As a resident of Tennessee, I’ve got to agree with David. We’ve seen mosques vandalized more recently than we’ve seen threats of violence at our shuls and JCCs. That said, I don’t think that either of the prevailing cultures of the state are particularly interested in promoting Jewish interests.
The Evangelical rapture-minded set would like Jews to make token appearances — a reiteration of the old Augustine/Luther line that a sherit Yisrael has survived so that we can be “made an example of.” This, admittedly, is tempered by a short-term alliance for the sake of having Eretz Yisrael around as a staging ground for WW3.
As for the more progressive set, there’s a bias among secular liberals (or semi-secular — Unitarians, Episcopalians, UMC’ers and the like) against both Medinat Yisrael and haAm. The Palestinian situation causes the first: liberation theology and its intellectual descendants love conflicts that can be painted in Marxist tones, with a good-vs.evil transparency thrown on top. The second issue stems from secularists’ being baffled (frightened?) by a people that is well-represented publicly but rejects cultural homogeneity. Of course, contradictions and cultural narcissism abound in the secularist view of Israel as a savvy Western nation savagely thrust on the primitive, childlike Arabs of the Levant and therefore culpable in any conflict.
Nevertheless, secular liberals and I are actually on the same page when it comes to wanting mosques built in and around our cities. If Islam is going to undergo its own haskalah, it’s likely to start in the West. If people don’t allow Muslims room to breathe, adherents of the world’s second most populous religion are going to become increasingly isolated while remaining in our midst. They will turn all their thought inward, without action, and meet the outside world with action unmoderated by thought. If Muslims are faced only with fear and intolerance, then xenophobes’ own ravings only become self-fulfilling prophecies.