2
" The irony, of course, is that not long ago, it was Trump’s own ancestors—German American immigrants—who were the demons of the day, as the United States fought two world wars against Germany. The only thing that saved Trump’s people from being rounded up and put in camps during World War II, like Japanese American families—as Trump lauded President Franklin Roosevelt for doing—was that their skin color happened to be white. Those who are so eager to stigmatize Muslims today should keep this in mind—next time around it could be them. That’s the way these American nativist, “know-nothing” uprisings work. One day it’s Catholics who are the reviled aliens, then it’s Jewish people, then it’s Muslims. If you don’t belong to one of these groups, just wait your turn—you could be next in line.
We will always be subjected to these us-versus-them hysteria campaigns as long as people in power seek to divide Americans for their own cynical political purposes—whether it’s to whip up war fever, split apart working people, or simply keep the citizenry fearful and easier to manipulate. "
― Arsalan Iftikhar , Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms
5
" Political observers point out that our country has a long, raucous history of witch hunts. “In times of economic distress, people tend to be more susceptible to charlatans and demagogues telling them who to blame and who to fear,” Matthew Duss, former national security editor at the Center for American Progress, once told me for a magazine article that I once wrote on this topic. “America has been through this sort of thing before with various minority groups, but we’ve always come through it stronger in the end…. Hopefully within a few years, the idea that all American Muslims want to turn America into an Islamic state will seem as stupid as the idea that a Catholic president would take orders from the Vatican.”
But in the meantime, America must sweat through a raging fever, a blaze of intolerance that puts many Muslim citizens at risk of losing their rights and, in some cases, their lives. Fear and ignorance, of course, fuel this anti-Muslim hysteria. But so does money. Because there is political capital in scapegoating Muslims. "
― Arsalan Iftikhar , Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms
