Bruce Lawrence quote about Muslim participation in a "polyvalent kaleidoculture" in America

In the aftermath of September 11, it is even more important, though also much harder, to remain optimistic about a polyvalent kaleidoculture in the twenty-first-century United States. Arab Americans, and Asian Americans who seem to resemble Arab Muslims or who are elided with them, have been targeted as possible suspects. Even when they cannot be directly linked to the crimes of September 11, law enforcement officials, following the lead of Attorney General John Ashcroft, suspect them of future crimes that may be planned but not yet carried out. [Read NYPD here]. It is a draconian policy, which the public in general seems to support, though responsible media have provided alternative, resistant perspectives.[38] [For example, the recent AP reporting.]

Alas, public backlash against the Asian Muslim Other will be slow to subside, even if foreign wars, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, are waged successfully. In fact, the very persistence of a propaganda war in tandem with a military campaign overseas ensures that a percentage of "patriotic" Americans will find unwitting accomplices at home to scapegoat as fifth column supporters of the foreign enemy. These perceptions are not only suspect; they also cut against the other American instinct, to trust that freedom of expression, including religious worship and loyalty, can be, and must be, maintained as part of the American dream. September 11 may have deferred, even complicated, Asian Muslim participation in a polyvalent kaleidoculture, but it remains a dream delayed, not erased.

-Bruce Lawrence, New Faiths, Old Fears: Muslims and Other Asian Immigrants in American Religious Life (2002), pg. 45