A reader’s challenge

A reader challenges me:

I was surprised at this statement: “Muslims lost people and respect in the West, where no doubt anti-Muslim extremists will take action against mosques.”  Your predictions are usually pretty cautious. The latter implies strong conviction that extremists will attack (?) mosques in the West. Since the West has a pretty good record of actually not reacting in that manner (very limited number of incidents in the U.S., for instance, though not non-existent either), how could one be sure?

There were about 185 hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. in 2011, according to the FBI.  One every two days or so.  Is that “very limited”?  They don’t seem to keep statistics on mosques per se, but it is clear attacks do occur, some claim with increasing frequency recently.   And my expectation was about the West, not only about the United States.  The French may be quicker.

Part of the reason I expect such things is that the film that triggered the demonstrations was made in the U.S. by anti-Muslim Christian activists, mainly but not exclusively Egyptian Copts, who seem unlikely to stop at film-making.  And even if they stop, the film and yesterday’s events are likely to incite others.  Here is what one of my Twitter followers had to say:

No way to compromise with Muslims; your pacifism is weakness and you’d be the 1st to lose your head under Sharia law.

I take this as his wish rather than an analytical prediction.  I can’t help but wonder how many Muslim acquaintances he has, how he would treat Muslims who in any way disagreed with him or tried to build a mosque in his neighborhood.

Hate crime statistics do not of course include what I would regard as the hate campaign against the “mosque at ground zero,” which wasn’t a mosque and wasn’t located at ground zero.  Campaigns against mosque-building have occurred in many American communities, for example.

We’ll see if I was right or wrong in expecting “action against mosques,” an admittedly ambiguous phrase that was intended to cover attacks, resistance to mosque-building, demonstrations, incitement, bigoted tweets and the rest.  In retrospect, I might have done better to anticipate “action against Muslims.”

I win either way:  if I’m wrong, I’ll be glad it didn’t happen.  If I’m right, I’ll have the satisfaction, albeit unhappily.