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| German mobs attack Jewish businesses and synagogues, 1938 |
After a campaign of fear-mongering antisemitism directed at Jews in Nazi Germany, an enflamed citizenry went on a two-night rampage of burning synagogues and vandalizing Jewish homes, schools and businesses. This infamous "Night of Broken Glass" happened November 9 and 10, 1938, less than eight decades ago, and in a supposedly "Christian" nation much like our own.
Could a growing hostility toward Muslims in the US today bring about a similar outbreak of violence?
There are already ominous signs of this happening. On December 11, in the wake of one of our leading candidates for president calling for an outright ban on all Muslims entering the US, there was an attempted firebombing of a mosque in Coachella, California. Worshippers inside were peacefully exercising their God-given (and First Amendment) right to pray together in the manner they chose.
Just the day before, a Sikh temple in Buena Park, California, was vandalized and a truck in their parking lot was spray painted with anti ISIS graffiti. Sikhs, ironically, are not even Muslim, but in a climate of fear and hate, rationality is no deterrence.
Within the same week a man in a pickup truck threw a pig's head in front of a mosque in Philadelphia, a young student in New York City wearing a hijab was assaulted by classmates, a Muslim store owner in Queens was attacked by a random customer, a man threatened a Muslim woman at a car wash in Chino Hills, California, and a local office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Santa Clara had to be evacuated after they received a letter containing some kind of white powder with the message, "Die a painful death, Muslims".
This is deeply disturbing. During 2015 alone, Islamic Centers and mosques in the US have been targeted a total of 63 times, according to CNN religion editor Daniel Burke. This is three times the number of such incidents reported last year.
Will a widespread Kristallnacht against Muslims in the US be next?
We must all weigh in with the kind of intense prayer and persuasion necessary to ensure that this kind of history will never repeat itself.
Thank you, Harvey. I try to avoid extremism and sky-is-falling-in theories, but have become terrified of a demagogic bigot becoming our next president. We would all lose so much, including the republic we take for granted. The horrors experienced by people living under despotic regimes (Nazi, North Korean, etc.) have always seemed so far away, but the rhetoric now makes me wonder. One thing that will be needed: Good people must VOTE! In 2016 we will not have the luxury of staying away from the polls if we see no candidate who is a blend of Mother Teresa, Gandhi and Superman. To paraphrase a proverb, “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.”
ReplyDeleteThank you, Harvey for saying it. I've been thinking it!!! It seems to me bad energy/evil is swirling around the world. Perhaps one of the things we can do besides pray is to create good energy and love, consciously, throughout the day. laura
DeleteAs you can see by an article on the Holocaust Memorial Museum website http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005206, Nazi Germany, with a population of 60 some million, had about 40 million Protestant Christians and 20 million Catholics, and each were partially tax supported as official state-sponsored churches. Only about 1% of Germans were Jews, the same percentage we have here today of Muslims. The Kristallnacht violence was fomented by trumped up charges of Jews being associated with Communism and there being capable of violence, based on a much publicized case of a Jew killing a German diplomat.
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