I used to get invited to speak with powerful people all over the world – government officials in Europe, university administrators in India, royals in the Middle East, about how America is a country where so many people of different religions live together in relative peace and trust.
After the madness of this past summer and fall (“Ground Zero Mosque,” Shariah in Oklahoma), my guess is I might be invited back only to be laughed at.
One of the craziest parts about what I’ve started calling the “summer of intolerance,” is the pride that some people seem to show in marginalizing and hating their fellow Americans from different religions. The most recent example of this is the story of Alabama, where a restaurant had a sign “BBQ Pork Restaurant is Safest No Muslims Inside.” High-profile, proud intolerance is antithetical to everything I learned about America in grade school and everything we want people beyond our borders to know about our nation.
Tags: eboo patel, ground zero mosque, islamophobia, muslim americans, religious freedom, religious pluralism
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