Thus far the Islamophobia in Farmersville Texas, spurred on by a Christian pastor named David Meeks and others without name, hasn’t resulted in shed blood and has thus created little sense of outrage or concern at a national level. As a nation we are as comfortable with overt bigotry against Muslims today as we were with overt bigotry against Jews and African Americans half a century ago. It is still possible for politicians, even presidential candidates, to spout hate-filled nonsense against their fellow Americans so long as they are Muslims.
But despite our society wide comfort with bigotry against Muslims we should be concerned about Farmersville, because the fundamental issues: the narrowly territorial claims and broader social claims to dominance by a single religion are exactly what is at stake. These are issues over which people will go to war, sometimes between nations but also in the form of private vendettas. The latter are of concern in any civilized society. Even bigots rarely want violence, and the inevitable collateral damage, on their home ground.
According to both press reports and those personally present the August 6th meeting in Farmersville, to allow citizens to ask questions regarding a proposed Muslim graveyard, turned into a jeering hate-fest egged on by the teaching of Pastor Meeks and barely controlled by the city’s mayor. Imam Khalil Abdurrahman, representing the coalition of mosques seeking to create a Muslim graveyard, was consistently booed and shouted down when he tried to answer questions. Civil discourse? None of that.
There are good guys in Farmersville, to be sure, and in that crowd. Pastor Barber Bart had tried to talk to his congregation about how religious freedom benefits everyone. The head of the VFW Commander Darrell Moore announced that the veterans would abide by the law and had no stake in the issue. But at least on August 6th those voices were drowned out.
The ugly crowd clearly wasn’t interested in anything other than a forum for voicing their ignorant fears and shouting down any answers that didn’t allow them to wallow in their ignorance. It could have been a KKK rally (pretty common around those parts a mere 80 or 90 years ago.) Or an ultra-Orthodox village in modern Israel. Or a civic center in nearby Garland. Or a city council meeting in Irving. Or for that matter a meeting of the Oklahoma or Texas State Legislatures. Anywhere people are preparing for a war to secure an identity that will inevitably be lost.
Because (and here is where we might actually offer some Christian pastoral concern) the ranting of the citizens of Farmersville isn’t different from the thrashing denial of death that often overtakes people in the final moments of their lives.
I saw it in old Jack A. Absent the antidepressants, pain medication and muscle relaxants with which modern hospice care allows us to slip into non-existence, his body twitched and jerked away its last energy even as his mind, barely in control of itself, managed to gain a final grasp on throat, tongue, and lips to tell his wife he loved her. And he was gone.
Farmersville society, whatever was good or bad about it, is going too. Like hundreds of other communities its geographical integrity will be shredded by developers and its culture will be transformed by suburbanites with their own peculiar virtues and vices. A graveyard for Muslims really is just the leading edge of social change that will slowly obliterate Farmersville society and replace it with something new.
Hopefully whatever new emerges will remember all that was good about rural American life, and exorcise the worst of its demons. Perhaps some new set of city fathers will even preserve the quaint downtown to house upscale restaurants and expensive law offices. After all, they can almost see McKinney across they lake.
And this is why, in Farmersville and elsewhere, inter-religious dialogue is really just the easiest and probably least effective response to the vitriol surrounding the proposed Muslim graveyard. The war in Farmersville isn’t a religious war, however much pastor Meeks wants to fight the crusades all over again. It is a war with inevitable death, a war that is won only through faith in the resurrection of the dead into God’s eternal presence and grace.
It is a war we all must fight, and which all societies fight as well. It remains to the citizens of Farmersville, as it does for all of us, whether their last words will be of love or hate.
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