“The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society. That is its task and its promise p. 6 … No social study that does not come back to the problems of biography, of history and their interconnections within society has completed its intellectual journey” p. 6 … C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination (1959).

“Sociology has as its task the analysis and understanding of the organized structure and operations of society and the basis in values and attitudes on which individual participation in social life rests. The carrying out of this task presupposes sociologists capable of doing the work and a society capable of tolerating their results … To the extent that society even notices the critical sociologist, it can be expected to make a negative judgment on his work … The critical sociologist requires at least two qualities (a) an ability to get outside the world of his own experience and to project himself into the centers of life and institutions which he does not in the ordinary course of events have direct experience, and (b) an ability to detach himself from the prevailing values and attitudes of the organized groups in society in order thereby to gain a level of understanding that goes beyond conventional perspectives …” p. 1. Maurice Stein and Arthur Vidich, editors. “Sociology on Trial (1963).

“The fascination of sociology lies in the fact that its perspective makes us see in a new light the very world in which we have lived all our lives. This also constitutes a transformation of consciousness. Moreover, this transformation is more relevant existentially than that of many other intellectual disciplines, because it is more difficult to segregate in some special compartment of the mind … p. 21 … Unlike puppets, we have the possibility of stopping in our movements, looking up and perceiving the machinery by which we have been moved. In this act lies the first step towards freedom. And in this act we find the conclusive justification of sociology as a humanistic discipline … ” p. 176 Peter L. Berger. Invitation to Sociology (1963).

Of course, no such tribunal will occur in America. You would be “anti-American” for suggesting that blame for US foreign policy, concoted by a minority of misguided, if not somewhat wicked, elites should fall upon us all. As if being an American means supporting US militarism which for some reason finds it necessary to “defend America overseas.” Yet that such a climate exists might certainly extend the circle of blame. Who really are the enablers? Are they not anyone who has not spoken out vehemently against jingoism? Or perhaps it is anyone who has paid taxes that fund military adventures abroad? I suppose I am guilty then. But then, by the same logic, those that purchase gas are responsible for funding radical Islamists.

But when speaking of the committee in question, I don’t think we are really looking at anything so rational as considering blame based on a community of beliefs. We are looking at an attitude similar to what a friend of mine encountered while studying abroad in Spain. Because he was American, he was responsible for the Iraq invasion, among other evils of the US government. He protested the Iraq war, yet simply because he was American, someone spit in his face. No questions asked. The expectorator didn’t have the rational bearings to differentiate among Americans: If you were an American, you were George Bush. The fact that my friend didn’t support the war, and even protested against it, didn’t mean a thing. My case in point is of course not an isolated incident. Anti-Americanism is a broad phenomena which often cannot tell the difference between George Bush and an Anarchist vehemently against US militarism, which my friend was.

I don’t think we should indulge such stereotyping that may equate Muslims with with radical Muslims. For one thing, you never know when you might be on the wrong end of the stereotype. But the stereotyping in question is fueled by paranoid delusions of “creeping Shariah” but tries to justify itself rationally by asking moderate Muslisms, “What are you doing about radical Muslims?” As if the over one billion Muslisms around the world comprise one giant community, and that each member of that community is responsible for the acts of all the others. No such community exists. Muslims are in fact very diverse, as are Americans. This is obvious, but for some reason not as obvious as it should be.