As an "echo chamber" for American Islamophobia, Fox News does its gosh darned best to foster fear and loathing of Muslims at every turn. Such was the case, Saturday, when Fox & Friends featured, for the second time, a report about a Michigan city which is, OMG, majority-Muslim.
Back in February, Pete Hegseth debuted, on Fox & Friends, his little documentary about Hamtramck, MI, the first Muslim-majority city in the US. And while the Polish-Catholic mayor has said that "in this little town, we manage to work out our differences and to live together,” Hegseth's presentation was heavy on those scary differences.
The scary tone was set, at the beginning of his piece, with the scary Muslim call to prayer. In speaking with young Muslim men, Hegseth immediately puts them on the defensive by bringing up jihadist terrorism which they adamantly disavowed. After sowing the initial climate of suspicion, Hegseth interviews Polish-Catholic folks who are, you guessed it, a little suspicious of the Muslim residents. Hegseth reminds us of why they should be scared with his comment about how the Muslim call to prayer "blasts" across the city, five times a day, and that there are more per-capita mosques in Hamtramck than, OMG, anyplace else in the country. (One mosque is, OMG, expanding!) There was heavy emphasis on the Catholicism of the Polish community. The video ended with a non-Muslim resident who says that "they're not ready to assimilate, I don't think they're ready for Western culture yet."
In discussing the video, Hegseth validated the fear mongering: "A lot of folks weren't willing to go on camera and say their true feelings" which are that "they're pretty worried about this." He noted that the non-Muslim residents are "anxious" because they're "not sure" that the Muslims "are actually integrating as much as we'd want them to." Resident genius Anna Kooiman cited information claiming that because of language differences, Muslim groups "don't intermingle as much." Hegseth noted that those Polish people who are concerned about Muslim integration say that there isn't a lot of assimilation.
Flash forward to Saturday when Hegseth's not so fair & balanced video was part of another discussion of those scary Muslims. Anna Kooiman set the Islamophobic tone immediately with her lead in comment about how, as hordes of "refugees flood Europe to leave war-torn Syria and Iraq," Hamtramck has become the first Muslim-majority city in this country. Hegseth informed us that he "wanted to see how they're assimilating with the community that came before it." His oh, so fair & balanced video was shown.
At the conclusion of the video, Hegseth validated the fear in informing us that the non-Muslims "expect the Muslim population to continue to skyrocket." While he acknowledge that Hamtramck is "better than places in Europe, for sure...the Polish population, not sure." After Tucker Carlson quipped that "one quick way to judge assimilation is burkhas," he asked Hegseth if he noticed "a lot of burkhas." Hegseth, of course, responded in the affirmative. He noted the presence of different ethnic groups which works against "the community coming together." Kooiman: "You might see the steeples of those Polish Catholic churches, but what you're hearing more and more is less of the bells from the churches and more of the call to prayer."
Funny, I haven't seen a Fox & Friends discussion about whether the Hassidic and various Asian (women in sari's?) communities are assimilating. Oh right, we're talking scary Muslims here. Nuff said.... Also funny, nothing was said about the 600 to 800 undocumented white Eastern European Christians who live in Hamtramck. Oh right, we're talking scary Muslims here. Nuff said...