It Shouldn’t Happen to a Muslim
July 13, 2008
In this Channel 4 Dispatches documentary It shouldn’t happen to a Muslim Peter Oborne looks at whether or not Islam and British Muslims have been demonised by the UK media. Poor in places but worth watching.
On the third anniversary of the 7/7 London Bombings, Peter Oborne investigates whether these attacks and the fear of terrorism has fuelled the rise of violence, intolerance and hatred against British Muslims.
The FBI’s Plan to ‘Profile’ Muslims
July 11, 2008
Fascism has returned to Italy, and Juan Cole shows, US is not very far behind.
The U.S. Justice Department is considering a change in the grounds on which the FBI can investigate citizens and legal residents of the United States. Till now, DOJ guidelines have required the FBI to have some evidence of wrongdoing before it opens an investigation. The impending new rules, which would be implemented later this summer, allow bureau agents to establish a terrorist profile or pattern of behavior and attributes and, on the basis of that profile, start investigating an individual or group. Agents would be permitted to ask “open-ended questions” concerning the activities of Muslim Americans and Arab-Americans. A person’s travel and occupation, as well as race or ethnicity, could be grounds for opening a national security investigation.
The rumored changes have provoked protests from Muslim American and Arab-American groups. The Council on American Islamic Relations, among the more effective lobbies for Muslim Americans’ civil liberties, immediately denounced the plan, as did James Zogby, the president of the Arab-American Institute. Said Zogby, “There are millions of Americans who, under the reported new parameters, could become subject to arbitrary and subjective ethnic and religious profiling.” Zogby, who noted that the Bush administration’s history with profiling is not reassuring, warned that all Americans would suffer from a weakening of civil liberties.
Messing with Zohan
June 27, 2008
Remi Kanazi looks at how Hollywood portrays Arabs in Adam Sandlers latest film You Don’t Mess with Zohan. He examines how it presents Mossad agents as innocent heroes, degrades Arabs and obfuscates the real issues in the Israel-Palestine conflict. It says a lot that Israelis are flattered by the movie which is being called the ‘most Israeli film in Hollywood‘ and comparisons are being drawn between Sandler as Zohan and Paul Newman in Exodus (a film famous for being propaganda). For more on this topic see the documentary Reel Bad Arabs.
I love Adam Sandler. From Billy Madison to Happy Gilmore to the Chanukah Song, the predecessor of the Superbad generation has effortlessly conquered the domain of slapstick comedy and inappropriate jokes. But damn you Scuba Steve! If you’re going to propagate misinformation about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, do it quietly—or at least in your non-comedic life.
You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, Sandler’s new flick, takes Hollywood chicanery and stereotypes that denigrate Arabs to an unprecedented level—surpassing hit flicks like the Kingdom, the Siege, and every Arnold Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris movie that came before it. I group Zohan with other shamelessly racist action movies because a film should at least be minutely funny to be categorized as a comedy. For the Sandler diehards and hilarity-loving skeptics, I should clearly state: using race and prejudices to engender laughter is not the problem. Mel Brooks and the creators of South Park exploit stereotypes far beyond anything Sandler has ever done, but unlike Zohan, I don’t think insidious propaganda and underlying racism drive their comedy. After all, if this hebetudinous clunker was just comedy, Sandler and company wouldn’t have, as the New York Times reported, sought out Arab actors to give the movie “legitimacy.” Their search was successful and a few token Arabs showed their presence to innocuously inform the public that it is okay to vilify the crazy towel-headed terrorists once again.
Reel Bad Arabs
June 27, 2008
Fortress Britain
June 26, 2008
By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Variant, Issue 32, Summer 2008; Spinwatch, June 23, 2008; Scoop (New Zealand), June 25, 2008; UK Watch, June 25, 2008; Media Monitors Network, June 25, 2008; Dissident Voice, June 27, 2008
“The public has to be more alert”, warned one “international terrorism expert” in the Daily Mail late last year, because Scotland “is set to become another Israel within five years”. “[A]nti-terror measures will soon become a common feature of life”, he assured the audience, and called for “routine arming of police officers” and increasing children’s “awareness of the dangers of terrorism” and for them to be “encouraged” to report anything “out of the ordinary”.
The oracle of doom was one Amnon Maor, identified as the head instructor of counter-terrorism for the IDF and Israeli border police.[1] Maor is working with security firm 360 Defence, based near Glasgow, which is “training Scottish police, military and civilians in security techniques”. This wouldn’t be the first time the British police benefits form Israeli anti-terror expertise. The police squad that carried out the extrajudicial execution of the young Brazilian electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes in the London underground had received similar training.
In the post-September 11 world, Naomi Klein writes, Israel has pitched its “uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the ‘global war on terror’”. Britain has since been furnished with its own unpopular occupation of Arab land – and the lessons from Israel are not lost on its architects. In disaster lies opportunity – and the only thing more useful than a thing to fear is fear itself. The give away line in Maor’s prescription above is his offer to increase children’s awareness of the dangers of terrorism – absent the real thing, fear should suffice. The Prime Minister may not have many achievements to his name, but he can claim patents to ‘Fortress Britain’, whose battlements sit on a foundation of fear.
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Obama Snubs Muslim Voters
June 24, 2008
‘Muslim Voters Detect a Snub From Obama’, Andrea Elliot of NYT reports:
As Senator Barack Obama courted voters in Iowa last December, Representative Keith Ellison, the country’s first Muslim congressman, stepped forward eagerly to help.
Mr. Ellison believed that Mr. Obama’s message of unity resonated deeply with American Muslims. He volunteered to speak on Mr. Obama’s behalf at a mosque in Cedar Rapids, one of the nation’s oldest Muslim enclaves. But before the rally could take place, aides to Mr. Obama asked Mr. Ellison to cancel the trip because it might stir controversy. Another aide appeared at Mr. Ellison’s Washington office to explain.
“I will never forget the quote,” Mr. Ellison said, leaning forward in his chair as he recalled the aide’s words. “He said, ‘We have a very tightly wrapped message.’ ”
When Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign, Muslim Americans from California to Virginia responded with enthusiasm, seeing him as a long-awaited champion of civil liberties, religious tolerance and diplomacy in foreign affairs. But more than a year later, many say, he has not returned their embrace.
Turkeys for Thanksgiving
June 10, 2008
Lo and behold! Gordon Brown, the man who has been forlornly playing the pipe still wet with Tony Blair’s spit, has failed to lure many vermin with his call for for more draconian legislation. So when finally a rat does come out, it bears a Muslim name. According to the Daily Telegraph, Brown’s call for 42-day detention — a political move according to Jacqui Smith to present the Tories as soft on terrorism — has received the endorsement of one Khurshid Ahmed, Chairman of something called the ‘British Muslim Forum’. ( It is worth reading the current article in conjunction with this article by Gareth Peirce; it provides necessary context about the draconian “anti-terror” legislation in Britain). My friend Paul de Rooij comments:
The British government is seeking to pass a law allowing 42-day-detention without trial for “terror suspects”. Note, that Britain already has draconian “anti-terror” legislation in place from the days it fought Irish nationalists. All the recent measures added to this legislation are specifically targeting Muslim “terror suspects”, and thus it is truly bizarre to find a Muslim organization favoring the government’s proposed measures. It is a bit like an organization of turkeys popping up stating that they are in favor of Thanksgiving.
The history of terrorist arrests in the UK is appalling. Many wrongful convictions, brutality in prison and under questioning, horrendous conditions in jail causing prisoners to lose their minds… and the cases that led to many arrests and were trumpeted in the media resulted afterwards in the release of suspects without charges and without any apology. And there are other frivolous cases: imprisoning a woman who wrote a poem lauding the resistance fighters in Iraq and Afghanistan…
Zionists and Fascists Unite
May 6, 2008
Just a few months back Gary Younge had observed that ‘plain old fascism has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe.’ What is talked about less, however, is the ally it has found in Zionism. This alliance was already in view in Austria, Germany, France and UK. Now it makes a debut in Italy. The following from the London FT. (Recall that the Italian centre-left was already at the service of Zion; Olmert was caught on camera instructing Romano Prodi on what to say during a press conference back in December 2006)
Rome’s election last week of its first rightwing mayor since the time of Benito Mussolini has been celebrated by fascists as a historic victory over the left.
Packs of young, thuggish supporters of Gianni Alemanno greeted the new mayor’s appearance at the Campidoglio city hall with straight-armed “Roman” salutes, shouting abuse at communists and foreign immigrants.
“Before, if you were a fascist you had to pretend to be part of the mainstream to have respectability. Now they are coming out of the closet,” said an aide to defeated centre-left candidate Francesco Rutelli.
Debate over the significance of the National Alliance’s first election victory in a major city has been intense - especially among the capital’s small but important Jewish commun-ity, which is widely thought to have swung in Mr Alemanno’s favour. Rome’s Jewish voters, numbering about 9,000, explain their shift to the right in various ways, most often because they see the National Alliance as firmly pro-Israel.
The Zionist Witch-hunt Against Muslims
April 28, 2008
A rare expose of Zionist witch-hunting of Muslims. ‘Critics Cost Muslim Educator Her Dream School’ reports Andrea Elliot. (thanks Shahid) Incidentally, Husain Haqqani, the man just appointed as the Pakistani ambassador to U.S., is a great admirer of Daniel Pipes. As a matter of fact, Daniel Pipes once established a ‘muslim’ think-tank appointing Haqqani as its head. Purpose of the think-tank? To go around the U.S. warning Jewish communities against ‘Arab influence’ on Washington, and to encourage them to get more ‘organized’ as a lobby.
Debbie Almontaser dreamed of starting a public school like no other in New York City. Children of Arab descent would join students of other ethnicities, learning Arabic together. By graduation, they would be fluent in the language and groomed for the country’s elite colleges. They would be ready, in Ms. Almontaser’s words, to become “ambassadors of peace and hope.”
Things have not gone according to plan. Only one-fifth of the 60 students at the Khalil Gibran International Academy are Arab-American. Since the school opened in Brooklyn last fall, children have been suspended for carrying weapons, repeatedly gotten into fights and taunted an Arabic teacher by calling her a “terrorist,” staff members and students said in interviews.
The academy’s troubles reach well beyond its cramped corridors in Boerum Hill. The school’s creation provoked a controversy so incendiary that Ms. Almontaser stepped down as the founding principal just weeks before classes began last September. Ms. Almontaser, a teacher by training and an activist who had carefully built ties with Christians and Jews, said she was forced to resign by the mayor’s office following a campaign that pitted her against a chorus of critics who claimed she had a militant Islamic agenda.
