Charles C. Haynes: The truth about Muslims in America

  Throughout our history, the United States has endured periodic outbreaks of fear and hysteria — from the Red Scare to the Yellow Peril. To that ignoble list, we can now add the “Muslim Menace.”

  Echoing “takeover” rhetoric from the past (communists in government, Asians in the workplace), demagogues and anti-Islam groups are using legitimate concerns about homegrown terrorism as an opportunity to stir fears of a stealth Muslim takeover of the United States.