A New Moral Panic: Islamophobia’s Echoes in American History Mirrors those of Catholics

From Colonial Fears to Modern Prejudices: How Old Patterns of Religious Discrimination Resurface in America, writes Yameen Ahmed

It has become undeniably clear that a new moral panic about Muslims is spreading across the United States. From Appalachian mining towns to the group chats of centibillionaire oligarchs, people fearmonger about the increasing presence of Muslims in American society.

Much like the Islamophobia of the Bush era and Donald Trump’s first term, this wave is based on an underlying fear of Islam’s perceived incompatibility with American values and fictional horror stories of jihad.

While new aspects have emerged, including discussions about the perceived genetic and intellectual inferiority of people from Muslim countries that harken back to this country’s dark legacy of racism, most Islamophobia in Trump’s second term looks identical to that of 20 years ago. The fear of the hijab, the anxiety that a terrorist lurks behind a beard, the smoking image of the Twin Towers, and migrant caravans filled with ‘fighting-aged males’ ready to conquer and pillage.

But this is not a trope unique in American history. Even a century before the US was founded, many colonies engaged in heavy religious discrimination. Rhode Island was not founded by Puritans fleeing persecution in Britain, but by ministers expelled from Massachusetts for preaching against the church-state orthodoxy.

The Quakers also faced severe persecution, with many members hanged on the streets of Boston. Even the Founding Fathers weren’t immune to the fear of immigrants with different cultures; Benjamin Franklin once warned of “swarthy” Germans migrating to the colonies.

However, no religious group was as feared as the Catholics. Many colonies that formed the United States were established specifically to escape what they saw as the corrupt, Catholic-leaning practices of the Anglican Church. Maryland was founded as a haven for Catholic immigrants, but even there, they were overthrown by the Protestant population, and the religion was banned until the American Revolution. In the 18th century, this fear took on a military dimension. British colonists felt surrounded, with France to the North and West and Spain to the South. After the British wiped out the French presence in North America, the colonies feared the political freedom given to Catholics, with protestors in New York waving flags exclaiming “No Popery”.

Although the American Revolution improved freedom for Catholics, heavy discrimination continued, particularly because new immigrants were no longer coming from England but from the heavily Catholic regions of Ireland, Germany, and Italy. The Know Nothing Party gained prominence in the mid-1800s, with politicians like former President Millard Fillmore and famous inventor Samuel Morse joining the secretive party dedicated to xenophobia against the Catholic immigrant population. Deadly riots occurred throughout the Northeast, resulting in the burning of convents and the killing of many immigrants.

In the early 20th century, these immigrant groups, marginalized by the dominant Protestant population, turned to crime and corruption. Gangs of Irishmen ran the New York City underworld, and Italian mobsters like Al Capone became iconic. This criminality was used by nativists to justify further discrimination, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. Media caricatures depicted the Irish as ape-like drunkards and Italians as violent, knife-wielding anarchists. It was a time when “Help Wanted” signs frequently ended with N.I.N.A.: No Irish Need Apply.

Perhaps the most extreme manifestation of anti-Catholic bigotry was the “Pope in the White House” conspiracy theory. Emerging in the 1870s just as the Papacy was confined to Vatican City, agitators claimed the Pope would take over the United States and rule it as a theocracy. The most extreme version claimed American Catholics would dig a tunnel from the Vatican to the US, traveling underneath the Atlantic Ocean, a feat impossible even by today’s technology.

Yet this conspiracy theory had real power. The KKK spread it across the country during the 1920s; the “Second Klan” was an anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic organization boasting millions of members. This moral panic flipped elections. The 1928 election saw the first Catholic major-party nominee, Democratic candidate Al Smith. As Governor of New York, he posed in front of newly excavated railway tunnels, which some claimed were evidence that he had dug the transatlantic tunnels. Many claimed his loss to Herbert Hoover was due to his Catholic faith. It took another 32 years for this stigma to fade enough for John F. Kennedy to be elected. Even then, Kennedy had to humiliate himself before the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, explicitly stating he would not take orders from the Pope, effectively asking permission from the Protestant establishment to serve his country.

But what would the world look like if the racists of the past had their way? Consider the railroads that transformed the US into an industrial superpower, built largely by Irish immigrants. Consider the Italians, once derided as dangerous anarchists, who eventually formed the backbone of American cuisine. Consider the Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian immigrants who filled the steel mills of the Rust Belt, forging the tanks and ships that defeated fascism in World War II.r

The end stage of assimilation, however, is joining the in-group in the bigotry they peddle. In this generation of the American right, Catholicism has been welcomed as a pillar of traditionalism. Jack Posobiec, an open white nationalist with ties to the MAGA movement, demanded democracy be destroyed while waving a Rosary. Matt Walsh, a self-described ‘theocratic fascist’, drums up outrage toward minority groups. The Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes is a hardcore Catholic who fears mongers about Jewish influence. Perhaps the biggest example is Catholic billionaire Peter Thiel, an open opponent of democracy itself, who funded the career of an Appalachian man now a heartbeat away from the presidency: the Catholic Vice President, JD Vance.

This shift makes the parallels between yesterday’s anti-Catholicism and today’s Islamophobia striking. The modern charge that Muslims possess a ‘dual loyalty’ to the Ummah or Sharia Law is a direct descendant of the charge that Catholics owed allegiance to the Pope over the President. The fear that Muslim neighbourhoods are no-go zones breeding insurrection mirrors the panic over ghettoised Irish slums. The claim that Islam is incompatible with Western democracy is identical to the delusions that Catholics were planning to install the pope in the White House.

Ultimately, xenophobia is a fire that takes money and attention to fuel. If those stoking the fire encounter another crisis, it will subside. Islamophobia comes in waves. The period from 2020 to the start of the war in Gaza saw panic about Islam driven to the back of the Conservative grievance list, replaced by panics over vaccines, the 2020 election, ‘Critical Race Theory’, and transgender people. It reached the point where many Muslims supported protests against LGBT issues in schools. However, after Hamas broke through the walls of Gaza, the fear of Islam became a fire worth fueling again.

The wheels of American assimilation will always turn. One day, Muslim-American influencers will barge into immigrant businesses to drum up moral panics. One day, American Muslims will be on talk shows, fearmongering about the cultures and races of people that certain wings of American society dislike.

And they will be wrong.

Yameen Ahmed is a software developer from Frisco with a deep interest in global affairs.