Islamophobia Watch

President Bush in recent days has recast the global war on terror into a "war against Islamic fascism". Fascism, in fact, seems to be the new buzz word for Republicans in an election season dominated by an unpopular war in Iraq.

Bush used the term earlier this month in talking about the arrest of suspected terrorists in Britain, and spoke of "Islamic fascists" in a later speech in Green Bay, Wis. Spokesman Tony Snow has used variations on the phrase at White House press briefings. Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., in a tough re-election fight, drew parallels on Monday between World War II and the current war against ‘‘Islamic fascism,'' saying they both require fighting a common foe in multiple countries. It's a phrase Santorum has been using for months. And Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday took it a step further in a speech to an American Legion convention in Salt Lake City, accusing critics of the administration's Iraq and anti-terrorism policies of trying to appease "a new type of fascism".

The White House on Wednesday announced Bush would elaborate on this theme in a series of speeches beginning Thursday at the American Legion convention in Salt Lake City and running through his address to the U.N. General Assembly on Sept. 19. "The key is that all of this violence and all of the threats are part of one single ideological struggle, a struggle between the forces of freedom and moderation, and the forces of tyranny and extremism", White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters traveling with Bush aboard Air Force One.

Conservative commentators have long talked about "Islamo-fascism", and Bush's phrase was a slightly toned-down variation on that theme.

Charles Black, a longtime GOP consultant with close ties to both the first Bush administration and the current White House, said branding Islamic extremists as fascists is apt. "It helps dramatize what we're up against. They are not just some ragtag terrorists. They are people with a plan to take over the world and eliminate everybody except them", Black said.

Mohave Daily News, 30 August 2006

For Bush's speech to the American Legion convention, see here

See also Eric Margolis's article 'The big lie about "Islamic fascism"'. He writes:

"The Muslim World is replete with brutal dictatorships, feudal monarchies, and corrupt military-run states, but none of these regimes, however deplorable, fits the standard definition of fascism. Most, in fact, are America's allies. Nor do underground Islamic militant groups ('terrorists' in western terminology). They are either focused on liberating land from foreign occupation, overthrowing 'un-Islamic' regimes, driving western influence from their region, or imposing theocracy based on early Islamic democracy. Claims by fevered neoconservatives that Muslim radicals plan to somehow impose a worldwide Islamic caliphate are lurid fantasies worthy of Dr. Fu Manchu and yet another example of the big lie technique that worked so well over Iraq."

BLINK website, 30 August 2006

Merseyside Police are hunting two men who attacked a pensioner with his own walking stick, in what they believe was a racist attack. The 71-year-old Asian man, who is registered blind, had just left the Shahjalal Mosque on Borough Road, Birkenhead, when his attackers struck. He was punched in the face and beaten unconscious by two white men who had stepped out from a bus stop.

BBC News, 30 August 2006

"I said in this blog before that one of the three fronts in this war against Islamism is the coming civil war in Europe. The socialist European leadership is content to let the infiltration, intimidation and disinformation of the Islamist slowly bring European civilization to its knees and join the happy family of the Islamic nations. But the European public will one day, some day, respond to the Islamist threat – and civil war in the streets and villages of Europe will result."

The Gathering Storm, 31 August 2006

Western Union, a global money transfer agency, has delayed or blocked thousands of cash deliveries by American Muslims on suspicion of terrorist connections simply because senders or recipients have names like Mohammed or Ahmed, drawing rebuke from the community as a yet another form of identity harassment.

Islam Online, 30 August 2006

In a letter to the Times, Lord Baker of Dorking has written: "The Government, in its first flush of multiculturalism, allowed new exclusive faith schools to be established and funded by the state.... There are 100 Muslim schools waiting to apply. Their entrance criteria are explicit: the purpose is to create a total Muslim personality, and the required familiarity with the Koran means that non-Muslims would not be acceptable."

Oddly enough, when he was education secretary under Thatcher in the late 1980s, I can't remember Baker proposing to withdraw support from the thousands of Church of England schools that receive state funding.

A letter in today's Times endorses and expands on Baker's argument: "Lord Baker wrote of the 100 Muslim schools waiting to apply for exclusivity (non-Muslims would not be acceptable): 'The entrance criteria are explicit: the purpose is to create a total Muslim personality.' A 'total Muslim personality' implies to me one who demands Sharia as the law; the full mechanistic rituals of prayer; submissive females in the garb of Asia and the Middle East; learning the Koran in its original Arabic and conditioned to regard the ways of the West as alien."

Another letter in the same issue by Brian Gordon, a Tory councillor from Barnet, warns: "The concerns Lord Baker expresses about Muslim schools should not be allowed to damage the position for other faiths, whose schools have been tried and tested for many decades. In particular, Catholic and Jewish schools – 'exclusive' as they certainly are – have produced generations of balanced, well-educated students adhering proudly to their religious heritage while developing into upright, integrated members of British society."

"Americans are at last waking up to the threat posed by British-born Islamists.... The fact that Americans are worried is gratifying. This column was among the first to warn about the radicalization of the British Muslim community. But there is a risk that, having ignored the danger hitherto, Americans may now overreact by penalizing all Britons, not just the minority who really do threaten security.

"It is true that opinion polls show that a significant proportion of British Muslims have at least some sympathy for jihadist extremism, and that even their leaders are unwise or unscrupulous enough to use the threat of terrorism to put pressure on Tony Blair to abandon his support for America and Israel. It is also true, however, that the overwhelming majority of non-Muslim Britons are just as hostile to Islamist terrorism as Americans.

"Even more significantly, the British – like the Americans – are now much more concerned about Islam than was the case five years ago. They no longer believe the assurances of 'moderate' Muslim leaders or their non-Muslim apologists that Islam is a religion of peace. People are much better informed and understand that there is a real problem about Islamic theology, which is constantly used to justify jihad against America, Britain and Israel, while suicide 'martyrs' are glorified.

"About half of all Britons now see Islam as such, not merely its most extreme versions, as a potential threat to their way of life – not before time. It is not only the war on terror that has to be won; there is a culture war, too. This involves resisting the encroachments of aggressive multiculturalism, which acts as a Trojan horse for Muslim demands to live under Shariah law or to censor legitimate criticism or comment."

Daniel Johnson in the New York Sun, 31 August 2006

The country's first Muslim Miss England has accused Tony Blair of fuelling hostility towards Islam in the wake of the London bombings. Hammasa Kohistani, 19, said the attacks of July 7 last year had in some ways brought communities together, as people from many different backgrounds were killed. But statements from the Government in the year since the bombings had created "negative stereotypes" of Muslims, she said.

Press Association, 31 August 2006

Britain's leading Muslim organisation is not doing enough to root out anti-Western extremism, eight out of ten people believe. A new opinion poll day suggests an overwhelming majority think the Muslim Council of Britain should do more to tackle dangerous radicalism in young Muslims. The survey, carried out for PR Week magazine, found 78 per cent of people overall, rising to nearly 90 per cent of over-55s, strongly agreed the organisation was not doing enough.

Daily Mail, 31 August 2006

Considering that most respondents have probably never even heard of the MCB, still less have any knowledge of its activities, it would be difficult to come up with a more stupid opinion poll. All the poll succeeds in registering is a high degree of ignorant anti-Muslim prejudice among the general population.

This hasn't prevented mindless right-wing Islamophobes from seizing on the poll's "findings" to attack the MCB. See, for example, Western Resistance, 31 August 2006

Urmee Khan provides a "check-list of things to avoid if we want to be seen as 'ordinary, decent Muslims', if we want to be seen as above suspicion, as normal citizens."

Guardian, 31 August 2006

"Nearly a third of Muslims in the United States are Black. However, 'Islam-phobia' – negative images and buzz words that produce stereotyping, physical and verbal attacks, and racial profiling of Muslims of color, including Muslims of African descent – has exploded in this country since the events of September 11, 2001.

Charles Hallman reports on a panel discussion on media perceptions and misperceptions on Islam during the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention in Indianapolis earlier this month.

Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder, 30 August 2006