by M. Junaid Levesque-Alam
At this point, it’s not even clear whether Jones will go ahead with his pyrotechnics, but the lesson still stands.
Animosity toward Islam has reached such extremes in America that officialdom only rallies against anti-Muslim invective if it interferes with its warring on Muslim countries.
Perhaps it’s just the skeptic and former journalist in me, but that’s my impression as I review the recent blow-up about the planned September 11th Qur’an bonfire.
Terry Jones, the pastor of the tiny Florida church that may conduct the book-burning, has garnered endless—and doubtless desired—attention from media outlets as military commanders and administration officials fret over the fallout of his obscene reimagination of Farenheit 451.
General Petreaus, who is rightly concerned for the welfare of the women and men under his command, warned that Jones’s actions “would undoubtedly be used by extremists in Afghanistan—and around the world—to inflame public opinion and incite violence.”
Petreaus’s pronouncements were followed by an equally onerous message from White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, who averred that any behavior “that puts our troops in harm’s way would be a concern to this administration.”
Continue reading “Islamophobia is Bad—Only Because Occupying Muslims is Good”
In their spirited assault on Islam, conservatives have seized upon one notion with particular delight: the Abrahamic faith embraced by a quarter of humanity is a “cult.”
You are not terrorists. Your religion is not evil. Your project is not a monument to murder. But since some believe otherwise, I propose a compromise:
When Nancy Pelosi said the power and money backing the anti-Muslim protests in New York and elsewhere should be investigated, she had in mind the simplest of political questions. Who benefits? In this case, who benefits from a spectacle of words and images that suggest that right-wing populism in America has now taken a definitively anti-Muslim tone? The message of these protests against more than one mosque is that the fight to defeat al Qaeda has become a war against Islam.
American leaders are always trying to assess Osama bin Laden’s level of influence over Muslims.
June 2009, Palais de Versailles: French president Nicolas Sarkozy declares in a major policy speech that the “burqa is not a sign of religion, it is a sign of subservience. It will not be welcome on the territory of the French republic.” Sarkozy does this while ignoring the fact that the women wearing this garment are as French as he is. In this fiercely republican discourse taking place in a monarchist palace he also declares that the burqa “is not the idea that the French republic has about a women’s dignity” while missing another point — this “idea” about women’s dignity did not allow French women to vote until 1944. French women earned their right to vote after Turkish women, whose access to European citizenship is now denied by Sarkozy.
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