So, it turns out Islam is a religion. Imagine that.

Granted, this would be considered self-evident by most of
us, but it has been a matter of great controversy in the Tennessee town of
Murfreesboro, where 17 people went to court last year to prevent a group of
Muslims from building a mosque. On their own land.

Islam claims 1.5 billion adherents on the planet, but 17 bigots in Murfreesboro, Tenn., trying to block a group of Muslims from building a mosque, contended Muslims have no constitutional freedom to worship because Islam is not a religion.

The need to defend this fundamental right was only one of
the ordeals visited upon the Muslims of Murfreesboro, who have also faced
threats, vandalism and arson. As recently, vividly illustrated in
“Unwelcome: The Muslims Next Door,” a troubling CNN documentary, the
antagonists here are a clownish band of bigots scared witless by the prospect that
a new mosque will be built in their community by a congregation that has
already worshipped in said community for 30 years.

Seriously. You can’t make this stuff up.

The 17 had contended Muslims have no constitutional freedom
to worship because Islam is not a religion. So the statement at the top of this
column represents not just self-evident truth, but an actual ruling last week
by an actual judge in an actual court. Again: seriously. Chancellor Robert
Corlew, the aforementioned actual judge, was obliged to verify that Islam —
which has survived 14 centuries, and claims a billion and a half adherents — is
a religion.

As reported in the Daily News Journal of Murfreesboro, in
throwing out most of the plaintiff’s case, Corlew also dismissed claims that
“Kevin Fisher, an African-American Christian, would be subject to being a
second-class citizen under sharia law; Lisa Moore would be targeted for death
under sharia law because she’s a Jewish female; Henry Golzynski has been harmed
because he lost a son fighting in Fallujah, Iraq, by insurgents pursuing jihad
as dictated by sharia law.”

Maybe you’re tempted to turn away in disgust. Yield not to
temptation. We need to see this. This is what it looks like when a country
loses its mind.

It looked like this in Germany in 1938 on Kristallnacht, in
Rwanda in 1994 when the Hutus savaged the Tutsis, in America in 1942 when the
Japanese were herded behind barbed wire.

My point is explicitly not that Muslims face mass vandalism,
genocide or internment. Lord only knows what they face. Rather, my point is
that the psychological architecture of what happened then is identical to the
psychological architecture of Murfreesboro now. Once again, we see people
goaded by their own night terrors, hatreds, need for scapegoats, and by the repetitive
booming of demagogues, until they go to a place beyond reason.

And in that place inevitably lies a dark night of malice,
destruction and awful deeds that seem like good ideas at the time. When it
passes, like a fever, we — the doers and those who simply observe — are left
shivering in a cold dawn as reason reasserts itself, wondering how barbarism
overtook us, what broke loose inside us, and vowing that it will never happen
again. Never again.

Me, I don’t fear Muslims. I fear Muslim extremists. I fear
extremists, period. And that group in Murfreesboro, make no mistake, are
extremists.

Against their extremism, I find bitter succor in the
inevitability of that cold dawn. Yes, there will come a morning after.

But first we must learn how dark this night will be.

Reprinted from the Miami Herald.