The Historical Roots Of Islamophobia

The concept of a ‘‘war on terror’’ pre-dates 9-11 by 22 years. Its seeds were first planted in 1979 at the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism (JCIT) organized by Benjamin Netanyahu (future Israeli Prime Minister). JCIT kicked off a campaign for a ‘‘war on terror’’ against ‘‘international terrorism’’. It featured: pre-emptive attacks on states that are alleged to support ‘‘terrorists;’’ an elaborate intelligence system apparatus; slashed civil liberties, particularly for Palestinians targeted as potential terrorists, including detention without charge, and torture; and propaganda to dehumanize ‘‘terrorists’’ in the eyes of the public.

George H.W. Bush Sr. and George Schultz, Reagan’s Secretary of State enthusiastically endorsed this concept. Bush Sr. gave a speech at JCIT advocating precisely the type of ‘‘war on terror’’ that his son implemented in 2001. But he acknowledged that such a policy would be highly unpopular:

"...I must urge drastic surgery as the only reasonable course – and by that I mean determined action, firmness under the duress of blackmail, and swift and effective retribution. ...The problem for the open society is how to have, build up and preserve this essential tool of defence – which in the long run is indispensable for the protection of ordinary people – and not so outrage the liberal conscience that the legitimate exercise of state power is frustrated." (George H.W. Bush, 1981, pp. 333, 337)


Israel’s ‘‘War on Terror’’

Following the 1979 JCIT, Israel independently implemented these policies. It planned a massive invasion of Lebanon, called ‘‘Peace for Galilee’’ to secure its hold over the Occupied Territories. The pretext incident and the 1982 invasion itself hauntingly foreshadowed the 9-11 ‘‘attacks’’ and the Bush ‘‘war on terror.’’ In both cases, a ‘‘terrorist’’ pretext justified preemptive military conquest and long-term occupation.

In July 1981, Israeli planes bombed Palestinian targets in southern Lebanon, killing hundreds of civilians. In 1982, it initiated over 2,600 violations of Lebanese airspace and waters, attempting unsuccessfully to spark a reaction by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) that could serve as a pretext for an Israeli invasion. On June 3, 1982, Abu Nidal’s terrorist group (which since has been exposed as a Mossad-infiltrated front, and which had been battling the PLO for years) tried to assassinate Israeli Ambassador Shlomo Argov in London. Israel ‘‘retaliated’’ by heavily bombing Lebanon, even though the Abu Nidal group did not operate there. The PLO responded by shelling West Bank settlements, finally giving Israel its excuse to launch a full-scale invasion of Lebanon. In West Bank cities, Israel also dissolved the elected city councils, dismissed mayors, arrested city employees, and attempted to impose puppet governments. Israeli troops continued to occupy southern Lebanon for 22 years, until May 24, 2000.

The parallels to the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq are clear. Despite all evidence to the contrary, the Bush administration insisted Iraq posed an imminent threat to the West based on false claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and links to al-Qaeda. Despite massive worldwide protests and the U.N. Security Council refusing to approve an invasion, the U.S. went ahead with a pre-emptive, brutal invasion, overthrowing the Hussein government it had originally installed, and replacing it with puppets. Labeling those who resist U.S. occupation ‘‘terrorist insurgents,’’ it has announced plans (already laid out in RAD) for a semi-permanent occupation.

The Reagan Doctrine: The U.S. Adopts ‘‘International Terrorism’’

Members of Reagan’s administration, particularly George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and George Bush Sr., supported Israel’s invasion of Lebanon. But Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, the Democratic Congress and public opinion did not. Netanyahu recognized that:

"...the key to the elimination of international terror was having the United States lead the battle, and...this American leadership would harness the countries of the free world into line, much as a powerful locomotive pulls the cars of a train. But it was no simple matter to change the minds of American opinion makers on this subject." (Netanyahu, 1995, p. 66)

From his perspective, the problem was that Americans foolishly believed ‘‘that terrorism was the result of political and social oppression, the inescapable conclusion was that terror could not be eliminated without first bringing these conditions to an end’’.

Netanyahu and Moshe Arens, the Israeli Ambassador lobbied hard to win U.S. support both for the Lebanon invasion and for the broader war against ‘‘international terrorism.’’

"...We believed that the American position...could be changed by a vigorous effort to
present the truth to the American public. The United States was hostile to this operation, and the Reagan administration applied various pressures to rein in the assault [on Lebanon], including suspending delivery of fighter planes to the Israeli Air force. Arens did much to reverse the American position, especially through the special relationship he was able to establish with Secretary of State George Shultz and President Ronald Reagan." (Netanyahu, 1995, pp. 66–67)

The campaign succeeded. The second JCIT conference was held in Washington in 1984. George Shultz ‘‘was determined to effect a change in American anti-terror policy from one of passive defense to a more active one, taking the battle against the terrorists to their bases abroad and to the countries supporting them’’. Shultz advocated ‘‘defense through appropriate preventive or pre-emptive actions against terrorist groups before they strike’’.

The result was the Reagan Doctrine, in which the U.S. ‘‘took the lead in mounting an unprecedented war against international terrorism’’ including sanctions against Libya, Syria, and Iran and bombing Libya. Overtly, the Reagan Doctrine mandated attacks on liberation resistance groups like the Sandinistas and the PLO as ‘‘international terrorists.’’ But covertly, the Doctrine called for the U.S. itself to finance and organize ‘‘terrorist’’ attacks. As Noam Chomsky (1991) dryly notes:

"There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism, and on a scale that puts its rivals to shame. ...under the Reagan Doctrine, the U.S. had forged new paths in international terrorism...not only constructing a semi-private international terrorist network but also an array of client and mercenary states – Taiwan, South Korea, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and others – to finance and implement its terrorist operations." (1991, p. 4)

Reagan was glad to collaborate with Islamic radicals to further his interests. In 1979, the same year as the JCIT, the CIA lured the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan, by funding and equipping Islamic mujahideen to overthrow the pro-Soviet Afghani government. Also in 1979, to damage Carter’s re-election campaign, Reagan’s campaign manager, William Casey (later head of the CIA), secretely got Khomeini to hold off releasing the Irani Embassy hostages until after the U.S. presidential elections in 1980. In return, Reagan would approve Israel’s sale of American military equipment to Iran for use in its (U.S. and Israeli supported) war against Iraq. Reagan won by a landslide, in large part because of the scandal of the hostage crisis. The hostages were released ‘‘about twenty minutes after Reagan took the oath of office’’.

In 1995, Netanyahu proposed a series of policies against ‘‘international terrorism’’ many of which have been incorporated into the foreign policy of the U.S. and its allies, particularly since 9-11. These included: diplomatic, military, and economic sanctions on ‘‘terrorist’’ states; pre-emptive attacks on ‘‘terrorist enclaves...precisely as [Israel] does in south Lebanon’’; freezing financial assets of ‘‘terrorist’’ organizations; sharing intelligence with other countries; passing laws to allow increasing surveillance of and action against ‘‘groups which are actively planning terrorist actions’’; pursuing ‘‘terrorists’’ with special anti-terrorism forces; and detaining ‘‘terrorists’’ indefinitely. Israel’s unilateral assault on the West Bank and Southern Lebanon in the name of fighting ‘‘international terrorism’’ became the model for Bush’s ‘‘war on terror.’’

"What happened on Sept. 11 is that the Likud doctrine, previously used only against Palestinians, was picked up by the most powerful nation on Earth and applied on a global scale. Call it the Likudization of the world, the real legacy of Sept. 11. ...It was the guiding philosophy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and may well extend to Iran and Syria." (Klein, 2004)


The ‘‘War on Terror’’: Creating the Islamophobic Myth

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989, the ‘‘communist menace’’ could no longer justify military intervention. The U.S. needed to invent a new ‘‘enemy.’’ President Clinton tried out several options:

"...in place of the International Communist Conspiracy, Washington now tells us, on one day or another, it’s fighting a War Against Drugs, or military or industrial spying, or the proliferation of ‘‘weapons of mass destruction,’’ or organized crime, or on behalf of human rights, or, most particularly, against terrorism. And they dearly want the American public to believe this." (Blum, 2000, p. 16)

‘‘Muslim terrorists’’ are an ideal ‘‘enemy,’’ because they provide an excuse for imperial conquest of the Middle East and Central Asia. As Margaret Thatcher crowed shortly after 9-11, ‘‘Islamism is the new bolshevism’’.

"To initiate a war, there first must be a perceived enemy. That one grand enemy was now claimed to be Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network. ... There are a number of people inside the US intelligence agencies who know this is a false picture." (Marrs, 2004, pp. 14–15)

To lend credibility to the ‘‘Muslim terrorist threat,’’ the CIA and FBI worked with al-Qaeda to carry out the 1993 World Trade Center bombing (Ahmed, 2005, pp. 32–39).*

"The leaders of the radical Islamic network responsible for the [February 26, 1993] bombing...were given financial aid and training by the CIA. Furthermore, at several critical junctures where the conspiracy could have been exposed and its leaders arrested, federal law enforcement either ignored that network or actually provided crucial help to it." (Grigg, 2005)

The CIA and FBI also failed to prevent the bombing, in part, because the Egyptian agent to whom they had paid $2 million would have revealed that they were deeply implicated in funding terrorist campaigns in Bosnia through Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman’s al-Qaeda cell, which had planned the WTC bombing (Ahmed, 2005, pp. 35–39).

The CIA was also deeply implicated in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Washington and the media initially blamed Muslim terrorists, resulting in a wave of hate crimes against Muslims in the U.S. (Council of American-Islamic Relations, 1995). Although the FBI rejected this theory and charged Timothy McVeigh and John Nichols, the White House actively promoted the story that Saddam Hussein was behind both the 1993 and the 1995 bombings. It based this allegation on Laurie Mylroie’s book, Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein’s Unfinished War Against America, published in 2000 by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a neoconservative think tank.

"Mylroie believes that Saddam was not only behind the ’93 Trade Center attack, but also every anti-American terrorist incident of the past decadey. She is, in short, a crackpot... But her neocon friends who went on to run the war in Iraq believed her theories, bringing her on as a consultant at the Pentagon, and they seem to continue to entertain her eccentric belief that Saddam is the fount of the entire shadow war against America." (Bergen, 2003)

Lewis Libby and Paul Wolfowitz not only endorsed her book, but actively fed her false information (Bergen, 2003).

In the lead-up to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, mainstream media again trotted out Mylroie’s allegations of Iraqi terrorist threats.12 Both the 1993 and 1995 bombings were, at least in part, designed to lend verisimilitude to the myth that Islamic terrorists threaten Americans.

This myth was also strengthened by Pentagon-backed, Islamophobic Hollywood films, television, video games, and relentless media reports about Islamic ‘‘terrorists.’’ Especially since 1990, the Pentagon has financially bribed, pressured, and censored movie makers to adapt story lines to support its propaganda. Reviewing over 1,000 Hollywood movies, Jack Shaheen found that:

"Today’s imagemakers regularly link the Islamic faith with male supremacy, holy war, and acts of terror, depicting Arab Muslims as hostile alien intruders, and as lecherous, oily sheikhs, intent on using nuclear weapons. When mosques are displayed onscreen, the camera inevitably cuts to Arabs praying, and then gunning down civilians." (Shaheen, 2001, p. 7)

Especially since the first Gulf War, journalists have been heavily pressured to use only official U.S. sources, to be ‘‘embedded’’ with the U.S. military, and to self-censor their work. Because ‘‘few American correspondents have extensive knowledge of the Arab worldyand few Americans get on-the-scene information from the Arab world,’’ they tend to uncritically quote official sources.

The Instant War

By 2001, the Bush administration and the media had learned to play the 9-11 events as an Islamophobic catastrophic movie. The public, well conditioned to identify the Hollywood good guy vs. villain storyline, swallowed it hook, line, and sinker.

Bush’s ‘‘war on terror’’ rests on the story that Islamic extremists, directed by Osama bin Laden, hijacked planes to fly into the WTC and the Pentagon, that ‘‘America is under attack’’ (the banner headline running on all networks) by al-Qaeda, and that fanatical Muslims continue to constitute the major threat to the security of both Americans and the ‘‘civilized’’ world.

The Bush Cabinet began promoting this official story even before the first plane hit the North tower. ‘‘Before the planes hit the World Trade Center, CIA Director George Tenet warned [Senator David Boren] that he was worried about a possible attack by Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network’’. Almost immediately after the first plane hit the WTC, Dick Cheney told counterterrorism ‘‘tsar’’ Richard Clarke, ‘‘It’s an al-Qaeda attack and they like simultaneous attacks. This may not be over’’. By 9:30 a.m. President Bush delivered a polished speech, surrounded by photogenic, multi-racial school children, announcing ‘‘an apparent terrorist attack’’ and promising to chase down the perpetrators. By 3:30 that afternoon, the CIA claimed to have identified the al-Qaeda operatives. And by prime time that evening, Bush gave a speech announcing punitive retaliatory military strikes against ‘‘the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them’’ and committing ‘‘the United States to a broad, vigorous and potentially long war against terrorism’’.

The next day, Bush’s cabinet argued over how to make the most opportunistic use of the 9-11 pretext (rather than about actually protecting Americans):

"Rumsfeld worried that a coalition built around the goal of taking out al-Qaeda would fall apart once they succeeded in that mission, making it more difficult to continue the war on terrorism elsewhere....[He] raised the question of Iraq. Why shouldn’t we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?...His deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, was committed to a policy that would make Iraq a principal target of the first round in the war on terrorism. ...[Colin] Powell, who opposed striking Iraq at this point, countered that they were focusing on al-Qaeda because the American people were focused on al-Qaeda. ‘‘Any action needs public support. It’s not just what the international coalition supports; it’s what the American people want to support.’’" (Woodward, 2002, pp. 48–49)

Nine days later, in an address to a joint session of Congress, Bush presented his ‘‘war on terror’’ speech outlining the new Bush Doctrine. It launched a global war on ‘‘nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism’’ as well as on ‘‘every terrorist group of global reach’’. Telling the world’s nations, ‘‘either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists,’’ he threatened to treat any country which failed to support this war as ‘‘a hostile regime’’. This ‘‘war on terror,’’ he promised, would be ‘‘a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen.’’

The ‘‘war on terror’’ also would turn the United States and its allies into ‘‘security states.’’ Bush announced ‘‘the creation of y the Office of Homeland Security’’ which would coordinate ‘‘defensive measures against terrorism’’. Three days after September 11, 2001, Attorney General Ashcroft ‘‘proposed the laws that became the USA Patriot Act,’’ an unprecedented attack on civil liberties, privacy, and due process, which was shoved through Congress without any debate and signed into law on October 26, 2001. Within the year, Britain, Canada, and Australia had implemented similar laws (Weeding, 2004). In early 2002, Bush laid out a detailed National Security Strategy which threatened war against Iraq as well as Afghanistan and implemented ‘‘the largest government reorganization since the Truman Administration’’.

From the speed with which the Bush administration fingered al-Qaeda and launched a complex array of innovations (identical to those proposed by in RAD published a year earlier), we can infer that the Bush Doctrine had been planned well in advance of 9-11. An unusually large military buildup surrounding Afghanistan in the week before 9-11 also suggests years of planning for the Afghan war. Operation Swift Sword sent 25,000 British troops to Aman, in the largest armada since the Falklands war. Two U.S. aircraft carriers arrived in the Gulf of Arabia off the coast of Pakistan. In early October 2001, CentCom hosted Operation Bright Star involving 60,000 troops in Egypt.

Islamophobia in Bush’s ‘‘War on Terror’’ Speech

None of this could have garnered public support without the 9-11 pretext and years of careful Islamophobic preparation. Bush’s ‘‘war on terror’’ speech is liberally sprinkled with Islamophobic myths. An Islamophobic hate crime, reminiscent of Hitler’s speeches, the ‘‘war on terror’’ speech was designed to whip up fear and vengeance against Muslims. It is full of lies, distortions, and projections:

* ‘‘Who attacked our country?...al-Qaeda’’: There has been no definitive proof that bin Laden had anything to do with the 9-11 attacks. The U.S. never produced Colin Powell’s promised White Paper of evidence, and Tony Blair’s White Paper ‘‘proof ’’ was widely dismissed as a weak exercise in public relations (Blair, 2001). As Francis Boyle points out:

"[T]here was no real case against al-Qaeda, bin Laden, and the Taliban government of Afghanistan. Such was the conclusion of senior diplomats from friendly nations who attended the so-called briefing [the U.S. gave to NATO members]." (Boyle, 2001)

In fact, as Richard Saunders points out: ‘‘Every time the U.S. has gone to war, pretext incidents have been used as triggers to justify military action...During the Cold War, dozens of covert and overt wars were promoted using specific pretext episodes’'. As early as 1962, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff had developed Operation Northwoods to create a ‘‘legitimate provocation as the basis for U.S. military intervention in Cuba’’. The plan proposed to create an incident, which would demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft had attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner (Justification for U.S. Military Intervention in Cuba, 1962).

In the ensuing months and years, the White House vehemently resisted all attempts to investigate the 9-11 attacks. Under enormous pressure, Bush finally appointed a highly partisan 9/11 Commission in 2003, with an extremely limited mandate, and blocked access to documents or to interviewing key witnesses. The resulting Report is an obvious cover-up. As David Ray Griffin quipped, ‘‘some people may wonderyis there anything in the 9/11 Commission Report that is untrue? But...the big question is, can I find a true sentence in the Report?’’

* ‘‘Enemies of freedom,’’ ‘‘freedom itself is under attack,’’ ‘‘they hate our freedoms’’: Some groups the U.S. labels as ‘‘terrorists’’ actually are freedom fighters, struggling for the liberation of their peoples or countries, for example, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Hamas, and the Irish Republican Army. Others are heavily infiltrated or even financed by the CIA, such as the Abu Naidal Organization and the Abu Sayaff Group. Even if bin Laden were the architect of 9-11, his stated grievances with the U.S. are not with its ‘‘freedoms,’’ but with its leading role in violating the freedoms (and lives) of others.

* ‘‘al-Qaeda... is...imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.’’ It is the U.S., which has imposed its policies on people everywhere, and particularly in the Middle East as part of its relentless defense of ‘‘vital U.S. interests in the region’’. Many Islamist movements have grown up in reaction against more than 80 years of colonial exploitation and brutal political, military, and economic manipulation by first the British, and since World War II, the U.S. ‘‘Rather than a clash of civilizations, there is a tawdry pursuit of oil-based profits at the expense of fundamental human rights’’.

* ‘‘There are thousands of these terrorists in more than 60 countries. They are recruited from their own nations and neighborhoods and brought to camps in places like Afghanistan, where they are trained in the tactics of terror.’’ It is true that Islamist movements, many of which reject violence, have spread throughout the world. However, Bush conveniently fails to acknowledge the U.S.’s role in creating, funding, transporting, training, and arming the Arab-Afghani mujahideen, or CIA’s continuing connections with al-Qaeda.

* ‘‘They want to overthrow existing governments in many Muslim countries...’’ Again, it is far more evident that the U.S. not only seeks to, but has actually overthrown many existing governments. As William Blum notes:

"From 1945 to the end of the century, the United States attempted to overthrow more than 40 foreign governments, and to crush more than 30 popular-nationalist movements struggling against intolerable regimes. In the process, the U.S. caused the end of life for several million people, and condemned many more to a life of agony and despair. (Blum, 2000, p. 2).

* ‘‘They want to drive Israel out of the Middle East. They want to drive Christians and Jews out of vast regions of Asia and Africa.’’ These allegations are designed to outrage both Christian and Jewish Americans. A wide range of Islamist and Arab liberation groups hope to take back control of their countries from imperial-imposed puppets, and eventually to establish a democratic Arab Economic Union similar to the E.U.13 Most Islamist groups – and many Jewish and Christian groups, as well as the United Nations – support the cause of Palestinian people, and oppose the imperialist role Israel continues to play both in the Occupied Territories and worldwide as a U.S. ‘‘strategic asset’’.

In short, Bush’s justifications for launching the ‘‘war on terror’’ are based on groundless lies and appeals to Islamophobic prejudice.

THE BUSH DOCTRINE IS ISLAMOPHOBIC

The Bush Doctrine resembles earlier witch-hunts like the Spanish Inquisition, the Third Reich, and the McCarthy era. In all three, a category of people is labeled as an evil, dangerous enemy in order to mobilize popular support for the elite’s ambitions to power. Institutions are created to isolate, scapegoat, and eliminate the target group. Those institutions also transform the entire society to become more doctrinaire, rigid, and authoritarian. Those who challenge the status quo are punished or killed. Free thought is outlawed. Inequality rises. Arbitrary decree replaces systems of justice.

Islamophobia is usually considered as an attitudinal prejudice, similar to racism or anti-Semitism, as in this definition of Islamophobia:

"Islamophobia refers to the fear and/or hatred of Islam, Muslims or Islamic culture. Islamophobia can be characterized by the belief that all or most Muslims are religious fanatics, have violent tendencies toward non-Muslims, and rejectyequality, tolerance, and democracy. It is viewed as a new form of racism whereby Muslimsyareyconstructed as a race. A set of negative assumptions are made of the entire group to the detriment of members of that group.14

However, Bush’s Islamophobia systematically institutionalizes and actively promotes discriminatory assaults on Muslims and Muslim countries (By contrast, racism and anti-Semitism are at least formally illegal and generally condemned in the media, courts, and schools). The ‘‘war on terror’’ incorporates structures – laws, prisons, intelligence agencies, surveillance infrastructure, military and corporate contracts, bombs, etc. – which target Muslims and Arabs in particular.

Islamophobia is as central to the Bush Doctrine as anti-Semitism was to the Spanish Inquisition or the Third Reich. Both oppressions function to whip-up fear, contempt, and genocidal rage against a whole people. Without this bogeyman, Bush’s ‘‘war on terror’’ would be exposed for what it is – a brutal, greedy grab for world conquest. As Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, recently pointed out, ‘‘There’s a lot of anti-Muslim bigotry. Some of it is based on religious chauvinism from Christians and Jews. Some of it is racisty. [But]...Ultimatelyypublic hostility toward Islam in the United States [and its allies] today is mostly a matter of geopolitics and U.S. nationalism’’.

U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were justified by Islamophobic assertions that their leaders are Muslim fanatics who threaten American security. Portrayed as primitive, anti-feminist, terrorists, people labeled ‘‘Taliban’’ are hunted down like vermin. Those who are not bombed or shot are detained in horrendous conditions. In November 2001, for example, CIA and U.S. Special Forces watched approvingly as 4,500 Afghani men were stuffed into truck containers where they either suffocated or were shot. Afghani and Iraqi people who presume to resist U.S. occupation (or simply to drive too quickly toward U.S. check points) are presumed to be ‘‘terrorists’’ and are summarily killed. The Afghan and Iraqi wars have left both countries devastated. Their people subsist under semipermanent, military occupation, without basic infrastructure or humanitarian aid, while oil rigs and natural gas pipelines are protected.

Dick Cheney defends torture as a legitimate interrogation tool, including specific attacks on Muslims, such as wiping prisoners with menstrual blood, forcing them to eat pork, threatening them with dogs (viewed as unclean by Muslims), and flushing Qurans down toilets (Human Rights Watch, 2005). To bypass Geneva Conventions against mistreating and torturing prisoners, the U.S. calls non-citizen Muslim detainees ‘‘enemy combatants’’ or more recently ‘‘unprivileged belligerents.’’ And under the neologism of ‘‘extraordinary rendition,’’ Muslim citizens are sent off to countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan with which have been contracted to torture them.

Almost 80,000 Muslim men worldwide are being detained without charges ‘‘in secretive American-run jails and interrogation centres similar to the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison’’ under conditions that violate the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions on the Treatment of Prisoners, and U.N. Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners.

Muslims and Arabs living in the West have also been targeted for official discriminatory treatment. After the U.S. Department of Justice passed a regulation allowing indefinite detention on September 20, 2001, nearly 1,200 Arabs and Muslims were secretly arrested and detained without charges. The U.S. National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS) ‘‘call-in’’ program required male visitors from 24 Arab and Muslim countries and North Korea to register with INS offices. Even though no ‘‘terrorists’’ were found, over 13,000 of the 80,000 men who registered were threatened with deportation, and many were ‘‘detained in harsh conditions’’. Overwhelmingly, the airline ‘‘no fly’’ lists are composed of Muslims.

What is a Terrorist?

What is a ‘‘terrorist’’? Surprisingly this question rarely gets asked by mainstream pundits. The definition of ‘‘terrorism’’ is so subjective that even the ‘‘UN Member States still have no agreed-upon definition’’. Most agree, however, that terrorism involves: ‘‘violence threatened or employed; against civilian targets; for political objectives’’. This definition encompasses both grassroots and state terrorism.

However, the U.S. definition of ‘‘terrorism’’ excludes anything done by the U.S. or its allies, but includes any resistance to U.S. assaults. For example, the CIA’s definition of ‘‘terrorism’’ explicitly excludes state actors: ‘‘The term ‘terrorism’ means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience’’. As Chomsky points out: ‘‘The message is clear: no one has the right of self-defense against US terrorist attack. The US is a terrorist state by right. That is unchallengeable doctrine’’.

The U.S. labels as ‘‘terrorist’’ liberation struggles which legitimately fall under Article 51 of the UN Charter: ‘‘the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations’’ (Charter of the United Nations, 1945). Thus Palestinian, Iraqi, and Afghani people resisting Israeli and U.S. invasion are hunted down and killed or detained as ‘‘terrorists’’.

The Bush Doctrine also widens the net of ‘‘terrorists’’ to include any individual or state, which, knowingly or not, is suspected of funding, aiding, or harboring ‘‘terrorists.’’ In the absence of due process and public evidence, this could include virtually any Muslim. Many Muslim men have been detained indefinitely and often tortured without ever being charged, simply for fitting a demographic profile, for having known others labeled as ‘‘terrorists,’’ for refusing to spy for an intelligence agency, for being named by another suspect under torture, or at the whim of an occupying army.

Since 9-11, hate crimes and discrimination against Muslims have dramatically increased, as have the negative impacts of ‘‘anti-terror’’ state actions on Muslims and people of Arab descent (e.g. Brown, 2003; Cassel, 2004; Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, 2004; Hagopian, 2004; The Runnymede Trust, 1997; Zogby, 2005). Like German Jews in the early 1930s,Muslims justifiably fear the rising tide of state-sponsored hatred and restrictions of rights. Palestinians, Afghanis, Bosnians, and Iraqis already are experiencing policies close to ethnic cleansing.

What is a Moderate Muslim?

The Bush administration claims to distinguish between ‘‘moderate’’ Muslims and ‘‘extremist’’ Muslims who are presumed to be ‘‘terrorists.’’ In Bush’s ‘‘war on terror’’ speech, for example, he promised ‘‘no one should be singled out for unfair treatment or unkind words because of their ethnic background or religious faith’’. The implication was that only ‘‘real’’ terrorists need fear reprisals, and that ‘‘moderate’’ Muslims, like other Americans, would simply experience minor ‘‘delays and inconveniences that may accompany tighter security’’. In actuality, the ‘‘inconveniences’’ have meant a witch hunt against Muslims and Arabs stripping them of rights, dignity, freedom, sovereignty, and often life itself.

This theme of distinguishing between ‘‘moderate’’ Muslims and ‘‘terrorists’’ dates back to Netanyahu’s original campaign against ‘‘international terrorism’’:

"Most of the European Muslims, like their co-religionists in the United States and Israel, are law-abiding citizens or residents who would never dream of participating in terrorist activity or in any other illegal act. But a few of them have come under the sway of a perverse and primitive interpretation of the faith, which moves them to fanaticism and violence. And as the Muslim communities in the West continue to grow, a widening fringe of their membership invariably becomes susceptible to infection by the message of militant Islam." (Netanyahu, 1995, pp. 89–90, emphasis added)

Since ‘‘terrorism’’ is a disease, which can invariably infect any Muslim, none of them can be trusted.

The theme of distinguishing between ‘‘moderate’’ and ‘‘terrorist’’ Muslims also pervades the pronouncements of the Bush administration. For example Paul Wolfowitz said in 2002 at the Brookings Institutions Forum, that:

"ywe must do what we can to encourage the moderate Muslim voices. This is a debate about Muslim values that must take place among Muslims. But, it makes a difference when we recognize and encourage those who are defending universal values. And, when we give them moral support against the opposition they encounter, we are indeed helping to strengthen the foundations of peace." (cited in Haddad, 2004a, p. 108)

It turns out that ‘‘encouraging the modern Muslim voice’’ means backing (and creating) pro-American/Israel front organizations like the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and the Free Muslim Coalition Against Terrorism.

"A few individuals have stepped up and volunteered to ‘‘lead the Muslims into moderation.’’ Several have been supported and funded by various agencies of the USA government. Their mission is to provide new reflections and interpretations of Islam. They have opened offices and are in the process of leading others into ‘right thinking.’ To date, they appear to have few followers since they are perceived as agents of the effort to undermine Islam." (Haddad, 2004a, p. 107)

Many Western Muslim and Arab groups, eager to distance themselves from the ‘‘terrorist’’ label, have gone to great lengths to prove that they fit the ‘‘moderate’’ category, assuring their governments that they are law-abiding, patriotic voters, even as they protest the rising tide of Islamophobic mistreatment. A board member of the Council on American- Islamic Relations Canada, for example, recently wrote:

"The Muslim community must...exercise vigilance against hateful rhetoric that masquerades as religion....TheMuslim community should not be seen as part of the problem, but as partners in the fight against a common enemy – extremism." (Kahn, 2005)

However, under Bush’s regime, even their assertions of loyalty are suspect. Daniel Pipes, a pro-Israel Bush appointee to the U.S. Institute of Peace (a Congressionally funded group), asserts:

"There are lots of fake moderates parading about, and they can be difficult to identify, even for someone like me.... The Council on American-Islamic Relations still wins mainstream support and the Islamic Society of North America still sometimes hoodwinks the U.S. government." (Pipes, 2004)

To solve this ‘‘problem,’’ he has called for ‘‘for what could be considered a new Inquisition reminiscent of what obtained in Spain during the 15th century,’’ proposing that all Muslim individuals and groups should have their records scrutinized and that they be required to answer a long list of questions about their beliefs. Even those who answer correctly, he and other neo-conservatives suspect, may only be pretending not to be terrorists or may be at risk of ‘‘infection’’ by Islamists:

"Pipes apparently also instigated Danish Islamophobic political cartoons in 2005 which provoked world-wide Muslim protests." (Sugg, 2006)

"[American military chaplain Yousef] Yee, of course, told the media after 9/11 that the attacks were ‘‘un-Islamic and categorically denied by a great majority of Muslim scholars around the world.’’ But now he has been charged with attempting to give classified information to the Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo." (Spencer, 2003)

On broader level, the U.S. demands thatMuslim countries ‘‘demonstrate their Islamic moderation by prosecuting, if not persecuting, suspected terrorists’’. The effect of this has been to allow U.S.-backed Asian dictatorships like Malaysia and Indonesia ‘‘to brand a spectrum of local opposition or separatist groups as terrorist or al-Qaeda-linked’’. The Bush administration ‘‘has made it clear that it expects moderate governments to implement other measures to assure American interests. These include curbing free speech, called ‘inflammatory’ if it is directed against American or Israeli policies’’.

In other words, under the Bush Doctrine, the only good Muslim is one who is willing to renounce his religion, denounce his fellow Muslims, uncritically support the U.S. – and even then he cannot be trusted. The logical conclusion is that all Muslims are targeted by the Bush Doctrine. As conservative commentator Ann Coulter declared the day after 9-11:

"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. ...Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims." (Coulter, 2001)



STANDING WITH MUSLIMS AGAINST THE ‘‘WAR ON TERROR’’

In this chapter, I have demonstrated that:


The overriding motive for Bush’s ‘‘war on terror’’ is to secure control over the Middle East and Central Asia for U.S. oil, military, and corporate interests.
Bush’s handlers have been planning imperial conquest of the world since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989.
From the evidence here and elsewhere, it is difficult to draw another conclusion than that Bush’s associates organized the 9-11 attacks to kick start popular support for this war. They have continued to justify the ‘‘war on terror’’ by claiming that Muslim terrorists pose an immanent danger to Americans.

In fact, however, terrorism actually poses minimal risk to Americans.
The ‘‘war on terror’’ is a concept modeled on Israel’s assaults on Palestinians to provide a cover for campaigns of territorial conquest.

Far from being ‘‘under attack,’’ America has pre-emptively attacked and conquered two sovereign states, and is threatening military domination of the entire world.

In other words, Bush’s ‘‘war on terror’’ is a massive con job, perpetrated by a few oil and military elites, at the expense of Muslims particularly, but threatening the security and well-being of virtually everyone on the planet.

"An immensely wealthy and powerful republic has been hijacked by a small cabal of individuals...The American people have...been deliberately lied to, their interests cynically misrepresented and misreported, the real aims and intentons of this private war of Bush the son and his junta concealed with complete arrogance." (Said, 2003)

Thomas Donnelly, author of the RAD blueprint for Bush’s ‘‘war on terror,’’ recently reaffirmed the neo-conservative commitment, not to protect Americans from ‘‘terrorism,’’ but to conquer the world.

"This war, properly understood, is a struggle to build a [new] ... order throughout the ‘‘greater Middle East,’’ that giant swath of the planet that extends from West Africa to Southeast Asia. ...Operation Iraqi Freedom represented the first step in a generational commitment to Iraq, but also the commitment of many generations to transforming the greater Middle East....The vision of the Bush Doctrine is hugely ambitious; in embracing this great vision, the United States must obligate the resources and create the institutions necessary to realize it." (Donnelly, 2004, pp. ix, 111)


‘‘Either you are with us, or you are with the Terrorists’’

Fear and hate of a scapegoated ‘‘enemy’’ are powerful tools by which despots confuse people into believing that their oppressors are their salvation. Just as anti-Semitism served to divide and silence progressive German movements in the early Nazi era, Islamophobia is dividing and silencing us now. No one wants to associate with ‘‘terrorists,’’ much less be labeled and persecuted as one. Many progressive Western people fear and despise ‘‘fundamentalist’’ Muslims, and thereby fall into the trap of allying themselves with, or at least not opposing, Islamophobic laws and practices in the name of opposing ‘‘terrorism.’’ They thereby collude in undercutting the fabric of rights, due process, and equality on which they too depend.

The Bush Doctrine rhetoric has succeeded in convincing most white Americans that ‘‘terrorists’’ pose a serious threat to their personal safety, and that the ‘‘war on terror’’ is necessary to protect them. Islamophobic language and values have seeped into the fiber of our daily lives. Bookstores now have ‘‘terrorism’’ sections, displaying some of the 5,036 mostly new books on the topic.15 Several U.S. colleges and universities now offer degrees in ‘‘homeland security.’’ Media images of ‘‘Arab extremists’’ have become routine.

Most Americans now believe that ‘‘terrorism’’ is such a big problem, that they should pay with their taxes, their freedoms, their decimated public services, and their children’s lives. In the summer of 2005, polls found that 79 percent of Americans believed that ‘‘the threat of terrorism against the U.S.’’ has increased or stayed about the same. Seventy-six percent thought ‘‘Osama bin Laden himself is currently planning a significant terrorist attack against the United States,’’ and 64 percent supported the Patriot Act. Sixty-four percent would be ‘‘willing to give up some of [their] personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism’’. Almost half of all Americans ‘‘believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim-Americans’’. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and shocking revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib prison, however, popular support for the ‘‘war on terror’’ plummeted. In November 2005, 55 percent of Americans disapproved of the way Bush is ‘‘dealing with the war on terrorism’’.

Which Side are you on?

Before 9-11, the anti-globalization movement had been rapidly gaining influence and unity worldwide. Opposition to U.S.-dominated institutions like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the G-8, NATO, and APEC, had succeeded in disrupting and exposing several of their gatherings. And in their place, the World Social Forum and other progressive people’s movements were demonstrating that indeed there are excellent alternatives to globalization and corporate rule.

The 9-11 ‘‘attacks’’ and the ‘‘war on terror’’ derailed these hopeful movements and imposed crippling constraints on dissent, democracy, and national sovereignty. Under cover of Islamophobic targeting of Muslims, the U.S. is waging war on all movements for social justice both domestically and internationally, using its new post 9-11 legislative powers and bloated military and policing budgets. Domestically, the Bush administration is attacking democracy, abortion rights, the judiciary, environmental protections, social security, public education, women’s rights, union rights, and civil rights (Dohrn, 2003). Internationally, it pressures other nations to enact similar ‘‘anti-terror’’ laws and policies, as well as demanding that they open their economies to full U.S. corporate rule.

As Bernadette Dohrn (2003) points out: ‘‘The result is a chilling effect. That is to say, people around the targets back away, get silent, don’t stand up when they see the cost of simply expressing your opinion or even making a joke, let alone publicly objecting to what’s going on.’’

Many progressive groups oppose Islamophobia and support Muslim victims of U.S. and Israeli assaults. These include civil liberties associations, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, anti-Zionist Jewish and Christian groups, unions, peace groups, and student organizations like the Canadian Federation of Students. Secular, Jewish, and Christian groups have formed alliances with Palestinians and Iraqis in opposition to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank. In the U.S., the Center for Constitutional Rights works to end arbitrary detention of Muslim detainees in Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere. In Canada, the Campaign to Stop Secret Trials in Canada has mobilized broad support for Muslim detainees and their rights.

However, even these groups have not dared to challenge the Islamophobic base of the ‘‘anti-terror’’ legislation, for fear of being called pro-terrorist. They are thereby left arguing that the particular individuals for whom they advocate are not terrorists, while implicitly condoning the myth that ‘‘real’’ terrorists are lurking in the shadows. But under the Bush Doctrine, all Muslims are presumed to be either current or potential terrorists, and their civil liberties have been sacrificed in the name of ‘‘national security.’’

To defeat the Bush plot for world control, we will need to challenge Islamophobic fear of ‘‘terrorists,’’ to assert clearly that there is little substantive terrorist threat. What terrorism there is could better be addressed through criminal justice systems and international law. More importantly, we need to insist that the U.S. desist from both overt pre-emptive wars and covert state-financed terrorism. The actual security of both Americans and all other people will be best served by ending the occupations of the West Bank, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and recognizing the right of all nations to self-determination (including oil policies). We need to stand in solidarity with all Muslims, regardless of their religious beliefs. At this juncture, Islamophobia is the key barrier to effective mobilization against the Bush regime...

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