immigration call -- to an extent Mitt Romney did -- but what do Nikki Haley and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana think of rhetoric like the "browning of America"?
A president should be able to influence the tone and temper of a nation ... if he tries. To speak only fleetingly in response to egregious acts is not enough, and to ignore one's own origins, in an environment increasingly Islamophobic, is to shame them. Have we really become more tolerant since the sixties? If so, how would a certain Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. feel, visiting if he could a New York adorned with Islamophobic ads on public conveyances?
Cloaking whole peoples, religions, races with the smear of anonymous undesirability epitomizes a bigotry one would have hoped might have disappeared in the twenty-first century. Yet it is on the rise, not just here but in Europe also. To be anti immigration and asylum seekers and all the they-are-not-us refugees, often from wars initiated or instigated by the West, is a popular stance, given gains in recent elections including the win this week in Denmark by the right wing party ousting Social Democrats.
So it is. And I thought the world would be a happier place by now.
Arshad M Khan ( http://ofthisandthat.org/index.html) is a retired Professor and occasional contributor mainly to the U.S. print and electronic media. He has been quoted in the U.S. Congress and published in the Congressional Record
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