Socialist Party USA

The season of mid-term electioneering comes to a close. Along with it, the furor over the construction of an Islamic Cultural Center blocks from Ground Zero have all but subsided. However, the underlying causes for such anxiety remains. Republicans, Tea Party organizers, and others on the right have successfully stoked the flames of hatred and islamophobia for their own electoral ends. Still, even as the election season winds down, even as the big money which finances the Tea Party and other anti-Muslim groups stops flowing, the fear and hatred which was sparked remains. Just this week, a new round of protests has erupted over a plan to build a mosque in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. These sorts of protests continue around the country.

This pattern of intolerance is nothing but a tool of the extreme right to pit middle class and working neighborhoods against themselves, to internally divide them for their own electoral gain. The Faith and Socialism Commission of the Socialist Party strongly condemns such tactics of hatred. We affirm the basic right to the freedom of conscience and congregation which includes that of peaceful religious congregation. We moreover affirm the principle of secular government; that the state should never assert the primacy of any sect, nor act as a mechanism for the interests of one religious group against another. We stand in solidarity with all those religious, ethnic, and cultural communities who meet with intolerance in this environment of irrational fear. Only through cooperation, brotherhood and sisterhood can we found a truly free, equal, and just society.

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Socialist Party USA 339 Lafayette St. #303 New York, NY 10012