Category Archives: Islamophobia

Islamophobia ‘acceptable’ in UK

Al Jazeera reports:

Prejudice against Muslims has “passed the dinner-table test” and become socially acceptable in Britain, the chairwoman of the country’s ruling Conservative party has said.

Sayeeda Warsi, the first British Muslim woman to join the country’s cabinet, said in a speech at the University of Leicester on Thursday that Britain is becoming a less tolerant place for believers.

Warsi said that dividing Muslims into “moderate” and “extremist” fuels intolerance as does “the patronising, superficial way faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media”.

The Pakistan-born minister has previously criticised parts of British society for demonizing Muslims in response to the threat from small numbers of extremists.

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Peter King: ‘I’m willing to’ be called a bigot if that’s what it takes to target Muslim community

ThinkProgress reports:

The Islamophobia gripping the U.S. grows more entrenched by the day. Once confined to the far right, more and more pundits, power-brokers, and politicians are bringing it into mainstream. Apparently unsatisfied with dragging Muslims through the mud, Rep. Pete King (R-NY) is now committed to dragging them before Congress. Elected Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee earlier this month, King penned an Newsday op-ed yesterday listing the investigation of “radicalization of the American Muslim community and homegrown terrorism” as a top priority. ” “I will do all I can to break down the wall of political correctness and drive the public debate on Islamic radicalization,” he said.

Civil rights, Constitutional, and sanity advocates have criticized King for repeatedly vilifying the entire Muslim community as obstacles to security. “We are disturbed that this representative who is in a leadership position does not have the understanding and knowledge of what the realities are on the ground,” the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s legal director Abed Ayoub said, adding that Mr. King’s proposal “has bigoted intentions.” But rather than consider, address, or even refute the charge, King embraced it yesterday. Lambasting the Muslim community for its supposed refusal to help expose homegrown terrorism, King told Fox News’ Jaime Colby that if targeting all Muslims makes him a bigot, then “I’m willing to take that hit if I have to.”

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The House Committee for Promoting Islamophobia in America

The New York Times reports:

The Republican who will head the House committee that oversees domestic security is planning to open a Congressional inquiry into what he calls “the radicalization” of the Muslim community when his party takes over the House next year.

Representative Peter T. King of New York, who will become the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he was responding to what he has described as frequent concerns raised by law enforcement officials that Muslim leaders have been uncooperative in terror investigations.

He cited the case of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan man and a legal resident of the United States, who was arrested last year for plotting to bomb the New York subway system. Mr. King said that Ahmad Wais Afzali, an imam in Queens who had been a police informant, had warned Mr. Zazi before his arrest that he was the target of a terror investigation.

“When I meet with law enforcement, they are constantly telling me how little cooperation they get from Muslim leaders,” Mr. King said.

The move by Mr. King, who said he was planning to open a hearing on the matter beginning early next year, is the latest example of the new direction that the House will take under the incoming Republican majority.

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The Return of Ghosts: Debating the rise of Geert Wilders and the far-right at the Nexus Symposium

Max Blumenthal writes:

I spent last week in Amsterdam, where I participated in the “Return of Ghosts” symposium of the Nexus Institute, a discussion/debate about the resurgence of neo-fascism in Europe and anti-democratic trends in the West. Besides providing a forum for debating European politics, the symposium was the occasion for the first public appearance in Europe by Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa since he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature last month. The arrival of Vargas Llosa, one of the world’s foremost intellectuals, resulted in an overflow crowd filled with members of the Dutch media, the country’s political class, and the royal family.

Even with Vargas Llosa in the spotlight, the participants’ attention was focused on Geert Wilders, the leader of the far-right Dutch People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy, which is now the third leading party in the Netherlands. With his gathering influence, Wilders has essentially placed the Dutch coalition government in a stranglehold; the government meets with him every Wednesday to gauge his opinions and ask for his instructions. While Wilders dictates at will to the government, he remains independent of it, comfortably avoiding the consequences of policies he has helped to shape. It is the perfect position for a politician whose agenda is comprised exclusively of xenophobic populism, and typical strategy of the far-right in countries across the continent.

Wilders’ base lies in the mostly Catholic south, where ironically few people have ever encountered a Muslim. He has also generated support in the city of Groeningen, once a citadel of the communists. Seeking to expand his base, Wilders promised to hire scores of “animal cops” to investigate and prosecute the abuse of animals, a clever wedge strategy in the only country I know of that has a party dedicated exclusively to animal rights. Of course, Wilders could care less about our furry friends. His stated goal is to end immigration not just to Holland but to all of Europe; ban the Quran (free speech is only for the “Judeo-Christian” community), and severely limit the rights of Muslim citizens of Europe by, for instance, instituting what he called a “head rag tax” on Muslim women. Wilders’ international allies include the goosestepping neo-Nazis of the English Defense League, the far-right pogromist Pam Geller, the Belgian neo-fascist party Vlaams Belang, and a substantial portion of the US neocon elite. Over the course of just a few years, he has become perhaps the most influential Islamophobe in the world.

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Caliphate on the range? The shariah precedent in American courts

Asma Uddin writes:

Judging by how Oklahoma voted in the recent election, one might conclude that despite its tiny Muslim population, Oklahoma was on the verge of becoming an Islamic caliphate in Middle America. The reality is of course far different. Oklahoma State Question 755, which passed, asked voters whether state courts should be forbidden “from considering or using Sharia Law.” Similar legislation is being considered in Tennessee, and Louisiana recently became the first state to pass several bills banning international law from its courts. Although the Louisiana bills didn’t mention shariah explicitly, they were apparently motivated at least in part by a similar distaste for Muslims and their religious law, and a desire to “protect” constitutional law. These constitutional law protectors appear, however, to be a little fuzzy on what constitutional law actually means, how it allows for various forms of religious arbitration and what the state can and cannot do to regulate religious freedoms.

In the discussion and debate surrounding Question 755, supporters in search of an example where the bogeyman shariah was permitted inside American courtrooms kept pointing to a New Jersey case where the court denied a restraining order to a woman who was sexually assaulted by her then-husband. The judge ruled that the husband did not have a “criminal desire to or intent to sexually assault” her as the husband was merely under the impression that he was exercising his prerogative as a husband under Islamic law. What’s rarely reported, however, is that the decision was promptly overturned on appeal because the application of shariah, or the “cultural defense,” conflicted with civil law.

This example is noteworthy not just because the decision was overturned because it got the law wrong, or that it is the only one of its kind, but because it is an atypical example of how shariah has made an appearance in American courtrooms. The typical cases are far from frightening. For example, arbitration under shariah law is permitted in the U.S., just like arbitration according to Christian principles or Jewish religious tradition is permitted, or according to any other set of rules two contracting parties may agree to. Indeed, prominent Christian groups like PromiseKeepers have long required Christian arbitration clauses in their contracts with vendors.

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Bill Maher’s fear of Muslims

Upon learning that in the UK last year, Mohammed (including its variant spellings) was the most popular name for baby boys, this was the reaction of comedian Bill Maher:

Am I a racist to feel alarmed by that? Because I am. And it’s not because of the race, it’s because of the religion. I don’t have to apologize, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years?

Maybe Maher thinks that as an expression of cultural integration Muslim parents in Britain should be naming their boys after English football stars like Wayne Rooney or David Beckham (and I dare say some do) but he should hardly be surprised that the name of the Prophet remains a favorite. The racist thought that he dared not utter but surely thought was this: at the rate they’re reproducing, it’s just a matter of time before the Muslims take over.

But Bill Maher — like Pastor Terry Jones — thinks the way to avoid being branded a racist when it comes to expressing ones Islamophobia is to suggest that you have nothing against Muslims, you just don’t like their religion. Thus Maher doesn’t express concern about the size of Britain’s Muslim population — simply the way they are choosing to name their babies.

Maher’s parochiality is most evident however, not simply in the focus of his alarm but because of the context he places it in: the condition of the Western world 300 years from now.

If 300 years ago any of the leading figures of the Enlightenment could have been given a glimpse of the West as it is now, I doubt that any would have felt reassured that Western Civilization had been preserved — least of all when they saw the jokers who have assumed the role of its defenders.

If 300 years hence, civilization exists in any form, humanity will have advanced in ways hard to anticipate. On its current trajectory, the West and the rest of the world is heading in a direction where the names parents choose for their babies should be the least of our concerns.

As for how that parenting task is being engaged now in America, what is striking about the popular choices is not so much the cultural sources of the names as the difference between genders: Old Testament and/or grandiose names for boys and mostly secular names for girls — Jacob, Isabella, Ethan, Emma, Michael, Olivia, Alexander, Sophia, William, Ava, Joshua, Emily, Daniel, Madison, Jayden, Abigail, Noah, Chloe, Anthony, Mia.

I don’t imagine that Bill Maher will be too concerned that among these 2009 top ten names for boys and girls not one of them is a New Testament Christian name, but it’s certainly curious that in a country whose population so strongly identify themselves as Christian, the apostles, their disciples and other prominent figures from Christian scripture have apparently gone out of style. Don’t blame the Muslims.

But here’s what will come as the biggest shock to the Islamophobes: the most popular name for girls in Iran in 2009 turns out to be Maryam — the Arabic and Farsi equivalent of Mary, mother of Jesus. What do you make of that, Bill?

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The challenge of religious pluralism in America

Legal scholar, Stanley Fish, writes:

The conflict between religious imperatives and the legal obligations one has as a citizen of a secular state — a state that does not take into account the religious affiliations of its citizens when crafting laws — is an old one…; but in recent years it has been felt with increased force as Muslim immigrants to Western secular states evidence a desire to order their affairs, especially domestic affairs, by Shariah law rather than by the supposedly neutral law of a godless liberalism. I say “supposedly” because of the obvious contradiction: how can a law that refuses, on principle, to recognize religious claims be said to be neutral with respect to those claims? Must a devout Muslim (or orthodox Jew or fundamentalist Christian) choose between his or her faith and the letter of the law of the land?

The context in which Muslims in America find their religion under assault is riddled with contradictions. Islamophobia — as The Tennessean reports — has become a profitable business in which fearmongers who profess no expertise on the subject are couching the “threat” from Islam in similar terms to the Red Menace of the 1950s.

“Islam,” says Pastor Darrel Whaley from Kingdom Ministries Worship Center in Rutherford County, Tennessee, “is political; it is ideas and philosophies; it’s not a religion at all… They want to take over America and the whole world.”


(The image in this video freezes after one minute but the audio continues uninterrupted.)

At the same time that Islam is being presented as an ideological threat to America, among those receptive to this message, another message resonates with equal strength: that Americans of faith are threatened by secularists who insist on imposing a separation of church and state.

When Colorado Republican Senate candidate and Tea Party favorite Ken Buck declared: “I disagree strongly with the concept of separation of church and state,” he drew a strong round of applause. Secularism and Sharia are seen by many as a dual threat to the American way of life.

One might imagine that — at least in theory — it would be possible for the embattled faithful, both Muslim and Christian, to find some common ground — at least one would if it were not for the fact that Christianity in America is in so many ways a secularized religion. That’s why the idea of religion shaping the whole life of the faithful is presented as foreign.

Religion in America has less to do with the devotional and ethical practices that circumscribe religious life, than with the experience of belonging to communities of affiliation within which a religious national identity finds expression. It’s about banding together around particular definitions of what it means to be American and taking on battles against those who pose a threat to these definitions.

For that reason, the fight against abortion is a much more popular cause than the fight against adultery. As with most crusades the preferred battleground is not home turf. Religious solidarity comes less through shared practice, than shared animosity.

But before the secularists here (and I include myself) start feeling too smug, Fish makes an important point:

[T]he respect liberalism can accord Islam (or any other strong religion) is the respect one extends to curiosities, eccentrics, the backward, the unenlightened and the unfortunately deluded. Liberal respect stops short — and this is not a failing of liberalism, but its very essence — of taking religious claims seriously, of considering them as possible alternative ways of ordering not only private but public life.

On that basis, it’s easy to adopt a live-and-let-live philosophy — well encapsulated in the COEXIST bumper sticker — in which tolerance is a kind of benign indifference. But coexistence in healthily functioning pluralistic societies must really go much further.

In an interesting talk, Muneer Fareed points out that the challenges America now faces have been addressed before and indeed that Islam in its formation saw its own existence in a pluralistic context.

[The Quran says] If God had so wanted, then all of humanity would be following one way. This is clear unmistakable evidence from the text itself, that Islam is a religion that doctrinally endorses, encourages and accomodates religious pluralism.

The faithful and fearful across America will remain unmoved, convinced paradoxically that this is an argument they cannot win even while truth remains on their side. According to the evangelicals, God does want all of humanity following one way and has chosen men like Pastor Darrel Whaley and Pastor Terry Jones to shepherd us in the right direction.

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Letter from Islamophobistan

Pepe Escobar writes:

Austrian-American psychiatrist Wilhelm Reich, in his Mass Psychology of Fascism, stressed that racial theory is not a creation of fascism. On the contrary; fascism is a creation of racial hatred and its politically organized expression.
[…]
In the extremely well-argued book [Why the West is not leaning to the Left], [Italian linguist and essayist Raffaele] Simone proves that the European Left is intellectually dead; it simply has not understood the drive of hardcore capitalism (which he defines as “arch-capitalism”, or “the political and economic manifestation of the New Right”); it has not understood the correlated primacy of individualism and consumerism; and it has refused to discuss the phenomenon of mass immigration.

From France to Denmark, from Italy to Sweden, it’s easy to see how savvy populists skillfully deploy those European values of free speech, feminism and secularism – oversimplifying issues to the point that their take seems logical – as ammunition against mosques, minarets, headscarves and, of course, “sub-intelligent beings”.

And then there are local realities. The majority of those voting SD were protesting against overwhelmingly Muslim immigrants, a great deal of them jobless, who come to Sweden, get fat government benefits and remain idle. Sweden is nowhere as tough on immigration as Denmark, Norway or Holland.

In Malmo, a mere 20-minute train ride via the stunning Oresund bridge from Copenhagen, about 80,000 (60,000 of them Muslims) of the overall population of 300,000 are immigrants. There are certified losers in Malmo’s carefully calibrated transition from old industrial city to a post-mod consumer haven; the old, the poor, and most of all, immigrants. So Sweden seems to have posed the European-wide question of the necessity for the European welfare state to concentrate less on health care and pensions and more on “including” immigrants. But is this really the real question?

Talk about an European summer of hate – from minarets banned in Switzerland to burqas banned in Belgium.

The populist extreme right has been part of coalition governments in Italy and Switzerland for many years now. And they are represented in the parliaments of Austria, Denmark, Norway and Finland. The National Front in France had 9% of the vote in last spring’s French regional elections.

But now everywhere it feels like a Lamborghini let loose. Geert Wilders’ Freedom party in Holland has turbo-charged Islamophobia to the point of almost paralyzing Dutch governance. The elegant, eloquent, peroxide-blonde populist Wilders wants to ban the Koran – which he has compared to Hitler’s Mein Kampf – and impose a “headscarf tax” (how come no government thought about this in the Middle East or in Pakistan?)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy – now facing his own, self-provoked May ’68 remix in the streets over his pension reform – tried to seduce (once again) the National Front by expelling planeloads of Romanian gypsies.

Austrian extreme right stalwart Heinz-Christian Strache, running for mayor of Vienna less than two weeks ago, took no less than 27% of the vote. And Barbara Rosenkranz, who insists anti-Nazi laws should be abolished, came second in Austria’s presidential race.

The Islamophobic, anti-immigrant Northern League of Umberto Bossi in Italy is part of the government in Rome and not accidentally the country’s fastest-growing party, now controlling the ultra-wealthy provinces of Veneto and Piemonte. During the latest election campaign, La Lega supporters handed out bars of soap to be used “after touching an immigrant”.

In Spain, the movement Preventive Reconquista is gaining ground – a perhaps George W Bush-inspired preventive war against the 1 million Muslim immigrants and their allegedly “evil” plans to re-attach Spain to Islam. A “headscarf controversy” already erupted in Madrid last April. Local town councils have been prohibiting the burqa and niqab – French-style (although a national ban was only narrowly defeated in the Spanish Congress last July).

It comes as no surprise that the extreme right is more turbocharged than ever in scores of European post-industrial cities which used to be center-left; that’s certainly the case of Wilders in Rotterdam, Le Pen in Marseille, Strache in Vienna and Akesson in Malmo. Simone’s assessment is being proven right.

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How to deal with Islamophobia in the media

So, as just about everyone now knows, NPR analyst and Fox News contributor, Juan Williams said this to Bill O’Reilly on Monday:

I’m not a bigot… But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

When someone says, “I’m not a bigot,” we can generally be sure they’re about to say something that we’d expect to come out of the mouth of bigot. We can also infer that they’ve bought into an improbable idea: bigots identify themselves as such. Thus the implausible disclaimer: take my word for it — I’m not a bigot. Err, OK Juan, but I’m sorry. You don’t sound too convincing.

Jeff Bercovici notes:

The notion that “people in Muslim garb are scary” is widespread in America, and its noxious that many people believe as much. Countless people getting on planes have thought the same thing as Mr. Williams. This is exactly the sort of case where airing and logically refuting a bigoted view is better than making it so that it’s an unspoken thing that many people persist in thinking privately.

Thanks to NPR’s knee-jerk reaction, more is now being said about the fact that Williams got fired than the fact that what he said was both prejudiced and dumb. Not only does the debate have the wrong focus but Williams has now been rewarded for his “blunder” by getting a new three-year contract from Fox News worth almost $2 million.

The people with the greatest regrets right now are probably local NPR station managers whose current fundraising efforts have been disrupted by the ruckus.

NPR’s CEO Vivian Schiller says: “This isn’t a case of one strike and you’re out.” They have had “an on-going issue” with Williams.

The problem is, each time a journalist gets fired for making a dumb remark, this doesn’t improve the overall quality of journalism. Instead it means that those journalists who are most disciplined in concealing their views will have a professional advantage over those journalists guilty of the occasional indiscretion. My suspicion is that the well-wrapped bigots are more common than the bigots with loose tongues. Bigots are better clearly labelled than fired.

What consequences should Williams have faced for revealing his Islamophobia? How about mockery on the Daily Show where the evidence that known terrorists do not wear “Muslim garb” would swiftly have exposed the folly behind his fear.

What should really scare Williams and anyone else who wants to play spot-the-terrorist next time they fly is that terrorists can wear business suits, carry US passports and have names like David Headley.

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The post-colonial era is slow coming

“It seems like the ragheads and the Pakis are worrying your dad, but your dad’s favorite food is curry and kebab,” sings Lowkey, summing up the multicultural dilemma facing quite a few white Englishmen.

Peyvand Khorsandi provides another multicultural vignette:

Golborne Road, on the outskirts of Notting Hill in west London, is home to two Portuguese cafés, Stella McCartney, and my favourite burger van, run by two Moroccan men. I’ve been a regular for almost 10 years – the van offers no ordinary fare. A ball of meat goes splat on the griddle as it’s evened into shape while onions sizzle.

Money and Arabic banter are exchanged – when the meat is crispy brown an egg is cracked open, stuffed alongside the patty into a heated bun with a sprinkle of chopped salad, fries and some warm, homemade, tomato sauce (fried prawns optional).

I am usually finishing off my second bowl of soup – they do a mean bean, lentil and pea – when the beaming parcel of beefy goodness is handed to me, smiling as a good burger should.

On Fridays Mohammed and Aziz repair to a mosque in the converted building opposite – customers find the van shut from around 12.30pm to 2pm. Caterers should hold these hours sacred but Mohammed and Aziz, as their prices testify, are not about money. The van’s closes for Ramadan.

The punters are largely Moroccan men but you do see Bohemian non-Moroccan women and men of all ages stopping off for a bite, too.

In the background the magnificent Trellick Tower — a hive of different people and cultures living next-door to, and on top of, each other — literally looks down on the rest of us.

If German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s declaration this weekend that multiculturalism has been an utter failure, was to be reduced to a motto, it might be this: we don’t want you, we just want your stuff.

That stuff includes all kinds of things from food, to cheap labor, to exotic artifacts, to land. But the one thing it excludes is non-native culture in the form of people.

If multiculturalism has failed it is only in as much as it has been conceived as a method for grappling with the legacy of colonialism. The problem with that notion is that colonialism hasn’t ended; it simply can’t be delineated on maps as clearly as it once could.

Meanwhile, out in the state that views itself as the most dangerous outpost of Western civilization, the old-fashioned colonial land-grabbing mindset was never more clearly expressed than it was a couple of years ago by Uzi Arad, currently Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security adviser. When asked whether it was time to abandon the two-state solution (and by implication for Israel to annex the West Bank) he responded: “We want to relieve ourselves of the burden of the Palestinian populations — not territories. It is territory we want to preserve, but populations we want to rid ourselves of.”

If there should be any doubt that we in the West remain shackled to mindsets shaped by colonialism, just look at the ever-widening chasm that separates Barack Obama as the embodiment of hope from Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States.

The only chance that our multicultural president could be enticed to take an action requiring only a modicum of political daring during his upcoming trip to India — to visit Amritsar’s Golden Temple where head coverings are obligatory — would have been if the Sikh religious custodians of the temple deemed a baseball cap acceptable. The don’t. (As a reader here suggested in jest: “Why can’t he just wear a kippah? It would fulfill the requirement, and he loves sucking up to the Israelis.)

Tunku Varadarajan asks:

[W]hat does this decision to avoid Amritsar tell us about how this White House feels about Americans? Does it feel that ordinary Americans will pillory their president for having associated himself with “ragheads” in Amritsar? Is this a variant of that elite condescension for ordinary folks who are “bitter,” and who “cling to guns and religion”?

That Obama can’t find a way to explain the symbolism of a little square of cloth on his head — placed there by enthusiastic, welcoming Indian hosts who wish him and America well — suggests that he has lost confidence in his own intellect, his own charisma, his own eloquence. A man once celebrated for his promise of change now allows a state visit to be shaped by his fear of the blogosphere — and by his fear of abuse that might come at him from an ignorant subset of the American population. Let’s just call it the pygmification of a president, and lament the gutlessness of this White House.

The operative fears here no doubt include all those Varadarajan lists but he omits the most obvious one, the one that was probably decisive: the reasonable expectation that images of Obama with head covered, showing his respects at a foreign domed temple would feature in GOP attack ads during the 2012 presidential campaign. The political value of such images suggests that the “ignorant subset” this commentator dismisses, penetrate much more deeply into mainstream America than he cares to admit.

Obama’s failing — and it is unforgivable — is that rather than challenge prevailing prejudices he has chosen to accommodate them.

When he meets India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh — note that he is a Sikh in a majority Hindu nation — will Obama muster the courage to put his hands together and say namaste?

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Obama bows to sensitivities of ignorant Americans and political advisers

The New York Times reports:

The Golden Temple, a sprawling and serene complex of gleaming gold and polished marble that is the spiritual center of the Sikh religion, is one of India’s most popular tourist attractions. Revered by Indians of all faiths, it is a cherished emblem of India’s religious diversity. So it was no surprise when the gold-plated marvel was promoted as the likely third stop on President Obama’s visit to India, scheduled for early November.

But the United States has ruled out a Golden Temple visit, according to an American official involved in planning. Temple officials said that American advance teams had gone to Amritsar, the holy city that is the site of the temple, to discuss a possible visit. But the plan appears to have foundered on the thorny question of how Mr. Obama would cover his head, as Sikh tradition requires, while visiting the temple.

“To come to golden temple he needs to cover his head,” said Dalmegh Singh, secretary of the committee that runs the temple. “That is our tradition.”

Mr. Obama, a Christian, has struggled to fend off persistent rumors that he is a Muslim, and Sikhs in the United States have often been mistaken for Muslims. Sikhism, which arose in the Punjab region in the 15th century, includes elements of Hinduism and Islam but forms a wholly distinct faith. Since Sept. 11, 2001, Sikhs in the United States have been occasional targets of anti-Muslim discrimination and violence — a Sikh was killed in Arizona a few days after the attack on the World Trade Center by a man who mistook him for a Muslim.

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The utter failure of multiculturalism?

Germany: third place winners in 2010 World Cup

It wasn’t just Germans who were disappointed to see their team fail to win the 2010 World Cup in South Africa this summer. If this was the team that represented “multi-kulti”, for most of us who had the pleasure of watching their performance, the response was: let’s have more — not: this is an utter failure. Did Angela Merkel so quickly forget?

In The Guardian, Philip Oltermann writes:

Today, when I heard reports of Angela Merkel announcing that multiculturalism had “utterly failed”, my first thoughts were: who is she talking about? I am German, and I have a sister whose three boys are half-Peruvian. My brother’s children are part-Japanese. My partner is English. Were we all utter failures?

“Multi-kulti” covers a grey area somewhere between co-existence and co-operation, and one hopes the German chancellor was trying to speak in favour of team-play and against mere tolerance. My guess is that Merkel wasn’t talking about us, or about Poles, Italians or Greeks living in Germany, but about her country’s 4 million-strong Muslim population – in which case she has still chosen her words terribly badly. The result is a faux pas uncharacteristic of a politician who has won a reputation for treading quietly in matters diplomatic.

So what made her say it? The question over how to integrate Muslim migrants and the rest of German society is hardly new: politicians and commentators have been discussing it ever since the first wave of Gastarbeiter (migrant workers) arrived in the 1960s. If you look at the figures alone, there would be no particular reason to reheat the debate at this time: the number of Turkish immigrants into Germany in 2008 was as low as it had last been in 1983, according to Der Spiegel magazine, and the number of asylum applications is about a sixth of what it was in the mid-90s. More Turks returned to Turkey last year than came to live in Germany, which is actually bad news for the German economy, because with the population forecast to fall by 11.6 million by 2050, the country needs every qualified worker it can get its hands on.

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Pamela Geller’s English friends — Islamophobes united

(Update below)

Pamela Geller — “hate monger and anti-mosque queen bee,” as she has been dubbed by Charles Johnson at the conservative blog where she got her start — has “helped bring into the mainstream a concept that after 9/11 percolated mainly on the fringes of American politics: that terrorism by Muslims springs not from perversions of Islam but from the religion itself,” write Anne Barnard and Alan Feuer in a New York Times profile.

Geller’s profile is twice the length of a piece Barnard wrote on Park51’s Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf in August. That’s presumably because Geller is now “a media commodity.”

Not until we get close to the end of the Geller profile do we hear mention of her connections to the notorious fascist group, the English Defence League.

Ms. Geller went on to champion as patriotic the English Defense League, which opposes the building of mosques in Britain and whose members have been photographed wearing swastikas. (In the interview, Ms. Geller said the swastika-wearers must have been “infiltrators” trying to discredit the group.)

In March, when the EDL held a rally in support of the visiting Dutch politician and anti-Islam leader, Geert Wilders, Geller wrote:

How I wish I could be there to stand with the English Defense League.

The EDL’s notoriety has no doubt been fueled by its more photogenic members and their drunken behavior, but the movement is not only attracting disaffected white skinheads.

In May, The Guardian (see also the accompanying video) recounted meeting an EDL leader who alluded to the group’s growing links to the US.

On a chilly evening in early March, Alan Lake settles into his seat in a cafe in central London. This smartly dressed man in his mid-40s has emerged as a key figure in the organisation and is quickly into his stride — warning that the UK will have Sharia law in the next 40 years “unless something is done”.

A London-based IT consultant, Lake has spoken at several EDL rallies and sees himself as one of the organisation’s thinkers. “The middle-class intellectuals are coming forward and also American speakers – some of them quite famous, although I can’t give you names yet … they love the fact that we can have people that can go on the streets.”

Addressing a far-right anti-Islam conference in Sweden last year, Lake told delegates it was necessary to build a united “anti-Jihad movement” and spoke of the need for “people that are ready to go out in the street”, boasting that he and his friends had begun to build alliances with “more physical groups like football fans”. Lake says he is opposed to violence or confrontation but regularly returns to the importance of the EDL’s physical presence.

In a post at the 4Freedoms Community website, Lake described his vision of segregation in the UK in the coming decades:

In 20 or 30 years the UK will start to fragment into Islamic enclaves and non-Islamic areas around them. Its time we decided who will be allowed in the non-Islamic areas. These are the people who we will force into the Islamic enclaves (and who we will execute if they sneak out).

By forcing these liberal twits into those enclaves we will be sending them to their death, at worst, and at best they and their families will be subjected to all the depredations, persecution and abuse that non-Muslims worldwide currently ‘enjoy’ in countries like Pakistan, Iran and Egypt. It will be great to see them executed or tortured to death…

Please everyone, start to contribute the names of all those we will send with their wives and children to enjoy the religion of peace. We are taking away the middle ground for sympathisers and appeasers. Sure, they can say they support the gangsters of Islamism if they want, it’s their choice! But we will not let them just stand in the middle and say it, hanging back from actually BEING WITH those Hamas and Hizbullah endorsing gangs. If they like that so much, they can be with them, lock, stock and barrel.

Here’s some names to start off. Please note this is a discussion, we need to work it out before sending them to their sordid end.
1. Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury
2. David Cameron [Britain’s prime minister]
3. Nick Clegg [Britain’s deputy prime minister]

After this post caught the attention of Indymedia, Lake made some revisions and wrote: “I said execute the leftists that left the Islamic enclaves — yes that was a bit provocative, but I was trying to be brief.”

In a further indication of the blossoming relationship between America and Britain’s anti-Islam movements, the EDL has announced an upcoming event, welcoming Rabbi Nachum Shifren who is a candidate for California State Senate District 26.

“The English Defence League Event @ Embassy of Israel” has this description on Facebook:

The English Defence League will be holding an event in London on Oct 24th in support of Israel, we have an orthodox Rabbi joining us from Los Angeles who is fighting Sharia in L.A and running for state congressman there, we sympathise with what Israel are going through, it’s the only country in the west that is tackling the issues we highlight, we have seen members of the Islamic community hold anti-Israel marches in England which the country is in disgust over but still no action from the government, our four [sic] fathers fought a Nazi regime and won to protect our god given human rights, we cannot allow such fascist ideologies try to rule our streets once again using the same racist tactics, the English Defence League ignited the flame that has awoke this whole world, we are at the fore front of this movement, we have to support our brothers and sisters worldwide the way they are supporting us.

A spokesman at the embassy told me they have nothing to do with the event and will be issuing a statement shortly.*

Lastly, back on Geller, the New York Times made no reference to her possible connections with organized crime.

In 2007, the New York Post reported on a murder that took place at a Long Island auto dealership where Geller was reported to be a co-owner. A car salesman, Collin Thomas, had been murdered outside the showroom of Universal Auto World. In the course of the investigation, detectives also uncovered evidence of an alleged million dollar scam.

As part of the homicide probe, Nassau County police raided the dealership, owned by auto czar Michael Oshry [Geller’s former husband], and Oshry’s Hewlett Harbor home and seized business records.

Cops found banking records were sent to the house, though the state requires such files be kept at businesses, according to court papers filed in a civil forfeiture action by the Nassau district attorney.

“The dealership knew what was going on,” an investigator said.

Oshry’s lawyer, William Petrillo, said his client “has not engaged in any criminal activity.”

His ex-wife, Pamela Geller, former associate publisher of the New York Observer and a conservative blogger, burst into tears when told her ex is under criminal investigation.

Although listed in business records as a Universal co-owner, she denied it. “I have nothing to do with this,” Geller said.

Thomas’ fiancée, Cindy Heron, 21, said he was popular and successful. “All his customers loved him,” she said.

Universal shut its doors June 22 and liquidated its assets.

The New York Times does mention:

Ms. Geller got nearly $4 million when the couple divorced in 2007, and when Mr. Oshry died in 2008, there was a $5 million life-insurance policy benefiting her four daughters, said Alex Potruch, Mr. Oshry’s lawyer. She also kept some proceeds from the sale of Mr. Oshry’s $1.8 million house in Hewlett Harbor.

*Update: The Israeli embassy in London issued a brief statement today, Tuesday, saying that it “wishes to disassociate itself from next Sunday’s event, and from any attempts to link Israel to the EDL.”

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Tea Party teaming up with English fascists

The Observer reports:

The English Defence League, a far-right grouping aimed at combating the “Islamification” of British cities, has developed strong links with the American Tea Party movement.

An Observer investigation has established that the EDL has made contact with anti-jihad groups within the Tea Party organisation and has invited a senior US rabbi and Tea Party activist to London this month. Rabbi Nachum Shifren, a regular speaker at Tea Party conventions, will speak about Sharia law and also discuss funding issues.

The league has also developed links with Pamela Geller, who was influential in the protests against plans to build an Islamic cultural centre near Ground Zero. Geller, darling of the Tea Party’s growing anti-Islamic wing, is advocating an alliance with the EDL. The executive director of the Stop Islamisation of America organisation, she recently met EDL leaders in New York and has defended the group’s actions, despite a recent violent march in Bradford.

Geller, who denies being anti-Muslim, said in one of her blogs: “I share the EDL’s goals… We need to encourage rational, reasonable groups that oppose the Islamisation of the west.”

Devin Burghart, vice-president of the Kansas-based Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights, said: “Geller is acting as the bridge between the EDL and the Tea Party. She plays an important role in bringing Islamophobia into the Tea Party. Her stature has increased substantially inside the Tea Party ranks after the Ground Zero mosque controversy. She has gained a lot of credibility with that stuff.”

Details of the EDL’s broadening aspirations came as about 1,000 supporters yesterday gathered to demonstrate in Leicester, which has a significant Muslim population. Home secretary Theresa May banned marches in the city last week but the EDL said its protest would proceed, raising fears of violence. Parts of Leicester were cordoned off to separate a counter-protest from Unite Against Fascism. Officers from 13 forces were on hand to maintain order.

At the end of August, EDL members converged on Bradford (which has a large British Muslim population) for a demonstration they promoted as “The Big One”.

This is their promotional video and beneath it is a video of the actual demonstration. In an apparent effort to fend off accusations that the EDL is a band of fascist, racist thugs, they have adopted as one of their rally symbols the Israeli flag (see 1 min 30 seconds into the second video) — even while they use the Nazi salute.

EDL rally in Bolton, March, 2010:

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The advance of the anti-Muslim movement across America


(Glenn Beck interviews Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy.)

Shariah: The Threat to America, a report released by the Center for Security Policy in Washington DC on Wednesday, is an attempt to provide a veneer of seriousness in support of the hysterical ravings of people like Pamela Geller.

The fact that Washington’s foreign policy establishment won’t take the report seriously is beside the point since Islamophobia needs neither the consent nor the interest of the establishment or the mainstream media in order to continue its advance across America.

The fact that 52% of Republicans believe that President Obama supports the imposition of shariah is sufficient evidence that a new McCarthyism has already gained a firm grip on this country while opposition to this movement has barely begun to solidify.

Under a heading, “The Enemy Within,” the new manifesto for Islamophobes warns: “a massive demographic shift has brought adherents to shariah — a doctrine that, by definition, opposes all others — deep into the non-Islamic world. [p.127]”

Although the report describes shariah as “the crucial fault line of Islam’s internecine struggle,” with moderates on one side and Islamists on the other, the authors decline to express any opinion about which side of this “fault line” most American Muslims reside. Indeed, the focus on shariah merely seems to be a ploy through which Islam as a whole can be attacked by those who profess no hatred for Muslims.

At the very same time, shariah is likened to a disease — a disease spread by Muslims.

The growth of Muslim populations in the West augurs the inexorable spread of shariah into Western societies — less by violence than by dint of natural procreation, unchecked immigration, and the incessant demands of an aggressive minority that refuses to assimilate. Logic should tell us, then, that the growth of shariah in the West threatens Western-style liberty: threatens freedom of expression, freedom of conscience and upends religious and sexual equality. [p.130]

For those willing to shun evil, a path to redemption is laid out: “… every effort should be made to identify and empower Muslims who are willing publicly to denounce shariah…”

But there’s also a call for a Muslims-keep-out sign at the border: “Immigration of those who adhere to shariah must be precluded, as was previously done with adherents to the seditious ideology of communism.”

Is it possible that America could succumb to the folly that the Islamophobes are demanding?

Well, it’s worth considering the fact that two decades after the end of the Cold War and more than fifty years after the passing of McCarthyism, the US Immigration and Naturalization Service still scrutinizes prospective citizens to see if any communists are trying to sneak into this country.

In fact, Sharia presents about the same threat to America as that posed by the Bible. Had America’s founders stuck to the principle “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s,” it seems unlikely that the colonies would ever have sought independence. It wasn’t Christ who objected to taxation without representation.

Thomas Jefferson rightly believed:

…that our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions any more than our opinions in physics or geometry, that therefore the proscribing any citizen as unworthy the public confidence, by laying upon him an incapacity of being called to offices of trust and emolument, unless he profess or renounce this or that religious opinion, is depriving him injuriously of those privileges and advantages, to which, in common with his fellow citizens, he has a natural right…

Ironically, the Islamophobes manifesto that Frank Gaffney is now promoting, cites the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom (in which the passage above appears), even while doing exactly what Jefferson condemned: proscribing American citizens as unworthy of public confidence unless they denounce their religion.

Maybe these fear- and hate-mongers should pay more attention to the principles upon which America was founded and worry less about Islam.

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What really shapes Muslim perceptions of America

As American politicians, administration officials, military leaders and commentators from across the political spectrum denounced a plan to burn Qurans in Florida, preeminent among the reasons given for this condemnation was that such an act would cast the United States in a very unfavorable light and expose American soldiers to greater danger — that it would lend strength to those radical voices who insist that America is hostile to Islam.

The US has spent most of the last decade at war in Muslim countries, as a result of which hundreds of thousands have died and millions been forced to abandon their homes, but it’s as though these facts alone would not have been sufficient to color Muslim perceptions of America.

Occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, drone attacks in Pakistan, missile strikes in Yemen and Somalia, thinly veiled threats against Iran, Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, secret prisons, renditions and torture — all of these merely raised doubts about US intentions. It was Pastor Terry Jones who had the power to solidify anti-American hostility across the Muslim world.

I guess if you believed that, then it would also somehow make sense that two recent reports about the actions of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have been given so little attention in the media.

The Seattle Times reports:

As part of one of the widest-ranging U.S. war-crime cases to emerge from the conflict in Afghanistan, charging documents released Wednesday allege soldiers took finger bones and other body parts cut from Afghan corpses.

The documents provide new public details of the cases against a dozen soldiers who served a year in southern Afghanistan with a Western Washington-based Stryker infantry brigade.

The most serious charges involve the alleged slayings of three Afghans in January, February and May. Five soldiers, all stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, are accused of involvement in one or more of the murders. They face penalties that range up to life imprisonment or death.

Meanwhile, Robert Fisk, in an article on the brutal practice of ‘honor’ killing refers to terrible stories of gang rape by United States personnel in Abu Ghraib.

You hear this repeatedly in Amman, and a very accurate source of mine in Washington — a man who deals with military personnel — tells me they are true. This, he says, is why Barack Obama changed his mind about releasing the photographs which George W Bush refused to make public. The pictures we saw — of the humiliation of men — were outrageous enough. But the ones we haven’t seen show Americans raping Iraqi women.

Lima Nabil, a journalist who now runs a home for on-the-run girls, sips coffee as the boiling Jordanian sun frowns through the window at us. “In Abu Ghraib,” she says, “women were tortured by the Americans much more than the men. One woman said she witnessed five girls being raped. Most of the women in the prison were raped — some of them left prison pregnant. Families killed some of these women — because of the shame.”

Obama’s refrain has been that we need to look forward, not back — that it’s time to turn the page — but the past lingers. Turning away usually simply means that we are choosing to ignore the ways in which the past is still present.

In an interview with Paul Jay from the RealNews Network, David Gardner, foreign affairs editor at the Financial Times talks about the UK’s ongoing investigation into the war in Iraq and some of the ways history may be repeating itself as the West confronts Iran.

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Scapegoating-psychology and rising xenophobia in America

Peter Beinart compares the mood in America with the hysteria that provoked the Palmer Raids in 1919 and the anti-Communist fearmongering of McCarthyism that began in the late 1940s.

Ever since 9/11, according to opinion polls, Republicans have worried more about terrorism than have Democrats. Initially, this fear translated into overwhelming support for military action abroad. But as Republicans (like everyone else) have grown tired and embittered by America’s wars, they have turned their anxiety inward, lured by the same idea that attracted Palmer and the McCarthyites: that America could guarantee its safety on the cheap by ferreting out the real threat, which resides within.

Has, we must fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them here, been turned into, why fight them over there when we can fight them here?

I don’t believe the driving force here is, as Beinart suggests, a desire to guarantee safety on the cheap. Rather, this is about age-old scapegoating-psychology and the political opportunities this crude dynamic opens up.

In a period of economic depression, with high unemployment and a pervasive sense that the nation is heading in the wrong direction, many Americans are experiencing a growing sense of powerlessness. Through scapegoating, they can foster the illusion that they are reclaiming control over our own lives. They can focus their animus on a clearly identifiable enemy — Islam.

In scapegoating, by definition, the enemy must be weaker than those on the attack — which is why even at the height of the financial crisis, popular anger at bankers never became as strong as current Islamophobia. It’s the same as the way a guy who’s treated as a drudge at work then finds his “strength” by abusing his wife.

The more that Muslims can be made to feel like outsiders, the more those who have defined them as other can feel empowered.

Meanwhile, with the emerging visceral sense that American renewal can be delivered by purging this country of its “foreign” elements, a political horizon is opening for conservatives such as Newt Gingrich — a man who has no apparent compunction about harnessing popular power even when delivered from the ugliest source.

Gingrich clearly smells presidential opportunity in rising xenophobia and is channeling this into an attack on President Obama whose “foreignness” derives from his Kenyan ancestry and even the fact that he grew up in Hawaii!

Gingrich claims that Dinesh D’Souza has provided “stunning insight” into Obama, in a Forbes cover story, where the president is characterized as “a Luo tribesman.”

David Frum, a neoconservative and former speech writer for George W Bush, sees Gingrich’s perspective as now providing the foundation for the White Party’s political platform.

With the Forbes story and now the Gingrich endorsement, the argument that Obama is an infiltrating alien, a deceiving foreigner — and not just any kind of alien, but specifically a Third World alien — has been absorbed almost to the very core of the Republican platform for November 2010.

Rush Limbaugh has been claiming for almost 2 years that President Obama is bent upon “redistribution” and “reparations.” Following D’Souza, Gingrich has now stepped up to suggest that this redistribution is motivated by anti-white racial revenge. If Obama wants to expand health coverage, tighten bank regulation, and create government make-work projects it’s not because he shares the same general outlook on the world as Walter Mondale or Ted Kennedy or so many other liberals, living and dead, all of them white and northern European. No, Obama wants to do what he does because he thinks like an African, and not just any kind of African but (in D’Souza’s phrase) “a Luo tribesman.”

It is to vindicate this African tribal dream that Obama wishes to raise the taxes of upper-income taxpayers and redistribute money away from these meritorious individuals. D’Souza contends that Obama is acting to vindicate his father’s supposed dream of overthrowing the global order and ending the global domination of the white race over other peoples.

If only it were true, the anticolonialist in me facetiously says. This global reordering must surely eventually come, but I have my doubts whether Obama will have much if any role in bringing it about.

Much more significant in the current context is the fact that an event which two years ago was seen as a reflection of America’s political maturity — the election of an African-American president — is now serving as a opportunity for America to regress into some of the ugliest recesses of its past.

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