Fundamentalist Town In Upstate New York

Here’s a story that will not make the American press. Whenever some kook Muslim does something insane the American media reports it and many bloggers promote as if it were typical of all Muslims or even noteworthy. In the case of the latter bloggers, they intentionally promote the most awful news from this or that astray Muslim (out of 1.5billion people) in order to maliciously smear Islam and all Muslims - the pronouncements that “I do not have all Muslims” notwithstanding. This is akin to me compiling a daily list of crimes committed in this country - and no Muslim nation comes close to the murders and rapes that exist in America - in order to demean American culture as violent and all Americans as bad atavistic people. But that is the routine that anti-Islam bigots engage in. They are obsessed and live to find some fringe bastard act and trump it in order to smear all Muslims. A sad existence.

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The acts by extreme Muslims as somehow bearing reflection on all Muslims and Islam instead of bearing only on the extremes committing the deeds just as Timothy McVaugh bears only on himself and not all Christians or right-wingers.

But, of course, when it comes to Muslims they never hesitate, nay relish, to make prejudicial generalizations, but never would dare to do so when it comes to Christians and Jews. That’s why they will not notice this story (see below) and even if they did they would not dare make any judgments about how some Jews are authoritarian and dogmatic and misogynistic. These people condemn extremism in Islam, but then excuse it or do not care to notice when it exists in other faiths. Or they themselves are fundamentalists in other faiths. We live in a country where Christian and Jewish fundamentalists now feel that they sit on some rational ground to criticize Islam. A true believe in liberal values would condemn extremism in all its form regardless of the believers' professed faith.

There is also the right-wing nonsense about some sort of deference accorded to Muslims. But there is no special treatment for Muslims in America. There are other religious groups which are accorded an obsequious manner from the state: Christmas is the only federally-recognized holiday and the public school calendar neatly pencils in school breaks around Christmas holidays. Orthodox Jewish and Hasidic communities in New York are also given special treatment. During Yom Kippur New York transit buses, for example, are rerouted so as not to offense Orthodox Jews who dislike seeing active transport on a day when observant Jews are not allowed to drive. That is more than a deference, but a deference which recognizes religious law and imposes a burden on non-believers.

Exactly the type of thing conservatives accuses Muslims of seeking in their alleged agenda of "Shari'a". And a new talking-point on the right that Muslims are seeking to build a "Shari'a" town in upstate New York. Well, it turns out that there is a town of religious fundamentalists with severe restrictions on women's dress and demands that all people follow religious dictate:

The sign is polite but firm. At the entrance to the small, upstate, New York community of Kiryas Joel, a new notice asks visitors to the village to shun shorts in favour of trousers or long skirts and wear long-sleeved shirts. It also asks people to maintain "gender segregation" in all public areas. "In keeping with our traditions and religious customs we kindly ask that you dress and behave in a modest way while visiting our community," the signs says.

What it does not explain is why. But that is simple enough. Kiryas Joel is home to a community of ultra-conservative Satmar Hasidic Jews and they would prefer that visitors adopt, or at least respect, their religious customs when passing through.

The New York branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, a tenacious watchdog on the encroachment of religion into public life, has no argument with the signs (they are on private land and, clearly, non-binding). Nor has the American media been especially outraged. After all, almost all the 22,000 residents of Kiryas Joel are Hasidic and abide by their religious customs of wearing heavy, body-covering clothing even through the heatwave that has gripped New York this summer.

The Guardian put it best:

Now, just for a moment, imagine that the good people of Kiryas Joel were not conservative Jews. Imagine them, instead, as Muslims. Muslims who had asked visitors to cover up when they come to their town. Muslims offended by the sight of any female flesh above the ankle or the wrist or below the neck. Muslims who wanted women and men passing through their community to stay apart. The outrage of America's conservative classes could well be astonishing.

The largely silent acceptance of Kiryas Joel's wishes tells us much about America's admirable tolerance for minorities. Just as the ugliness of the Ground Zero mosque debate tells us much about its fear over Islam.

Islamophobes seek to purposely fabricate this or that "Islamic/Shari'a threat" and amp up some Muslim kook in a basement, but when it comes to actual non-Muslims actually doing the things that Islamophobes accuse Muslims of simply seeking to do the ostensible champions of freedom cannot be bothered.

Their silence exemplifies the hollowness of their cause being in the name of freedom or liberty or "the West." Those are the slogans used to (poorly) mask a hooligan cause that is all about hate and just about attacking Muslims.