McChurch - Racism in the Culture of Fear

(As America continues to move in the direction of insisting on “exporting democracy,” and as the Christian Right sees in the chaos of the Middle East the opportunity to promote Zionism, we will witness more and more stereotyping of Muslims as being “Infidels.”

Racism is a latent emotion that rears its ugly head in a culture of fear…The fear that Americans now experience is the loss of security – both economic security and physical security…Couple this with the persecution complex already prevalent with the evangelical community, and you have the perfect setting for full-blown hatred of those who reject the traditional evangelical litmus test of faith…

Stan Moody, author of “Crisis in Evangelical Scholarship” and “McChurched: 300 Million Served and Still Hungry.”)

A Moderate Voice to Quell Extreme Perceptions

By - CNN--Paula Zhan Now
Wednesday, April 11, 2007 - Web Link

(CNN) -- As the president of the Islamic Society of North America, Ingrid Mattson has set out to correct the misconceptions and prejudices that she says shroud the Muslim community.

And as a white woman born in Canada, and one raised Catholic -- a seeming walking contradiction of the religion's stereotypes -- Mattson may be best poised to debunk the myths.

"There are so many challenges right now for being a Muslim," Mattson, the society's first woman president, told CNN in a recent interview.

"The perception of who we are and what we believe is heavily influenced by international events, and it's difficult to present ourselves independently," she said, citing the war in Iraq and other conflicts in predominantly Muslim countries.

As a result of violent and anti-American news stories coming from Iraq, Pakistan and other countries, she said, Muslims in the United States "face this suspicion and this fear that somehow we represent a foreign threat."

"The war in Iraq, in particular, has such a negative effect on the way Americans perceive Islam," she said. "The chaos there has led many Americans to have this association between Islam and violence."

And it is an association and an image that she said has no bearing on the religion and the community she knows.

"When I became a Muslim I was embraced wholeheartedly," she said. She converted at age 23, after not practicing Catholicism for about eight years. "Islam for me provided a way back to God," she said.

"When I read the Quran, it really opened up to me a whole new world of meaning ... I could connect my experiences, my place in the world, with a greater power and greater authority."

Part of her responsibility as ISNA president, she said, is to convey the positive aspects of the community and the faith -- what she calls the "good news" to non-Muslims.

"We are the best asset for America in understanding what is going on in the Muslim world, and so we need to be ... welcomed as equal partners in this struggle for a peaceful and civil world."

And as Muslims, she said, "we need to raise our heads up; to not be afraid that people are looking at us with suspicion, and to not feel that we have to answer to everything that every Muslim is doing in the world."

Mattson is also a professor of Islamic Studies and Director of Islamic Chaplaincy at the Macdonald Center for Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations at Hartford Seminary. She lives in Connecticut with her husband and two children, according to the