CAIRO, 28 December 2004 — The results of a recent US nationwide poll, conducted by Cornell University, are shocking. Can you believe that in the “land of the free” almost half believe the civil liberties of American-Muslims should be restricted?
Most enthusiastic to single out Muslims were religious Republicans, and frequent watchers of television news channels. While more than a quarter of all respondents thought Muslims should be required to register their home addresses with the government, while almost one third supported the covert infiltration of Muslim organizations within the US.
Syndicated columnist, Fox News contributor and author of “In Defense of Internment: The Case for ‘Racial Profiling’ in World War II and the War on Terror” Michelle Malkin goes one step further, saying “targeted intelligence-gathering at mosques and in local Muslim communities, for example, makes perfect sense”.
The writer, who believes that the American government was right to intern and expel America’s ethnic Japanese population, for which the US has apologized, recently told Fox & Friends of an open season on Christians in Iraq, citing the ambush of four US clergymen near Baghdad.
When asked whether they were specifically targeted because they were Christian, she insisted they were as though she was privy to some insider knowledge, whereas it is far more likely that they were attacked because they were Americans. Naturally, the program’s jingoistic hosts neglected to investigate further or point out that more Iraqis have been killed by insurgents than anyone else.
Malkin is following in the footsteps of her fellow right-wing pundit Ann Coulter who urged the US to respond with full force to the 9-11 attacks, saying, “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity”.
As though she didn’t get enough attention following that bloodthirsty tidbit, the hate-filled Coulter recently went on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes advising anti-war Canadians to hope the US “doesn’t roll over one night and crush them,” adding, “they are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.” But Murdoch mouthpieces aren’t the only ones using vile rhetoric in an attempt to shape the perceptions of Americans against Muslims. MSNBC’s “Imus in the Morning” program is doing its bit too.
During a November segment, the killing of a wounded Iraqi insurgent, referred to as a “booby-trapped rag-head cadaver” was justified and described as an “Al-Jazeera moment” prompting the “Muslim masses to respond with their routine pack of rabid sheep mentality.” During an earlier show, Palestinians were referred to as “stinking animals” with suggestions they should all be killed.
One wonders why MSNBC allows the shows host Don Imus to continue his bigoted muckspreading when as early as 1985 he was forced to apologize for defamatory anti-Arab statements.
Earlier this year, with reference to the crash of an Iranian aircraft responsible for the death of 43 passengers, he shamefully commented: “When I hear stories like that, I think who cares... too bad it wasn’t full of Saudi Arabians”.
The Arab-American founder and editor of the right-wing worldnetdaily.com Joseph Farah is another one wielding a poisoned pen. When asked during an interview about the Palestine-Israel conflict, he said: “There won’t be peace without a military solution. Israel will have to reoccupy the West Bank and the Gaza Strip”.
Farah, an evangelical Christian, who has described the late President Arafat as “pro-Nazi scum”, advises Israel to forcibly transfer all Palestinians to neighboring Arab countries, warning, “population transfers are not pretty and not without problems.”
“The Arabs — and I can say this as an Arab — are great storytellers...the Arabian Nights and all these things. They lie that the Jews threw the Arabs out of their homes. If you tell a big lie often enough, people will believe it,” he said, unwittingly parroting the famous line of Hitler’s propagandist Joseph Goebbles.
Tragically, more and more Americans are falling for the lies spread by Farah, Malkin, Coulter, Imus and their ilk as we can deduce by the results of the Cornell University poll.
Statements by politicians, such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin, deputy under-secretary of defense for intelligence, who told evangelical congregations that “Satan wants to destroy us as a Christian army” with reference to American troops in Iraq, adding Bush is in the White House “because God put him there” add toxic fuel to the embers.
These purveyors of poison against Arabs and Muslims are obviously agenda-led, and should be exposed and taken to task whenever possible.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asks Muslims to do just that. Its ongoing campaign “Hate Hurts America” is based on the premise that attacks by talk show hosts harm the US “by creating a downward spiral of interfaith mistrust and hostility”. It asks listeners and viewers to report such incidents and make written complaints to offending networks.
America was, indeed, attacked by 19 criminals who purported to espouse Islam, and Catholic members of the IRA launched terrorist attacks on Britain. However, there is a difference: The British did not advocate infiltrating Catholic churches or treating Catholics differently to other groups as a result. Just imagine the international outcry were that to have happened.
The big lie in this case, spread by agenda-led elements in the US media, paints Muslims as the aggressors.
In truth, in Palestine and in Iraq, they are the victims of American-made Apache gun-ships, F16s, and tanks. Tens of thousands are dead. Tens of thousands more are maimed. Tens of thousands have been orphaned. Many thousands languish in jails without charge or trial. Hundreds have been tortured or humiliated.
Faced with this onslaught, instead of inter-squabbling it is time Muslim nations stuck together in defense of their own. If they can’t or won’t, then who on earth will?
— Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She welcomes feedback.
