How a proposed Muslim cemetery became a battleground for America's soul (COMMENTARY) - Religion News Service

So is the protest really about Farmersville? Or is it about Islamophobia of the sort that has beset American towns for years? Are these the same angry people we see in towns across America, scared of cemeteries, scared of mosques, scared of Muslims?

The people in this rural part of Texas are not the first to fear the unfamiliar.

In his book “American Panic: A History of Who Scares Us and Why,” Mark Stein examines the history of American bigotry. He quotes a 19th-century politician charging that Catholicism will rob Americans of our rights, and writes about a New York-based business owner who viewed Chinese immigrants as “ready and anxious” to step over Americans “to possess the land.”

At the town hall meeting, a woman faced Abdur-Rashid.

“Everywhere you have been you’ve caused some kind of problem,” she said. “It’s not going to happen in Farmersville.”

“With all this opposition, why do you want to stay here?” asked another. It was a very serious question, a question that ignores the basic right of American Muslims to live their lives freely.

That’s what Islamophobia is really about: You don’t belong here. This is our land, our water, our beliefs, our country.

How a proposed Muslim cemetery became a battleground for America's soul (COMMENTARY) - Religion News Service

The Conflict Between the Hasidic and Immigrant Communities in East Ramapo -- New York Magazine

One morning in June 2005, a team of real-estate agents left Manhattan and drove an hour north to the western part of Rockland County to ­repossess a house. The home, in a village called New Square, had long since fallen into delinquency, and the bank had sold the property. The new owners, investors, had offered a cash settle­ment to the occupants as an enticement to leave before the formal eviction, but that offer had been refused. The agents had been told that New Square was a Hasidic village, but they had not given that fact much thought. Arriving, accompanied by the police, one of the agents noticed that the village had a gate and that the gate was attended.

In retrospect, that gate seems like a portal. Inside, young men and boys seemed to be everywhere, dressed alike. One of the agents was a woman in business clothes, her hair uncovered, and as the group passed through the village, her colleagues noticed a Hasidic woman covering a young boy’s eyes. At the house, the owner answered the door and the eviction began. The agents took a look at the place—a yellow house divided into four units, a small structure in the yard, no great prize.

The phrase “all hell broke loose” conjures an ancient kind of chaos. Perhaps it applies. Dozens of Hasidim arrived, forming a crowd, some just curious but some very upset. Villagers took photos of the police, of the agents, of the license plates on the agents’ cars, of the possessions being piled on the lawn. One Hasid stuck a microphone in the lead agent’s face and yelled questions at him, as if he were a corrupt politician. A group of workmen had been hired to help with the physical eviction; they had rocks thrown at them.

The Conflict Between the Hasidic and Immigrant Communities in East Ramapo -- New York Magazine