The Meme of Which We Shall Not Speak [incl. Khalil Gibran International Academy, Debbie Almontaser]

WITH regard to a certain conflict over religious-freedom issues that shouldn’t even be controversial, Ezra Klein writes:

Is there really nothing to be done but let this sort of thing pass? Maybe. But it’s depressing, not just because of the way these memes degrade political discourse but because they tend to make actual, important projects in demagogue-prone fields untouchable. This silly controversy may end up sabotaging the ability of Cordoba House to serve as a centre of interfaith dialogue between Islam and other American faiths, which is a really important project. And it’s a national version of the earlier, New York-centric controversy over the Khalil Gibran International Academy in Brooklyn, which provoked the fury of the professionally infuriated by having the temerity to teach Arabic as a mandatory language. (Other New York City public schools teach mandatory Spanish, French or Mandarin.) That pointless firestorm ended with the resignation of a widely admired principal, Debbie Almontaser, who was known for building ties to the Jewish and Christian communities.* The effect of this nonsense, ultimately, is to discourage people from trying to educate Americans about Arabic language and civilisation, or from setting up interfaith dialogues between Islam and other American religions. Those ought to be near the top of anyone’s list of worthy, non-controversial projects.

It’s not just Islam-related projects that get hurt. USAID offices abroad shy away from organisations that work with prostitutes or drug addicts; some part of their programme might turn out to offer birth-control advice or clean needles, and the next thing you know some congressman accuses you of encouraging prostitution or drug addiction and you’re out of a job. The Veterans Administration suddenly found itself under fire last fall for offering free end-of-life counseling to veterans. (Death panels!) And so on.

It seems like there ought to be some way to defend people and programmes that fall victim to demagogues, without simply amplifying the reach of demagogy. Maybe we could distract them by launching enormous numbers of programmes that actually seem to embody every potential demagogue’s worst fears. We could start an organisation dedicated to attracting man-eating sharks to America’s beaches, or one that promotes kidnapping young blonde women. Perhaps a club dedicated to spitting at children. In such a target-rich environment, maybe demagogues would have difficulty deciding what to aim at. I don’t know. Ideas?

* Opponents, who formed a pressure group called “Stop the Madrassa”, tied her to an independent Muslim women’s organisation that had put out a T-shirt reading “Intifada NYC”. In fact she was simply on the board of an organisation that had rented office space to that group. The city government pressured her to do an interview with the conservative

New York Postto defend herself, and the

Posttrumpeted comments she made during the interview playing down the significance of the T-shirts. The city government then asked for her resignation. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

foundthe city had “succumbed to the very bias that creation of the school was intended to dispel and a small segment of the public succeeded in imposing its prejudices on D.O.E. as an employer.” Ms Almontaser ultimately

decided not to sue the city.