In New York City this week, an institution is being accused of using Islam to subvert American culture – but this time, it’s on the other side of the East River.

The controversy over Brooklyn College’s Common Reader program doesn’t hold a candle to the Ground Zero mosque debacle – thankfully, Sarah Palin has yet to tweet on the subject – but it’s gotten more than a few people riled up in the past few days. The most riled might be Bruce Kesler: the conservative blogger and Brooklyn College alum wrote the college out of his will when they assigned Moustafa Bayoumi’s How Does It Feel To Be A Problem? Being Young and Arab in Americato all incoming freshmen.

Then there’s the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group that’s already leading an attack on college reading lists across the country. They were quick to support Kesler: “[the book] aims to establish Arab and Muslim Americans as victims and indict American society for making them so.” It all fits perfectly with the growing sentiment that Muslims – led by President Obama, of course – are working to destroy America, but it’s cloaked in the guise of a real academic debate.

It’s a shame that Moustafa Bayoumi’s book, a thoughtful and highly regarded portrait of the group living with this growing antagonism, has to be at the heart of it.

Elizabeth Minkel at the New Yorker Book Bench blog, 1 September 2010