Daily Times

This must be a recurring nightmare for American Muslims. You wake up on October 1, turn on the television while sipping coffee and the news flash makes your skin crawl: another campus shooting, this time in Douglas County, Oregon, but with a macabre twist. The shooter “singled out Christians,” says The Washington Post quoting major news networks and the shooter sneered, “Because you are a Christian, you are going to see God in just about one second,” before pulling the trigger. He kills nine people that day.

Your heart sinks as the local sheriff refuses to name the killer. Here it comes, you moan, another Nidal Hasan or Nadir Soofi. Another wretched day of defending Islam at work or at the next neighbourhood watch meeting. Blessedly, the tumult is short-lived. US federal authorities soon reveal the shooter as one Christopher Harper-Mercer, a 26-year-old man of mixed race with mental issues and a Nazi memorabilia fetish. Oh, and best of all, inspired by the Irish Republican Army (IRA), not al Qaeda. Mercer, apparently, committed suicide instead of surrendering to the cops.

Not everyone gave up on the Muslim angle though. The tinfoil-hat set in the right wing media continued to seek that elusive Islamic connection. Its audience, the 56 percent of Republicans who believe US President Barack Obama is a Muslim, wanted the Oregon shootings to lead anywhere but another damning debate on gun control laws.

Unsurprisingly, Fox News firebrand Sean Hannity’s mood darkened when he realised Mercer was not a Muslim. On his primetime show that day, Hannity badgered reporter Trace Gallagher about the faith angle of the massacre since Mercer “obviously targeted Christians”. After Gallagher dithered on a verdict, Hannity went back to the killer’s name and moped, “He does not sound like he is Muslim.” Fear mongering is not new to US politics or the press. It is a permanent blank space in the social conversation, filled in with the nemesis du jour. Muslims, post-9/11, may find themselves as ready scapegoats but there are no fixed rules for who becomes the national bogey. Nor, for that matter, is there any discrimination based on ancestry, ideology or religion.

The McCarthy witch-hunt of the 1950s, for example, sought to dig out and prosecute domestic communists using often false testimonies. A decade earlier, after the Pearl Harbour bombing in 1941, over 120,000 Japanese-Americans found themselves herded into internment camps by the government for the duration of World War II, simply to prevent any spies for Tokyo from operating freely. That said, the right wing’s eagerness to pin any violence on Muslims does not make the Mercer case unique, the timing does. With US presidential elections a little over a year away, the presumptive Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, will likely run into a Republican (GOP) campaign driven not by traditional planks but by the anti-Obama vote.

Republicans, you see, have long accused the president of being opportunist-in-chief, soft on critical foreign policy issues but strong on race-baiting at home. The Christian lobby also complains that education on Islam has gained undue focus in public schools on his watch. These are hot button issues for conservative voters and the GOP primary frontrunners, Donald Trump and Ben Carson, have expertly exploited them to overtake the establishment candidates. Trump, especially, has tapped into the frothing redneck vein of the party and plans to milk it to the finish line. GOP insiders, however, worry that candidate sound bites pandering to the Christian US could cost them chunks of the minority vote in 2016, something that Mitt Romney believes sank his last election bid. Clinton will not mind running against Trump today but things could get hairy if the entire GOP vote bank veers hard right.

In the battle of optics after July 2016, when the final presidential debates begin, a Benghazi-bitten Clinton will be wary of sounding demure on foreign policy. Going against her is the lack of loquaciousness. She is many synonyms of the word smart but cannot talk herself out of tight corners like Obama or spouse Bill can. In 2013, Clinton’s “What difference does it make?” snap at a probing GOP senator in the Benghazi hearing put a permanent question mark on her ability to absorb pressure.

Also, Trump’s campaign will no doubt influence political tent pegging in the months leading up to the presidential vote. Going forward, any GOP candidate overtaking Trump will need to ride his far-right wave all the way to November 2016. As a woman vying for this hitherto men’s only club, Clinton could well overcompensate to sound tough enough. Still, she should be okay as long as there is no mini-9/11 and Democrats keep the minority vote.

Sadly, what this could mean for American Muslims is exclusive rhetoric from both candidates that makes them uncomfortable. The voter turnout for this bloc could diminish or sway towards an independent candidate. If nothing else, the Trump phenomenon guarantees that next year’s elections will be partisan and fought far away from the centre line.

The writer is a freelance columnist and audio engineer based in Islamabad