Saturday, October 27, 2007
Opinion, Stephanie Ramage

Islamo-Fascism Unawareness Week

 

I was raised as part of middle Georgia’s very small Mormon minority. It wasn’t until my freshman year at Brigham Young University that I saw the theocracy that essentially defines Mormonism. At BYU, Mormonism was not, as it had been in Georgia, an oasis of spiritual singularity; it was instead an overwhelming omnipresence, a penetrating interloper into every facet of our lives.

It was there, under the too-watchful eyes of the church authority, that my sword of faith was beaten into a plowshare of secularism. My eventual decision to forsake Mormonism entirely was one I made on my own, without outside influence. In an accepting environment, I had been free to think about my religion without feeling the need to defend it, and that freedom of intellectual inquiry made all the difference in who I am today. I left BYU at the end of that year, going on to the University of Georgia.

I thought about that a lot recently as Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week swept college campuses across the nation. The term “Islamo-Fascism” has primarily been used to describe Islam employed as a disguise under which the pan-Arabic front seeks to legitimize the violent expansion of its influence. “Islam” is not the point, and if you lop that off you’re left with “fascism,” which essentially describes established governments subverting the law through violence upon their own people in order to secure their power.

So, at whom are these events aimed, exactly? Are we to be grateful because their sponsors have informed us of the heretofore unknown danger of Islamic extremists? Is it to show who is a “safe” Muslim and who is not? At what point does a veil become a threat or a Muslim woman become a mindless possession? Who is it who decides? And once decided, what is the point of it?

Comparisons of personal experiences of faith are slippery things, but I know a tiny something of the effect of vilification on religious devotion.

In high school, I was a devout Mormon, and my piety made me an easy target in ways that “moderate” Mormons were not. The day after many of my fellow students had taken in a vicious little anti-Mormon film called “The Godmakers” at an event sponsored by a prominent local church, I was slapped around and spit on by a group of boys, Christian Protestants all. These boys waited until the teacher and the only other girl in the class left the room to make copies in the office, as they did every day. Then they turned off the lights, locked the door and cornered me. I sat as impassively as possible. One of them called me, rather incongruously, a “Mormon whore” and slapped me. I felt my tears searing my face and I tasted the blood of my lip as I tried not to sob.

There’s no point in going into the rest. Suffice it to say that when the teacher returned she saw that something had happened. The boys were suspended for three days. The school apologized to my family. The effect on me was like a blacksmith’s fire on a sword—I would have died for my faith.

So if the idea behind Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is to deter extremists by separating less-secular Muslims from the mainstream and holding them up to suspicion, I would argue that potential extremists will not be deterred, but galvanized.

What is particularly troubling about Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week is that its organizers and speakers—David Horowitz, Ann Coulter and their ilk—seek to demonize a particular segment identified with a particular religion. But for them, as for all of us, there is no way of precisely defining who that segment is. Which means that ultimately all Muslims, regardless of the stated intent to shield the moderates, will be viewed with more suspicion, and the devoutly non-secular, fueled by alienation, will have their suspicions regarding the non-Muslim world validated—a big step on the path to becoming extremists. SP

Stephanie Ramage is news editor of The Sunday Paper.