History News Network: In History-Islamophobia and Anti-Catholicism—Two Sides of the Same Coin

[pampango]

http://www.hnn.us/articles/131475.html

Those who speak of a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West might not realize it, but they are echoing fears that Europeans and Americans harbored towards Roman Catholicism for hundreds of years. Of course, religious prejudice is nothing new, but the similarities between the Islamophobia of today and the anti-Catholicism of the past are striking. Early modern Protestants would have recognized many of the specific arguments today advanced against Islam and would have responded to much of the language, imagery and symbolism of contemporary fears of an alien, aggressive, domineering, intolerant and illiberal “Other.” Contemporary Islamophobia needs to be seen not as something that took root in America only after 9/11, but as part of a tension between Western nation-states and religious minorities that stretches back to the sixteenth century.

Early modern Protestants justified their hostility to Catholics by arguing that Catholics themselves were intolerant. They declared their willingness to tolerate the Catholic religion, but warned that Catholics would not be content with religious freedom. They insisted that Catholics were politically-motivated “Papists” who wanted to further the power of the pope. Catholics, if given the opportunity, would not treat Protestants with the same tolerance that they themselves had received. Paradoxically, hostility to Catholicism was justified in the name of religious liberty.

Modern Islamophobes, like the Protestants of old, square their hostility to Islam with their professed attachment to tolerance and religious freedom by insisting that Islam is itself intolerant. The far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders, addressing the recent rally against the building of the Cordoba Mosque, explained that “the tolerance that is crucial to our freedom... must defend itself against the powers of darkness, the force of hatred and the blight of ignorance. It cannot tolerate the intolerant and survive.” Geert concluded, “In the name of freedom: No mosque here!”

Seen in a short-term perspective, Islamophobia is a product of the last ten years, a reaction to 9/11 and fuelled by an imprecise “War on Terror.” Broadly speaking, though, Islamophobia has deep roots in Western history. This long-term view should lead us to be skeptical when Islamophobia is justified as a legitimate response to intolerant “Islamism.” Tolerance and religious liberty can, however paradoxically, serve as rallying cries for the religiously intolerant. A religious tolerance that is conditional upon cultural assimilation is not a genuine tolerance.