Anti-Muslim is Anti-American

From New York to Tennessee to California, mosques and Muslim community centers are meeting a small but fierce swelling resistance from an increasingly vocal minority of local citizens' groups who charge that mosques represent a major threat to America's way of life and central values. Such baseless and hateful attacks are at the heart of a dangerous miscalculation, particularly since many mosque founders and leaders today share a common commitment to promoting an authentic and mainstream vision of Islam that coexists with other faiths in America. In a mid-term election year, and as presidential candidates get ready for 2012, anti-Muslim prejudice is ripe for political pickings.

The anti-Muslim rage-aholics, however, feel that Islam cannot exist within America's pluralism. Ironically, their view is shared by Al-Qaeda -- making right-wing groups and former Republican speaker of the House Newt Gingrich closer to the Al-Qaeda narrative than the local Muslim communities they are fiercely protesting. The vitriol from these anti-Muslim groups plays right into the hands of Al-Qaeda, a group that works tirelessly to prove that America is at war with Islam.

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