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Sikhs, Muslims, Drones and Guilt by Association

Posted in Cultural Racism, Guilt by Association, Islamophobia, Sikhs, tagged , , , , , , on August 6, 2012 | Leave a Comment »

This piece first appeared at Progressive.org

The tragic death of six Sikhs in suburban Milwaukee sheds light on the ugly ways that bigotry works. Since 9/11, Sikhs have often been the target of hate crimes. Balbir Singh Sodhi, a gas station owner in Arizona, was the first such casualty. He was murdered just four days after 9/11 because, his murderer said, he was “dark-skinned, bearded and wore a turban.”
The hate crimes against Sikhs have continued over the last decade. Sikh temples have been vandalized, and according to Representative Joseph Crowley (D-NY), two Sikh men were murdered last year in hate crimes.
This is how cultural racism operates: anyone who bears the markers of the “enemy” must necessarily be guilty. For members of the Sikh community, this bizarre attitude is baffling. Some have gone out of their way to insist that Sikhs are not Muslim and should therefore not be targeted in these ways.
Yet, the horrific murders in Wisconsin should teach us that racism is about the dehumanization of an entire group of people: It is the worst kind of guilt by association.
If the Sikh community is not to blame for the events of 9/11, neither is the Muslim community. It was not Islam that caused the 19 hijackers to carry out the attacks. It was the nihilistic political views of those particular assassins. Similarly, it was not something intrinsic to white American males that precipitated this attack on the Sikhs in Wisconsin. It was the neo-Nazi attitudes of this particular white gunman.
Page was a white supremacist and the leader of a white-power band named End Apathy, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. He was even supposed to have had a tattoo of 9/11 on his upper right arm.
The context for this crime is the climate of prejudice in the United States that “the war on terror” has created.
Central to “the war on terror” is the ideology of Islamophobia. Rep. Peter King (R-NY) has held hearings hyping the risk of radical Islam here at home. Rightwing politicians such as Michele Bachmann and Newt Gingrich have also used reckless rhetoric targeting the entire Muslim American community.
In U.S. military policy, Islamophobia allows the United States to carry out drone strikes against Muslim men perceived to be terrorists in several countries around the world with impunity. Many victims of these “kill lists” are not terrorists, but innocent people.
Dehumanization and guilt by association enable the United States to kill innocent people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Yemen.
Dehumanization and guilt by association enable a killer to gun down worshipers in Oak Creek, Wisconsin.
As we mourn the latest killing, we need to denounce this dehumanization and guilt by association. They are the handmaidens of the murderer.

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The Islamophobic Warriors

Posted in Islamophobia, Islamophobic warriors, tagged , , , , , , , on August 16, 2011 | 1 Comment »

This article first appeared on SWonline.

The Islamophobic Warriors

Robert Spencer has been in the news lately because Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian right-wing terrorist who killed 77 people in his bombing and mass shooting last month, cites him several dozen times in a hate-filled manifesto published on the Internet.

But Spencer first came to prominence in the U.S. in 2010, when along with Pamela Geller, he instigated a controversy around the construction of an Islamic community center, misnamed the “Ground Zero mosque,” in lower Manhattan. A study by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life found that Islam dominated news media coverage in 2010.

David Yerushalmi was featured in a lengthy report in the New York Times as the mastermind behind a crusade to ban the use of Sharia law in U.S. courts. No one can point to any effort to promote Sharia law in the U.S. legal system–yet about two dozen states have considered banning its use anyway, and Republican presidential candidates are falling over themselves to incorporate anti-Sharia rhetoric into their campaigns.

What do Yerushalmi and Spencer have in common? Apart from the obvious–that they are both rabid right-wing Islamophobes–the two men are part of a phalanx of Islamophobic warriors that has emerged from the woodwork and started to gain a hearing in the mainstream over the last year and a half.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist groups and individuals, has a primer on the 10 most outrageous and rabid Islamophobes. In addition to Spencer, Yerushalmi and Geller, they include figures like David Horowitz, Bill Gaubatz, Brigette Gabriel and Debbie Schlussel.

Here are some of their opinions:

David Horowitz: “Some polls estimate that 10 percent of Muslims support Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. An Al Jazeera poll put the number at 50 percent. In other words, somewhere between 150 million and 750 million Muslims support a holy war against Christians, Jews and other Muslims who don’t happen to be true believers in the Koran according to bin Laden.” (from the Columbia Spectator, October 15, 2007)

Debbie Schlussel: “So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And she should have known what Islam is all about. Now she knows. Or so we’d hope…How fitting that Lara Logan was ‘liberated’ by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the ‘liberation.’ Hope you’re enjoying the revolution, Lara! Alhamdillullah (praise allah) [sic].” (From Schlussel’s website, following the sexual assault on CBS correspondent Lara Logan in Cairo on February 15, 2011)

Terry Jones: “Here’s your opportunity, all you so-called peaceful Moslems [Jones' pronunciation]…We are accusing the Koran of murder, rape, deception, being responsible for terrorist activities all around the world…Present to us your defense attorney who is going to defend the Koran. Let us really see. We challenge you: do it. Let us not talk. Let us have some action and proof…The Koran, if found guilty, can be burned…Or the Koran will be drowned. Or the Koran will be shredded into little bitty pieces…Or the Koran will face a firing squad.” (from an undated video on the Dove World Outreach website announcing “International Judge the Koran Day”)

The question that a reasonable person might ask is: How is it that such extreme racists have been successful in grabbing the limelight over last the year or so? The fact of the matter is that the “Islamophobic warriors,” like the Cold Warriors and McCarthyites of yesteryear, have been enabled by a political system that benefits from scapegoating and fear-mongering as a means to quell dissent and advance an imperial agenda.

Furthermore, while the September 11 attacks and the Bush administration’s “war on terror” created an ideological opening for the warriors, they have risen to even greater prominence during the presidency of Barack Obama. There is an ugly dynamic at work: liberal Islamphobia at the top enables right-wing Islamophobia at the bottom, which then further impacts politics at the top, and so on.

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The Islamophobic warriors

Reading the quotes above, one might be tempted to dismiss these bigots as so many loony right-wingers. Yet the ranks of the Islamophobic phalanx goes beyond the evangelical right and the Tea Party movement. Among their cadre are fixtures of the security establishment, the foreign policy elite and the academy. We should begin, therefore, with a survey of a few of their leading lights:

Frank Gaffney was a Reagan-era deputy assistant defense secretary, serving under notorious neo-con Richard Perle from 1983-87. For Gaffney, it was an easy shift from Cold Warrior to Islamophobic warrior. A member of the neo-con Project for the New American Century think-tank, he is a senior adviser for the group Americans for Victory Over Terrorism (AVOT).

AVOT’s website states that it is “dedicated to victory in the War on Terrorism” through “the shaping of public opinion, the encouragement of a foreign policy based on the founding principles of America, increased research about Islam and Islamism and a steadfast commitment to attacking those who would blame America first.”

In short, AVOT combines the Cold War demonization of the left (“those who would blame America first”) with a new enemy (“Islam and Islamism”). Drawing a page from the McCarthyist playbook, Gaffney is one of many who claimed that President Obama might be a “secret Muslim.”

According to SourceWatch.org, AVOK’s reading list is drawn from the writings of Bernard Lewis, Martin Kramer, Samuel Huntington Benjamin Netanyahu and other ideologues and politicians. But what, by contrast, qualifies Gaffney as a warrior is that he is an activist and works to put these ideas into practice. He has, for example, collaborated closely with Yerushalmi to forward the anti-Sharia agenda.

The warriors have long argued that the U.S. has been “infiltrated” by Muslims bent on destroying the West. In 1994, Steven Emerson aired his film Jihad in America on PBS, drumming up fear of the supposed Jihadist threat. He went on to form the Investigative Project on Terrorism in 1995 and spew out conspiracy theories about the “Islamic threat.” His books include American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us (2002) and Jihad Incorporated: A Guide to Militant Islam in the U.S. (2006). Emerson claims that 80 percent of mosques in the U.S. are controlled by extremists.

Another important Islamophobic warrior and contributor to this line of argumentation is David Horowitz. Horowitz advocates the notion that the Muslim Brotherhood and other “Islamofascists” control most American Muslim organizations, and that this is especially true of Muslim student groups on college campuses.

A former student radical of the 1960s, the “reformed” Horowitz has nothing but invective for the left. He is the author of Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (2004). Among his other activist attempts, Horowitz organized the “Islamofascism Awareness Week,” which brought prominent anti-Muslim zealots to college campuses in 2007. His Freedom Center is affiliated to Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch. Spencer’s articles on Jihad appear regularly in Horowitz’s Front Page magazine.

The connections between various individuals, their organizations and the larger foreign policy establishment is deep and entrenched. The film Obsession–28 million copies of which were distributed in the run up to the 2008 presidential elections–showcases the range of Islamophobic warriors, and their disturbing and distorted views of Islam.

David Gaubautz worked in the Middle East for the U.S. Air Forces Office of Special Investigations. He built his career after 9/11 by arguing that Muslim civil rights groups such as Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) are actually front groups for terrorist organizations. He is co-author of Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America (2009).

Andrew McCarthy is an attorney who prosecuted the people responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and is the author of Willful Blindness: A Memoir of Jihad (2008) and The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America (2010).

Clare Lopez is a former CIA operations officer and speaker for the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, a far-right wing organization with highly distorted vies on Islam and Muslims that regularly offers counter-terrorism training courses for law enforcement officials.

The now well-known Pamela Geller is a prominent Islamophobe and cofounder (with Robert Spencer) of Stop Islamization of America (SIOA), a group based on the premise that Muslims are planning to take over the U.S.. She is also a rabid Zionist.

Alongside these white Christian and Jewish warriors are those of Middle East origins who serve to legitimate racist ideas about Muslims through first-person “testimony.” Most are either Muslims who converted to Christianity or Christians from Muslim-majority countries who speak about their personal stories of woe in their former homes.

Nonie Darwish is the founder of Arabs for Israel, and the director of Former Muslims United, whose cofounders include Wafa Sultan, Walid Shoebat and Ibn Warraq. Darwish is the author of Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel and the War on Terror (2007) and Cruel and Unusual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law (2009). For Darwish, an Egyptian by birth, the 2011 Egyptian uprising is proof that Obama has emboldened Islamists, both in Egypt and within the U.S. security apparatus.

Brigitte Gabriel is a Christian Lebanese woman who was part of the South Lebanon Army, Israel’s proxy militia operating inside Lebanon. She is the founder of ACT! for America and the American Council for Truth. She is the author of Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America (2006) and They Must Be Stopped: Why We Must Defeat Radical Islam and How We Can Do It (2008).

Gabriel believes that “Islamic militants now reside in America, operating in sleeper cells, attending our colleges and universities, even infiltrating our government. They are here–today. Many have been here for years. Waiting. Preparing.”

Walid Shoebat regularly gives lectures to the law enforcement community on “terrorism.” At one such meeting, he stated that the Islamic Society of North America and the Council of American Islamic Relations are “the terrorist arms of the lawmaker: Sharia, Koran and Hadith.” Shoebat has converted to Christianity and believes that the “end times” of Biblical prophecy are one where Muslims will fight along with Satan on Earth.

Among this group, Walid Phares probably has the most credibility. He has a Ph.D. in International Relations and Strategic Studies from University of Miami and has been invited many times to offer briefs and testimony before congressional committees. He leads seminars for government employees and addresses law enforcement and homeland security conferences.

Phares believes that there is a Jihadist strategy to infiltrate key institutions in the U.S., such as the defense sector, the academy and community organizations. His books include Future Jihad: Terrorist Strategies Against America (2005), The War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy (2007) and The Confrontation: Winning the War Against Future Jihad (2008)).

What is ironic is that while the Islamophobic warriors are obsessed about “Islamic infiltration,” it is they who have infiltrated the defense sector and security apparatus. This has happened particularly in regard to counter-terrorism training courses that law enforcement officials are required to take. A recently obtained PowerPoint presentation by the FBI’s Law Enforcement Communications Unit reveals a highly distorted view of Islam–not surprising given that it draws from books by Robert Spencer and the Orientalist Rafael Patai.

As NPR notes, “[T]here’s growing evidence that many of these [counter-terrorism] training sessions are providing officers at the grassroots with a biased view of Muslims in America.” This disturbing trend has been thoroughly documented by Thomas Cincotta, and further reported on by PR Newswire, CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Gawker.

To summarize, the Islamophobic warriors believe that there is a conspiracy by Muslims to take over the U.S., and that Islamists have already “infiltrated” all levels of society. The goal of Muslims is to replace the U.S. constitution with Sharia law, according to this view. The warriors believe that all Muslim Americans have ties to terrorist organizations and that there are really no “good” Muslims. Thus, Schlussel ranted against recently appointed New Jersey judge Sohail Mohammed that he is a Hamas supporter–she called the man who appointed Mohammed, Republican Gov. Chris Christie, a “halal pig.”

The warriors are also doggedly pro-Israel and pro-Zionist. For some, this pro-Israeli stance flows from their evangelical beliefs–for others, it is a product of their politics. Regardless, Islamophobia will no doubt gain more traction in the lead-up to the 2012 presidential elections–despite the fact that Islam bashing didn’t do very much for candidates in the 2010 elections.

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Islamophobia and the Foreign Policy Establishment

What has enabled such extreme figures–people who were more or less on the fringe in the 1990s–to start gaining a hearing? They have not only influenced politics at the top of society–particularly the public pronunciations of Republican politicians–and grabbed the limelight in the mainstream media, but there has been a burst of book publishing and films, and a proliferation of blogs and websites, dedicated to their world view.

Most obviously, the events of 9/11 and the launching of the “war on terror” legitimized these views and created a larger audience for the warriors. For the Bush administration, the war on terror would serve as an ideological shield to further its vision of brute imperialism in the post-Cold war world. Islamophobia flows from the logic of imperialism.

Within the foreign policy establishment, there are two strands of imperialism–liberal and conservative. While both are devoted to the goal of expanding U.S. hegemony, the former more typically uses humanitarian rhetoric to justify this goal, while the latter often dispenses with such niceties and asserts the right of the U.S. to intervene unilaterally anywhere it wants.

Advocates of conservative imperialism began to articulate their ideas after the collapse of the USSR in 1991. They argued that in the context of a new unipolar world, the U.S. should employ a bold unilateralist strategy and simply assert Pax Americana on the global stage. Many of the individuals associated with this wing of foreign policy would go on to form the Project for the New American Century, and come to be known as the “neo-cons.”

A close associate of the neo-cons, the Orientalist ideologue Bernard Lewis penned his views on Islamism in 1990, in a now-famous essay titled “Roots of Muslim Rage” in which he raised the alarm about an impending “clash of civilizations.” Samuel Huntington then popularized this concept and argued that the new post-Cold war era would be characterized by cultural conflict between various civilizations–with the Islamic one seen as among the more dangerous threats to the West.

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote in 1993 that the “new threat [Islamism] is as evil as the old Evil Empire.” Cold Warrior Daniel Pipes echoed this point, writing, “[L]ike communism during the Cold War, Islam is a threat to the West.” In short, a new enemy had been found to replace the old one.[i]

In an article in Foreign Affairs in 1991, journalist Judith Miller argued that U.S. policymakers should not try to distinguish between “good” and “bad” Islamists because there was a consensus among all Islamists to defeat the West. As she put it, “In Islam’s war against the West and the struggle to build Islamic states at home, the ends justified the means.” Confrontation, rather than co-optation or dialogue, was the only way to thwart this new enemy.

Those leading this charge–known as “confrontationists” in political science jargon–included other figures such as Martin Indyk, who served on Bill Clinton’s National Security Council; Jeane Kirkpatrick, a one-time Democrat turned dogged Cold Warrior Republican; and others.

Confrontationists belong to both political parties, and they sometimes switch between camps. For example, Indyk was one of the founding members of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Zionist and conservative think-tank. Now, he is with the centrist Brookings Institute. Similarly, the news media personality Fareed Zakaria–once a Ph.D. student of Samuel Huntington’s at Harvard–was part of the inner circle of Bush strategists who hatched the “war on terror” brand. Now, however, he has morphed into an Obama-type liberal imperialist.

To be sure, the confrontationist position and conservative Islamophobia was not developed from scratch in the early 1990s. Rather, a group of international thinkers closely associated with Israel had begun to put forward its main themes a decade earlier.

One early moment in this work came from Benjamin Netanyahu, then head of the Jonathan Foundation–he organized a pivotal conference in 1979 in Jerusalem. At this conference, as author Karim H. Karim notes, “[L]eading Orientalists such as Bernard Lewis, Elie Kedourie and Panyotidis Vatikiotis played a significant role in developing the dominant discourses on ‘Islamic terrorism,’ which has been key to the construction of Islam as the post-Cold war Other.”

The connections to Israel are multifold. Geert Wilders, the notorious Dutch Islamophobe, states that he formed his views of Muslims while working on a cooperative farm in Israel in the 1980s. Key funders of the Islamophobic warriors include Zionists such as Aubrey Chernik. As journalist Max Blumenthal reports, Chernik not only funds Islamophobes in the U.S., but also “messianic settlers dedicated to ‘Judaizing’ East Jerusalem. The settlement movement’s leading online news magazine, Arutz Sheva, has featured Pamela Geller as a columnist.”

In short, the anti-Muslim network is international in scope–and the connections between respectable ideologues and the Islamophobic warriors are deep. The dynamic has been one where respectable ideologies legitimize Islam-bashing in the mainstream, which then creates an opening for the conspiracy theorists to take their case several steps further. While George W. Bush may have stated that the U.S. was not at war with Islam, the “clash of civilizations” rhetoric uniformly demonized Muslims and was a declaration of open season on all Muslims.

In this sense, the rise of the Islamophobic phalanx bears similarities to McCarthyism. As David Caute argued in his book The Great Fear, McCarthyism wasn’t simply about one extremist senator, Joseph McCarthy, but a political system (including both Democrats and Republicans) that allowed a figure like McCarthy to set the political agenda. McCarthy was a useful tool in prosecuting the Cold War–particularly in creating a climate of fear where dissent could be punished and neutralized.

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The role of Barack Obama

Some on the left and many Muslims believed that the Obama presidency would mitigate and undo the virulent Islamophobia unleashed during the Bush years. But this hasn’t come to pass. The Obama administration represents much more of a continuity with the Bush administration than not–and as a result, it has had to resort to Islamophobia, albeit in a more “enlightened” and articulate manner.

What we have seen is a softening of Islamophobia, not its rejection. At the level of foreign policy, the unilateralists were replaced by the multilateralists–correspondingly, the rhetoric shifted from right-wing to liberal Islamophobia. This isn’t to exclude, however, the odd Bush-style action–such the unilateral mission conducted by the U.S. to assassinate Osama bin Laden, which resurrected the jingoist and vengeful mood of September 11.

A brief overview of Obama’s record on Islam helps to illustrate how his policies and actions created a further opening for the Islamophobic warriors.

When Obama was “accused” of being a Muslim during his campaign, he responded defensively, thereby legitimizing the charge that there is something wrong with being a Muslim. If that wasn’t clear enough, he made sure to avoid the Muslim community at all costs during the campaign. At one point, during a speech in Detroit, two women wearing hijabs were asked to move from behind the podium so that they wouldn’t be in the same frame with candidate Obama.

Once in power, Obama toned down the Islamophobic rhetoric, but has done little in reality to stop the attacks on Muslims. In practice, he continued Bush’s wars and extended the domestic attacks on Muslims and Arabs by continuing policies of torture, extraordinary rendition, etc. He has even gone further than Bush in some ways–for instance, in giving himself the power to execute U.S. citizens suspected of ties to terrorism, such Anwar al-Awlaki, without so much as a trial or the apparently unnecessary burden of proof.

The Obama White House’s recent “counter-radicalization” strategy only deepens Bush’s policies, even while it offers several caveats that American Muslims should not be discriminated against. The administration’s modus operandi is one in which it roundly rejects Islam-bashing–and then proceeds to institute proposals that do precisely that.

Obama has been able to use the language of multiculturalism to advance the ridiculous proposition that “al-Qaeda and its affiliates and adherents represent the preeminent terrorist threat to our country”–and that the government therefore protect Americans from “al-Qaeda’s hateful ideology” and attempts to radicalize Americans.

First even members of the security apparatus don’t believe that al-Qaeda is a threat to the U.S, let alone the “preeminent” one. As of July 2011, the Washington Post was reporting that it was widely believed in the CIA, as well as among counterterrorism officials, that al-Qaeda was all but finished. A Foreign Affairs article by author John Mueller titled “The Truth About al-Qaeda” arrives at the same conclusions.

Second, American Muslims are not really susceptible to al-Qaeda’s message–most of all, for the simple reason that being Muslim doesn’t equate to having sympathy for Islamic fundamentalism.

A Gallup poll released in August 2011 showed that 92 percent of Muslim Americans had no sympathy at all for al-Qaeda. What is heartening is that over 50 percent of people in other religious communities also believed this about Muslims, with Jewish Americans at the top with 70 percent.

As for radicalization leading to violence–the key proposition put forward in the Obama White House policy paper–Muslim Americans, by a far higher number than any other religious group, believe “that attacks on civilians by individuals or small groups are never justified.”

Yet the Obama White House is proposing a “counter-radicalization” strategy that not only continues the policy of racial profiling, but also opens the door to the idea that “homegrown” terrorism is a threat that must be policed–through seeking the support of teachers, coaches and community members who are to be turned into a McCarthy-type informer system.

Why? There are a number of reasons for this, but one is certainly that the U.S. military’s “counterinsurgency” strategy–that is, the attempt to win “hearts and minds”–is largely failing in the prosecution of the “war on terror.” This is especially true in Afghanistan.

Thus, Obama has turned back to counterterrorism and must therefore resuscitate the “Islamic terrorist” enemy to underscore the grave threat posed by al Qaeda–consequently reviving Islamophobia, albeit with a liberal guise. And in raising the specter of Muslim “radicalization” in the U.S., Obama legitimizes the right-wing conspiracy theories espoused by the warriors.

It is worth emphasizing that what makes this particularly insidious is that Obama is able to do so while convincing the public that he is not an Islamophobe.

At the end of the day, there are still many people who would claim that, in his heart, Obama is not anti-Muslim. But the fact is that no matter what Obama may personally believe about Muslims and Islam, he is a part of a political system that is based on projecting U.S. power and interests around the world. In doing so, he will use every means at his disposal, including Islamophobia.

The Islamophobic warriors were a fringe minority in the 1990s. After September 11, they came out of the woodwork with their rhetoric of the “clash of civilizations,” and during the Obama era, they have only strengthened their position.

To some degree, the fact that Obama has a Muslim middle name would have furthered the warriors’ argument that the government was infiltrated by Muslims. Yet the proposition that Obama is a “secret Muslim” has credibility only among 20 percent of the U.S. public–a shockingly high number, but nevertheless a minority. To succeed in the mainstream, the anti-Muslim crusaders needed the further opening created by the Democrats’ liberal Islamophobia.

In the lead-up to the 2012 presidential elections, we can expect to read many stories about the Islamphobic warriors, the Tea Party bigots and all the other scary right-wing forces that support Republican Party candidates. We will be asked to accept all of Obama’s betrayals and vote for the lesser of two evils. Yet as an analysis of the Islamophobic warriors shows, when you vote for the lesser evil, you wind up getting both the lesser and the greater evil anyway.

Deepa Kumar is an associate professor of Media Studies and Middle East Studies at Rutgers University. Her book on Islamophobia is forthcoming from Haymarket Books (Spring, 2012).

[i] Quoted in Fawaz Gerghes, America and Political Islam, Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 24.

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Wikileaks, Iran, and the US’s Arab Allies: What the Corporate Media are not Saying

Posted in Arab public opinion, Bahrain, Corporate Media, Gulf monarchies, Islamophobia, Nuclear weapons, Orientalism, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Wikileaks, Yemen, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 3, 2010 | 4 Comments »

The corporate media are reliable and consistent. They consistently focus on the sensational, and they reliably take the position of the US government. So, it should come as no surprise that the recent release of US diplomatic cables by Wikileaks is being covered with much sound and fury, signifying little on many issues.

On the sensational and gossip mongering front we have Gaddafi’s Ukrainian nurse, Angela Merkel’s “manly” leadership skills, Putin’s cozy relationship with Berlesconi, sex crimes charges against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange etc. On the mundane lapdog front we have repeated stories touting the administration’s line about “national security” and the rationale for why the cables had to be kept hidden from public view, US efforts to bring legal charges against Wikileaks, questions of whether Hillary Clinton should resign, the internet and its regulation etc.

Sorely lacking in all the attention given to the Wikileaks cables is an analysis of the functioning of empire. While the cables may not reveal anything radically new, particularly to an astute left-liberal audience, it does offer a concrete snap shot of the workings of US policy. And if nothing else it provides proof positive that governments lie. The US lies to its people, and its allies lie to theirs.

For instance, the US has been at war with the people of Yemen for the last year, sporadically dropping bombs anywhere it likes. An Amnesty international investigation found that an air strike in December, 2009 killed dozens of local residents leading them to state that “those responsible for unlawful killings must be brought to justice.”

But the US will definitely not be brought to justice. And certainly not with loyal allies like Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh, who are more than willing to lie. In a conversation with General David Petraeus, Saleh trying to save face domestically for the US airstrikes, said: “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.” Petraeus in exchange guaranteed that US foreign aid to Yemen would more than double in 2010.

This is diplomacy, US style. When Italian mobsters engage in such activity it is considered illegal, yet empires have an uncanny way of getting around such irksome impediments like international law and human rights.

Iran in the Cross Hairs

Then there are the cables on Iran which show that not only is Iran in the cross hairs of the US and Israel, but that the US’s Arab allies in the region appear to be falling over themselves to assist the US in thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Here you get to see how the Mafia Don relates to subordinates.

These subordinates, i.e. the US’s allies in the Middle East, referred to routinely by the corporate media as “moderates,” are far from being moderate in any real sense of the term. For instance, the Gulf states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and most importantly Saudi Arabia), which house the majority of the oil in the region, are monarchies headed by leaders who are corrupt and unaccountable to their people. Yet, the US prefers to ally with such “moderate” (read: pro-US) governments rather than Iran, which at least holds elections, albeit of a limited kind.

It should come as no surprise that these Gulf autocrats, as well as the US’s allies in other Arab nations such as Egypt and Jordan, would assist the US in advancing its imperial ambitions in the Middle East. In so doing, they are simply advancing their own interests.

Yet, the cables reveal a level of animosity towards Iran that is quite remarkable especially since the comments made behind closed doors by several Arab allies stand in stark contrast to public statements made for domestic and regional consumption. In a similar Orwellian move, Israel which is routinely attacked (verbally of course) by these same leaders, is a behind-the-scenes ally, the cables reveal. Black is white, night is day.

For instance, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed of the United Arab Emirates urged US General Abizaid to take action against Iran “this year or next.” In another cable, bin Zayed, echoing Israeli language, stated that Iran should be not be appeased since “Ahmadinejad is Hitler.”

Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa, another close US ally, is quoted in one cable as calling “forcefully for taking action to terminate [Iran's] nuclear program, by whatever means necessary.” Bahrain hosts the US’s Fifth Fleet, the naval command responsible for the Persian Gulf.

Other cables show that Qatar is willing to let the US use an airbase in that country to bomb Iran. This would not be the first time the US has used this particular airbase, having previously mounted air attacks from here on Iraq. Qatar is willing to foot the lion share of the bill to maintain this airbase for US war games in the region.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abudullah, one cable shows, made repeated entreaties to the US to attack Iran and “cut off the head of the snake.” Saudi Arabia, at the biding of the US, also met with Chinese representatives to seek their consent for US sponsored sanctions on Iran and agreed to supply China with oil as a way to reduce its dependence on Iranian oil. Saudi Arabia was then permitted to buy $60 billion in military hardware, following faithfully the script of a seven decade old relationship between the two countries based on “oil for security.”

Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak’s statements, drip with contempt for Iran. In a meeting with Sen. John Kerry, a memo states that Mubarak exclaimed that the Iranians “are big, fat liars and justify their lies because they believe it is for a higher purpose.”

He went on to add, however, that no Arab state could publicly assist the U.S. in a military attack on Iran. He stated that Iran’s backing of terrorism is “well-known but I cannot say it publicly. It would create a dangerous situation.” Yet, in private Egypt has recruited Iraqi and Syrian agents to counter Iranian intelligence operations.

All this reads like a bad soap opera with feuding families pretending to make nice while plotting all along to stab each other in the back. And at the head of this murky cess pool of deception is none other than the US grande dame.

But nations are not families, and so what explains the aforementioned Arab nations’ hostility towards Iran?

Explanations: History vs. Islamophobia

If one is seeking an explanation of the conflict between Iran and the US’s Arab allies, one is unlikely to find it the corporate media. Because rather than reveal the historical economic and political interests that bring the US, Israel, and various Arab states together, the media fall back on age old clichés.

For instance, in an otherwise useful front page article in the New York Times on Arab and Israeli leaders’ responses to a nuclear Iran, the authors go on to explain the roots of the conflict between the Arab world and Iran as follows:

“To some extent, this Arab obsession with Iran was rooted in the uneasy sectarian division of the Muslim world, between the Shiites who rule Iran, and the Sunnis, who dominate most of the region.”

Even the Guardian newspaper, which has done a better job than the Times of analyzing the Wikileaks cables and making them available in an easy to search format, states:

“Arab-Persian enmity, with a strong undercurrent of rivalry between Sunni and Shia Muslims, dates back centuries but increased markedly after the overthrow of the shah and the Islamic revolution in 1979 and is now viewed as a struggle for hegemony in the region.”

In short, according to these papers, the US’s main interest in the Middle East for over seven decades—oil (particularly control over oil production and distribution)—has little relevance to this conflict. And the struggle for hegemony in the region has little to do with geopolitical interests, rather, it is rooted in religious and ethnic divisions.

In place of concrete analysis, we get Islamophobic cliché which is based on the assumption that the roots of all (or most) actions by Arab states lie in Islam. If this reductionism is applied to Arab nations, it is also applied to Iran as I show below.

What such explanations obscure is the real historical and political relationship between the US, Israel and its various Arab allies. While the US’s allies might mouth pro-Iranian and anti-Israeli slogans, such commentary is limited to the sphere of rhetoric. In real terms, it is the political and economic interests that drive their actions.

In the case of the Gulf monarchies, which have long allied themselves closely with imperial nations (first Britain and then the US), control over oil resources trumps all other concerns. For instance, the so-called “special relationship” between the US and Saudi Arabia is based on oil for security: the US needs to control oil in the region in order to be a global hegemon, and Saudi Arabia needs the US to shore up its defense capabilities in order to put down both external and internal threats to the rule of the Al Saud family.

Iran, since the fall of the US-backed Shah in 1979, has been seen as an external threat. Saudi Arabia therefore buys billions of dollars worth of military equipment from the US, and has an important client of the US defense industry.

Internal threats are all struggles that have the potential to disrupt the “special relationship” by threatening the control of the Al Saud family. Thus, movements for workers rights, women’s rights and democratic reform have been squashed by the ruling family, with the approval and help of the US. When workers went on strike in the oil regions in the 1940s and 50s, the Al Saud family, with the assistance of the US oil company ARAMCO, ruthlessly suppressed the strikers and jailed, deported or assassinated its leadership. When women staged a “drive in” in the early 1990s to seek greater rights for women, they were stripped of their passports and fired from their jobs.

These actions were not driven by “Islam.” Rather, both the US and the Al Saud family have little tolerance for democratic movements, fearing rightly that such actions will result in elevating the will of the people over theirs, which could upset the oil for security status quo.

And indeed, the will of the people does stand in opposition to the aforementioned leaders on the question of Iran.

In contrast to the hostility expressed by the leadership, a recent poll carried out by the Brookings Institution finds that regular people in several Arab nations don’t see Iran as a major threat. Instead, 88% identified Israel as the biggest threat, followed closely by the US (77%). A whooping 10% identified Iran as a threat to their interests. So much for the historic Sunni-Shia enmity and Arab-Persian rivalry!

Additionally, in contrast again to the views held by the leadership, 75% of ordinary people were opposed to international efforts to pressure Iran to curtail its nuclear program stating that they believed that Iran had a right to its nuclear program. 57% even think that it would be positive development for the region if Iran acquired nuclear weapons.

It is therefore not surprising that the US’s Arab allies are not willing to publicly criticize Iran or offer open support for US efforts to “cut off the head of the snake.” What this poll reveals is not only the contrasting views held by the Arab public and the leadership, but also that the majority of Arabs don’t see the world through the US/Israeli prism that is taken for granted by the corporate media.

Framing Iran

As I have argued elsewhere, the dominant media framing of the Iran-nukes discussion is one which draws from an Orientalist/Islamophobic logic that states that “insane” and “irrational” Muslim Iran cannot be trusted to have nuclear weapons. This logic further takes for granted the proposition that the US has a legitimate right to police and adjudicate on questions of nuclear capabilities.To the extent there is any debate in the corporate media, it is about whether the US should use diplomatic or military means to quell Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Little time is devoted to shedding light on why Iran, as a rational political actor, might want to acquire nuclear weapons. After all, Iran is surrounded by states that possess nukes such as India, Pakistan, China, Russia, and Israel, not to mention by U.S. bases in Qatar, Iraq, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan, which might have nuclear weapons.

What is also left out of the discussion is not only that Iran obtained its nuclear technology from the US, but that Iran’s nuclear technology is under the full oversight of the international community since it is a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

Yet, Israel which has not has not signed on to the NPT and which is known to be sitting on a stockpile of nukes is given a pass. Perhaps more importantly, we are not asked to question why the US, which possesses the largest arsenal of nuclear weapons in the world (and is the only country to have ever used such weapons), has a legitimate right to police other nations.

At the end of the day, the Wikileaks cables reveal a lot about the mechanics of imperialism. They not only provide concrete proof of the levels of duplicity and the self serving logic that drives political actors on the international stage, they can also, if placed in proper historical context, shed light on the day to day functioning of empire. But don’t expect to find such analyses in the corporate media.

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The US to Gaza Initiative and the Hillel Controversy at Rutgers

Posted in Hamas, Hillel, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 5, 2010 | 2 Comments »

Last night I attended a fund raiser for the US to Gaza mission that intends to bring humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza. It was an incredible success. About 150-200 mostly young people had crowded the hall [correction: I was informed that there were 350 people at the event], most of whom stayed on past 10pm to listen to the invited speakers.

The presence of so many students who had chosen to attend the event despite intimidation by those claiming to represent Rutgers Hillel was truly heartening. Colonel Ann Wright, who was one of the featured speakers, said that this was one of the largest and most well attended of such fund raising events she has been to.

This speaks volumes to the potential that exists right now to build a genuine grass roots movement that will not be bullied, and that will stand up against the inhumane conditions that the people of Gaza have had to endure under Israel’s blockade.

Hillel’s line of attack was predictable. In a press release Andrew Getraer, the executive director of Rutger’s Hillel, argued that there were “serious legal issues” involved. First on the list was the claim that the “blockade runners will attempt deliver goods, services or technical assistance to Hamas, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO).”

This is a standard rhetorical ploy: trot out the bogeyman of Hamas in order to obscure and paper over the horrendous conditions under which Palestinian people in Gaza live. In fact, the press release does not once make reference to these conditions and why it so urgent and important to raise money for this humanitarian crisis. Instead, it asserts that “Hillel is vehemently opposed to this event.”

Which leads me to ask: what kind of person would oppose an event that tries to bring much needed aid to people who are suffering from malnutrition, lack of access to clean water, inadequate housing and health care facilities, and massive unemployment?

International agencies from the UN to various Human Rights groups have documented the impact that Israel’s blockade (begun in 2007) has had, and have shed light on the extent of the crisis. A recent report by the United Nations Development Programme explains:

“The blockade [has] resulted in the closure of most of the manufacturing industry, which was deprived of materials and export markets, and led to a surge in unemployment which currently stands at 40%. John Holmes, the United Nations Emergency Relief Co-ordinator, described the blockade as “collective punishment” of the civilian population of the Gaza Strip. The blockade has created shortages in a number of critical items and constrained the rights of Gazans to education, health, shelter, culture, personal development and work.”

The Red Cross recently pointed out:

“The closure imposed on the Gaza Strip is about to enter its fourth year, choking off any real possibility of economic development. Gazans continue to suffer from unemployment, poverty and warfare, while the quality of Gaza’s health care system has reached an all-time low. The whole of Gaza’s civilian population is being punished for acts for which they bear no responsibility. The closure therefore constitutes a collective punishment imposed in clear violation of Israel’s obligations under international humanitarian law.

“The closure is having a devastating impact on the 1.5 million people living in Gaza”, said Béatrice Mégevand-Roggo, the ICRC’s head of operations for the Middle East.”

Why would anyone be opposed to efforts to not only bring aid to Gazans but also challenge the blockade? As many commentators have pointed out, it is the blockade that is illegal and not efforts to challenge it. Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a leading figure in the South African struggle against Apartheid, and a UN envoy called it  “a siege” and a “gross violation to Human Rights.”

Yet, none of this is worthy of mention in Getraer’s press release. There is neither empathy nor compassion for the plight of the 1.5 million men, women and children who live in what is nothing less than a prison camp in Gaza.

Getraer’s second line of attack has to do with the environment for Jewish students at Rutgers. He criticizes BAKA for not only organizing this fundraising event but for holding other events as well on campus that “contribute to creating an environment that is becoming increasingly anti-Israel, and supportive of terrorist organizations, such as Hamas.” One of the events that he lists, a talk by Prof. Gilbert Achcar on Nov. 10th, has been organized by me.

This line of attack is also utterly predictable and is in line with the now well established argument that criticisms of Israel’s policy are unacceptable and are automatically anti-Semitic. And in this instance apparently automatically supportive of “terrorist organizations” as well.

In making these unfounded charges against BAKA, Getraer claims to represent and speak on behalf of the 6000+ Jewish students at Rutgers. He ends the press release by stating that his aim is to ensure that the atmosphere at Rutgers “remains a safe one for pro-Israel students.”

This is truly a despicable accusation and one made in bad faith. Neither myself nor any of the students that I know in BAKA would ever participate in creating an unsafe environment for our Jewish students.

Hoda Mitwally, a leading member of BAKA, who has worked with me as a research assistant for the last two years is an outstanding person. She is extremely well read, thoughtful and compassionate—to paint her and others like her in BAKA as attempting to create an “unsafe” atmosphere is insulting.

Perhaps Getraer might have spend a little more time talking to the people he is attacking, or for that matter talking to the Rutgers Jewish student body to elicit their opinions before putting out a press release that has now drawn national media attention. If he had done so, he might have found that his views don’t strike a chord with everyone.

For instance, Avi Smolen, a former president of Rutgers Hillel, wrote a letter to the Rutgers campus newspaper the Daily Targum offering his support for the BAKA fund raiser. In the letter titled “Allow BAKA event to continue,” Smolen takes on all the points raised by Getraer and refutes them, stating at the outset that the blockade of Gaza “violates international law.”

He adds:

“Some people will also be quick to say that this event will be “anti-Israel.” First, this “pro” and “anti” dualism is rarely useful in any case. If a U.S. citizen doesn’t support the war in Iraq, is she “un-American” or is she simply expressing her views on a single issue?

Second, the aim of the event is to challenge the actions of Israel in enforcing a blockade against Gaza. I recognize Israel’s positive movement in easing the restrictions on Gaza, but the blockade does still exist, and those who disagree with it have every right to protest it.”

Smolen is not a lone voice among the young Jewish American students who attend Rutgers University. If anything, he is part of a new generation that is open to having an honest discussion about Israel and its policies. As Peter Beinart in an article in the New York Review of Books points out, today’s younger generation of liberal college age Jewish students have “imbibed some of the defining values of American Jewish political culture: a belief in open debate, a skepticism about military force, a commitment to human rights.” He adds that “in their innocence, they did not realize that they were supposed to shed those values when it came to Israel.”

Beinart also states that “several studies have revealed, in the words of Steven Cohen of Hebrew Union College and Ari Kelman of the University of California at Davis, that “non-Orthodox younger Jews, on the whole, feel much less attached to Israel than their elders,” with many professing “a near-total absence of positive feelings.””

Smolen has some good words of advice at the end of his letter. He states: “I encourage all current University students, faculty and staff for whom this issue is meaningful to speak about it openly and with compassion for people with different viewpoints. If we listen to one another, instead of shouting past each other, we may understand each other better and find a way to work together for the common good.”

Indeed.

In the face of what is now universally recognized as a horrendous humanitarian crisis in Gaza, I urge the Rutgers administration to permit BAKA to donate the money raised yesterday to the US to Gaza initiative and not give in to Getraer’s pressure tactics. In my view, this is simply the right thing to do.

This piece was re-posted on mrzine, socialist worker and dissident voice.

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Islamophobia and the Far Right in Europe: Lessons for the US

Posted in European Far Right, Immigration, Islamophobia, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 1, 2010 | 3 Comments »

An alarming trend is sweeping Europe. Far right wing parties, using anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, have made electoral gains in several European countries. In the June European parliament elections, these parties were able to garner votes in a way they haven’t before. The British National Party (BNP) which has its roots in fascist parties of the past, got almost a million votes and its first two seats in the European parliament. Geert Wilders’ Party for Freedom (PVV) made significant gains as well.

Overall, as Time magazine notes about the June elections:

“Around Europe a ragbag of extremist parties, as varied as the countries that produced them yet united by a vehement nationalism that singles out minority groups as a growing threat, scored in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia. Confronted with sliding economies and disappearing jobs, voters kicked the mainstream parties they held most responsible. “

Even in countries considered liberal, such as Holland and Sweden, far right wing parties have had breakthroughs. In the recent elections in Sweden, the party of Jammie Akesson, the Sweden Democrats, gained power in the parliament running on blatantly anti-Muslim campaigns. Akesson called for restricting immigration, stating that Islam is the greatest threat facing the Swedish nation.

In Holland, Geert Wilders’ party, the Party for Freedom (PVV), won 24 seats in the Dutch elections and appears poised to be part of a new minority government.

Wilders is a notorious Islamophobe. He has compared Islam to fascism, equating the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Wilders ran on the platform of banning immigration from Muslim majority countries, contending that people who are a part of Islamic cultures are “retarded.” He would further ban the Koran and veiling.

In striking a deal with Wilders, the center-right coalition that is attempting to form a minority government in Holland has adopted several of Wilders’ policy demands such as banning the burqa and imposing tighter immigration standards.

Wilders’ was one of the highlighted speakers at the September 11th rally against the proposed Islamic center in downtown Manhattan called by Tea Party bigots, where he called on his audience to “defend itself against the powers of darkness, the force of hatred and the blight of ignorance.”

This should come as no surprise. The far right in the US not only collaborates with its counterparts in Europe, but it is also learning the lessons of their electoral victories.

Pamela Geller, whose group Stop Islamization of America was largely responsible for polarizing the discussion around the proposed Islamic center in downtown Manhattan, is not only a fan of Wilders (and the feeling is mutual given his glowing blurb for the book she co-authored on the Obama presidency) but an admirer of open fascists and street gangs such as the English Defense League that routinely attack Muslims and immigrants.

The Tea party has clearly taken a few pages from the European right. They have learned that in the context of a prolonged economic crisis, racism and the politics of scapegoating can enable them to reach a wider audience.

Thus, anti-immigrant groups such as the Minutemen have started to appear at Tea party rallies and events. Similarly, Geller who identifies as a Tea Party person spoke at the Tennessee Tea party convention in May.

It is not a coincidence that Tennessee is also the site where an Islamic center in Murfreesboro, has come under attack. There were arson attempts and gunshots at the center creating a climate of fear and intimidation for the Muslim community.

Tennessee is also the location where Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, endorsed by more than 20 Tea Party groups, ran on the promise that he wanted to prevent sharia law from coming to Tennessee, and referred to Islam as a “cult” and a “violent political philosophy.”

What we are seeing is a right wing populist movement beginning to coalesce with racism at its core. This movement has both an electoral strategy as well as a grass roots strategy based on intimidating Muslim communities (and Latino immigrants). While earlier, Islamophobia in the US primarily served as a means to justify the “war on terror,” it is now serving the domestic agenda of the far right in ways similar to what has gone on in Europe.

As Gary Younge put it in a recent article in the Nation, the current phase of Islamophobia,

“marks the rise of xenophobic and racist forces within the Republican Party, for whom the election of a black Democratic president with an uncommon name and an African father has produced a perfect storm for divisive, deranged rhetoric. As such, this most recent outburst of Islamophobia marks a plot development in the narrative of the Nixon strategy, which used the dog whistle of racially charged rhetoric to realign the South toward the GOP. Now no dog whistle is needed. The racism is not veiled but naked, the delivery not subtle but brutal. With the Minutemen, the birthers, the Tea Partyers and Fox News on common ground, it was only a matter of time before they turned their pitchforks on Muslims. For while they did not invent Islamophobia, they were well positioned to exploit it.”

Europe is a mirror of what can happen at the level of mainstream politics in the United States if this right wing movement is not pushed back. Yet, Europe also offers lessons for the left in the US.

First, the rise of the right is taking place in the context of a prolonged economic crisis. European governments have responded through imposing austerity measures and attacking the most vulnerable. Unfortunately, traditional left parties have failed to offer an alternative. In this gap, the right by scapegoating Muslim immigrants, have been able to tap into voter anxiety.

In Sweden for instance, the social welfare state has been steadily dismantled over the last decade. Left parties such as the Social Democrats have been party to such efforts, and have failed to put up any resistance to cuts in unemployment benefits, and the privatization of health care, schools etc. In this context, and with the ongoing recession, it becomes easy to place blame for the public’s economic hardship on immigrants.

France’s upper house voted almost unanimously to ban the burqa. When the vote passed in the lower house, the left parties (the socialists, Greens and Communists) abstained. Rather than put up a principled defense of Muslims and try to defeat the measure, they decided to sit out the vote instead. The Socialist Party then came forward and stated that it too objected to the veil, but didn’t support constitutional measures banning it.

Such pathetic responses only strengthen the right. Even in the US, as I have argued earlier, the far right was able to set the terms of discussion around the Cordoba House controversy because the liberal establishment failed to present a principled anti-racist defense.

The first lesson, therefore, is that you cannot fight the right from the center. In the face of hyperbolic rhetoric that blatantly demonizes Muslims, a weak kneed response that attempts to be “moderate” only strengthens the far right.

The second lesson is that the right is being resisted by ordinary people, sometimes organized by smaller left groups. The non-mainstream left in various European nations have a historical memory of what it takes to fight the right. For instance, the Anti Nazi League in Britain that successfully pushed back the fascist National Front, the precursor to the BNP, organized on two fronts. First, they articulated a principled defense against racism. But second, they also articulated a broader politics that explained how racism and scapegoating are the products of an economic system that needs to blame racial “others” for its flaws, thereby putting forward a progressive alternative.

Today, in the context of a global recession that seems to have no end in sight, this is a crucial lesson. Islamophobia has to be exposed as the scapegoating tactic of a system in crisis, but this has to be part of a broader vision which puts on offer both a political and an economic alternative to neoliberalism and war.

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