Google News 09/12: Church cancels Islamophobic event

Scrolling through Google News last week, I saw a curious headline on the ‘local stories’ page. A Baptist church in the town of Bloomfield, Michigan was planning an event with the provocative name: “9/11 forgotten? Is Michigan surrendering to Islam?”

Now, as a devout Muslim, I hardly believe that my religion is taking over Michigan, and I also doubt that 9/11 has been forgotten in this country. These facts seem obvious to me — and everyone else, I presume — but they clearly weren’t to the organizers of the event, who felt it necessary to open some kind of dialogue about these issues.

That, in itself, doesn’t surprise me. This kind of fear-mongering rhetoric has regrettably become more commonplace in our contemporary politics. But what did surprise me was the utter proximity of this way of thinking. When reading about Islamophobic trends, I’ve always relegated them to some far-off corner of the country: but now, they were coming to a church so close by that I drive past it every day on my drive to work.

In this article, I’ll briefly review the event’s intended topics of discussion and the rise of Islamophobia in the United States.

The event

This flyer informs us that two talks had been scheduled: the first, “How the interfaith movement is sabotaging…