OMNI US ISLAMOPHOBIA NEWSLETTER #1,
December 30, 2012. Compiled by Dick Bennett for a Culture of Peace and
Justice.
This newsletter was accidentally not published at the time of its composition.
My blog: War
Department/Peace Department
My Newsletters:
Index:
See: Fear, Imperialism, etc.
Contents #1 December 30, 2012
Lean, Islamophobia Industry
Kumar, Islamophobia and Empire
Sheehi, Islamophobia
Nation
Magazine, 6 Essays
Bacevich, Boykinism (McCarthyism)
Rendall, Muslim Violence?
Pal, Islamic Nonviolence
SYNOPSIS
Islamophobia:
The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims examines the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments in the West
following the end of the Cold War through GW Bush’s War on Terror to the Age of Obama. Using
“Operation Desert Storm” as a watershed moment, Stephen Sheehi examines the increased
mainstreaming of Muslim-bating rhetoric and explicitly racist legislation, police surveillance,
witch-trials and discriminatory policies towards Muslims in North America
and abroad.
The book focuses on the various genres and modalities of Islamophobia from
the works of rogue academics
to the commentary by mainstream journalists, to campaigns by political
hacks and special interest groups. Some featured Islamophobes
are Bernard Lewis. Fareed Zakaria, Thomas Friedman, David Horowitz, Ayaan
Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney,
John McCain, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama. Their theories and opinions
operate on an assumption that
Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, suffer from particular cultural lacuna
that prevent their cultures
from progress, democracy and human rights. While the assertion originated in the colonial era, Sheehi
demonstrates that it was refurbished as a viable explanation for Muslim resistance to economic and
cultural globalization during the Clinton
era. Moreover, the theory was honed into the
empirical basis for an interventionist foreign policy and propaganda campaign during the Bush regime
and continues to underlie Barack Obama’s new internationalism.
If the assertions of media pundits and rogue academics became the basis for
White House foreign policy,
Sheehi also demonstrates how they were translated into a sustained domestic policy of racial profiling and
Muslim-baiting by agencies from
Homeland Security to the Department
of Justice. Furthermore, Sheehi examines the collusion between
non-governmental
agencies, activist groups and lobbies and local, state and federal agencies
in suppressing political
speech on US campuses
critical of racial profiling, US
foreign policy in the Middle East and
Israel.
While much of the direct violence against Muslims on American streets,
shops and campuses has
subsided, Islamophobia runs throughout the Obama administration. Sheehi,
therefore, concludes that Muslim and Arab-hating emanate from all corners
of the American political and
cultural spectrum, serving poignant ideological
functions in the age of economic, cultural
and political globalization.
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REVIEWS
“Sheehi’s analysis of Islamophobia as an
ideological formation brings a much needed dose of fresh air,
and analytical clarity... A worthy update of Said’s seminal discussion of
Orientalism and one that leaves
few players in the contemporary foreign policy establishment, in particular
so-called liberals, unscathed.”
MARK
LEVINE, author of Why They
Don’t Hate Us
and Heavy Metal Islam
"[A] brilliantly synthetic work; a gift to all who struggle to
understand the anti-Muslim sentiment so
pervasive in contemporary America.
In a richly detailed yet accessible manner, Sheehi tackles post-Cold
War American Islamophobia in all of its complexity, weaving together its
liberal and neoconservative
strands, and illustrating that we must interrogate it not as a problem of
“prejudice” or “misunderstanding,”
nor as a debate about Islam itself, but as an ideological paradigm used to
structure and justify U.S.
policies, both domestic and international."
NATSU
TAYLOR SAITO, author of Meeting the Enemy:
American
Exceptionalism and International Law
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"...the value of this book is
incalculable, and Stephen Sheehi is due our deepest
thanks and admiration for his courage in writing it."
from the Foreword by WARD CHURCHILL
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EXCERPT (from
the Introduction)
Islamophobia as an Ideological Formation of US Empire
All
of this said, Islamophobia is not a political ideology in itself nor is it
an isolated dogma just as
Islam itself is not a political ideology. Islamophobia
does not have a platform or even a political
vision. Islamophobia is something more substantive, abstract, sustained,
ingrained and
prevalent. This book contends that Islamophobia is an ideological
formation. This does not
mean that it is the purview of any particular political party. Rather, an
ideological formation is
created by a culture that deploys particular tropes, analyses and beliefs,
as facts upon which
governmental policies and social practices are framed. This book argues
that Islamophobia, in
its current form, is a new ideological formation that has taken full expression
since the collapse
of the Soviet Union. Islamophobia does not
originate in one particular administration, thinker,
philosopher, activist, media outlet, special interest group, think tank, or
even economic sector or
industry though indeed, these actors are collectively
responsible for the virulent dissemination of
anti-Muslim and anti-Arab stereotypes and beliefs, circulated in order to
naturalize and justify US
global, economic and political hegemony. The Bush administration
unabashedly wore its disdain
for Muslims and Arabs on its sleeve from
the first day of his administration. The subsequent
chapters will show that even the Clinton and Obama administrations are rife
with Islamophobic
paradigms and acts that couple with a similarly imperial American outlook.
Indeed, we have
witnessed the unprecedented mainstreaming
of Islamophobia since 9/11. An extremist flake
such as Robert Spencer, for example, has authored two vitriolic, racist
screeds on Islam that
became New York Times bestsellers while Bruce Bawer’s incendiary and
hackneyed The Enemy
Within was nominated by the prestigious
National Book Critics Circle for the best book of
criticism.11
While scholars, activists and community groups as well as projects such as
Fairness and
Accuracy In Reporting have taken on the ideological hacks and pseudo-intellectuals in
the
mainstream,12 this book adopts a different tack. Rather than understanding
Islamophobia as a
series of actions and beliefs
that target Muslims and arise from a generic misunderstanding of
who Muslims are and what Islam is, it reveals that Islamophobia is an ideological
phenomenon
which exists to promote political and economic goals, both domestically and
abroad. The effects
of Islamophobia can be a
series of acts institutionalized by the United States government
ranging
from war to programmatic torture to extrajudicial
kidnappings, incarcerations and executions to
surveillance and entrapment. The effects of Islamophobia are experienced in
the daily lives of
Muslims who encounter harassment, discrimination and hate speech in the
street, anti-Muslim
rants on nationally syndicated television and
radio shows, and hate acts such as mosque
bombings. These effects, however, will only be understood as scattered
albeit tangentially
related acts if they are not seen to be located in a complete paradigm or
discourse of
Islamophobia that permeates American culture and society.
For these effects to work in unison with a rhetoric that justifies them,
Islamophobia must act
concurrently on two levels; the level of thought, speech and perception; then, the
material level of
policies, violence and action. Therefore, this book is structured by a dual
methodology that
excavates how Islamophobia operates as a powerful ideological formation
that facilitates
American Empire. On the one hand, the book anchors its analysis on works by Bernard
Lewis
and Fareed Zakaria, on “native informants” such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and
Irshad Manji, and on
speeches by presidents Bush
and Obama as well as their cabinet members and underlings
whose analyses and political philosophies provide the discursive bedrock that naturalizes and
justifies Islamophobia as state, foreign, security, economic and energy
policy, domestically and
abroad.
To streamline the massive, multifaceted ideological edifice of
Islamophobia, two similar but
competing paradigms of Islamophobia by Bernard Lewis and Fareed Zakaria will be
mapped
out. As bears repeating, these two are certainly not progenitors of the
Islamophobic narratives
deployed post 9/11, but
arguably their work condenses Islamophobic narratives that have
previously circulated and accumulated over the preceding decade. Lewis and
Zakaria distilled
many Islamophobic tenets into two separate but intersecting Islamophobic
discourses that
explicitly intend to legitimize the deployment of US political power in the Middle
East and the
control of its own domestic populations. The talking points within these two
versions of
Islamophobia are continually repeated throughout the mainstream media, in
policy circles, and
by native informants (persons
of Muslim or Arab descent who are purportedly best placed to lay
bare an inside view or critique of Arab/Islamic culture), but more importantly,
echo in the
speeches of Bush and Obama.
On the other hand, this book will show how these Islamophobic discourses
have very real
effects. In other words, the words of Islamophobia are the raw materials for the sticks
and stones
that break Muslim bones. Through engineering, managing, mediating and directing
Euro-
American hatred and fear of
Muslims and Arabs inside the US and globally, new levels of
domestic control and surveillance could be achieved. Domestic policies that previously would
have been considered unconstitutional, even un-American, could be justified
as necessary
matters of security and self-preservation.
Torture (from water-boarding to extreme isolation of
American defendants in the United States), racial profiling, kidnapping and extraordinary
renditions, extrajudicial assassinations, freezing habeas corpus, and total
war against and
occupation of sovereign countries are
the effects of the deployment of Islamophobic foils,
stereotypes, paradigms and analyses.
This book will examine the violent and not-so-subtle effects of Islamophobia,
particularly how
attacks on Muslims and Arabs in the US are multipronged. Government
organizations and
agencies work with the legislature, the Executive and even the judiciary in
targeting, profiling and
disenfranchising Muslim and Arab Americans of their Constitutional rights.
Political interest
groups, lobbies and political action committees work with local, state and federal
authorities to
isolate, intimidate and harass Muslim communities, student organizations,
activists, and
scholars. Likewise, the media efficiently disseminates overtly anti-Muslim
propaganda that
demonizes Muslims and Arabs and amplifies mainstream
hostility to Islam and its adherents.
We will also see how against the backdrop of a sheet of Muslim-hating white
noise, extremist
acts are committed against Muslims, Arabs and minorities who are mistaken
for them.
Indeed, the book is not comprehensive. Unfortunately, the list of anti-Arab
and Islamophobic hate
acts, speech, activists, legislators and incidents
are far too numerous to review. If this book were
to name the litany of Islamophobic acts committed by the government,
private citizens, public
organizations and Hollywood
and the media, then it would be a tome-like catalogue of hate.
While diligently tracking Arab-hating and Islamophobia is important, this
book hopes to crack
open the complexities of the ideological formation itself, to understand
how it is constructed and
organized, and critically observe how it is manifested in American society.
For this reason,
Islamophobia is defined and examined
in terms of discursive archetypes taken in the form of two
master-narratives as provided
by Lewis and Zakaria. Rather than discuss every
Islamophobic
rogue pseudo-scholar, political hack, charlatan native informant,
opportunist pundit or activist
journalist, the works of a handful
of Islamophobes serves to define the scaffolding upon which
Islamophobic acts and policies are grafted and American foreign and domestic policies find
justification.
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THE NATION (July
2/9, 2012).
9 essays: “Islamophobia: Anatomy of an American Panic.”
Thursday, June
14, 2012
The Nation has
a special issue entitled "Islamophobia: Anatomy of an American Panic"
with articles examining different aspects of Islamophobia in the US.
These include Moustafa Bayoumi,
"Fear and Loathing of Islam",
Jack Shaheen, "How the Media Created the Muslim Monster Myth"
(subscription only), Petra Bartosiewicz, "Deploying Informants, the FBI
Stings Muslims", Laila Lalami, "Islamophobia and Its Discontents",
Abed Awad, "The True Story of Sharia in
American Courts", Ramzi Kassem, "The Long Roots of the NYPD Spying
Program", Max Blumenthal, "The Sugar Mama of Anti-Muslim Hate",
and Laila Al-Arian, "When Your Father Is Accused of
Terrorism".
September 25, 2012
First came the
hullaballoo over the “Mosque at Ground Zero.” Then there
was Pastor Terry Jones of
Gainesville,
Florida, grabbing headlines as he
promoted “International Burn-a-Koran Day.” Most recently,
we have an American posting a slanderous anti-Muslim video on the Internet with
all the
ensuing turmoil.
Throughout, the official
U.S.
position has remained fixed: the
United States government condemns
Islamophobia. Americans respect Islam as a religion of peace. Incidents suggesting
otherwise are the work of a tiny minority -- whackos, hatemongers, and publicity-seekers. Among
Muslims from
Benghazi to
Islamabad, the argument has proven to be a
tough sell.
And not without reason: although it might be comforting to dismiss anti-Islamic
outbursts in the
U.S.
as the work of a few fanatics, the picture is actually far more complicated.
Those complications in turn help explain why religion, once considered a
foreign policy asset, has in recent years become a net liability.
Let’s begin with a brief
history lesson. From the late 1940s to the late 1980s, when
Communism provided the overarching ideological rationale for American
globalism, religion figured prominently as a theme of
U.S. foreign
policy. Communist antipathy toward religion helped invest the Cold War foreign
policy consensus with its remarkable durability. That Communists were godless
sufficed to place them beyond the pale. For many Americans, the Cold War
derived its moral clarity from the conviction that here was a contest pitting
the God-fearing against the God-denying. Since we were on God’s side, it
appeared axiomatic that God should repay the compliment.
From time to time during the decades when anti-Communism provided so much of
the animating spirit of U.S. policy, Judeo-Christian strategists in Washington
(not necessarily believers themselves), drawing on the theologically correct
proposition that Christians, Jews, and Muslims all worship the same God, sought
to enlist Muslims, sometimes of
fundamentalist persuasions, in the cause of opposing the
godless. One especially notable example was the Soviet-Afghan War of 1979-1989.
To inflict pain on the Soviet occupiers, the
United
States threw its weight behind the Afghan resistance,
styled in
Washington
as “
freedom
fighters,” and funneled aid (via the Saudis and the Pakistanis) to the most
religiously extreme among them. When this effort resulted in a massive Soviet
defeat, the
United States
celebrated its support for the Afghan Mujahedeen as evidence of strategic
genius. It was almost as if God had rendered a verdict.
Yet not so many years after the Soviets withdrew in defeat, the freedom
fighters morphed into the fiercely anti-Western Taliban, providing sanctuary to
al-Qaeda as it plotted -- successfully -- to attack the
United States.
Clearly, this was a monkey wrench thrown into God’s plan.
With the launching of the
Global War
on Terrorism,
Islamism succeeded
Communism as the body of beliefs that, if left unchecked, threatened to
sweep across the globe with dire consequences for freedom. Those who
Washington had armed as “freedom fighters” now became
America’s
most dangerous enemies. So at least members of the national
security establishment believed or purported to believe, thereby curtailing any
further discussion of whether militarized globalism actually represented the
best approach to promoting liberal values globally or even served
U.S. interests.
Yet as a rallying cry, a war against Islamism presented difficulties right
from the outset. As much as policymakers struggled to prevent Islamism from
merging in the popular mind with Islam itself, significant numbers of Americans
-- whether genuinely fearful or
mischief-minded -- saw this as a distinction without a
difference. Efforts by the Bush administration to work around this problem by
framing the post-9/11 threat under the rubric of “terrorism” ultimately failed
because that generic term offered no explanation for motive. However the
administration twisted and turned, motive in this instance seemed bound up with
matters of religion.
Where exactly to situate God in post-9/11
U.S.
policy posed a genuine challenge for policymakers, not least of all for George
W. Bush, who believed, no doubt sincerely, that God had chosen him to defend
America in its
time of maximum danger. Unlike the communists, far from denying God’s
existence, Islamists embrace God with startling ferocity. Indeed, in their
vitriolic denunciations of the
United
States and in perpetrating acts of
anti-American violence, they audaciously present themselves as nothing less
than God’s avenging agents. In confronting the Great Satan, they claim to be
doing God’s will.
Waging War in Jesus’s Name
This debate over who actually represents God’s will is one that the
successive administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have studiously
sought to avoid. The
United States
is not at war with Islam per se,
U.S. officials insist. Still, among
Muslims abroad,
Washington’s
repeated denials notwithstanding, suspicion persists and not without reason.
Consider the case of
Lieutenant
General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin. While still on active duty in 2002,
this highly decorated Army officer spoke in uniform at a series of some 30
church gatherings during which he offered
his own response to President Bush’s famous question: “Why
do they hate us?” The general’s perspective differed markedly from his
commander-in-chief’s: “The answer to that is because we're a Christian nation.
We are hated because we are a nation of believers.”
On another such occasion, the general recalled his encounter with a Somali
warlord who claimed to enjoy Allah’s protection. The warlord was deluding
himself, Boykin declared, and was sure to get his comeuppance: “I knew that my
God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an
idol.” As a Christian nation, Boykin insisted, the
United States would succeed in
overcoming its adversaries only if “we come against them in the name of Jesus.”
When Boykin’s remarks caught the attention of the mainstream press,
denunciations rained down from on high, as the
White House, the State Department, and the
Pentagon hastened to disassociate the government from the
general’s views. Yet subsequent indicators suggest that, however crudely,
Boykin was indeed expressing perspectives shared by more than a few of his
fellow citizens.
One such indicator came immediately: despite the furor, the general kept his
important Pentagon job as deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence,
suggesting that the Bush administration considered his transgression minor.
Perhaps Boykin had spoken out of turn, but his was not a fireable offense. (One
can only speculate regarding the fate likely to befall a
U.S.
high-ranking officer daring to say of Israeli Prime Benjamin Netanyahu, “My God
is a real God and his is an idol.”)
A second indicator came in the wake of Boykin’s retirement from active duty.
In 2012, the influential
Family
Research Council (FRC) in
Washington
hired the general to serve as the organization’s executive vice-president.
Devoted to “advancing faith, family, and freedom,” the council presents itself
as emphatically Christian in its outlook. FRC events routinely attract
Republican Party heavyweights. The organization forms part of the conservative
mainstream, much as, say, the American Civil Liberties Union forms part of the
left-liberal mainstream.
So for the FRC to hire as its chief operating officer someone espousing
Boykin’s pronounced views regarding Islam qualifies as noteworthy. At a
minimum, those who recruited the former general apparently found nothing
especially objectionable in his worldview. They saw nothing politically risky
about associating with Jerry Boykin. He's their kind of guy. More likely, by
hiring Boykin, the FRC intended to send a signal: on matters where their new
COO claimed expertise -- above all, war -- thumb-in-your eye political
incorrectness was becoming a virtue. Imagine the NAACP electing Nation of Islam
leader Louis Farrakhan as its national president, thereby endorsing his views
on race, and you get the idea.
What the FRC’s embrace of General Boykin makes clear is this: to dismiss
manifestations of Islamophobia simply as the work of an insignificant American
fringe is mistaken. As with the supporters of
Senator
Joseph McCarthy, who during the early days of the Cold War saw communists
under every State Department desk, those engaging in these actions are daring
to express openly attitudes that others in far greater numbers also quietly
nurture. To put it another way,
what
Americans in the 1950s knew as McCarthyism has reappeared in the form of
Boykinism.
Historians differ passionately over whether McCarthyism represented a
perversion of anti-Communism or its truest expression. So, too, present-day
observers will disagree as to whether Boykinism represents a merely fervent or
utterly demented response to the Islamist threat. Yet this much is inarguable:
just as the junior senator from
Wisconsin
in his heyday embodied a non-trivial strain of American politics, so, too, does
the former special-ops-warrior-turned-“
ordained minister with a passion for spreading the Gospel
of Jesus Christ.”
Notably, as Boykinism’s leading exponent, the former general’s views bear a
striking resemblance to those favored by the late senator. Like McCarthy,
Boykin believes that, while enemies beyond
America’s gates pose great dangers,
the enemy within poses a still greater threat. “I’ve studied Marxist
insurgency,” he
declared in a 2010 video. “It was part of my training. And
the things I know that have been done in every Marxist insurgency are being
done in
America
today.” Explicitly comparing the
United States
as governed by Barack Obama to Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s
China, and Fidel Castro’s
Cuba, Boykin charges that, under the guise of
health reform, the Obama administration is secretly organizing a “constabulary
force that will control the population in
America.” This new force is, he
claims, designed to be larger than the
United
States military, and will function just as Hitler’s
Brownshirts once did in
Germany.
All of this is unfolding before our innocent and unsuspecting eyes.
Boykinism: The New McCarthyism
How many Americans endorsed McCarthy’s conspiratorial view of national and
world politics? It’s difficult to know for sure, but enough in
Wisconsin to win him
reelection in 1952, by a comfortable 54% to 46% majority. Enough to strike fear
into the hearts of politicians who quaked at the thought of McCarthy fingering
them for being “soft on Communism.”
How many Americans endorse Boykin’s comparably incendiary views? Again, it’s
difficult to tell. Enough to persuade FRC’s funders and supporters to hire him,
confident that doing so would burnish, not tarnish, the organization’s brand.
Certainly, Boykin has in no way damaged its ability to attract powerhouses of
the domestic right. FRC’s recent “
Values Voter
Summit” featured luminaries such as Republican vice-presidential nominee
Paul Ryan, former Republican Senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum,
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and Representative Michele Bachmann -- along
with Jerry Boykin himself, who lectured attendees on “Israel, Iran, and the
Future of Western Civilization.” (In early August, Mitt Romney
met privately with a group of “prominent social
conservatives,” including Boykin.)
Does their appearance at the FRC podium signify that Ryan, Santorum, Cantor,
and Bachmann all subscribe to Boykinism’s essential tenets? Not any more than
those who exploited the McCarthyite moment to their own political advantage --
Richard Nixon, for example -- necessarily agreed with all of McCarthy’s
reckless accusations. Yet the presence of leading Republicans on an FRC program
featuring Boykin certainly suggests that they find nothing especially
objectionable or politically damaging to them in his worldview.
Still, comparisons between McCarthyism and Boykinism only go so far. Senator
McCarthy wreaked havoc mostly on the home front, instigating witch-hunts,
destroying careers, and trampling on civil rights, while imparting to American
politics even more of a circus atmosphere than usual. In terms of foreign
policy, the effect of McCarthyism, if anything, was to reinforce an already
existing anti-communist consensus. McCarthy’s antics didn’t create enemies
abroad. McCarthyism merely reaffirmed that communists were indeed the enemy,
while making the political price of thinking otherwise too high to contemplate.
Boykinism, in contrast, makes its impact felt abroad. Unlike McCarthyism, it
doesn’t strike fear into the hearts of incumbents on the campaign trail here.
Attracting General Boykin’s endorsement or provoking his ire probably won’t
determine the outcome of any election. Yet in its various manifestations
Boykinism provides the kindling that helps sustain anti-American sentiment in
the Islamic world. It reinforces the belief among Muslims that the Global War
on Terror really
is a war against them.
Boykinism confirms what many Muslims are already primed to believe: that
American values and Islamic values are irreconcilable. American presidents and
secretaries of state stick to their talking points,
praising Islam as a great religious tradition and touting
past
U.S.
military actions (ostensibly) undertaken on behalf of Muslims. Yet with their
credibility among Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis, and others in the Greater Middle
East about nil, they are pissing in the wind.
As long as substantial numbers of vocal Americans do not buy the ideological
argument constructed to justify
U.S.
intervention in the Islamic world -- that
their conception of freedom
(including religious freedom) is ultimately compatible with
ours --
then neither will Muslims. In that sense, the supporters of Boykinism who
reject that proposition encourage Muslims to follow suit. This ensures, by
extension, that further reliance on armed force as the preferred instrument of
U. S.
policy in the Islamic world will compound the errors that produced and have
defined the post-9/11 era.
Andrew J. Bacevich is currently a visiting fellow at Notre Dame’s Kroc
Institute for International Peace Studies. A TomDispatch regular,
he is author of Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War,
among other works, and most recently editor of The
Short American Century.
Copyright 2012 Andrew J. Bacevich
Rendall, Steve.
Why Do They Hate Us Back?” Extra! (Nov. 2012)
“When considering ‘anti-American violence in the Muslim
world,’ it would have been helpful to mention as context that such violence
amounts to a tiny fraction of the mayhem visited on Muslims by the U.S. and
NATO over the past decade.”
NONVIOLENT ISLAM
That is why “Islam”
Means Peace: Understanding the Muslim Principle of Nonviolence Today, the new book by
Amitabh Pal,
the managing editor of the Progressive,
is so important. In addition to writing wonderful chapters on
somewhat more well-known figures in the nonviolence world like Khan Abdul
Ghaffar Khan, Pal tells the story of many obscure Muslim peacemakers who
deserve far more attention—such as Abdul Kalam Azad, who worked
alongside Gandhi in India’s
independence struggle, and Ibrahim Rugova, who led the Kosovar Albanians’
nonviolent movement against Milosevic.
For
anyone not well-versed in Islam, Pal also provides a great primer on the
Qur’an, the real meaning of jihad and how Islam actually spread around the
world, effectively rebutting many of the most common myths about the
religion. I recently interviewed Pal for Religion Dispatches about this hidden history
and how the nonviolent movements in the Middle East are shaking up both the
region and the way that the West perceives Islam. (from review by Eric Stoner)
END ISLAMOPHOBIA NEWSLETTER #1
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