Faith & Fairness: The scapegoat next door

Scapegoating of a group is defined by psychologists as a social phenomenon in which people may become prejudiced towards a section of their society to give vent to their anger at unresolved problems not directly related to the target group.

Ahmadiyya Times | News Watch | Int'l Desk
Source/Credit: The News | Pakistan | Op/Ed
By Talat Farooq | September 17, 2010


On the eve of this Sept 11, the Bipartisan Policy Center released its report on homegrown terrorism, stating that the greatest threat to US security stems from Islamic fundamentalists living in the United States. The report seems to have discovered America’s “Achilles heel, in that we currently have no strategy to counter the type of threat posed by homegrown terrorists and other radicalised recruits... America is thus vulnerable to a threat that is not only diversifying, but arguably intensifying.”

The fear of growth of indigenous terror in the United States relates to isolated incidents of violence or potential violence. These incidents are an exception, yet they tap into reservoirs of hatred and intolerance.


Vandalisation of mosques and the stabbing of a Muslim cabdriver in New York are reflections of this deep-rooted prejudice. Was the call for the burning of the Quran an isolated incident, or did it symbolise a growing anti-Islam sentiment in the US? More importantly, are these fears based on reality or do they serve as a diversion from pressing societal issues?

Estimates available at the internet demonstrate that in the aftermath of the 2007 economic downturn about 1 to 2.5 million people fell to poverty within a year in America and by 2008 nearly 40 million (13.2 per cent) lived below the official poverty line; expected increase in 2010 is a record 15 per cent. The unemployment rate in the United States in August was reported at 9.60 per cent, approaching the 1960s levels when Lyndon Johnson had to declare war on poverty in America. California, traditionally one of the United States’ most affluent states, is $19 billion in the red.

Unemployment translates into diminished consumer spending that normally accounts for two-third of American economic activity. Job loss is therefore a significant contributor towards economic insecurity and it breeds feelings of vulnerability among Americans; the huge nativist movement against immigrants from Mexico and other Latin American countries substantiates such anxiety.

For all their freedom rhetoric the Americans suffer from periodic paranoia: The Red Scare of the interwar period was provoked by fears of an “imminent” Bolshevik revolution in the United States, post-World War II McCarthyism was based on suspicions of a “genuine” communist threat to American institutions, and the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942 occurred because civilian and military officials in the United States suspected the loyalty of people of Japanese origin.

These are events that demonstrate America’s proclivity for demonisation of the external “other,” rather than its focusing on internal weaknesses.

The American media whipped up xenophobia during the Red Scare and McCarthyism episodes. The post-9/11 media hysteria in the United States, the stereotyping of Muslims, and the treating of the widely diverse Islamic world as a menacing monolith have not been helpful in forging interfaith harmony. The controversy over the “Ground Zero Islamic centre” has been politicised by the Christian right and the Republicans in the run-up to the mid-term elections in November.

A political system driven by corporate interests is ready to indulge in irresponsible behaviour where short-term gain blinds the politicians to future societal disharmony as a consequence of exploitation of existing divisions; it is a disservice to their nation.

The fears of American Muslims is highlighted in a recent article in The New York Times, “American Muslims Ask: Will We Ever Belong?” A vast majority of them are law abiding “regular folks” who abhor violence and bloodshed like all civilised human beings.

American Muslims, the article says, are “scared not as much for their safety as to learn that the suspicion, ignorance and even hatred of Muslims is so widespread. They liken their situation to that of other scapegoats in American history: Irish Roman Catholics before the nativist riots in the 1800s, the Japanese before they were put in internment camps during World War II.”

Scapegoating of a group is defined by psychologists as a social phenomenon in which people may become prejudiced towards a section of their society to give vent to their anger at unresolved problems not directly related to the target group. According to the scapegoat theory, Germans used the Jews as scapegoats for all their national problems, including their country’s economic woes.

The United States needs to focus on its internal economic and socio-political problems to avoid falling into the trap repeatedly. If the melting-pot phenomenon is not working at a certain level of American society, then US domestic and foreign policies require some serious scrutiny.

In their supposed moment of unipolarity in the 1990s, Americans were too engrossed in triumphalism to listen to voices of reason, such as that of Charley Reese a columnist for The Orlando Sentinel. “Terrorism is a political act, a response to US foreign policy,” he wrote in 1998. “It is an act of war waged by people too weak to have a conventional army, or one large enough to take on the United States.”

Unfortunately, such voices are often neglected in the heat of the moment. Today, post-9/11 American foreign policy is perceived by the Muslims as demonisation of the Islamic world and America is rightly seen as occupier of Muslim lands. Trillions of dollars have been spent on wars which the massive American military has not even been able to win. And the returning “boys” from the battlefields are sure to add to social and psychological problems back home. So the scapegoating of Muslims may become an attractive national pastime.

In 1988, the Reagan administration issued an apology for the internment of Japanese Americans in 1942. The action was based on “race prejudice, war hysteria, and a failure of political leadership,” it admitted. Will a US government offer a similar apology to American Muslims 46 years down the road? That is a question that the American public and politicians need to consider now.

The writer is a PhD student at Leicester, UK. Email: talatfarooq11@gmail.com

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