“In The Force of Reason, the controversial Italian journalist and novelist Oriana Fallaci illuminates one of the central enigmas of our time. How did Europe become home to an estimated 20 million Muslims in a mere three decades?”
More racism in the form of wacko conspiracy theories in LA Weekly, 15 March 2006
For a comment by American socialist Louis Proyect, in which he attacks the “left” Islamophobia that is as rife in the US as it is in the UK, see here.
Outspoken US Christian evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has accused Muslims of planning world domination, and said some were “satanic”.
On his live television programme, The 700 Club, he said radical Islamists were inspired by “demonic power”.
He went on to say that “Islam is not a religion of peace”, and “the goal of Islam, ladies and gentlemen whether you like it or not, is world domination”.
The first time Glenn Koehler can remember learning about Muslims and the Islamic faith was in September 1972, when a Palestinian terrorist group called Black September murdered 11 Israeli hostages during the Olympics in Munich, Germany. “Then the second was Sept. 11,” Koehler said. “So there’s really been no pleasant introductions.”
Koehler is a 58-year-old Fremont engineer. He describes himself as a Lutheran, politically conservative and a registered Republican who receives much of his news from the Drudge Report, Michael Savage and the Alliance Defense Fund, a legal advocacy group for Christian rights. He does not have Muslim friends, and he says he agrees with the statements that Muslims teach their children to hate unbelievers, Muslims value life less than other people and Islam teaches violence and hatred.
Koehler is not alone. Two polls released last week indicate almost half of Americans have a negative perception of Islam, and one in four of those surveyed have extreme anti-Muslim views.
An independent survey by the Council on American-Islamic Relations shows 23 to 27 percent of all Americans believe Muslims value life less than other people and that Islam teaches violence and hatred. The survey also showed only 6 percent of Americans have a positive first impression of Islam and Muslims. A similar poll released by the Washington Post and ABC News found that one in four Americans “admitted to harboring prejudice toward Muslims,” and 46 percent had a negative view of Islam, a 7 percent jump since the months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
When asked to respond to the open-ended question, “When you hear the word ‘Muslim,’ what is the first thought that comes to your mind?” Koehler said: “Religion of death.”
Tim Rutten examines the background to the Islamophobic campaign in the US media which prevented the UAE-owned company Dubai Ports World taking over the commercial contracts on five US ports.
Los Angeles Times, 11 March 2006
See also Ali H. Aslan’s article “Politicians and media provoke Islamophobia in US” in Zaman, 10 March 2006 and “Two new polls show negative image of Islam in US”, CAIR news report, 9 March 2006.
Update: See Parvez Ahmed, “Dubai Ports fallout / Islamophobia on the rise”, SFGate, 13 March 2006
More than 250 medical experts have signed a letter condemning the US for force-feeding prisoners on hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The letter, in the medical journal, the Lancet, said doctors who used restraints and force-feeding should be punished by their professional bodies.
“Next time you read an apocalyptical article about the impending doom of the world due to the ‘clash of civilizations’ between the Muslims and [insert non-Arab, non-Muslim nation here] take a moment and think for yourself: amidst the debates about free speech and freedom of the press that have been circulating around the globe over the past few months, a double standard has been applied to a large part of the global community. The portrayal of Islam in the media has long been questionable, but the situation in Denmark is the straw that broke the camel’s back. The cartoons and the resulting chaos represent the escalation of a deeper problem.
“Why has Islam become the demon monolith of the world which threatens to destroy all that is good and peaceful? People identify Islam with something that threatens their very being and all that they stand for: democracy, equality and liberty. Yet, this fear is perpetuated by the stereotype of a fight between good and evil, the world against Islam, a stereotype which has come to distort world public opinion.”
Sarah Dajani and Emily Norris in the Daily Princetonian, 10 March 2006
“It’s hard to conceive how the United States will win a ‘war of ideas’ in the Islamic world when American leaders flock to a Washington conference where Muslims are publicly insulted and the U.S. officials fail to voice objections to the bigotry.
“That’s what happened at this week’s annual meeting of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee whose invitees included Vice President Dick Cheney, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman, former Democratic vice presidential nominee John Edwards, Virginia’s ex-Democratic Gov. Mark Warner, and Sens. Evan Bayh, D-Ind., and Susan Collins, R-Maine.
“In a luncheon speech on March 6, Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman [pictured] entertained the AIPAC crowd with what the Washington Post described as ‘straight talk’, including a comment that came close to equating Islam with terrorism. ‘While it may be true – and probably is – that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim,’ Gillerman said to the crowd’s delight.”
Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.com, 8 March 2006
The insulting remark was in fact a quote from Abdelrahman al-Rashid of al-Arabiya TV – which tells you something about the role played by pro-western Arab intellectuals like that.
John Walsh on America’s leading Islamophobe, in Counterpunch 9 March 2006
Whether it is accurate to describe Pipes as a neocon in questionable, though, in the sense of advocating an aggressive US foreign policy aimed at removing hostile regimes under cover of imposing democracy. He has always been sceptical that “brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and not exactly maintaining Germanic standards of hygiene” are ready for democracy.
The Daily Telegraph tries to counter the impact of Moazzam Begg’s new book Enemy Combatant by quoting from a “confession” that he signed under torture while held by the US in Afghanistan.
The Telegraph tells us that “US officials insist [the confession] was not obtained under duress”. Moazzam Begg has described his treatment as follows:
“… they interrogated me severely for almost the whole month and kept me in separate solitary confinement. They tied me up with my hands behind my back to my legs, kicked me in the head, kicked me in the back, threatened to take me to Egypt to be tortured, to be raped, to be electrocuted. They had a woman screaming in the next room whom I believed at that time was my wife. They bought pictures of my children and told me I would never see them again. All sorts of things like that.”
Juan Cole writes: “The constant drumbeat of hatred toward Muslims and Arabs on the American Right, on television and radio and in the press, has gradually had its effect. This according to a Washington Post poll. Even in the year after September 11, a majority of Americans respected Islam and Muslims, but powerful forces in US society are determined to change that, and are gradually succeeding. As they win, Bin Laden also wins, since his whole enterprise was to ‘sharpen the contradictions’ and provoke a clash of civilizations. Some 25% of Americans now say they personally are prejudiced against Muslims. And 33% think that Islam as a religion helps incite violence against non-Muslims, up from 14% after September 11. The Bush administration policy is to continually insinuate that the Muslim world is the new Soviet Union and full of sinister forces that require the US to go to war against them.”
Informed Comment, 9 March 2006
See also “Negative perception of Islam increasing”, Washington Post, 9 March 2006