Kazi Anwarul Masud**

LEPERS, untouchable, politically radioactive, is how Muslims in the US presently describe themselves before the presidential election to be held on November 4. The McCain camp reportedly tried to portray Barack Obama as a Muslim to scare away his supporters.

It is sad that in a multi-religious, multi-cultural nation of immigrants, about 6 million Muslims have to prove their loyalty to a country where many of whom were born and bred.

According to the American Muslim Council (AMC) there are three categories of Muslims: immigrants, American converts/reverts to Islam, and those born to the first two groups as Muslims. California has about 20% of the Muslim population while New York 16% of the total Muslim population.

Sensible Americans are furious because of the causal relationship that is being painted between the Muslims and the terrorists. Colin Powell, President George W. Bush's first term secretary of state expressed his fury on NBC's Meet the Press by asking: "Is there something wrong being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no, that's not America."

Powell said that he felt very strongly on this issue when he saw the picture of a mother of a Muslim soldier embracing her son's grave in the Arlington Cemetery. Powell's statement generated strong support among Muslims.

One Muslim said: "Muslims feel jaded by 2008 election precisely because they see the smearing of their identity. Muslim or Arab is seen as a scarlet letter, political leprosy, Kryptonite. There is that taint there. We are the lowest of the low."

The desolation resounding the words spoken reminds one of the riots that took place in Europe after the unsavoury characterisations of Prophet Mohammed (SM) in the cartoons published by a Danish newspaper and reproduced by several European newspapers.

It is generally accepted that freedom of expression is circumscribed by its adverse fallout on the dignity of the individual (libel) or the majesty of the divinity (blasphemy). Society by definition being a conglomeration of diverse individuals, societal responsibility demands that rights of the members of the society not be intruded upon.

The first amendment to the US constitution insisting that "Congress shall make no laws respecting an establishment of religion" was a declaration that was powerfully pursued by the US Supreme Court to ensure separation of church from state.

Sociologists and political scientists would have to delve into the intricacies to find out the reasons of this "conflict" between two great religions of the world -- Islam and Christianity.

Dethronement of atheism has, perhaps, resulted in people's greater devotion to established religions. Though it is believed that an inverse relationship exists between wealth and religiosity yet the description of the US, the largest economy in the world, as "a poster child for supernatural belief" is a puzzle.

Supernatural belief, according to anthropologist Edward Taylor, is the "minimum definition of religion." Just about any American, blessed with the material advantages of technological age, believe in God in the biblical sense along with miracles, angels, devils and the afterlife.

This belief in the supernatural is not confined to Christian conservatives, once described by the Washington Post as "largely poor, the uneducated," but, for example, embraces about half of the scientific community of the US.

It is often forgotten that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 were carried out by a handful of renegades in the name of Islam and condemned by the whole Islamic world (along with the rest of the international community.) But nonetheless the prejudice of the majority community has reduced the Muslims, particularly the Muslim diaspora living in the West, to negotiating the parameters of minority citizenship.

The death by accidental electrocution of two Arab Muslim youths fleeing from the French police led to riots. But the core reason for the riots was basically caused by decades long socio-economic exclusion of Muslim immigrants brought into France from North Africa and into Germany from Turkey to shore up the post-war sagging Franco-German economies.

One must, however, acknowledge the "failure" of the immigrants to fully integrate themselves with the mainstream life that resulted in gaining political territory by anti-immigration political parties who play on the unfounded fear of the host country voters about the immigrants.

This fear of the "unknown" was furthered by academics of impeccable credentials like Bernard Lewis, among others, of Islam being an intolerant religion. "Islam was never prepared," writes Lewis "either in theory or in practice, to accord full equality to those who held other beliefs and practiced other forms of worship."

Besides, adds Bernard Lewis, there exists millennial rivalry between Islam and Christianity "a competing world religion, a distinctive civilization inspired by that religion … the struggle between these rival systems has now lasted for some fourteen centuries ... and has continued virtually to the present day."

The other school of thought less severe on Islam observes: "The West won the world not by supremacy of ideas or values or religion but rather by superiority in applying organised violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do."

The arrogant display of an "inerrant" interpretation of divinity was not accepted by all, particularly the Muslim immigrants. In defense, wrote Irish anthropologist Vincent Tucker: "For a society to claim universal desirability while turning its back on others from whom it is convinced it has nothing to learn, is not only cultural elitism, but cultural racism."

Some political analysts are not unduly worried that America seems deeply divided over moral and political values. Party polarisation may have been caused by mainstream political parties having been taken over by polarised political activists. Though more than one-third of Americans live in the so-called "lop-sided counties" (defined as those counties which vote for one party or the other by a lop-sided margin) such voting pattern reflects the historical range for presidential elections since 1840.

During the last presidential election, many analysts found the loyalty of American voters almost perfectly divided between the Democrats and the Republicans -- Red America and Blue America -- Red America is godly, moralistic, patriotic, predominantly white, masculine, less educated, heavily rural and suburban; Blue America is secular, relativistic, internationalist, multi-cultural, feminine, college educated, heavily urban and cosmopolitan."

People like Professor James Hunter and political scientist John White see culture divide among Americans -- one culture being "orthodox" and the other being "progressive." But according to sociologist Alan Wolfe, Americans are moderate, reluctant to pass judgment, and "tolerant to a fault."

Equally, others find both conservative and progressive Americans sharing shocking level of agreement on many issues. Both red and blue state residents agree that religion is an important part of their life. Many agree that the problem lies not with the voters but with the political parties and politicians.

Yesterday's political parties, which used to be loose coalition of interests and regions, have now become ideological clubs. On top of this if Samuel Huntington's "clash of civilizations" becomes an essential part of the American narrative and religious intolerance finds its way into the domestic and international interaction of the only superpower of the world, then the victor will be neither Barack Obama or John McCain but Osama bin Laden and his band of terrorists.

**Kazi Anwarul Masud is a former Secretary and Ambassador.

Source: The Daily Star