Conspiracy theorists, especially in the Muslim world, held that 9/11 was really the work of Israelis or the Americans themselves. Nine years out, it’s the Americans who are singing loony tunes about Muslims.

Eighteen per cent think Barack Obama is a Muslim, according to a Pew poll. That’s 55 million Americans. Many use only his middle name, Hussein. Rush Limbaugh calls him Imam Obama.

Newt Gingrich believes that sharia, the Islamic law, is coming to America by stealth. The danger is so high, says a Republican state representative in Oklahoma, that “there’s a war for the survival of America.”

Others have called Elena Kagan, the newly appointed Supreme Court judge, “Justice Sharia” because she had been dean of Harvard Law School, which teaches Islamic jurisprudence.

Two Republican members of Congress, Sue Myrick of North Carolina and Paul Broun of Georgia, believe that young Muslim interns are part of a secret Islamic infiltration into Capitol Hill.

Then there’s the firestorm over the Ground Zero mosque.

“The outcry implies that Islam alone was responsible for the 9/11 attacks,” writes Ron Paul, Republican member of Congress from Texas.

He says it’s all part of a long and well-orchestrated campaign by those “who demand continual war in the Middle East and Central Asia” and who “never miss a chance to use hatred toward Muslims to rally support for the ill-conceived preventative wars.”

Gingrich equates the proposed Islamic centre there to a Nazi display next to the Holocaust Museum in D.C. or a Japanese warrior monument at Pearl Harbor. (The analogy would be fine if Osama bin Laden was the one building a mosque at the World Trade Center and not a Manhattan couple, devoted to interfaith work, proposing a Muslim Y.)

“Gingrich is too smart to be that stupid,” says John Esposito, professor of Islamic Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., by way of illustrating how anti-Muslim bigotry has become so acceptable that “mainstream politicians, including two potential Republican presidential candidates (Gingrich and Sarah Palin), media commentators, hardline Christian Zionists and a large number of Americans feel that they can say anything about Islam and Muslims with impunity.

“They are not simply members of minority anti-immigrant parties as in Europe.”

Esposito’s opinion, conveyed by email, contradicts mine, expressed in the last column, that the anti-Muslim voices in America are marginal.

Esposito, a Catholic, is a respected public intellectual and a prolific author on contemporary Islam. His latest and 45th book, The Future of Islam, tackles all the controversial topics, from violent Islamists to Western Islamophobes.

That the firestorm over the Muslim centre in Manhattan reflects deeper malaise can be seen in the fact that few 9/11 families oppose the project and opposition to it is less in New York than across the U.S.

Several studies show that significant percentages of Americans admit to prejudice against Muslims; approve of racially profiling them and forcing them to carry identity cards; and say that Muslims should not be allowed to run for president or Congress or be appointed to the Supreme Court, etc.

All this despite the fact that American Muslims are well integrated. They are more educated and more of them are in the workforce than the average American. Muslim women report monthly household incomes more nearly equal to men’s, compared with women and men in other faith groups.

Esposito: “Islamophobia is fast becoming what anti-Semitism is — rooted in hostility and intolerance toward religious and cultural beliefs and a religious or racial group. The social cancer of Islamophobia must be recognized as unacceptable as anti-Semitism.”

He was sad to see that the venerable Anti-Defamation League, “devoted to fighting defamation and prejudice,” decided to oppose the Manhattan Muslim centre “not because Muslims do not have a right to build it but rather to protect the feelings of those opposed! Is this a criterion the ADL has used or would subscribe to in its own struggles against anti-Semitism?”

(Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek columnist and CNN host, has returned an award given him by the ADL, saying its stand went against its declared aim of opposition to discrimination and bigotry.)

Esposito said that what’s happening across the U.S. hurts the country in several ways: It feeds the bin Laden theory that America is at war with Islam; it helps Al Qaeda and other militants recruit; and it erodes America itself.

“What is at stake is the very core of who and what we are as a nation and a society, the foundation of our identity, and the principles and values embodied in our constitution.”

Haroon Siddiqui is the Star’s editorial page editor emeritus. His column appears on Thursday and Sunday.

hsiddiqui@thestar.ca