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Bankrupt in Ideas, US Republican Contenders Demonize Islam for Political Gain
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, April 4, 2011
Welcome to the Shari'ah Conspiracy Theory Industry
How the
American right demonizes Islam for political gain.
At
February’s Conservative Political Action Conference, a student from the
group Youth for Western Civilization at Liberty University asked members
of a panel titled “The Shari'ah Challenge to the West”: “Are we going to
see a rise of Islamic Europe, and America just sits there on its own...
are we actually going to win?” Another audience member asked, “what
recourse does America have as a country... to deal with that problem with
a completely won Islamist population? What recourse do we have at home and
abroad?”
That these questions were treated as legitimate lines of inquiry at a
conference that serves as a dog and pony show for Republican presidential
candidates demonstrates the success of a cottage industry of anti-Muslim
fearmongers (politicians, religious groups, ministers, self-styled
national security experts, former government officials, retired military
officers, pundits, and writers) who have cultivated a wide-ranging
conspiracy theory that totalitarian Islamic radicals are bent on
infiltrating America, displacing the Constitution, and subverting
Western-style democracy in the U.S. and around the globe.
Also see:
The Fear-Mongers: GOP Presidential Contenders Stoke Up Islamophobia in Bid
for Tea Party Votes
Islamophobia has exploded onto the political scene as anti-Muslim pundits
and activists gain traction in the conservative mainstream.
Once
relegated to the right-wing fringe, Islamophobia has exploded onto the
political scene as anti-Muslim pundits and activists gain traction in the
conservative mainstream. Lawmakers and activists are now targeting
anything affiliated with Muslims -- be it a charity, a teacher, or a
mosque. GOP politicians like former House Speaker and GOP presidential
candidate Newt Gingrich are fear-mongering over perceived dangers within
the American Muslim community to pander to the conservative extremes. But
this weekend at the Conservative Principles Conference in Iowa, GOP
presidential candidate Herman Cain introduced an unprecedented level of
bigotry into the GOP platform by declaring he would never appoint a Muslim
to his administration.
Exposure: A Muslim Woman's Unlawful Humiliation by Law Enforcement
Imagine
the uproar if women were forced to remove their shirts and bras for
booking photos in police stations or jails. The feelings of vulnerability,
degradation and trauma such a practice would generate would quickly put an
end to it. For a Muslim woman, wearing a hijab (headscarf) is not only a
symbol of her faith, but a way for her to control the parts of her body
people see. Being forced to remove the hijab is humiliating, no different
from being compelled to strip in front of others.
Yet that's exactly what happened to Nashville, Tennessee, mother and
educator Leyla Isaaq* several weeks ago, at the hands of the Davidson
County Sheriff's Office. After being cited for a minor traffic-related
charge Leyla reported to the jail for booking, where she was told she must
remove her hijab to be photographed. She tried for hours to explain to
officers that, according to her religious beliefs, she must remain covered
at all times in public and especially in the presence of men. The
sheriff's office told her that if she did not remove it, she would be
subject to arrest, despite the fact that her hijab in no way obscured her
face and she was able to wear itin the photograph on her driver's license.
To add insult to injury, the booking photo was then posted in a database
accessible not only to law enforcement, but to the general public via
Tennessee's Open Records law.
Questioned at the Border: Aun Hasan Ali
Over the
past several years, at ports, land border crossings, and international
airports across the country, U.S. citizens and lawful residents who are
Muslim or who are perceived to be Muslim have been targeted by CBP
officers for questioning about deeply personal beliefs, associations and
religious practices protected by the First Amendment.
Brit Hume Stunned Muslims Could be Outraged by Something as 'Trivial and
Minor' as Koran Burnings
Fox News
Sunday pundit Brit Hume just can't understand how Afghan Muslims could be
so upset by something as "trivial and minor" as Pastor Terry Jones' nasty
little stunt of burning Korans, despite being asked by the State
Department months ago not to, out of fear of inflaming anti-American
sentiment in the Middle East. In Hume's mind, because Terry Jones is the
head of such an insignificant following (Mara Liasson's estimation of two
dozen followers may be generous), it's not that big a deal that he
desecrated the holy book for 1 billion Muslims worldwide. Right, and Fred
Phelps and his church comprised of 18 family members shouldn't bother the
families of fallen servicemen when they demonstrate at military funerals.
There's nothing that can justify the irrational lost of life of those NATO
workers. But likewise, this kind of violence was predictable and
avoidable. I doubt very much that Brit and Co. would be as sanguine if
some imam burned a stack of Bibles and a crucifix as a statement of the
evils of Christianity. In fact, conservatives have been less than tolerant
of what they view as condemnations of Christianity, from Jesse Helms and
Alfonse D'Amato demanding Serrano's Piss Christ be removed from
exhibition, to Boehner and Cantor demanding the National Portrait Gallery
remove Wojnarowicz’ “A Fire In My Belly,” to Maine Gov. Robert LePage not
wanting to be reminded of the labor movement in a mural in the state
building. Over and over again, they demand that their intolerance be
respected above all else. But when the shoe is on the other foot...
http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/brit-hume-stunned-muslims-could-be-ou
Radical Pastor Terry Jones Says He’s Considering ‘A Trial On The Life Of
Mohammed’
Violent
protests in Afghanistan have now spread as far south as Kandahar. However,
Jones feels no sense of responsibility. “We do not feel responsible,” he
said on Friday. “We feel more that the Muslims and radical Islam uses that
as an excuse.” Now, in an interview with the Daily Telegraph, Jones says
he might also put the prophet Mohammad on trial: Terry Jones, the
radical pastor who oversaw the burning of a Koran in his Florida church
last month after a mock court hearing, may put the Islamic prophet
Mohammed on trial in his next ‘day of judgement’, he told The Sunday
Telegraph.
http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/03/terry-jones-trial-mohammed/
Right-wing Islamophobes: Petraeus' comments about dangers of Koran-burning
a "recipe for surrender"
We've
previously pointed out that a nationwide climate of Islamophobia has
followed the right-wing media's ugly, inflammatory, anti-Islam response to
the planned Park51 Islamic cultural center. In addition to Jones'
proposal, this anti-Muslim wave has included protests across the country
in opposition to local mosques and Islamic community centers, vandalism of
existing mosques, and rallies against Park51 that have echoed the
right-wing media's disturbing rhetoric. Now Gen. Petraeus is making the
completely obvious point that viciously anti-Islam protests undermine our
anti-terrorism efforts and could lead to a violent backlash against our
troops. How have the stokers of those fires responded? By attacking
Petraeus, of course.
http://mediamatters.org/blog/201009080024
Guantanamo is an evolutionary experiment
US
detention centre can remain open as long as the "war on terror" continues,
with no end in sight.
Guantanamo is the most visible piece of a bigger legal mess that the Obama
administration inherited from its predecessor. Many military law experts
regard the entire post-9/11 legal edifice as flimsy. In 2001, Bush
administration officials reinterpreted the laws of war in order to assert
that people's status as captured constitutes the basis for the president's
right to declare them "unlawful enemy combatants" and detain them, despite
that many who ended up in Guantanamo were arrested far from any
battlefield and were not combatants by any conventional understanding of
the law. Obama, acknowledging this particular problem, made a semantic
modification by changing the term to "unprivileged enemy belligerent". But
this had no practical effect of mending this legal fabrication. On the
contrary, the EO for indefinite detention indicates that the problem has
been reinforced. The government also invented new war crimes in order to
create a new right to charge and prosecute people in military commissions.
Any alleged criminal activity committed by a person with the status of
being in US custody at Guantanamo was redefined as a war crime.
http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/03/201132712390105734.html
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