From Kentucky to Mecca: What Do the Tea Party and Islam Have in Common?

What do Islam and the tea party have in common? Both are victims of a negative generalization — resulting in so called tea party-phobia and Islamophobia. As I have written several times, there are huge differences between the followers of Islam. There are differences starting in the division between Sunnis and Shiites, not to mention the smaller groups. How to compare a Lebanese woman in a bikini to an Afghan woman in a burqa? Or a Muslim from San Francisco with another from Sudan? And a Turkish immigrant in Germany with a Pakistani in England? They all have one thing in common; the belief in one religion. Of the one billion Muslims worldwide, only a minority adheres to a violent and distorted aspect of the religion. To give you a further idea, it is estimated that there are only 300 living members of Al-Qaeda and in Yemen the number is even lower.

But many insist on focusing on the more radical aspects of Islam, on half a dozen people in a Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut supposedly celebrating Sept. 11, when all the heads of state and relevant Muslim organizations including Saddam Hussein and Khatami condemned the attacks. The only exception was the Taliban in Pakistan.

The same phenomenon is occurring with the tea party. Its members are always being described as racists and stuck in time, as being always against same sex marriage and abortion. On TV they can’t stop talking about the Delaware candidate who gave the impression that she was against masturbation many years ago. But four in 10 Americans do not support the tea party because of this. In reality the Republicans advocate fewer taxes, less government intervention in the economy and less spending. In general, the Republicans consider the United States an exceptional country in the sense of having been “chosen by God,” as the Brazilians would say. As Rand Paul, the elected senator from Kentucky, said, raising taxes on Americans making more than $250 thousand per year is wrong. “We all either work for rich people or we sell stuff to rich people. So just punishing rich people is as bad for the economy as punishing anyone. Let’s not punish anyone. Let’s keep taxes low and let’s cut spending,” Paul said to CNN.

But while the members of the tea party share these ideals, they do differ on a number of other points. There are libertarians and ultraconservative members within the group.

The symbolic leader of the libertarians, Ron Paul, father of Rand, condemned America’s massive overseas defense spending. He questioned how much it costs the U.S. to maintain troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Germany and Japan, aside from giving financial assistance with taxpayers’ money to Israel, Egypt and Jordan. If it is a mistake from the libertarian point of view to enhance the state in the U.S., imagine doing so for a nation far away like Afghanistan?

The ultraconservatives agree with the foreign policy of George W. Bush, are not against military action towards Iran and do not consider spending $300 billion dollars on the Afghanistan conflict a mistake. So I would suggest deepening analysis on the tea party before criticizing it, the same for Islam. The tea party-phobia, like any generalization, is stupid.