In March, an arsonist targeted a mosque in California. Another mosque burned in Connecticut in May. Other mosques have received threats during this holy month of Ramadan. The FBI reported in its latest hate crime statistics that there was a 77 percent increase in anti-Muslim incidents between 2014 and 2017.
In these recent attacks on American Muslims, we have seen the return of shocking ideas that had fueled earlier assaults on religious freedom in the United States. Throughout American history, attacks on religious minorities have returned periodically like cicadas that lay low for a few decades and then emerge again in full force. They followed certain patterns. Peculiar arguments that were made against Baptists in the eighteenth century reappeared in attacks on Mormons and Catholics in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
What can we learn about the nature of the modern attacks on Muslims from previous attacks on Mormons, Catholics, and other religious minorities?
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