It was dark, around 8:00 p.m. on a Saturday night in December, a long time ago. Two men in a black ’67 Pontiac GTO cruised slowly through the busy parking lot of a suburban Atlanta shopping center until they spotted my car parked halfway down a row in front of a bookstore. A rifle barrel was quickly raised through the GTO’s passenger side window, and five rapid shots sent bullets flying through the windshield of my red Opel wagon.
Calling the police would have been pointless. It wouldn’t have surprised me to learn that the shooters had been the police!
Earlier that day I had been refused service at two local businesses, and a cashier at a local utility company office had spit on my check and shoved it back at me through the payment window when I tried to pay an electric bill. It had been a stressful, but not extraordinary day.
This morning I heard a news report about a Muslim cab driver in New York who was stabbed by a passenger simply because he is Muslim. Later this morning, I read an article about Muslims in Middle Tennessee who are fearful for their safety after an arsonist set heavy equipment ablaze at the site where a new and controversial mosque is being built in Murfreesboro.
When I sat down at my desk to read my email, I found my inbox filled with more than a dozen copies of hate-filled messages designed to stir up fear and hatred of Mexican immigrants and Muslims of every stripe. A few other emails disparaged the character of honest Americans struggling to feed their families and keep their homes on budgets limited to meager unemployment benefit checks.
Now, let me be clear. I am not equating my life experiences to those of anyone. Though religion gone mad played a role in fanning the flames of public passion directed against me, I have never been harassed or maligned simply because of my religion. I have never been targeted because of my ethnicity. Nonetheless, I can speak from personal experience about what it is like to be the target of public scorn and derision and to be an outcast within your own community. I doubt that the basis for such hatred makes much difference.
I know what it is like to be put in fear of the very law enforcement establishment that others depend upon for protection, and I know what it is like to be constantly on guard against those who wish to do you harm. I know what it is like to be threatened, and I know what it is like to be on the receiving end of violence, both to property and to person.
It know what it is like to fear for the safety of those you love, and I know the hopelessness that comes from looking in the faces of your accusers and realizing that reason can set nothing right where there is an eagerness to believe a lie.
The truth means nothing to those who thrive on hate. Truth may set you free in spirit, but it will do little to set you free in fact!
When I came into the public crosshairs, my first reaction was to offer an explanation—to assure my accusers that the damning rumors and innuendo were untrue. It was a futile effort. Their shouts drowned out my defense, and the inflammation of their minds produced an ever rising fever that was impervious to all reason.
After a time, winning hearts and minds became increasingly unimportant to me. One will persist only so long in an impossible struggle. My thoughts turned exclusively to protecting myself and the one I loved, and in the quiet moments, in the lull before each approaching storm, anger and resentment grew in my heart.
I know anger and resentment must be straining to grow in the hearts of Muslims and all those made scapegoats by political opportunists who play to the fears and courser sentiments of the public. People, even good people, will only be pushed so far before the will to strike back arises within them.
Just as Johnny Appleseed once spread the seeds of goodwill and hope of heaven, today’s hatemongers are sewing the seeds from which America’s enemies are born. They are creating ill will where none existed before, and they are turning loyal and patriotic Americans into disillusioned and resentful men and women. Hate is tearing at the fabric of America more violently than our foreign enemies ever could.
The night bullets flew through my windshield I remember being frightened, angry and wishing I could return the fire. I can appreciate that today’s victims of anti-Muslim violence and rhetoric must feel the same way.
Despite patriotic calls to take our county back, we are watching the lunatic fringe give our country away—more everyday as each hate email travels to another inbox, each outlandish rumor is told and retold, and the manure of sensational lies fertilizes the fear growing in our hearts.
