In the current round of parliamentary elections in Jordan, a candidate has just won who ran on a platform of further dissolving the distinction between church and state. He’s been a fierce critic of same-sex marriage, calling it “abhorrent,” and has said that Christians cannot hold elected office, comparing the Bible to Mein Kampf. He once claimed that terrorist attacks are justified because they’re a punishment from God. The region in which he ran is deeply conservative, and he defeated a more historically moderate candidate.
Except instead of happening in the Middle East, this scenario took place this past week in Alabama. After winning the Republican primary election in the state, ultra-conservative firebrand Roy Moore is all but guaranteed to become a United States Senator in a few months. And while such a candidacy abroad would likely evoke a storm of criticism and condemnation of Islamic values, there has been relatively little American media condemnation of Moore’s win, other than to dismiss it as a product of his state’s idiosyncratic cultural and religious conservatism.
Moore’s abhorrent human rights record is well-known, but this week’s election demonstrates a broader, and deeper, point: Americans are willing to compartmentalize the election of individuals like Moore by claiming that they only represent the views of an extreme fringe in a particular state, but they, and American media outlets more broadly, perceive the worst actions of individuals from Muslim-majority countries as emblematic of an entire region, people, or religion.
Social psychologists label this behavior the Fundamental Attribution Error: when someone whom we don’t know does something bad, we assume that it’s an essential element of their identity; that they’re a bad person. But when we, or someone we know well, does something objectionable, even something reprehensible, we place it in context, ascribing it to external factors and preserving our idea of ourselves as fundamentally good people whose misconduct was an exception, rather than the rule.
The fact that, as Americans, we can dismiss Moore as simply the voice of an angry, extreme fringe, while simultaneously viewing an imaginary foreign zealot with an identical background as part of a larger, frightening “Middle Eastern culture,” speaks to the power of in-group/out-group thinking. It’s enabled Americans to dehumanize those with whom we’ve gone to war, whether that be Germans, Vietnamese, Koreans, Native Americans, or Arabs, and to commit horrendous atrocities in the name of “civilizing” others. It’s enabled white Americans to enshrine into law second-class status for Chinese immigrants and African-Americans. The idea that “our” bad actions are only exceptions, while “theirs” are identity, continues to justify a multitude of sins.
But the one positive takeaway from recognizing that this hypocrisy also has roots in psychology is that it can be combatted. One largely agreed-upon consensus about FAE is that its effects are reduced once the individual becomes aware of them. At the same time, generalizing about an entire country or religion becomes harder once you actually get to know some of its people. That’s why organizations like mine, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), have consistently sought to challenge Islamophobia through facilitating meaningful, in-person interactions between Americans who are Muslim and their neighbors, in order to help engender more nuanced mutual understanding. It’s our hope that such genuine engagements will lead to a greater appreciation for our global diversity, and a resistance to blind generalization.
Roy Moore does not speak for America any more than any single politician can speak for an entire country. It’s time we begin affording the same standards to other nations that we do to our own.