The debate over the prisoner-swap deal spotlights how anti-Muslim sentiment on the right has actually grown in the last decade, argues Peter Beinart.

The Atlantic, 4 June 2014

For years, opponents of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro vowed to take their legal fight to shut down the mosque all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. That fight ended Monday (June 2), when the nation’s highest court declined to hear their case.

The four-year conflict over construction of the mosque, which opened in 2012, brought national attention to this Bible Belt city of 112,000 about 30 miles south of Nashville. Hundreds marched in protest after Rutherford County officials approved plans for the mosque in 2010. Televangelist Pat Robertson labeled the Islamic center a “mega mosque” and claimed Muslims were taking over Murfreesboro. An arsonist set fire to construction equipment on the building site.

Mosque opponents eventually filed a suit against Rutherford County, seeking to block construction of the worship space. On the surface, the fight was over the minutiae of Tennessee’s sunshine, or public notice, laws. Mosque foes claimed local officials failed to give adequate notice of a meeting where plans for the mosque’s construction were approved.

But a thriving anti-Muslim movement in Tennessee fueled the fight. Mosque foes asserted that the First Amendment’s guarantee of religious freedom did not apply to the mosque. In court, Joe Brandon Jr., a lawyer for mosque foes, said Islam is not a religion, and he argued that the mosque was a threat to the community.

Initially, a local judge ruled for the mosque foes and ordered a halt to mosque construction. But a federal court quickly overruled that decision, paving the way for the mosque to open in 2012. A state appeals court also later overturned the lower court decision.

Local Muslims, many of whom had worshipped in the community for years, found themselves having to defend their faith and their status as American citizens at the trial.

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A newly elected school district trustee in Texas is under fire after she posted comments on Facebook disparaging registered voters who didn’t go to the polls for allowing a Muslim to be elected.

According to WFAA, Place 5 representative Jo Lynn Haussmann posted the following on her Facebook page last week: “Do you realize because SO FEW voters took the time and responsibility to VOTE in the municipal elections – YOU NOW HAVE A ‘MUSLIM’ on the City Council!!! What A SHAME!!!!”

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In 2012, anti-Islam blogger Pamela Geller’s American Freedom Defense Initiative funded ads throughout the Metro system with a quote from the Quran next to a photo of the burning Twin Towers. Ads that cost Metro $35,000 over a failed effort to block them.

Now she’s back with another awful ad, this one claiming that “Islamic jew-hatred” is “in the Quran” as a response to an ad about “Israel’s occupation” from the American Muslims for Palestine. From Geller’s blog:

The DC Metro transit authority made multiple demands for the substantiation of every claim in our ads before they would accept the ad, and I, of course, happily provided that substantiation. The libelous American Muslims for Palestine antisemitic ad (below) did not have to provide substantiation. The MTA had no problem with their antisemitism. And you cannot provide evidence of a smear and a bigoted lie. But it is proof of the AMP’s hate.

Our ads are in response to the vicious Jew-hating ads that American Muslims for Palestine unleashed on Washington, DC Metro buses last month. And might I add, had we not sued and won in NYC and DC for violating our First Amendment rights when they tried to refuse our previous ads, our ads might never have gone up.

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“In the wake of the self-censorship controversy surrounding South Park‘s portrayal of the Prophet Muhammad, artists intent on defending freedom of speech have responded by organizing an event they call Draw Muhammad Day, to take place on May 20. The goal, according to the website hosting the endeavor, is to defend free speech by showing Muslims that artists ‘don’t back down’ when threatened.

“But the fact is that millions of Muslim-Americans – many of whom have known about South Park caricatures of Muhammad for years – behaved exactly the way free speech advocates wanted them to: by remaining silent or expressing their feelings peacefully. The handful of thugs at a New York-based site called Revolution Muslim – who, by the way, are unwelcome in every New York mosque for their extremist rantings – were the only exceptions. And now these Muslim-Americans are being subject to mass insult as thanks for their respect of South Park‘s free speech rights….

“Imagine for a moment if an African-American blogger complained about an unfair stereotype in a cartoon in the same crass manner as the Revolution Islam folks. Would free speech advocates respond by hosting a contest to draw as many vile stereotypes of blacks as they could? I can’t imagine that anyone would even propose such an idea. So why, then, are millions of Muslim-Americans who said nothing about South Park in the past decade being subject to this mass insult? To prove a point? What point would that be?”

Shahed Amanullah at the Huffington Post, 13 May 2010