A Michigan imam condemns protesters from his community of believers who shout “death to America” in pro-Palestinian marches. He specifies that only a minority launched that slogan. And he offers an impeccable argument to that extremist fringe: «We are America too, immigrants from Islamic countries, citizens of the United States and Muslims. That slogan of hate is wrong and makes no sense.”
The incident captures one of the contradictions at the heart of the protests roiling America. Sympathy for the Palestinian cause, indignation at the suffering of the civilian population in Gaza, are sincere feelings. However, they are mixed with systematic attacks and threats against Jews, ideal targets because they are considered “white colonizers”.
Anti-Americanism, hatred of the West, has been the dominant culture on university campuses for years. It reconnects with a latent feeling in Arab immigrant communities: those to whom the Imam of Michigan speaks. His sentence is fair, impeccable, but he doesn’t answer one question: why “death to America” is a slogan shouted by some Muslim extremistswhile it was never used by Italian, Irish, Polish, Chinese, Indian, Vietnamese immigrants?
That slogan was born from the confluence of two phenomena: on the one hand the hatred for the West which is a component of the history of Islam (but intolerance towards alternative civilizations and value systems is not one-way: Russia India China are not immune to tensions with their Muslim minorities); on the other a self-loathing that American elites have long cultivatedthus encouraging certain categories of immigrants to oppose the country that welcomed them.
The imam in question is called Mohammad Ali Elahihis speech is accessible on YouTube and on FoxNews.
He was interviewed about a recent pro-Palestine demonstration that took place in Dearbourne, a town near Detroit that shares its working-class vocation. So in the heart of the historic capital of the American automotive industry. The state of Michigan and its working class are at the center of attention in this election campaign. Swinging in favor of Joe Biden or Donald Trump, Michigan could be one of those decisive constituencies in assigning the White House on November 5th. It is also a state that hosts a large community of Arab and Muslim origins. It has seen some of the largest demonstrations of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza recently. Those marches quickly turned into protests against Israel and America providing military aid to Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
An authoritative commentator on the New York Times, Nicholas Kristof observed that «Gaza has now become Biden’s war, the balance of his presidency and his chances of re-election are inextricably linked to this conflict.” Kristof is very severe, he thinks that Biden is making a serious moral and political mistake in supplying weapons that Israel uses against civilians. In his opinion Gaza risks being Biden’s Vietnama lost war against internal public opinion. Kristof interprets well what the left wing of the Democratic Party thinksthe world of university campuses, the left-wing intelligentsia (albeit with the exclusion of the progressive Jewish elite, shocked by rampant anti-Semitism).
The phenomenon that Imam Mohammad Ali Elahi dealt with is parallel but distinct. Speaking to his faithful who shouted “Death to America” in a procession, the imam said two things. The first: «I do not preach a religion of death and hate, I urge love and peace». The second: it makes no sense to invoke the death of America given that “We are America too, seven million Muslims live here”. She could – and should – have added: given that America welcomed us in our time of need, as we emigrated from Islamic countries where poverty, corruption, violence, despotism reign; America has offered us opportunities that did not exist in our homelands; America has guaranteed us freedoms and rights trampled upon in the majority of the Islamic world.
This type of gratitude was normal to hear expressed in the communities of Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, Jewish-Americans: I purposely indicate three important migratory flows belonging to different religions compared to the dominant Anglo-Protestant strain; three ethnic communities that originally also suffered racism and discrimination. However, no one remembers any demonstrations where the Italians or the Irish or the Jews shouted “Death to America”.
On September 11, 2001, in some parts of the Islamic world, crowds took to the streets to celebrate the massacre of three thousand innocent American civilians; the demonstrations of joy among the Palestinians stood out in particular. At that stage America was not oppressing the Palestinians, indeed under the presidency of Bill Clinton it had taken steps to give them a state; America had also mobilized its armed forces to defend the Muslim minority in Bosnia.
The imam of Michigan therefore said the right things but remained on the surface, he did not go to the heart of the problem: because Islam in some of its historical versions (including certain contemporary fundamentalisms) has been transformed into a religion of hate, not of love and tolerance; because that hatred is ready to make proselytes even in immigrant communities who have achieved their American Dream.
On the other hand, American citizens of Arab origin and Muslim religion today are immersed in a local culture – secular and secularized – which encourages them to hate America. On the ideological climate that reigns on university campuses, I give the floor to a great Black intellectual, an African-American academic who can afford to face taboos. He is the well-known linguist John McWhorter, a professor at Columbia University in New York, the epicenter of the pro-Hamas protests for many days. According to McWorther, the ongoing clashes between students and the police are to be inserted into an “extreme left-wing culture that I have felt for decades on campuses”, fighting “against what they call colonialism and genocide”, that is, in a generalized way “against everything that belongs to the white world.”
This ideology dictates that Jews in universities must endure threats and slogans “that would be immediately condemned” as uncivilized and racist if directed at blacks. Jews, on the other hand, must suffer “because they are white”. «What began as an intelligent protest – concludes McWorther – has become fury and aggression».
I remember one detail: this “fury and aggression” against America, against the West, has among its leading protagonists young white, Anglo-Protestant children of very wealthy families, who in these rites try to “atone” the real or presumed faults of one’s nation and civilization. This is the other explanation of the “Death to America” phenomenon.
Italians who emigrated to the United States during the times of fascism were sometimes Mussolini sympathizers. If they were still like this when America entered the war against Nazi-fascism in 1941, they were careful not to express hostility towards the country in which they lived. Some of them, however, were interned in special detention camps (like the Japanese-Americans) because they were a priori suspected of having colluded with the enemy. They suffered abuse and injustice during the war. Ameria later recognized its wrongs for those episodes of unworthy discrimination. Nonetheless, in the Italian-American or Irish-American community, a patriotism and love for the United States has consolidated, demonstrated in practice by the many soldiers who fell on the front.
Today we are in a reversed era: “Death to America” is a slogan clearly condemned by the imam of Michigan, but encouraged by a part of American society, convinced that immigrants have the right and duty to hate the country they welcomed them.
