Morphing the Muslim

[rug]

An Afghan taxi driver in 2010. (Photo by Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images}

March 5 2014 11:03 AM
By William Saletan

Last week, I wrote about the use of Muslims as bogeymen in the campaign against Arizona’s religious freedom bill. The bill would have shielded businesses from discrimination suits, as long as they were acting on religious beliefs. Everyone understood that the bill would have allowed conservative Christians to refuse services for a gay wedding. But politically, that wasn’t a strong enough argument against it. So opponents raised a different scenario: A Muslim proprietor—typically, a taxi driver—might refuse services to a woman or to a person of a different religion.

Chronologically, the first reference I could find to Muslims in the Arizona fight came from the Anti-Defamation League. I linked to the ADL’s press release about its Jan. 16 letter to state senators, as well as to a committee hearing in which Tracey Stewart, the ADL’s assistant regional director, read from the letter. I quoted Stewart’s testimony (taken verbatim from the letter) that if the bill were to pass, “A Muslim-owned cab company might refuse to drive passengers to a Hindu temple.”

The day after my article appeared, the Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded an apology from the ADL. A CAIR official alleged: "The introduction of this stereotypical scenario gave way to the narrative that Muslims are in some way serial abusers of 'religious freedom based denials of service,' which is completely baseless."

Technically, the elements of this charge are correct. The scenario was stereotypical. It did give way to an anti-Muslim narrative. And, as far as I can tell, the scenario was introduced by the ADL’s letter and testimony. But the demand for an apology is unwarranted, in my view, because the ADL didn’t put these three elements together. They came together over the course of the Arizona fight, through the intercession of other players.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/saletan/2014/03/05/how_the_muslim_taxi_driver_became_a_bogeyman_in_arizona_s_religious_freedom.html

[MisterP]

1. the headlines are always what matters: the retractions always be buried later

http://www.fivechinesecrackers.com/2007/06/brilliance-of-construct-of-pc-brigade_7583.html

[cbayer]

2. They never seem to think these things through long enough to see all

the unintended consequences, do they.

The best line in the piece is

One right-wing website lamented: “Unfortunately, Christian religious rights must suffer in order to stop Muslims from imposing theirs.”