Islamophobia and Anti-Catholicism—Two Sides of the Same Coin
The ironically-named Dove World Outreach Center has just fifty members and undoubtedly belongs to the lunatic fringe of American society. Its proposed Koran burning, however, was a manifestation—an extreme manifestation—of a much wider Islamophobia. Fear of Islam has been prominent recently in the storm in a teacup over the Cordoba Mosque and in the contested memory of the September 11 terrorist attacks. The 9/11 anniversary prompted many in Europe and America to voice, to varying degrees of extremity, their fear that Islam represents a threat to Western values, to Western society and to the Western way of life.
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.
England provides a salient example. Even after the religious violence of the Reformation subsided and Protestant monarchs came to tolerate the existence of Catholic heretics, English Protestants continued to view Catholics as potential traitors. Catholics were not granted legal equality until 1829, and even then they continued to be subject to popular hostility. This hostility outlived the more strictly religious conflict of the Reformation because France and Spain, England’s principal enemies for nearly three hundred years, were Catholic powers. Protestants feared that Catholics would act as a fifth column that would undermine the country from within, bringing French-style absolutism to England.
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.
Protestant writers argued that Catholic doctrine was intrinsically intolerant. In particular, they asserted that Catholics believed that “no faith is to be kept with heretics.” Protestant writers insisted that Catholics saw all Protestants as heretics. Catholics, supposedly, did not consider it a sin to break an oath with a Protestant (if all this sounds familiar, it should). Even assassinating a Protestant ruler was considered morally acceptable if the pope said so. Catholics could not simultaneously be good Catholics and good subjects.
Modern Islamophobia operates in exactly the same way. Just as early modern anti-Catholicism insisted that it was hostile not towards the Catholic faith itself, but towards political “Papists,” modern Islamophobia is supposedly directed only against political “Islamists.” But Pat Robertson believes that "Islam is... not a religion. It's a political system. It's a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination." Bill Warner, the director of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, agrees that “Islam is a political ideology.” Just as Catholics supposedly believed that “no faith is to be kept with heretics,” Warner explains that Islamic “doctrine demands that Muslims dominate the kafir in all politics and culture… Kafirs are the lowest and worst form of life. Kafirs can be robbed, murdered, tortured, enslaved, crucified and more."
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!”
Islamophobes warn that the principles of Islam are incompatible with the rights and duties of citizenship. Raymond Ibrahim, an associate director of Daniel Pipes’s conservative Middle East Forum, has recently written an article on “The Specter of Muslim Disloyalty in America,” in which he has warned of “the mandate for Muslims to be loyal to fellow Muslims and Islam—a loyalty that all too often translates into disloyalty to all things non-Muslim, including the American people and their government.” Citing the Fort Hood shootings as an example, Ibrahim warns that, when push comes to shove, American Muslims’ loyalty to Islam will always trump their loyalty to America.
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.