The warming comfort of a familiar paranoia

Don’t worry yourself with things like hard facts, logic or statistics

Dear Deborah,

Letters like the ones you sent last week — missives predicting civilizational collapse at the hands of outsiders, filling my inbox for most of the Syrian refugee crisis — tend to elicit either boredom or laughter. They don’t typically inspire a written reply.

Yours aren’t typical letters, though. True, they cite the existence of Very Bad Muslims as evidence that every Muslim is very bad; they fret about the niqab on women, about ISIL among refugees, about Islamic prayer in schools.

But where others in your cohort say, “I’m not racist, but here’s a racist belief I have,” you say that you are indeed racist, that you don’t want Muslims to come to Canada, and that you feel really badly about all that. But that you’re scared, really scared. You say you’d appreciate hearing something to set your mind at rest.

That something depends on what kind of thing you’re comforted by.

Do statistics help you sleep at night? You might like numbers that confirm Canadian culture isn’t under siege: Muslims account for less than three per cent of the population, though Canadians estimate that Muslims account for more than 20 per cent; birthrates are only slightly higher among Muslims who have migrated to Canada (2.4 children compared with the national 1.7), and The Myth of The Muslim Tide author Doug Saunders points out that birthrates for third-generation Canadian Muslims fall to about the same level; finally, only two Muslim women have tried to wear a niqab at citizenship ceremonies since 2011 and, as far as I’m aware, in neither incident was a Canadian maimed, killed or religiously converted by the garment.

Perhaps you prefer cold logic to hard data. You say you worry about how Muslims treat women. The Army of God, a Christian terrorist organization, has planted bombs at women’s abortion clinics, and kidnapped and possibly murdered abortion providers. It doesn’t follow that their beliefs and practices are fundamental to Christianity or shared by Christian men. I really don’t mean to be cruel, Deborah, but many Christians would be horrified by even your prejudice, just as most Muslims are repulsed by the hate spewed by extremists.

Maybe you prefer a historical argument though. So recall that Catholics and Jews faced the very accusations you make. They have different values. They live in enclaves. They aren’t to be trusted. Did these groups ruin your country, as you fear Muslims might, or help build it?

But you evidently appreciate a good contemporary anecdote, so here are a few: my Syrian translator was terrified when he was pursued by neo-Nazis in Germany; Syrian women are terrified of rapists hiding in Europe’s forests; and Syrian fathers are terrified of not finding diapers for their infants, food for their wives, money to send home. The ones I’ve met aren’t threats. They’re threatened.

Would you listen to God at least, since you repeatedly say you worry that Christian traditions are being squeezed out? It’s been many years since I pretended to take communion, but I don’t recall Jesus teaching Christians to slander outsiders and keep them out. He did go on about turning cheeks, loving neighbours, helping the needy and being kind to strangers.

So there you have it, Deborah. Statistics, logic, history, anecdotes, and your religion all challenge your beliefs; and yet, since each approach has been exhausted many times by many others, I suspect that none will now alleviate your fears and give you comfort. Maybe fear alone can comfort you. It feels better, somehow, to agonize over a distant threat than grapple with the clear-and-present democratic decline, economic recession, civil liberties abuse and environmental degradation knocking at your door. You may choose to fixate on Islamic extremism despite evidence that you’re overwhelmingly safe from it, and politicians may choose to validate your choice despite the harm incited by waving niqabs and dual citizenship at voters like red capes at a bull.

At least some people will feel safely cocooned in their familiar paranoia.

While head scarves are torn off pregnant women and babies wash up on western shores, that’s what matters, right?