The Name Game Comes Home to Roost: Islamophobe  In 1991-92, in the famed Lutheran Gustavus Adolphus College at St. Peter, Minnesota, a now retired professor, an ex-colleague, a graduate of a famous university, had a bigoted and infuriating statement to make, which may be summed up thus: We cannot give arms to the Bosnian Muslims even for self-defense. They cannot be trusted to maintain the parameters and the perimeter of the conflict. But did it occur to him that he'd leave no stone unturned to retain his right to bear arms for hunting and self-defense. Muslims have been labeled variously from Islamo-Fascists, now, to Islamists and Wahhabis around 2004 and Shi'ites and Fundamentalists earlier in the 1980s. Once they were our Mujahideen allies against Russia in Afghanistan. So, what has been its net impact on the Muslims, on non-Muslims and on the USA as a society? Last, but not the least, how productive or fair is this characterization? Let's take one example of unfair characterization of a people and their subsequent victimization. The Bosnians were highly secularized Muslims. Many of them did not know how Muslims pray or could not recite even the first seven verses of the Quran that every Muslim knows by heart. Yet they were shown no quarter. A failing atheist, socialist government perniciously and craftily used the Muslim label in its bid to hold together an artificial state. So, what was a nationalistic drive was given a Christian mask to justify a heinous crime. What otherwise was a liberation drive for the Bosnians, just as in the case of East Germany, Poland, Estonia, Lithuania and others, was converted into something altogether different: a struggle between Islam and Christendom. As a result, the debate shifted from its real tactical nature to its so-called strategic nature and 300,000 Bosnians perished as Europe and the USA debated over three years to decide the fate of these European Muslims. The insidious Serbian concoction stumped the best US and European minds. The polarization was absolutely one-sided. How secularized must Muslims become in order to be spared, even respected? It appears that being a Muslim is like carrying the smell of blood that refuses to leave the murderer's hands as in Macbeth no matter the washing. Curiously, back around 1492, even Queen Isabella's church-educated counselors used the same argument to pull off the Inquisition. Treaties were abandoned and surrendering innocents, and even those reverting to Christianity, were executed. In fact, when Bosnia genocide happened, people who opposed providing relief to the Muslims dared using the argument that the murder and pillage were necessary just as the Inquisition was. Otherwise, the monstrous Muslims will be all over Europe. Today, according to some analysts, it is the same latent argument that is keeping the highly secular ally, NATO member, Turkey from entering the EU, while ex-Communist countries are being shooed in willy-nilly. Today, the immobilizing fear that is being fanned across all of US via the various media and rightwing groups make a similarly warped argument, "No Muslim in America or anywhere else threatening 'strategic' US and Christian interests." This would appear like a fear mongering conclusion. However, when we see the position of these parties with respect to Iraq even when the President says that it is not a religious war, in regard to Israel and Palestine and how they inevitably and relentlessly berate the Quran and the Prophet Mohammed , then what else is one to surmise? Yet few in the US have spoken out and said, "Stop this nonsense, this hateful speech!" Why has that been possible? Can we be that gullible? Is it likely we think we can make no mistakes? Or that the other party has no redeeming grace? Or is it because we are just ignorant about the facts? It could be that we have no stake in the welfare of the Muslims, but we make no bones about having a stake in their land and the wealth it conceals. It's difficult to believe that our great Republic could have sunk so low. Our labels about the Muslims are tentative because our knowledge and understanding about them are shallow or opportunistic. Our reading of History and the discourse in Political Science regarding Muslims predate the Colonial period. Thus, our policies toward them smack of Colonialism. With the fall of Muslim civilization, there was a benign neglect on these matters. But policies crafted in darkness are anything but benign for the Muslims. Repeatedly attacking political opponents with a storm of accusations is a true and tested technique of the US Religious Right since the Reagan Era. Then the unreal becomes real. Muslims, who have not attacked the West in at least 300 years and who are yet to achieve Industrial Revolution, are being accosted with spurious and specious analysis. This un-religiosity finds validity in the warped mind of certain church elders. Years of unmitigated haranguing of Muslims lead to Bosnia, Chechnya and Iraq, with Iran in the waiting. "Why don't your moderates speak up?" Muslims are asked. Oh, but they do. But is the Media listening? No. While we own the Media, why are our moderates silent with our vaunted moderation in the face of fabrications in our own backyard? Sixteen years later, whenever I think about that illiberal statement made in the most liberal of institutions by perhaps the most dapper senior professor, I am still startled by its level of raw ignorance, the rampant double standard and the willingness to countenance any excess whatsoever against Muslims as an unavoidable evil. Is it then immature or premature to say, "I have had it up to my eyeballs with Islamophobes?" Shafi A. Khaled is a freelance writer. He teaches and does research in Business & Economics. http://www.iviews.com/Articles/articles.asp?ref=IV0803-3543 |
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