America's growing culture of hate

[indigobusiness]

Commentary

America's growing culture of hate

By Linda S. Heard

July 9, 2004—Islamophobia is alive and well in the US, starting with the authorities down to individuals such as radio talk show host Jay Severin who, according to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR,) claimed that Muslims want to take over America even if it takes centuries, adding "I've got an idea. Let's all kill Muslims." Amazingly Severin is still in his job, although he has been forced to apologize on air.

snip

But such ignorance and hatred isn't confined to radio hosts. CAIR campaigned to have US General William G. Boykin, the undersecretary for Defense on Intelligence, removed from office last year, after he referred to Islam as an idolatrous, sacrilegious religion against which "we are waging a holy war." While discussing his efforts to capture a Muslim Somali warlord, Boykin said, "I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol."

CAIR earlier fought against George W. Bush's nomination of "pro-Israel commentator Daniel Pipes—who many American Muslims regard as the nation's leading Islamophobe—to join the board of the United States Institute of Peace, a federal institution created by Congress."

snip

Pipes has also been quoted as saying: "Palestinians are miserable people . . . and they deserve to be," while his website, "Campus Watch," which kept dossiers on professors thought to be critical of Israel, has attracted controversy.

snip

When it comes to Pipes, he is so bathed in discrimination, bias and paranoia that he doesn't merit a response.

But it isn't only influential individuals such as these who have an ax to grind against Muslims. In New Jersey and Texas, mosques have been targeted by vandals, who dumped dead fish outside the entrance to one, and liquor bottles inside an Islamic Educational Center. Inside a Muslim community center in Florida, was written "Kill all Muslims" while in Missouri, a Nazi swastika and "die" were painted on an extension to the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis.


snip

Whoever said: "Fear plus ignorance equals evil" was right on the mark. It's ignorance, more than anything else, which must be combated if tolerance and respect for other faiths can ever reign on our planet.
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http://onlinejournal.com/Commentary/070904Heard/070904heard.html

[HysteryDiagnosis]

1. Ahhhh tolerance.

>>July 9, 2004—Islamophobia is alive and well in the US, starting with the authorities down to individuals such as radio talk show host Jay Severin who, according to the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR,) claimed that Muslims want to take over America even if it takes centuries, adding "I've got an idea. Let's all kill Muslims." Amazingly Severin is still in his job, although he has been forced to apologize on air.<<

Makes other hosts comments pale in comparison. It is an excercise in bigotry, hatred, and intolerance. Just what we need to combat the growth of terrorism... not to mention a few more hundred thousand tons of tnt dropped hither and yon.. and don't forget the DU.

[delhurgo]

2. I like Severin and think he's right about the 'muslims', even if he

does go a lil overboard - just for shock value tho. But he's correct about fundamentalist Islamists, which are a large portion of all muslims. They do wanna take over the world... convert everyone to islam. They are a threat to civil liberties especially in Europe, the Europeans know this. They are the polar opposite of secular liberalism, worse than Christian fundamentalists.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. Point taken

I like Severin and think he's right about the 'muslims', even if he<<

Point taken... valid.

[ScrewyRabbit]

7. Wha...? Where are you guys from?

Radical islam doesn't want to take over the world. They object to Western foreign policy in the Middle East. Read some history.

[indigobusiness]

8. Thanks...I rolled my eyes and they got stuck

for awhile there.

[JSJ]

17. bullcrap- anti-islam bullcrap- all the way- no restraint whatsoever n/t

[indigobusiness]

19. You have a way with words...

I admire your directness.

If people want to read about something they should truly be concerned about, try this:

snip

In a democracy, the citizens have individual rights, but the citizens in their entirety have a political impact only from a quantitative point of view -- one follows the decisions of the majority. For Ur-Fascism, however, individuals as individuals have no rights, and the People is conceived as a quality, a monolithic entity expressing the Common Will. Since no large quantity of human beings can have a common will, the Leader pretends to be their interpreter. Having lost their power of delegation, citizens do not act; they are only called on to play the role of the People. Thus the People is only a theatrical fiction. There is in our future a TV or Internet populism, in which the emotional response of a selected group of citizens can be presented and accepted as the Voice of the People.

Because of its qualitative populism, Ur-Fascism must be against "rotten" parliamentary governments. Wherever a politician casts doubt on the legitimacy of a parliament because it no longer represents the Voice of the People, we can smell Ur-Fascism.

14. Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.

Newspeak was invented by Orwell, in Nineteen Eighty-Four, as the official language of what he called Ingsoc, English Socialism. But elements of Ur-Fascism are common to different forms of dictatorship. All the Nazi or Fascist schoolbooks made use of an impoverished vocabulary, and an elementary syntax, in order to limit the instruments for complex and critical reasoning. But we must be ready to identify other kinds of Newspeak, even if they take the apparently innocent form of a popular talk show.

* * *

Ur-Fascism is still around us, sometimes in plainclothes. It would be so much easier for us if there appeared on the world scene somebody saying, "I want to reopen Auschwitz, I want the Blackshirts to parade again in the Italian squares." Life is not that simple. Ur-Fascism can come back under the most innocent of disguises. Our duty is to uncover it and to point our finger at any of its new instances — every day, in every part of the world. Franklin Roosevelt's words of November 4, 1938, are worth recalling: "If American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, fascism will grow in strength in our land." Freedom and liberation are an unending task.


http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html

[delhurgo]

4. The fear I have now is that Islamists/muslims take over in Iraq

and turn that country into a religious theocracy where the people wouldn't have any civil liberties or rights. I also fear that in Europe. If that makes me a bigot, so be it - even tho it has nothin to do with race. Until they can learn to stop trying to use governments to force their religious beliefs on everybody, especially women, thats how I'm gonna feel.

[ixion]

12. oh, you mean like the theocracy BushCo is trying to create in the US

I don't understand how people can be so appalled by one form of fanaticism and so tolerant of another one RIGHT IN THEIR FACE!

Fanaticism is bad, in ANY form, not just Islam.

[myopic4141]

18. What fanatics do not see.

The problem with fanatics is that they do not see that they are fanatics. So righteous in their cause, they also do not see their own lack of faith in the core tenets of their own belief. Fanatics cannot see the hatred that resides within them. Hatred directed outward; but, derived from self loathing due to the lack of faith deep within them. A downward spiral of ever greater intensity as fanaticism leads to ever greater and greater misdeeds and malfeasance. Each easier to justify than the last. Stuck in a never ending loop of self destruction and destruction of all that surrounds them while totally oblivious to the perceptions of those viewing from without. Fear grows extending the paranoid perceptions towards others which leads to epic levels secrecy through the illusion that they are being misunderstood for they believe no one on the outside can understand their cause. Self delusion feeds on self delusion until the fanatic is no more. All that remains once the fanatic has departed is the devastation that has been wrought along the way. Only time will tell if paradise can return from the wasteland they have created in their wake. That is of course if it is not too late.

[coda]

15. Yeah, a fear from since the beginning of the Iraq/Iran war 25 years ago.

But Saddam, ya know he was such an incredible threat to world peace so he had to go.

[Tsiyu]

16. Say It, delhurgo

Funny how tolerant some men can be when it wouldn't be the men wearing burquas and cowering in their houses.

Any male who expects me to believe that subjugating women, and effectively shutting them out of their own childrens' sight in public are just evidence of "cultural diversity" smacks of perhaps harboring some James Dobson anti-female stuff in his own pointy little head

[no_hypocrisy]

5. Haven't we before through this before with ostracizing German-Americans

during World War I? Frankfurters were re-named hotdogs or Coney Islands. Hamburgers were called Salsbury steak. Sauerkraut was called Liberty Cabbage. It was forbidden to teach German as a language in public schools. German businesses were boycotted, some destroyed, only because of the ethnicity of the owners.

During World War II, some German-Americans and a great deal of Japanese-Americans were rounded up and put in government camps, even though none had violated any laws.

Why not focus on individuals who actually do something? Why does an ethnic group or religious group deserve to pay for the acts of a few? It must make Americans harbor the illusion that their leaders are doing SOMETHING instead of appearing impotent, which they really are.

[indigobusiness]

6. Exactly...and Severin is a bigoted bozo

that knows nothing of what he speaks.

[akitamata]

9. hear hear, brother/

Severin is more likely a fullblown racist troll.

[ixion]

13. no doubt... I had to reread those posts...

all the while thinking, :wtf: ??

[JayS]

10. It just isn't the American way.

Our leaders have always tried to appear "on the ball" by passing legislation that punishes the many for the actions of the few. It makes for great campaign fodder.



Why not focus on individuals who actually do something? Why does an ethnic group or religious group deserve to pay for the acts of a few? It must make Americans harbor the illusion that their leaders are doing SOMETHING instead of appearing impotent, which they really are.

[dand]

11. Islamic fundamentalists are dangerous,

but no more dangerous than Christian fundamentalists, it is really religions that are dangerous, they are breeding grounds for intolerance and hate.

[indigobusiness]

14. Morons are dangerous

and power in the hands of morons is powerfully dangerous.