Making hate respectable: demonization of Islam = 1 of the ugliest faces of the U.S. imperial project

[Hannah Bell]

SINCE WHEN is it a sign of "sensitivity" and "tolerance" to oppose the building of a house of worship? When that house of worship is a mosque, and you're a politician seeking mileage out of the hysteria that can be whipped up around 9/11 and the "war on terror."

The crusade in Lower Manhattan is more than the ravings of racists. It represents the crudest face of the ideological offensive to justify U.S. wars and occupations in the Middle East and beyond, as well as stepped-up repression at home...

Anti-mosque crusades in other cities and towns have also gained traction, according to the New York Times...There have been other outbursts of anti-Muslim hate--including Glenn Beck's call for a "Militia Day" to protest Muslim Family Day at the Six Flags amusement park in Chicago on September 12, and South Carolina state Sen. Jake Knotts' description of his opponent for the Republican nomination for governor, state Rep. Nikki Haley, as a "raghead" (Haley is actually a Methodist who was born in India and converted from Sikhism)...

THESE DIFFERENT expressions of anti-Muslim bigotry have a common source--and it isn't simply the racist pandering that is the stock and trade of right-wing political leaders like Palin, Gingrich and Beck. The demonization of Islam is the ideological face of the U.S. drive to control the flow of oil from the Middle East and to project its military and political influence around the world.
From the beginning, the U.S. "war on terror" has been framed as a war to defend "Western values" from barbarism, medieval cruelty and irrationality...

http://socialistworker.org/2010/08/11/making-hate-respectable

[dkf]

1. Isn't distrust of Muslims best illustrated by the fear Iran will get the bomb?

Also why the need to secure Pakistan's nukes? It seems to me that those are the strongest anti Islam stances we have. Allowing a mosque is such a small thing. Demonstrating real trust in an Islamic country means being at peace with their possession of nukes.

[jobycom]

2. Another group in the way of our resource grab, another group we can villify.

Native Americans went from symbols of freedom and virtue to "savages" when we wanted their land. Africans became slaves, then when they were freed, they became barely human. The Japanese, the Germans, the Russians, Muslims... Stand in the way of American dollars, and they will dehumanize you then wipe you out.

Ask Jews what the result of this type of demonization is. 2000 years of persecution, massacre, and ritual murder over a myth that may not have even happened, culminating in one of the worst human atrocities in world history. That seems to be the pattern we're following again, only with our nuclear arsenal, the Holocaust might not take 2000 years this time.

[grantcart]

3. The common source is ignorance and a lack of confidence in their own belief system

The rubric that it is to "control the flow of oil" lost its sting when the open and fair bidding of the Iraqi oil contracts did not go to US Oil companies but to Russian and French companies, ironically from countries that opposed the Iraqi invasion.