King Hearings Make Muslims The New Racial Bogey Man

As a black person who has lived 40 years on this planet, I’d like to think that we have made racial progress. But then you hear about things like Rep. Peter King’s Congressional hearings on Islamic terrorism.

King’s hearing on home-grown Muslim terrorism kick off Thursday. This McCarthy-like circus is the culmination of about 12-month of rising anti-Muslim hysteria. This has included protests in the streets of New York over Park51, a mosque scheduled to be built a few blocks from Ground Zero, demonstrations against mosque construction in California and Tennessee and frenzied warnings about alleged plans to impose Sharia law in the United States. (It should be noted that Muslims currently account for less than 0.5 percent of the U.S population.)

This Islamophobic propaganda has been disseminated by a host of shrill, racist commentators. People such as Frank Gaffney, a former Reagan administration official, who claimed that the NASA sign had hidden Muslim symbols, Pam Geller, a lunatic blogger, who claimed that President Obama was Malcolm X’s son, and Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, who has said we should end Muslim immigration.

And all of these propagandists get an open forum on the neo fascist/neo racist FOX News, which is ironically partially owned by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who also funded Park51. (Although this has been covered extensively by Think Progress and “The Daily Show,” you won’t find this information on FOX or other right-wing outlets.)

Islamophobia is not just words, it has spurred violent action. In Sacramento, two Sikhs were killed in an attack which police believe was a hate crime, and a video from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) showed Tea Party protestors haranguing Muslims, including children, at a fundraiser in Orange County. Speaking at the event, Villa Park Councilwoman Deborah Pauly said, “As a matter of fact, I know quite a few Marines who would be very happy to help these terrorists to an early meeting in paradise.”

Now King brings this rising Islamophobia to a head with his farcical hearings. King claims that about 80 percent of American mosques harbor radical imams. Ironically, he doesn’t plan to call any senior law enforcement or intelligence officials to testify at the hearings. Maybe, because they would disprove his accusations.

According to an article in Think Progress, more domestic terrorist attacks have come from non-Muslim terrorists, than Muslims terrorists. Writer Zaid Jilani says: “In fact, right-wing extremist and white supremacist attacks plots alone outnumber plots by Muslims, with both groups being involved in 63 terror plots, 18 more plots than Muslim Americans have been involved in.” Jack O’Reilly Jr., mayor of Dearborn, Mich., a city with a 30 percent Arab population, has described King’s accusations as “just not true.”

King himself has a long history with terrorism. His great uncle was a member of the IRA, which was responsible for a series of terrorist bombings of London in the 1970s and 1980s. King was an enthusiastic supporter of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and according to the New York Times he said, ““If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it.” He was also accused by a Belfast judge of being “an obvious collaborator.”

It’s questionable why King has launched his quixotic campaign against terrorism. His anti-Islam hearings could be a cynical attempt to boost his profile. And it's seems to be working, because he is all over the media. If you didn't know who he was before, you do now. Maybe King, like pseudo-politicians Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin, he is following the format of making outrageous comments to sell more books and book more media appearances. But this sudden outburst of Islamophobia is more calculated. Studies show that anti-Muslim rhetoric spiked in the run up to the mid-term election. This is really about politics and scaring people into voting against their own interests.

The upper-class whites who controls this country don’t care about working-class whites who drive Toyotas and shop at Wal-Mart. The only thing that alligns them with working class whites is racism. And over the last 40 years, the Republican party has mined that fear to get people to vote. For a long time it was blacks, with fears of integration and “welfare mothers in Cadillacs,” then it was fear of gays, who were destroying the traditional family, then it was Latinos threatening American culture with the Spanish language. But all of these minority groups have largely been mainstreamed.

The new ethnic bogey man is Muslims (read Arabs.) The right doesn’t seem to care that not all Arabs are Muslims, and not all Muslims are Arabs. To them it doesn’t matter as long as it gets NASCAR dads and Tea Baggers to forget about their vanishing 401ks, declining home prices, the awful health care system and the cost of two foreign wars. Muslim is the new black.


What do you think of the Rep. Peter King hearings?Market Research

Muslim is the New Black

The new wave of Islamophobia is embarrassing and frightening

It seems that some elements of the GOP always need to have a new enemy to hate. Almost 30 years ago, Richard Nixon used the Southern strategy to end the Democratic party’s stranglehold on the former Confederate states.

Black people have been a convenient whipping boy for the GOP over the last few decades, through code words such as “welfare queens” and “state rights.” Then after the growth of the gay rights movement and the rise of AIDS, gays become a convenient enemy for the newly invigorated fundamentalist wing of the Republican party.

But after 9-11, Muslims seem to have become public enemy no. 1. There were a few unfortunate incidents of anti-Muslim violence after 9-11, but it did not reach the level of hysteria we have seen in the past few months. The rhetoric coming from the Tea Party and the GOP is both embarrassing and frightening. Recently we have seen:

• A concerted effort from activists to prevent the construction of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero. This has inspired race-baiting comments from presidential aspirants Newt Gingrich and pinup pundit Sarah Palin.
• Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey, who declared that “Islam was not a religion, and more like a cult.”
• Evangelical churches and synagogues have hosted Brigette Gabriel, a speaker who says that Muslims “do not have souls,” and a Florida church held a “Burn a Koran” day.
• Pam Geller, an unhinged right-wing blogger who lies every time she opens her mouth, has spouted nonsensical claims such as President Barack Obama is a secret Muslim who cavorts with hookers, Muslims have infiltrated the government and military, and Muslims plan to introduce Sharia law.
• Several Christian groups have protested the proposed construction of new mosque around the country, even in supposedly liberal California. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association said that he would like to see construction of all mosques cease.

Much of this new wave of Islamohobia is driven by fact-free propaganda spread through pseudo news outlets like FOX News and AM radio. A recent study by Media Matters showed that 75 percent of the guests on FOX News, the “fair and balanced network,” were opposed to construction of the mosque near Ground Zero. The Tea Party has also amplified this xenophobia. One of the current memes spreading through the right-wing media is the idea that Muslims want to secretly take over America by out-breeding good Christian folk.

In a recent New York Times article, Tea Bagger Diane Serfain says, “As a mother and a grandmother, I worry. I learned that in 20 years with the rate of the birth population, we will be overtaken by Islam, and their goal is to get people in Congress and the Supreme Court to see that Shariah is implemented.” This would take a few generations because according to a 2001 study by the City University of New York, Muslims make up 0.5 percent of the U.S. population.

Americans who are swallowing this garbage should stop and ask themselves, what do the people spreading these lies actuality know about Islam? Sarah Palin just left the country for the first time a few years ago, and barely understands English and Christianity, so is she really the best person to go turn to for advice about Islam? And as for Ramsey, a Methodist, who has spent his entire life in Tennessee which is 1 percent Muslim, has he even had a conversation with a real-life Muslim?

These Islamohobes also seem to forget that freedom of religion is one of the central tenets of this country and is enshrined in the constitution. A few years ago. Gen. (rtd.) Colin Powell criticized Islamophobes and said that many Muslims had given their lives for this country serving in the military. Recently President Obama declared that "I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country.”

The terrorists attacks on 9-11 also killed several hundred Muslims. Al-Qaeda kills indiscriminately, they do not care if their bombs rip into Muslims who happen to be in their way, which I am sure is one of their many violations of the Koran.

Islamic terrorists seem to be doing to their religion what the KKK,did to Christianity. Although the Klan claimed they were good Christian men fighting to protect women and the Southern way of life, anyone with half a brain knew they were as far from being Christian as a Satanist.

American Islamophobes are taking the worst parts of Islam to to stereotype a whole group of people. Christianity also has it’s own dark periods such as the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the church-backed conquest of Africa and the Americas. Also many American clergyman, including Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, supported segregation and were against the Civil Rights movement. It would unfair to judge Christianity by these examples, although many black people have rejected the religion because of its ties to colonialism and white supremacy..

This hatred is not unfamiliar to black people. There was a time when “Christians” said we did not have souls. And many police officers still believe that black men are guilty until proven innocent, But in the age of Obama and Republican neocoons like Alan Keyes and Jesse Lee Patterson, you can get away with a lot more with anti-Muslim hatred.

Islamophobia is a new potent form of racism,because it is backed by religion, which always appeals to irrational thoughts, and many Muslims are well, foreign-looking. (However a visit to a mosque will tell you that Muslims come in every shade of color found on this planet.)

Unfortunately it is easy to demonize a small group of people, who practise a religion that most close-minded Americans know nothing about. And the War on Terror gives people all the more reason to be suspicious of Muslims and anyone who looks Middle Eastern. Americans can now hide their xenophobia behind patriotism, because hating minorities is as American as apple pie.