Category Archives: Islamophobia

NEWS: British Muslims and people of color victimized by anti-terrorism measures

Only 1 in 400 anti-terror stop and searches leads to arrest
By Vikram Dodd, The Guardian, October 31, 2007

Only one in every 400 stop and searches carried out under sweeping anti-terrorism laws leads to an arrest, official figures released yesterday reveal, triggering fresh pressure on the government and police over the controversial tactic.

Official government figures covering 2005/6, the first since the July 7 2005 bombings on London, show a big increase in the use of the power, with Asian people bearing the brunt. One force, City of London, carried out 6,846 stops of pedestrians and vehicles without finding enough evidence to justify a single arrest.

Stops under the Terrorism Act 2000 rely more on an officer’s discretion than other powers to search, which require reasonable suspicion. The number of stops under terrorism laws in 2005/6 showed a 34% rise on the previous year to 44,543. Asians faced an increase of 84%, black people an increase of 51%, searches of “other” ethnic groups rose 36% and white people faced a 24% increase.

The biggest increases were in London, with the Metropolitan police carrying out more than half of all terrorism stop and searches and the City of London force 15%.

Experts believe anti-terrorism stop and searches have not led to a single person being caught who was later convicted of a terrorist offence. [complete article]

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OPINION: Why the U.S. government is losing its war on Islam

Anti-terrorism on trial
By David Cole, Washington Post, October 24, 2007

The government’s failure in the Holy Land case suggests that the administrative processes for designating groups as terrorist organizations are flawed. The president has asserted the power to designate any organization or individual he chooses, here or abroad, without formal charges, a trial or hearing of any kind; without a statement of reasons; and on the basis of secret evidence. While full-scale criminal protections are not necessary, surely groups should be afforded a meaningful opportunity to defend themselves before they are shut down.

We’ve seen this kind of regime before. In the McCarthy era, the government, working behind closed doors, created lists of “subversive organizations” and then held individuals responsible for any association with such groups, often using secret evidence to support its charges. Such actions invited abuse, harmed innocents and infringed on the very rights the government claimed to be protecting. As the Supreme Court said in a 1967 decision belatedly declaring unconstitutional the “guilt by association” tactics of the McCarthy period: “It would indeed be ironic if, in the name of national defense, we would sanction the subversion of one of those liberties — the freedom of association — which makes the defense of the Nation worthwhile.” The administration seems to have forgotten that lesson; American juries, thankfully, still remember. [complete article]

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OPINION & EDITOR’S COMMENT: In defense of hate

Defending Islamofascism
By Christopher Hitchens, Slate, October 22, 2007

The attempt by David Horowitz and his allies to launch “Islamofascism Awareness Week” on American campuses has been met with a variety of responses. One of these is a challenge to the validity of the term itself. It’s quite the done thing, in liberal academic circles, to sneer at any comparison between fascist and jihadist ideology. People like Tony Judt write to me to say, in effect, that it’s ahistorical and simplistic to do so. And in some media circles, another kind of reluctance applies: Alan Colmes thinks that one shouldn’t use the word Islamic even to designate jihad, because to do so is to risk incriminating an entire religion. He and others don’t want to tag Islam even in its most extreme form with a word as hideous as fascism. Finally, I have seen and heard it argued that the term is unfair or prejudiced because it isn’t applied to any other religion. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The word “Islamofascism,” is not a conceptual tool of discrimination. It does not circumscribe a phenomenon and thereby shine light upon and bring clarity to our understanding of the world. Hitchens implicity admits as much by focusing all his attention on what he sees as the suitability of the second half of the formulation — fascism — and nothing on how “Islamo” fits. Google, on the other hand, makes it perfectly clear how the prefix “Islamo” fits — almost exclusively as a lead in to fascism/ist. By this self-fulfilling coupling, the term Islamofascism displays itself as a purely political tool used to twist perceptions and bolster support for reckless policies.

When Hitchens speaks up in defense of the word Islamofascism, he should recognize that the use of this term has nothing to do with semantics and everything to do with the promotion of fear and hatred.

During my current trip to the UK, I met a young family from Syria. After their recent arrival and within a few hours of entering the country, a British child exclaimed in their direction, “I hate terrorists.” The object of this child’s hatred was the meekest looking couple cradling a bonneted six-month old baby. They had rudely been informed what it means to be visibly Muslim in a nation that has loudly and repeatedly been warned about the Islamofascist threat. Christopher Hitchens, Tony Blair, David Horowitz, Norman Podhoretz, and George Bush — these are among the prominent voices that have been watering the seeds of fear, suspicion and hatred inside those who see, in the Muslims they encounter, the face of terrorism.

“Islamofascism” is Islamophobia. It is the anti-Semiticism of our era.

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NEWS & EDITOR’S COMMENT: Another defeat in the war on Islam

U.S. prosecution of Muslim group ends in mistrial
By Leslie Eaton, New York Times, October 23, 2007

A federal judge declared a mistrial on Monday in what was widely seen as the government’s flagship terrorism-financing case after prosecutors failed to persuade a jury to convict five leaders of a Muslim charity on any charges, or even to reach a verdict on many of the 197 counts.

The case, involving the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development and five of its backers, is the government’s largest and most complex legal effort to shut down what it contends is American financing for terrorist organizations in the Middle East.

President Bush announced he was freezing the charity’s assets in December 2001, saying that the radical Islamic group Hamas had “obtained much of the money it pays for murder abroad right here in the United States.”

But at the trial, the government did not accuse the foundation, which was based in a Dallas suburb, of paying directly for suicide bombings. Instead, the prosecution said, the foundation supported terrorism by sending more than $12 million to charitable groups, known as zakat committees, which build hospitals and feed the poor. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — This is a vindication for the principle that democracy depends on the separation of powers. Those in the executive branch of government who obviously feel more comfortable with a totalitarian concentration of power will however be disappointed that most of the jury reached the “wrong” verdict and that in doing so they may have been influenced by a former American consul general in Jerusalem. That the defendents would regard this as having been “an Israeli trial tried on American soil,” is not surprising, yet when a jury member says of the trial, “it seems political to me,” noting that the prosecution’s key witness was paid by the Israeli government to testify, it seems reasonable to ask, who is our government working for? And when what had been the largest Muslim charity in the United States gets put on trial there seems little reason to wonder why so many Muslims, and others, see the war on terrorism as a war on Islam.

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OPINION: The invention of a global threat

Stalin, Mao and … Ahmadinejad?
By Fareed Zakaria, Newsweek, October 20, 2007

At a meeting with reporters last week, President Bush said that “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon.” These were not the barbs of some neoconservative crank or sidelined politician looking for publicity. This was the president of the United States, invoking the specter of World War III if Iran gained even the knowledge needed to make a nuclear weapon.

The American discussion about Iran has lost all connection to reality. Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative ideologist whom Bush has consulted on this topic, has written that Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is “like Hitler … a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism.” For this staggering proposition Podhoretz provides not a scintilla of evidence.

Here is the reality. Iran has an economy the size of Finland’s and an annual defense budget of around $4.8 billion. It has not invaded a country since the late 18th century. The United States has a GDP that is 68 times larger and defense expenditures that are 110 times greater. Israel and every Arab country (except Syria and Iraq) are quietly or actively allied against Iran. And yet we are to believe that Tehran is about to overturn the international system and replace it with an Islamo-fascist order? What planet are we on? [complete article]

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NEWS: Fox helps boost Islamophobia

FOX to air controversial documentary on Islam
Fox News, October 18, 2007

A controversial film that PBS axed from its documentary series about the post-Sept. 11 world will be broadcast for the first time nationwide this week by the FOX News Channel.

The documentary, originally titled “Islam vs. Islamists,” was produced by ABG Films with $675,000 in public funds from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It was originally slated to run earlier this year as part of PBS’ “America at a Crossroads” series.

The film follows moderate Muslims who have challenged the “Islamists” who espouse a more radical view of their religion. The film shows the Islamists advocating, among other things, the imposition of Sharia law on Muslims in the West, the stoning of women who commit adultery, and even violence and terrorism. [complete article]

Editor’s Comment — The “America at a Crossroads” series included an episode devoted to Richard Perle – in fact a devotional representation of Perle presented by Perle.

After having paid homage to the neocons in this way, perhaps PBS couldn’t justify capping this with a boost for Islamophobia. Naturally, Fox is only too eager to step into that role.

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