Your Taxes Fund Anti-Muslim Hatred
By Chris Hedges
opednews.com
News
personalities, politicians, self-appointed experts on the Muslim world,
and law enforcement and intelligence officials, as well as the Christian
right, have successfully demonized Muslims in the United States since
the attacks of 2001. It is acceptable to say things openly about Muslims
that could never be said about any other ethnic group. And as the
economy continues to unravel, as we face the possibility of revenge
attacks by Islamic extremists, perhaps on American soil, the plight of
Muslims is beginning to mirror that of targeted ethnic minority groups
on the eve of the war in the former Yugoslavia, or Jews in the dying
days of the Weimar Republic.
The major candidates for the Republican nomination for the
presidency, including Rick Santorum, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt
Gingrich and Mike Huckabee, along with television personalities such as
Bill Maher, routinely employ hate talk against Muslims as a way to
attract votes or viewers. Right-wing radio and cable news, including
Christian radio and television, along with websites such as Jihad Watch and
FrontPage, spew toxic filth about Muslims over the airwaves and the Internet.
But perhaps most ominously -- as pointed out in "Manufacturing the Muslim
Menace," a report by Political Research Associates
-- a
cadre of right-wing institutions that peddle themselves as
counter-terrorism specialists and experts on the Muslim world has been
indoctrinating thousands of police, intelligence and military personnel
in nationwide seminars. These seminars, run by organizations such as
Security Solutions International, The Centre for Counterintelligence and
Security Studies, and International Counter-Terrorism Officers
Association, embrace gross and distorted stereotypes and propagate wild
conspiracy theories.
And much of this indoctrination within the law
enforcement community is funded under two grant programs for
training -- the State Homeland Security Program and Urban Areas Security
Initiative -- which made $1.67 billion available to states in 2010. The
seminars preach that Islam is a terrorist religion, that an Islamic
"fifth column" or "stealth jihad" is subverting the United States from
within, that mainstream American Muslims have ties to terrorist groups,
that Muslims use litigation, free speech and other legal means
(something the trainers have nicknamed "Lawfare") to advance the
subversive Muslim agenda and that the goal of Muslims in the United
States is to replace the Constitution with Islamic or Shariah law.
"You would not expect a Democratic administration to fund right-wing
groups," Thom Cincotta, a civil liberties attorney and the author of the
Political Research Associates report, told me, "and yet we continue to
have hard-right, Islamophobic speakers and companies being paid taxpayer
dollars to promote racist doctrines that undermine U.S. national
security policy concerning Islam and the Muslim world. Policy expert
after policy expert points out that framing our counterterrorism efforts
as a war against Islam is a recipe for building increased resentment
among Muslims, as well as a potent recruiting tool for those who would
like to carry out violent attacks against us. This kind of demonizing
breaks down communication between law enforcement agents and Muslim
communities, which have proven to be strong allies in the rare instances
of domestic extremism. Not only does it threaten to erode basic civil
liberties, it threatens freedom of expression and freedom of worship."
The effects of this campaign of racial hatred are being felt
throughout the Muslim community. Those with Muslim names are routinely
harassed at airports, and many who wear traditional Muslim dress report
mounting cases of verbal and sometimes physical abuse. Muslim children
endure taunts in schools. Muslims complain of intrusive surveillance,
unconstitutional profiling and frequent mistreatment by law enforcement.
The practice of Islam, especially in its traditional forms, is now
viewed by many as a sign of criminal intent. And with the rise of the
surveillance and security state--we now have 854,000 people working in
our domestic security apparatus and 800,000 more employed as police and
emergency personnel--national law is being turned into an instrument of
overt repression against a religious minority.
Those making war on Islam are ignorant of the practices and beliefs
of the world's 1.3 billion Muslims. The Muslim community is not a
monolith. It is composed of numerous ethnic, national, cultural and
racial groups that often have little in common and in some cases are
antagonistic. Of the some 6-million Muslims in the United States, only 5-
to 10-percent define themselves as religious. And those groups that
express political versions of Islam -- the Jamaat al-Islamiyya out of South
Asia and the Salafis -- are a tiny and marginalized minority.
There is now an industry of well-funded hatemongers producing seminars, courses
and books on Islam. Walid Shoebat,
one of the stars of the circuit, gives a presentation titled "The Jihad
Mindset and How to Defeat It: Why We Want to Kill You." Shoebat, who
bills himself as a reformed terrorist and who speaks to law enforcement
officials around the country, tells his listeners that mainstream Muslim
organizations such as the Islamic Society of North America and the
Council on American-Islamic Relations are terrorist fronts and that
Islamists are by nature violent extremists and pedophiles. Shoebat, like
most of the other "reformed" Muslims trotted out to speak at these
events, has embraced fundamentalist Christianity. He denounces Islam as
the religion of the Antichrist. Shoebat is scheduled to be one of the
featured speakers Wednesday at the 2nd Annual South Dakota Homeland
Security Conference in Rapid City, sponsored by the South Dakota
Department of Public Safety.
The poison of this rhetoric was on display a few days ago when a trustee of
City University of New York blocked the playwright
Tony Kushner, who is Jewish, from receiving an honorary doctorate
because of Kushner's criticism of Israel's treatment of the
Palestinians. The trustee, Jeffrey S. Wiesenfeld, labeling Kushner "an
extremist," told The New York Times that the Palestinians "who worship
death for their children are not human."
I had dinner in Berkeley recently with my friend Sheikh Hamza
Yusuf, an Islamic scholar and the co-founder of Zaytuna College, who has
watched the steady deterioration of Muslims' civil rights since the
2001 attacks. He argues that the stereotypes employed against Muslims
mirror, with a different iconography and language, the Cold War
Red-baiting that dismantled the militant labor movement and ended all
serious challenges to unfettered corporate capitalism. The Red-baiting
disempowered a dissident segment of American society and legalized its
persecution. Red-baiting turned socialists, anarchists, populists,
communists and radicals, who relentlessly challenged the orthodoxies of
the permanent war economy and assault on civil liberties, into pariahs
and scapegoats. It worked once. It could work again.
The portrayal of Muslims as mortal enemies serves the interests of
the expanding security state and the war industry, which consume half of
all federal discretionary spending. The "Muslim threat" propagates the
culture of fear and ensures our political passivity. Yusuf calls the
attacks on American Muslim leadership and Islamic charities
"Swiftboating," in reference to the right-wing smearing of John Kerry's
war record when the senator was running for president in 2004. Create
doubt in people's minds about the allegiances of Muslim leaders and you
effectively undermine the entire community. He says these caricatures of
Muslims as evil terrorists become effective tools in justifying the
ongoing occupations and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the proxy wars in
Yemen and Pakistan, and the suspension of basic civil liberties at home.
Israel, as well as its supporters in the United States, routinely
employs the same racist cant to excuse Israeli war crimes and deny the
legitimate rights of Palestinians.
Nazi portrayals of Jews, Yusuf points out, bear a disturbing
resemblance to modern portrayals of Muslims. The goal that some of these
demagogues have, he said, especially in a time of economic collapse, is
to divert widespread rage toward Muslims, just as the leadership of
Serbia diverted rage toward Muslims and Croats when that nation's
economy collapsed.
"I was completely humiliated by one of these Homeland Security
officials at the San Francisco Airport recently," Yusuf told me. "He
knew who I was. He got more and more antagonistic. He searched all my
things. It was one question after another. 'Who were you visiting?' he
asked. 'Where were you?' It was done in front of my wife and children.
He would not let up. We had somebody else's bag who was traveling with
us and who had just gone through security. He said, looking at the bag, 'What
kind of a name is that, Hussani?'"
I said, "It is an American
name." He looked at me and said: 'Don't get smart with me. You're a
big-shot guy. You're not stupid. You know exactly what I mean. What is
that? Is it an Arab name?'" I said, "Look, it could be many, many
nationalities." 'Well,' he said, 'I'm asking you about this one.' He was
talking to me like this. After about 30 minutes of this, and I don't
know why I was putting up with this, I guess I was hoping each time
would be the last, I finally said, "You can arrest me. You can do
whatever you want. But I'm not answering another one of these inane
questions." He tossed my passport at me and said, "Have a nice day." And
I am wondering, "did he just go through one of these training seminars?"
Yusuf filed a complaint with his senator and the Homeland Security
Department. Homeland Security officials told him they would investigate
the matter, and that if he could notify them in advance they would
escort him through the airport security line. "But," he said, "the
problem with that approach is it essentially turns us into a Third World
country where influential people are treated well, but others suffer
the brunt of a regime's brutality if they are suspect. That's what
happens when I go to counties in the Arab world. They meet me at the
airport. I get treated like a VIP. But then Gulam, the little
green-grocer from Peshawar, who came here as a refugee 15 years ago from
the Afghani war, he gets treated like crap, because he doesn't have
friends or influence. Our creed is supposed to be 'Liberty and justice
for all' and that's all I want."
Yusuf tells Muslims in the United States that they should attempt to
understand those who readily embrace these stereotypes. "We can't
demonize those who attend rallies where they demonize us, because in the
end the people who attend these rallies are also victims," he said.
"They are victims of these demagogues with bully pulpits. People are
scared. They are losing their jobs. Their mortgages have gone into
foreclosure. They are angry. Demagogues always arise in these situations
to use and direct anger. The Muslim community is just an easy target."
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Your-Taxes-Fund-Anti-Musli-by-Chris-Hedges-110509-709.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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