The fallout from the notorious Fox News interview with noted academic Reza Aslan continues. The ten-minute segment in which host Lauren Green repeatedly quizzes Aslan as to why he, a Muslim, 'would be interested in the founder of Christianity' is mind-boggling in its casual religious persecution.
Buzzfeed calls it 'the most embarrassing interview Fox has ever done', Slate says it is 'cringe-worthy', and The Washington Post is calling for Fox to apologise to Aslan, who was promoting his new book Zealot: The life and times of Jesus of Nazareth. Aslan has benefited from the publicity, hitting number two on the New York Times best sellers list and number one on Amazon.
Green has been roundly criticised for implying that Aslan, despite his numerous degrees in religious studies including a PhD, is incapable of providing an objective and scholarly account of Jesus because of his Muslim faith. While much of the criticism centres on the right of someone to write about a group to which they do not belong, in reality, this goes far deeper than that.
The most troubling thing about Green's performance was not that she had an issue with a non-Christian writing about Jesus, it's that she had an issue with a Muslim doing so. In Green's world of privileged western Christianity, a Muslim, even one who has dedicated his working life to studying major world religions, cannot possibly write about Christianity without an ulterior motive.
While Fox is not representative of the entire US population, this distrust of Aslan is symptomatic of a culture, helped by movies and TV shows such as Homeland, that still continues to paint every Muslim as a potential threat.
Unsurprisingly, Green has no issue with Christians writing about Islam. Her 2011 interview with Barry Van, a Southern-Baptist minister and author Puritan Islam, was spent discussing the stealthy ways Muslims with terrorist sympathies 'can be your neighbours ... they can be in a suburb of Cincinnati ... they can be medical doctors'. But that is how privilege works; it is the assumption that what applies to other, minority groups does not apply to you.
Aslan is not alone in experiencing this type of persecution. Huma Abedin, one of Hillary Clinton's closest aides, is the focus of an attack by former Republican presidential candidate and congresswoman Michelle Bachman, who, along with four other Republicans, is accusing Abedin — who, like Aslan, happens to be a Muslim — of having ties to the Muslim Brotherhood. Other prominent Republicans, including John McCain, have denounced the claims. Keith Ellison, the US's first Muslim member of congress, warns of a dangerous step towards McCarthyism.
Although The Atlantic has debunked the claims, that hasn't stopped others from jumping on the bandwagon. Abedin is married to Anthony Weiner, the disgraced Democrat candidate for New York City mayor who is currently embroiled in a sexting scandal, leading some Fox News commentators to query the media interest in Weiner when Abedin's connections to 'people who want to kill us' is 'the real story'.
It seems a Muslim cannot be in the public eye without being accused of harbouring terrorist connections. When Rima Fakih became the first Muslim Miss USA in 2010, some conservative bloggers dubbed her 'Miss Hezbollah', claiming she had ties to the radical group. Her skimpy pageant outfits were nothing more than an elaborate attempt to fool Americans into thinking she had assimilated, demonstrating that whether in hijab or a bikini, in the eyes of some, a Muslim woman just cannot win.
It's a mistrust from which Australia is not exempt as the Ed Husic debacle recently demonstrated. Some Australians just couldn't accept that a Muslim, even one who sits on the Government front bench, can be committed to both Australia and to his religion.
Of course, the less devout are not spared either. I would describe myself as, at best, a non-practising Muslim, but that doesn't stop the hostile distrust I encounter when I write on certain issues. When I criticise Israel's treatment of black Ethiopian Jews, readers, purely on the basis of my surname, blithely dismiss me as 'biased' and 'pushing another agenda'. When I write about the practice of 'white-washing' in Hollywood films, I am accused of 'playing the race card' and having 'an ulterior motive'.
And when I, as an Australian citizen, lament the direction of Anzac Day commemorations, which I feel have gone from solemn remembrance to glorification of war, furious readers inform me that as a 'foreigner' I have no right to talk about the Anzacs, and demand to know why I 'even came here'.
I have come to accept that some people will always regard me with suspicion, but that doesn't make it any less shocking when you see this hostility exhibited so blatantly and unapologetically as it was by Green to Aslan. Sure, Fox News doesn't speak for everybody, but as Aslan himself has since noted, they have created a successful brand based on a widespread fear that already exists in the community.
Ruby Hamad is a Sydney writer and associate editor of progressive feminist website The Scavenger. She blogs, and tweets as @rubyhamad