The new MIA--continued ... Muslims in America, that is!

I just finished reading "Invisible Man" ... a book that can get down to the deepest emotions even on a wonderful summer day with puffy clouds against a blue sky, with birds chirping and children giggling with excitement.  Reading it, and allowing the messages into my system where they seem to stir feelings that I didn't know existed against the backdrop of the Manhattan Mosque, Glenn Beck, Faux Noose, Pakistan floods, Chilean miners, Haiti homeless, ... I am surprised I haven't jumped off a cliff, yet!

As much as that book is about race, slavery, and so many of the complex issues many of which haven't gone away even now, all those are metaphors as well. Metaphorically, now the Muslims in America are rapidly facing the conditions of "Invisible Man."  For the first time in a long while I feel absolutely deflated. Ellison writes towards the end of the book, in the Epilogue:

Whence all this passion toward conformity anyway?—diversity is the word. Let man keep his many parts and you'll have no tyrant states. Why, if they follow this conformity business they'll end up by forcing me, an invisible man, to become white, which is not a color but the lack of one. Must I strive toward colorlessness? But seriously, and without snobbery, think of what the world would lose if that should happen. 

Now, it is the same issue of dealing with diversity--the "different" Muslims ...

Ellison further writes:

America is woven of many strands; I would recognize them and let it so remain. It's "winner take nothing" that is the great truth of our country or of any country. Life is to be lived, not controlled; and humanity is won by continuing to play in face of certain defeat. Our fate is to become one, and yet many—This is not prophecy, but description. Thus one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he's going.

Apparently, unlike Elison's description of whites becoming blacker, there is a vehement opposition from many Americans who do not want anything to spillover from the new invisibles--Muslims in America. It is way too disheartening to read even the NY Times headline: American Muslims Ask, Will We Ever Belong?

Really? We have come down to this level now?

Eboo Patel, a founder and director of Interfaith Youth Core, a Chicago-based community service program that tries to reduce religious conflict, said, “I am more scared than I’ve ever been — more scared than I was after Sept. 11.”
That was a refrain echoed by many American Muslims in interviews last week. They said they were scared not as much for their safety as to learn that the suspicion, ignorance and even hatred of Muslims is so widespread. This is not the trajectory toward integration and acceptance that Muslims thought they were on.
Some American Muslims said they were especially on edge as the anniversary of 9/11 approaches. The pastor of a small church in Florida has promised to burn a pile of Korans that day.

I still find it beyond my comprehension that conditions have deteriorated this fast. And to think of the impression it will leave on the young ones:

Young American Muslims who are trying to figure out their place and their goals in life are particularly troubled, said Imam Abdullah T. Antepli, the Muslim chaplain at Duke University.
“People are discussing what is the alternative if we don’t belong here,” he said. “There are jokes: When are we moving to Canada, when are we moving to Sydney? Nobody will go anywhere, but there is hopelessness, there is helplessness, there is real grief.”