Monday, 12 October 2015 00:00

US Evangelical Islamophobia

Published in Resources

A coalition of Muslims and Christians have come together to address the rising tide of discrimination, intolerance, and at times downright hatred against Muslims in the United States. This is what is called today Islamophobia (see my 2011 blog on the 138-page report by the Center for American Progress entitled, "Fear, Inc.: Exposing the Islamophobia Network in America"; also my blog examining Robert Spencer's work).

Among these are the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy (ICRD) based in Washington, DC, Peace Catalyst International (PCI) headquartered in Denver and the Dialogue Institute (DI) at Temple University in Philadelphia.

In January 2014, ICRD convened 19 U.S. and Pakistani religious leaders for a week in Nepal to establish an Interfaith Leadership Network (ILN) that will develop and jointly pursue capacity-enhancing initiatives to ease the plight of religious minorities in Pakistan and to arrest the spread and impact of Islamophobia in the United States. Among other goals, this Network proposes to bring together American religious leaders, predominantly from the Evangelical movement, to educate, discuss and ultimately limit the impact of Islamophobia in the United States.

The next step was for Douglas Johnston of the ICRD, Rick Love of PCI, and Leonard Swidler of Temple University's DI to convene a conference on Religious Freedom and Islamophobia (October 6-8, 2015), which sought to help evangelicals and others understand the consequences of and develop thoughtful responses to Islamophobia in the United States.

This was the paper I presented -- a look at the historical roots of American evangelical Islamophobia. My thesis was that from the late seventeen century to now there has been a sad continuity in evangelical polemics against Islam and Muslims, but that there were nevertheless signs of hope today as well. We should continue to vigorously build on those!

It was subsequently published in the Journal of Ecumenical Studies (Temple University) 51, 2 (2016), 224-35.