The More Things Change...

This past Friday afternoon at 3 pm, a group of about 100 people gathered at the North Entrance to the Connecticut State Capitol Building. This interfaith gathering including Muslims, Jews and Christians. This diverse group came together to speak out against and be a witness in opposition to the increasing Islamophobia in the US. The Islamophobia came "home" to Connecticut over the past one and a half weeks, when an organization that claimed to be Christian showed up outside a mosque in Bridgeport, CT -- one of the state's 3 largest cities -- one two successive Friday. While outside the mosque, on the first Friday, this supposed Christian organization harassed people attempting to enter the mosque for Friday prayers and called them names. The following Friday, members of the organization picketing the mosque claimed that they were there to "convert" Muslims, to teach them the "truth" about Jesus, insisting that "love[d]" Muslims and want to "save" them.

The name of the organization protesting outside the Bridgeport mosque is "Operation Save America." To my mind, what this nation most needs saving from is groups like "Operation Save America" that wants to claim and insist that they alone have the truth, that Christianity is the only true religion, and that everyone who does not believe in Jesus Christ in the way in which they believe in Jesus Christ is going to Hell.

I'll leave aside whether or not this group and others like it are, in fact, truly Christian. That's a topic for another day. Instead, I'll address a different topic. In many ways, there's little new here. What I find particularly interesting, however, is that "Operation Save America" is a new name for a group many had thought had faded into history in the late 1990's. "Operation Save America" used to be "Operation Rescue," the ultra-Right-Wing anti-abortion and anti-women's rights organization that used to block entrances to women's health clinics; super-glue the clinics' front door locks shut; harass clinic staff, physicians and clients; scream at women through megaphones and call it "counseling," yelling at them not to abort their babies. The actions by Operation Rescue and similar groups whose misogyny and distrust of women's moral agency became so extreme that, in 1994, two women staffers were murdered and several injured at 2 women's clinics in Brookline, MA. The perpetrator of those attacks was a very devout Roman Catholic man, John Salvi. And these were not the only 2 people murdered in the struggle for women's reproductive rights.

At the time of the Brookline clinic shootings, I was working around the corner from several major Boston teaching hospitals (Brigham and Women's, Beth Israel Deaconess, Children's Hospital, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute). Before leaving work that day, we were advised to be extremely careful; the shooter had not yet been arrested. Extra police were visible all over the hospital area, in part because the injured had been transported to the nearest hospitals, which were the Brigham and Beth Israel Deaconess. We were advised to go directly home, rather than to one of the hospitals, even though many of us worked as physician / researchers at one of the hospitals. Law enforcement could not tell us for sure that the perpetrator would not show up at one of the hospitals with the intent to attempt to take more lives. It was known that the Brigham performed abortions.

Two nights later, I went with a friend from church -- a young woman who was a med student at Harvard Medical School -- to a memorial service / rally to mourn our lost sisters and show publicly that even in the face of these horrific murders, we would not be cowed, we would not be made fearful, we would not hide -- and we would not stop providing the best and most comprehensive medical care to women, no matter what their circumstances and / or their needs.

I am not stating that Operation Rescue was responsible for John Salvi's actions. I would argue, however, that extremist rhetoric does influence people who are considering carrying out extremist actions. It's likely that no one in Operation Rescue, or any other anti-abortion organization, told John Salvi it would be good, just, and justifiable for him to shoot and kill people who worked at the 2 Brookline clinics. When he got through shooting on that 30 December 1994 afternoon, Shannon Lowney, age 25, and Lee Ann Nichols, age 38, were dead, and a number of other clinic employees and volunteers were injured, in what he considered to be in defense of life.

Now, Operation Rescue has a new incarnation, Operation Save America. Instead of harassing and threatening women, the "new" organization is harassing and threatening Muslim women, men, and even children. Now, instead of yelling at women entering health clinics not to abort their babies, they are yelling at Muslims to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of G-D and telling them that they should convert to Christianity.

Why is it that people in groups like Operation Rescue and Operation Save America insist that their way is the only way and their truth the only truth and that we all must follow them in that way and that truth?

And if this has begun to sound all too tiredly familiar, here are a few more jolts. Operation Save America chose to picket the Bridgeport mosque on Friday afternoons -- Fridays being the holy day during the week for Muslims -- starting during the month of Ramadan, which is the holiest month for Muslims. As a woman who grew up Jewish and is now a practicing Catholic, I am outraged by this series of deliberately insulting actions. If Operation Save America, or any other Right-Wing (supposedly) Christian group chose to picket synagogues with the aim of converting Jews on Rosh Hashahah -- the Jewish New Year -- or Yom Kippur -- the Day of Atonement which, together with Rosh Hashanah, are the holiest days in Judaism -- the Jewish community and much of the Christian community, and certainly liberal Christian denominations, would be in an uproar. Yet there has been little uproar over the actions of Operation Save America against the Muslim community during Ramadan.

Another jolt: I don't know which organization has come up with the following idea, but somewhere in the US, a Right-Wing ostensibly Christian organization has proposed that every 11 September be a day dedicated to the burning of copies of the Koran, the holiest book of Islam. Shades of Nazi Germany and Josef Goebbels, no? This type of rhetoric not only frightens me; it chills me right down to the very marrow of my bones. So, please, if you know of an act of anti-Islamic intolerance / Islamophobia in your neighborhood, city, or state, please speak out against it. Please attend a rally, community meeting, interfaith gathering to say "No, not in my neighborhood; not in my city; not in my state." Please take positive action, please speak out; please do not remain silent in the face of this increasing intolerance.