Muslims have naturally expressed concern over this latest assault on the Islamic sacred text...
American ‘televangelists’ (missionaries or preachers who reach large audiences by television) are able to influence public opinion heavily; unfortunately they tend to be not the most honest people. Since September 11 last year, televangelists and zionists have launched yet another campaign against Islam and Muslims...
These are tough times to be a Muslim in North America, especially living in the US. Muslims travelling from Canada to the US at the beginning of September to attend the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) annual convention in Washington DC were told bluntly by US customs officials that Islam and America do not mix...
The brutal murder of a hijab-clad woman in a German court last month has once again exposed the deep-seated racism and Islamophobia that rage in Europe and North America...
Abu Rideh is a man who has never been charged with any offence, terrorism or otherwise; he has never been asked a single question about his alleged involvement with terrorism nor has he ever been told why he is suspected of being a threat or shown any evidence that is being used against him.
“You’re going to remember this day for the rest of your life” — these words were uttered by anti-terror police officers to intimidate and terrify British Muslim Babar Ahmad during the brutal assault inflicted upon him in a pre-dawn raid on his home on December 2, 2003. They were right; Ahmad never forgot that day and spent the last five years struggling to ensure that it would live in the memories of the British public forever.
The British police service can no longer be described as “institutionally racist”, according to Trevor Phillips, the chair of the Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR). Phillips made his comments in a speech marking 10 years since the Stephen Lawrence murder report, which originally coined the phrase.
The war in Bosnia that resulted in the deaths of some 300,000 people, most of them Bosnian Muslims, may be over but old hatreds still run deep, and not too far beneath the surface. Theoreti-cally, the Republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina is made up of three peoples: the Bosnians, Croats and Serbs.
Islamophobia has been a political tool of convenience that has been used at least since 1492 CE and is still in use by Western imperialist powers. For the past 200 years it has also been adopted by Zionists. Both groups willingly accepted it as part of their historical makeup and have continued to use it as a means of advancing their respective agendas of domination, occupation, exploitation, torture and killing of Muslims, including the genocide of their language, religion and culture.
Generations of university graduates have been deliberately deprived of any encounter with Islamic civilization. It is nothing less than an egregious disservice to students — no educational institution can strive for excellence if it allows such a disservice to continue.
While other forms of racism are frowned upon, Islamophobia is actively being promoted as an acceptable form of political behavior in the West. Muslims are a soft target and in such an environment, denigrating them carries little direct political costs.
The long history of encounters between Western civilization and Islam has produced a tradition of portraying, in largely negative and self-serving ways, the Islamic religion and Muslim cultures. There is a lot of literature cataloguing (and sometimes correcting) these stereotypes. It is not my intention to rehash this corpus here, though I do rely upon some of the more important works. What I want to do instead is focus on a particular dimension of these encounters, and examine why the West has consistently constructed and perpetuated negative images of Islam and Muslims. My focus will be on the utility of Islamic imagery in Western civilization.
One can imagine the furore that would erupt if a Muslim group were to launch a "Judeo-Christian Fascism Awareness Week" on American university campuses and then circulate a petition asking people to sign; those refusing to do so would be accused of supporting ‘Judeo-Christian Fascism’. Something similar took place for a week at nearly 200 American university campuses from October 24 but Muslims, not Jews or Christians, were the targets of this vicious campaign.
This month, the Islamic Human Rights Commission will publish a detailed critique of the British government’s proposed anti-terrorism legislation, written by FAHAD ANSARI. Here we publish an extract focussing on the targeting of “extemism”.
On August 24 the British government announced details of new measures to be taken against foreign Muslims living in Britain. Foreign Muslims will be deported from Britain, or not permitted to enter the country in the first place, if they are considered by the government to be “fostering hatred or fomenting, or glorifying terrorist violence”.
Although America prides itself as a open-minded and inclusive society, its policies towards the Muslim world are in fact deeply imbued with imperialist attitudes. YUSUF AL-KHABBAZ discusses the American legacy of hate.
Is There An Islamic Problem? Essays on Islamicate Societies, the US and Israel By M. Shahid Alam. Pub: The Other Press, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, September 2004. Pbk:$15; pages: 240.
The presidents of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan met in Tashkent, capital of Uzbekistan, on June 16 to reinforce their alliance against Islamic activism in the region...
Even as it acts more and more aggressively against Muslims around the world, the US has launched a massive propaganda campaign in the Muslim world...
Civil Democratic Islam: Partners, Resources and Strategies by Cheryl Benard. Pub: Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, CA, 2004. Pp: 118. Pbk: $20. (Also available on-line to download.)
