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The
following article appears in the September 2010 edition of Socialist
Action newspaper.
NEW
YORK—“There has been an explosion of racist attacks, verbal and
physical, on masjids (mosques), proposed masjids, and Islamic community
centers around the US. Masjids have been picketed and vandalized and
obscenities shouted at worshippers.”
So
read the opening words of an on-line petition initiated by Al-Awda NY: the Palestine Right to
Return Coalition, and the Palestine Solidarity Caucus of the United
National Antiwar Committee. It is a statement that aptly outlines the
roots of this phenomenon and the required response by all movements for
social change. To set the stage for a more detailed analysis of this
phenomenon we quote excerpts from this document:
“On
September 11th the Tea Party and its allies plan to demonstrate at the
site of the proposed Islamic masjid and community center [called
Park51, after its address] in lower Manhattan. On the same day, Christian
fundamentalists plan a “Burn the Quran” day at a Florida masjid. …
“After
9/11 the government and media launched a witch-hunt against Muslims and
Arabs, encouraging individual violent attacks. Even before 9/11,
demonization was used to justify support for Israel’s wars and U.S. efforts to control Arab and
Iranian oil. Since 9/11, as part of the bipartisan ‘war on terror,’
tens of thousands of Muslim men were fingerprinted, questioned and
registered. Hundreds were detained with no regard to their
constitutional rights, often abused and tortured, in a campaign of
preemptive prosecution…
“Masjids
have been subject to FBI and police surveillance, infiltration and
intimidation. We are told that Muslims must be presumed guilty of
‘terrorism’ until proven innocent...
“The
Obama administration claims to support the right of Park51 to build the
lower Manhattan masjid/center but fuels
Islamophobia with the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, and a stepped-up campaign
of extra-judicial assassinations. These attacks occur for one
fundamental reason: To intimidate those who would oppose Washington’s wars abroad and growing
economic misery at home.
“Islamophobia
also serves to split potential allies in the fight against the
deepening economic crisis. … The attacks on Muslims parallel the
scapegoating of mostly Latin@ undocumented workers, whose labor is key
to the economy but whose status is used to pit workers against each
other.” Statement signers pledged to “mobilize and speak out whenever
there is an attack on any Muslim individual or institution, and calls
on our allies in every social movement to do the same” (see www.petitiononline.com/nophobia/petition.html).
A
Wave of Attacks
Protests
against the proposed building of new masjids or expansion of existing
ones have occurred in at least seven states and at several locations in
New York City. Vandalized masjids and
Islamic centers include those in Temecula, Calif., and Arlington, Tex. One was firebombed in Jacksonville, Fla. (see CAIR’s website for
detailed lists). Until recently, those opposing the building of masjids
claimed their concerns were traffic and noise. Now they don’t bother to
hide their real motives.
In
most communities, interfaith groups of clergy have come out in favor of
the masjids, and on occasion activist-led coalitions have mounted
counter-protests. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has stood on
civil liberties grounds to support the Center, and has even maintained
it should be built exactly where proposed.
On
the other hand, the day after President Obama said he supported the
right of the Center’s builders to proceed, he stressed that he was not
taking a side “on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque
there”—in effect granting the right of the racists to declare Muslims
unfit to be on “our sacred ground.” This comes as Obama oversees a
skyrocketing rate of deportations, encouraging Republicans to come
forth with a new anti-immigrant demand: an end to the 14th Amendment
guarantee of citizenship to anyone born in the US.
Obama’s
backtracking opened the door for fellow Democrat Harry Reid, the Senate
majority leader, who said, “the masjid should be built someplace else,”
and for supposed ultraliberal Howard Dean to call the Center “a real
affront to people who lost their lives” on Sept. 11.
The
difference in approaches of Bloomberg and Obama and other Democrats
represent a tactical debate in ruling circles as they try to balance
the need to keep a domestic populace lined up behind failing wars
abroad, and the risk of alienating potential Arab and Muslim allies
abroad and at home.
Opponents
of the Center include the Anti-Defamation League. Following up on years
of racist anti-Palestinian statements, the ADL, while professing to
support the rights of the Center’s builders, claimed the admittedly
“irrational” feelings of 9/11 victim survivors must take precedence.
A
common theme at racist protests and in the right-wing media is that the
centers or masjids are, in the words of Cal Thomas, “not about
tolerance, but triumphalism. It isn’t about honoring the dead, but
celebrating their deaths.” Of course, many right-wingers claim the
masjids and centers will be “terrorist training grounds.” And many of
them claim Islam is not a religion but a cult not worthy of protection
by the Constitution.
Organizers
of an Aug. 22 protest at the Manhattan Islamic Center site
gave out hundreds of signs with “SHARIA” printed in dripping, blood-red
letters. Another common theme is that masjid proliferation is part of a
devious plan to impose sharia law locally as a prelude to imposing it
nationally. This allows right-wing zealots to revive the “take back our
country” theme used recently to lambaste Obama’s supposed imposition of
“socialism” via his health-care and jobs bills. As we’ve pointed out in
past articles, these bills are so brazenly pro-corporate that they’ve
emboldened the ruling class and its right-wing shock troops to demand
even more, and now we see they’re moving on to other fronts.
Ironically,
the filth spewed against Islam is a convenient way to express racism
against Obama himself—and through him to workers of color.
Connecticut
Muslim leaders asked for police protection after the antiabortion group
Operation Save America (formerly Operation Rescue) showed up outside a Bridgeport masjid chanting hate-filled
slogans. Mongi Dhaouadi, executive director of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations-Connecticut, said protesters chanted, “Islam
is a lie” and “Jesus hates Muslims.”
One
key anti-Islam group is Stop the Islamization of America (SIOA), whose
leader, Pamela Geller, compared building the center two blocks away
from Ground Zero to building a KKK “shrine” near a black church in
Alabama.
The
initiator of the Park51 project, Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf, has gone on
repeated tours for the U.S. State Department to convince fellow Muslims
that the US can be trusted. Despite
this service to Washington, he has been accused, with
no proof whatsoever, of getting funding for the center from Iran, the Saudis, and so on. And
he has been attacked for his (correct) claims that 9/11 must be placed
in the context of global Muslim and Arab resentment against imperialist
policies.
This
wave of Islamophobia and related racist trends is also engulfing Europe, with the French government
banning wearing of the burqa or hiqab in public places, and trying to
deport the Roma people. In the Netherlands, an openly anti-immigrant
coalition came in second in national elections in May. Europe, of course, is experiencing
the same economic crisis that allows politicians in the U.S. to launch their
scapegoating campaigns.
The
supposed “Mosque at Ground Zero” is not in fact a masjid, but rather a
community center, modeled on a Manhattan YMHA to include a spa,
swimming pool, community meeting rooms, a 9/11 memorial, auditorium,
basketball court, classrooms—and rooms for prayers. It is located two
blocks even visible from that site.
But
contrary to the popular saying, in this case it is not all about
“location, location, location.” Ali Akram, a local doctor who supports
the project, said: “The people who say the mosque is too close to
Ground Zero, those are the same people that protest mosques in Brooklyn and Staten Island and Tennessee and Wisconsin and California. What radius will they go
for? There’s no end to it.”
Just
as mainstream politicians enable the open racists, so too Fox and other
rightwing media get aid and comfort from more “respectable” outlets
such as The New York Times, whose years-long coverage of the
“radicalization of American Muslims,” repeating FBI and CIA lies about
victims of preemptive prosecution, reinforces the “guilty until proven
innocent” mindset.
Counter-protests
But
the racism has not gone unchallenged. With less than a week to organize,
a rally to counter the Aug. 22 anti-Islamic protest at Park51 drew 300
people early on a rainy Sunday morning. The racists’ rally was not much
bigger—although it is expected a broader range of right-wing
organizations will mobilize far greater numbers for their 9/11 rally.
Over
120—the majority Arab, South Asian, Black and Latin@—attended meetings
of progressive groups the following week to plan a counter-protest to
the racists’ 9/11 event, and several dozen more, including local clergy
and the 9/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, met to plan events on
9/10.
Another
successful counter-protest, this one of 500, occurred on July 14 in the
Nashville suburb of Murfreesboro, Tenn. It was followed up with a
program of ongoing education, and was done in close collaboration with
the local Arab and Muslim communities.
In
July, 800 people meeting at the UNAC national antiwar conference in Albany, N.Y., took a strong stand
against the attacks. A prominent plenary session was devoted to them
and to the preemptive prosecutions of Muslims by the government. The
conference ended with a march to a local masjid, cosponsored with Albany’s Project Salam and Muslim
Solidarity Committee, where accounts of harassment and frame-ups were
shared.
Witnesses
at the Aug. 22 racist rally in Manhattan reported being stunned and
even scared by the expressions of hatred. A Black union carpenter who
works at Ground Zero was surrounded and threatened by the crowd, which
assumed him to be a Muslim because of his cap (apparently a soft
painters’ cap). Taunts included “he musta voted for Obama,” and
“Mohammed’s a pig.”
Days
later, a man yelling insults about Islam slashed the throat of a Muslim
cab driver. The next day a drunk entered a masjid in Queens and urinated on prayer
rugs, shouting anti-Muslim epithets and calling worshippers terrorists.
We
can expect more such attacks, whether by individual thugs or even
actual lynch mobs, as long as the racists feel emboldened to act with
impunity. Asked Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, “Does anyone believe that
their [the protesters’] real agenda is simply to have Park51 move a few
blocks away to less Sacred ground?”
Greenwald
concluded: “If Park51 ends up moving or if opponents otherwise succeed
in defeating it, it will seriously bolster and validate the ugly
premises at the heart of this campaign: that Muslims generally
are responsible for 9/11, terrorism justifies and even compels our
restricting the equals rights and access of Americans Muslims. … If the
project does fail, the message that will be sent is that bigotry and
fear of Muslims is not just permitted, it is effective.”
Leaders
of SIOA and other Islamophobic groups have been among the most
explicitly racist in their support for Zionism. Israel has from its founding
relied on anti-Arab and anti-Muslim racism to garner support for its
ethnic cleansing, land theft, and discrimination. Palestine solidarity activists,
seeing these connections, have been at the center of today’s fight
against Islamophobia.
Stepping
up the fight for Palestinian and Arab rights, here and abroad, is an
integral part of fighting anti-Islamic bigotry.
The
link was made tragically clear in the Aug. 26 attack by Zionist
settlers on a masjid in Jerusalem’s Silwan neighborhood. Such
attacks have become increasingly common in recent years. Of course,
they are just the continuation of the wholesale destruction of masjids
that was part of the ethnic cleansing and land theft leading to the
creation of Israel in 1948. This followed the
centuries-old tradition of Western powers using anti-Muslim and
anti-Arab racism as an excuse to seize Arab lands.
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