"The mostly Saudi suicide team that
attacked New York and Washington on 9/11 made clear they were doing so
for two primary reasons: 1. to punish the US for supporting Israel’s
repression of the Palestinians; 2. to protest what they called US
"occupation" of Saudi Arabia and domination of the Mideast.
Their bloody attack was a political act."
""Muslims under our mattresses" have replaced "Reds
under our beds" of the 1950’s."
New York Mosque: Bigotry Rears Its Head
by Eric Margolis
At a time when the US is mired in two lost wars, running a
$1.4 trillion deficit, and trapped in economic stagnation, a bitter but
trivial public controversy over a Muslim social center in downtown New
York seems absurd.
But that’s what we now have, and it’s an ugly harbinger of the oncoming
wave of religious bigotry and xenophobia that will mark this fall’s
elections.
We applaud two courageous men, President Barack Obama and New York City
mayor Michael Bloomberg, for defending the Muslim center even at
considerable political risk. As the president noted, choosing the
downtown site may not have been wise, but it was the absolute right of
its proponents, a right which we as Americans must defend at all costs.
Republicans, neocons and assorted racists are having a field day
promoting hatred of Islam. They see it as a golden opportunity to revive
charges that the president is a closet Muslim. Newt Gingrich recently
kicked off his campaign for the presidency by issuing a disgusting
jeremiad about the supposed dangers of Islam to the nation.
Now, the massed myrmidons of the hard right are wailing that the prayer
center – which is actually interfaith – somehow violates the profound
sanctity of the 9/11 "holy ground."
I don’t known what they think about the massage parlors, escort services
and bars that also abut this lower Manhattan "holy
ground."
What we are seeing is an eruption of cultivated anti-Muslim hatred that
has been building up for the past nine years since 9/11. Openly attacking
Muslims has become the last acceptable public prejudice.
Islamophobia has become the mantra of the right, not only in the US, but
across Europe.
I saw the first signs of Islamophobia fifteen years ago when I
interviewed Jean Marie Le Pen, France’s far right, Vichyite leader.
"Muslims are invading Europe," he told me. "They are
spreading crime and disease. We must drive them out."
Today, we witness Islamophobia in normally sensible, levelheaded nations
like Denmark, Holland, Britain, Belgium, France and Switzerland.
Hatred and fear of Muslims has become as much a central creed of the
right’s thinking as was right-wing hatred and fear-mongering about Jews
in 1930’s Europe. Simply replace the word "Muslim" with
"Jews" in today’s anti-Islamic screeds and the evil flavor of
the 1930’s is revived.
A primary reason for this carefully cultivated anti-Muslim hysteria lies
with the Bush administration, which issued to the public a stream of
disinformation and untruths about 9/11.
The mostly Saudi suicide team that attacked New York and Washington on
9/11 made clear they were doing so for two primary reasons: 1. to punish
the US for supporting Israel’s repression of the Palestinians; 2. to
protest what they called US "occupation" of Saudi Arabia and
domination of the Mideast. Their bloody attack was a political
act.
Nine days before 9/11, I wrote in a newspaper article, "America’s
strategic and economic interests in the Muslim world are being threatened
by the agony in Palestine, which inevitably invites terrorist attacks
against US citizens and property."
But the Bush administration, which ardently supported Israel and
garrisoned Saudi Arabia, would not admit this, nor that it had been
caught asleep on guard duty by 9/11.
The White House immediately came up with the fable that Muslim fanatics
had staged the attack because of their hatred for "our way of
life," as Bush claimed, hatred of American culture and, sotto voce,
Christianity.
A Koran belonging to one of the attackers was even found in the burning
debris of the World Trade Center, miraculously intact. So the massacre
became a religious attack. Bush did not misspeak when he proclaimed a
"crusade" to avenge 9/11.
America had been attacked by Islam. Christian fundamentalist groups, some
44% of registered Republican voters, were quick to propagate this canard,
with lurid claims about Muslims seeking to impose a caliphate over the
United States. The Internet teems with such dangerous nonsense. Islam
became America’s new enemy of choice.
"Muslims under our mattresses" have replaced "Reds under
our beds" of the 1950’s.
Few politicians or media have dared tell Americans the truth about the
real cause of 9/11. Instead, we have had a steady outpouring of junk
psychological clap trap about how Islam is a sick religion; how Muslims
are innately violent; and how "Islamofascism" supposedly
menaces America.
The dragon teeth of religious hatred planted by the Bush administration,
and nurtured by the neocons and religious far right, are blooming.
Islam had no more to do with 9/11 than Christianity did with World War
II. The men who staged the attacks were Muslims, and spoke in its idiom,
as most Muslims do, but their inspiration for this awful act was
punishing the US for Palestine, overthrowing Mideast governments,
expropriating resources, and imposing brutal tyrannies on the Muslim
world.
So President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg (my mayor, I am proud to say) did
exactly the right thing by reminding their misled countrymen of our basic
right of religious freedom and tolerance.
www.ericmargolis.com
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