By: David Brooks, Huma Dar, Ayesha Ghani, Surprising Study On Terrorism: Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims, | Tea Break

Sat, 05 Dec 2009 13:37:51 +0000

[...] Huma Dar: In her astute deconstruction of Varadarajan’s proposal, Aysha Ghani writes that in “the aftermath of “Going Muslim” ” she “shudders” to think that because of her critique and her sentiments, she “too might be categorized as an un-integrated American Muslim.” It is significant to note that Varadarajan’s argument here is even more insidious. He is asserting that being “integrated” or otherwise is moot for Muslims as their religion is founded on “bellicose conquest, a contempt for infidels and an obligation for piety” that may make them “more extreme” such that their “integration” is never to be trusted. It is simply a “camouflage” that could be “discarded” at any “calculated moment” of “revelatory catharsis.” Thus, all or “perhaps many more than a few” Muslims are just waiting to come out of their “camouflage” and one never knows which ones. This is where Varadarajan’s fear-mongering actually slides into fascism: the construction of the Muslim as the perfect Homo Sacer – uncannily, the term in German concentration camps for those who lost the will to live was “Mussulman”(3) – because s/he is intrinsically unpredictable, untrustworthy, fundamentally unlike the “civilized us,” and therefore ultimately intractable and dispensable. Through a deconstruction of Varadarajan’s article, I propose to show here the confluence of Islamophobia in America and with that operative in India, in the new configuration of global political and economic powers, offering a preliminary understanding of some emerging positionalities and relationalities. This will also be an initial foray into theorizing the manifestations of Islamophobia and its commonalities as well as divergences from racism as such. [...]

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By: David Brooks, Huma Dar, Ayesha Ghani, Surprising Study On Terrorism: Al-Qaida Kills Eight Times More Muslims Than Non-Muslims, | Tea Break