Sociologist Christopher Bail is author of “Terrified: How Anti-Muslim Organizations Became Mainstream,” and in this interview talks about the recent uptike in anti-Muslim rhetoric on social-media and by mainstream politicians.
Bail talks about his own experiences post 9-11 and why he wanted to study this important topic. “The voices I was hearing and that most Americans were hearing were not represented of Muslim Americans, they were represented of fringe groups who created a sea change in the American public opinion about Islam.”
Bail also makes a strong point about the current political debate regarding Muslim immigrants: “This debate simply sends the wrong message to the Muslim world. Muslims have been coming to the United States for centuries. Historians estimate that as many as one in three Africans who were brought to the United States hailed from regions with Muslim-majority populations. During the 1960s, the U.S. experienced successive waves of refugee migration from a variety of Muslim-majority countries as well. While immigration policy will not transform negative perceptions of America among foreign Muslims, overt calls to ban Muslim migration to the United States will only validate the narrative of groups such as ISIS who claim that the United States is at war with Islam.”
An important read (and view).
