Opinion Editorials, October 2007
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Islamophboia week at US campuses spreading hatred under the guise of patriotism
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
ccun.org, October 26, 2007
Borrowing from President Bush’s terminology ‘Islamo-Fascists,’ a notorious band of ultra-right wing Arabphobes and Islamophobes is embarked on a new project to spread fear and hatred under the guise of patriotism and freedom.
Packaged as “Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week,” David Horowitz, a neo-conservative polemicist, is leading the Arab/Muslim-basing efforts at campuses across the nation.
In the past, David Horowitz, the self-appointed chief of the new campus thought police, has organized witch-hunts against progressive academics and attempted to introduce legislation to enforce “codes of conduct” that would silence “left-wing” voices on campus. This time his target of the Oct. 22-26 Islamo-Fascist Week are Islam and Arabs/Muslims.
Horowitz asks students participating in the campaign to disseminate presentations, such as “The Islamic Mein Kampf,” (meaning the Qur'an). He also tries to connect Islam with fascism and Arabs and Muslims with Nazis. He proclaimed that Palestinians are the “quintessential Islamo-Fascists” and that their cause is “genocidal.”
Horowitz’s personal Web site is home to comments such as, “There is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists,” and, “Put a complete stop to Muslim immigration, and find creative ways to deport all Muslim non-citizens. These two measures would be accompanied by the creation of an environment where the practice of Islam is made not easy but difficult.”
Tellingly, Horowitz’s mission is not much different than another Islamophobe group known with the acronym SANE: the Society of Americans for National Existence that seeks to banish Islam from the US by making "adherence to Islam" punishable by 20 years in prison. It also seeks a ban on Muslim immigration to the US.
A petition from the so-called David Horowitz Freedom Center demands that “students and faculty...declare their allegiances: either to fighting our terrorist adversaries or failing to take action to stop our enemies.” In a throwback to McCarthyism, right-wing students are encouraged to issue press releases condemning those who refused to sign. It means either you are with us or with our enemy.
But just who are the “Islamic fascists? According to Horowitz’s FrontPage magazine, they include the Muslim Student Association, which has chapters on hundreds of U.S. campuses--and the Council on American Islamic Relations, which advocates for civil rights and tracks hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims.
As part of the "Islamo-Fascism Week," Horowitz visited Princeton University, New Jersey, on Oct. 16, the last day of Eid al-Fitr, the holy Muslim holiday celebrating the end of the month of Ramadan. Interestingly, due to his less-than-gleaming reputation, the event had to be kept somewhat of a secret.
In his tirade against Muslims he persistently connected the religion of over 1.5 billion people to fascism, lumping together a diverse array of ethnic and political groups by using terms such as "Islamic Nazis," "barbarians" and "Islamo-fascism." Alarmingly, Horowitz made the claim that groups like al Qaeda and Hamas are comparable to American organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Muslim Students Association (MSA).
Perhaps unknowingly, Horowitz negated his own claims by citing an inaccurate and selective history of the Middle East. He denied that the Arab-Israeli conflict centers on the issue of land and state and insisted that no Palestinian lands had ever been annexed. He also made the apocalyptic statement that Christians in the Middle East are "vanishing," a startling claim considering the existence of over 8 million Coptic Christian Egyptians, 1.4 million Lebanese Christians and 300,000 Christians in the West Bank.
There is a collection of bigots and crackpots that Horowitz has recruited to speak for Islamophobia week.
Ann Coulter is one. After September 11, she was fired from her job at the highly conservative National Review for her comment that the U.S. “should invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” In 2004, on Fox’s Hannity and Colmes, Coulter reiterated her stance. When asked if she would still “like to convert these people all to Christianity,” Coulter replied, “The ones that we haven’t killed, yes.” “So no one should be Muslim?” Alan Colmes asked. “They should all be Christian?” Coulter replied, “That would be a good start, yes.”
Other luminaries include: Rick Santorum, a former US Senator, who has compared homosexuality to incest; Robert Spencer who claims Islam is "the world's most intolerant religion"; and noted anti-Arab commentator and Islamophobe Daniel Pipes who once said that "Palestinians are a miserable people…and they deserve to be."
Some other well-known Islamophobist speakers are: Dennis Prager, Sean Hannity and Wafa Sultan. More intellectual takes will come from such neoconservative icons of Middle East policy as Michael Ledeen who seeks to apply Machiavellian principles to the modern world: if we win, everyone will judge our methods to have been appropriate; if we lose, they will despise us. Strike decisively, get it over with quickly. The diplomats will always say that we can achieve our goals with a little bit of nastiness and a whole lot of talking, but they are wrong. It is better to be feared than loved.
Surely such a notorious lineup of racist, bigoted, Islamophobic, anti-Semitic and Machiavellian speakers will serve not to educate but to promote hatred and spread misinformation and lies.
Let us not forget that these are the same lies that have lead, and continue to lead, to hate crimes and attacks against minorities including African-Americans, Jews, Muslims, homosexuals, and others based on stereotypes.
Events such as Islamophobia week do not seek to further the discussion in a peaceful manner, but rather contribute to the prejudicial anger and hatred targeted against Arabs and Muslims in the US. The post-9/11 America has seen a dramatic increase in hate crimes targeted against Arabs and Muslims or those perceived to be so. It has already been well-documented that the Arab-American and Muslim-American communities and anyone perceived to be a member of the communities have been the targets of hate crimes and discrimination. The FBI has reported that such crimes increased by a reported 1,600 percent after the horrific terrorist acts of Sept. 11.
For a sign of how easily rhetoric about the Middle East can escalate, consider George Washington University, where authorities discovered hundreds of posters last week that said: “Hate Muslims? So do we!” A “typical Muslim” is then portrayed, with features identified such as “venom from mouth” and “suicide vest.”
Surely this event is a celebration of hate speech and intolerance in order to promote hate and bigotry. It will be an opportunity to Arab/Muslim-bashing under the auspices of “fighting terrorism.”
Abdus Sattar Ghazali is the Executive Editor of the online magazine American Muslim Perspective: www.amperspective.com
email: asghazali@gmail.com
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