Juan Williams

So everybody's been commenting on the Juan Williams affair. It really got me thinking. Personally, I read through the transcript of the interview which got him fired, and I can't say that when I was younger, I didn't feel the same way he did. He expressed a feeling he has, an emotion: "...when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous." He even said later in the interview that we need to be clear that our problem isn't with Muslims or Islam, but with extremists per se. Seems that his firing was completely unfair and handled unprofessionally.

But then again, there are those who make the case that we're applying a double standard to Muslims. Robert Wright writes:

Suppose Williams had said something hurtful to gay people instead of to Muslims. Suppose he had said gay men give him the creeps because he fears they’ll make sexual advances. NPR might well have fired him, but would Fox News have chosen that moment to give him a $2-million pat on the back? I don’t think so. Playing the homophobia card is costlier than playing the Islamophobia card.

I think Wright might have a point, so I present his comparison so you dear readers can show me if I'm wrong. Is there a significant nafka mina between what Williams said and an imaginary scenario where Juan says that he's creeped out by men who are openly* gay because the only sort of men who generally hit on other men happen to be* gay?

I'm brought to consider Wright's view after reading Rabbi Shafran's piece defending Williams. Originally, I was on Williams' side too. But I think Shafran's poor defense has brought me to reconsider Wright's view. Shafran wrote:

It is true...as Mr. Williams’ critics have duly and repeatedly noted, that most Muslim terrorists on murder missions are sufficiently sharp to dress in Western-style clothing...But it is no less true that the declared motivation of the vast majority of terrorists who have harmed Americans in recent years, and of those who seek to harm more of them, has been an understanding of Islam. One rightly feels sympathy for the many Muslims of good will who are viewed fearfully by others. But only someone drunk on a misguided notion of liberalism could fail to recognize that such nervousness [as Mr. Williams has experienced] is rooted, for better or worse, in unfortunate actuality.

So our fear of Muslims dressed in Muslim clothing and clearly dressed as Muslims "is rooted...in actuality." Yeah, except for one thing, which Shafran himself noted at the beginning of the piece, but somehow waved away: "most Muslim terrorists on murder missions are sufficiently sharp to dress in Western-style clothing." So it would appear that we have allowed our fear of extremists to turn into a fear of Muslims per se, because speaking in terms of the actual situation we're faced with today, nobody on an American plane should be fearing Muslims dressed in Muslim clothing. Haven't we just generalized our fear of extremists to general Muslims? I can't speak to "Muslim doctrine," particularly since I don't know the differences between the general sects well enough. I do think the Koran and the Hadith are filled with primitive ideas from man's dark ages. But as long as the people themselves are secularizing and not taking those ideas truly seriously (i.e. they're Reform or Conservative Muslims!), even if there are ideas which are popular in even moderate Muslim communities which are contemptible, isn't saying how we fear them stereotyping a religious culture based on the extremists?

But maybe I'm just drinking liberal kool-aid. Thoughts?

*warning: foul language