Scapegoats

May 23, 2016
There's real pain within the pages of this slim volume, a denunciation of the religious prejudice that's infected American life since 9/11. Iftikhar, a human rights lawyer, leavens his accounting of more than a decade of anti-Islamic bias with some truly absurd personal moments, such as the incompetent inquisition conducted by CNN reporter Don Lemon, who asked whether Iftikhar supported ISIS during a discussion of the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris. Describing the anti-Islamic mindset in Western societiesâparticularly in the U.S., where politicians issue proclamations such as "mosques are not like churches"âIftikhar conveys what it's like to be part of a religious minority in the crosshairs of bigotry. It's an unsettling perspective, particularly when he points out that media accounts of other religiously motivated acts of violence don't describe Christianity or Judaism as religions that are a "source of homegrown terrorism." Iftikhar rightly sounds exasperated when observing, "As with any kind of bigotry, anti-Muslim sentiment is not based on a rational response, but an emotional one. Bigotry is a result of fear." He offers little hope that the forces that fuel Islamophobic currents in the early 21st century are losing momentum, and rightly attests that this bigotry diminishes us all.