Anti-Arab Racism, Islam, & the Left
Tayseer Allouni, the Qatari Aljazeera TV correspondent,
reporting from his prison in Spain,
after being arrested by its Anti-Arab and Anti-Muslim
government for covering the war in Afghanistan and Iraq
in a way that did not please the Fascists.
America's imperial adventure in Iraq
has further inflamed racist views of Arabs and Muslims
What makes this growing racism so frightening
is its wide acceptance in US society,
particularly by the left
Yet, the escalation that we witness today can be traced to the war on terror launched after 9-11 by Bush and his neoconservative ideologues with the backing of the Democrats.
Anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism has helped sell the detentions, wars, gulags, and occupations of US imperialism's latest and boldest venture into the Middle East and South Asia. In turn, this imperial venture has further inflamed racist views of Arabs and Muslims.
What makes this growing racism so frightening is its wide acceptance in US society, particularly by the left. With the latter, it is not as much conscious racism as not doing enough to fight it.
Part of this may be due to ambivalence, but it also stems from a lack of a dynamic understanding of Islamism.
Broad support gives anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism a sense of legitimacy and respectability that makes building a mass movement that can end the war and occupation of Iraq difficult, if not impossible, since so much of the support for the war is fueled by fear and racism.
According to an ABC-Washington Post poll taken in March 2006, a majority of people in the US believe that "Muslims are disproportionately prone to violence," with 46 percent expressing a negative view of the religion, 7 percent higher than in the immediate aftermath of the 9-11 terrorist attacks.
The poll also found that 25 percent of people in the US admitted to "harboring prejudice towards" Muslims and Arabs. The institutional effect of this racism is stark.
The earnings of Arab and Muslim men working in the US dropped about 10 percent since 9-11, according to a new University of Illinois study.
The drop in wages was most dramatic in areas reporting high crime rates. Robert Kaestner, co-author of the study said there was "an immediate and significant connection between personal prejudice and economic harm."
This should not come as a surprise when you consider the extent of anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism being perpetrated by governments and the media around the world.
The past year has seen the mass publication of Danish cartoons ridiculing Islam, police brutality and repression against North Africans in France, and a riot against mostly Lebanese immigrants in Australia -- all of which led to mass protests and, in the case of France, riots by Arabs and Muslims in response.
While such blatant racism has not yet provoked a similar response in the US, it has not been because of any shortage of incidents:
Last year a Washington, DC, radio host continuously referred to Islam as a "terrorist organization" on his show (Paul Farhi, "Muslims Call Comments by WMAL Host 'Hate-Filled,'" Washington Post 26 Jul 2005: C01).
The Coalition for a Secure Driver's License started a campaign to put up "Don't License Terrorists" billboards depicting an Arab holding a hand grenade in one hand and a driver license smeared with blood in the other.
Republican Congressman Tancredo of Colorado openly called for the US to preempt a terrorist attack by attacking Muslim holy sites like Mecca.
War on Terror
Anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is an indispensable part of the so-called "war on terror" or "the long war," as it is now referred to, and US plans to dominate the Middle East.
By dehumanizing those that the US is waging war against, this racism makes their death and the destruction of their countries more palatable to the US public and quells domestic resistance to the war.
Today it helps numb people to the deaths of dozens of Iraqis per day and the mass murder of Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel.
Fomenting anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism has not been difficult because, as Noam Chomsky puts it, such racism has "long been extreme, the last 'legitimate' form of racism in that one doesn't even have to pretend to conceal it."
I do not want to minimize all the other forms of racism that run deep in this country, but there is indeed a certain legitimacy and respectability given to anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism that is not found with other forms of racism.
This legitimacy stems from the fact that anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism cuts across the entire political spectrum, from right to left. It is accepted and even practiced by those who would not tolerate other forms of racism.
While the anti-racist record of liberals and some on the left is not the best, it is particularly bad when it comes to Arabs and Muslims.
The 'Green' Menace
The end of the Cold War and resistance to US hegemony, particularly by Muslims in the Middle East, made Islam a useful scapegoat for US imperialism -- its new bogeyman now that communism was gone.
Books by the Orientalist Bernard Lewis and Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations became popular because they gave "scholarly" backing to the idea that Islam was the main threat to Western "civilization."
Many have drawn parallels between this scapegoating of Muslims to the red scare during the Cold War, referring to it as the "green menace."
While the comparison is appropriate, the concept of the green menace is, in many ways, much more insidious because it relies on racism rather than ideology.
It is a more effective means of instilling fear in people, deflecting their attention from their everyday problems, and mobilizing them against some supposedly powerful enemy.
That is not to say that the red scare was not (and still is not) used in a racist manner against countries like Vietnam, North Korea, China, Cuba, and against black activists in the US.
It is just that the main communist bogeymen, Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, were white Europeans.
The specter of the green menace, on the other hand, relies on the fact that Muslims look different and, even if they do not look different, they have distinct names, places of worship, dress, and customs that can be easily exploited to portray them as the "other" -- different, prone to violence, and barbaric.
Also, in the age of "full spectrum dominance," this racism can be used to justify and mobilize attacks on a huge swath of the world's poor because Muslims are not only present in large numbers in the Middle East, but in Africa, Asia, and most urban centers in Europe, the United States, and Canada.
They'll Never Win
Doing so will not only bring more Arabs and Muslims into the movement, but also undercut the racist basis of support for the war.
It will also alleviate the sense of isolation and powerlessness that so many Arabs and Muslims feel as a result of being the targets of war and racism.
Such blatant injustice combined with a lack of any effective mass opposition to the US-backed murder of so many innocent Arabs and Muslims is, ultimately, what pushes people to resort to terrorism.
On the other hand, what the resistance in Lebanon has accomplished shows a successful alternative to such desperate and, ultimately, counterproductive tactics. It has also shown how quickly things can turn in this seemingly overwhelming struggle to stop the US war machine.
Most importantly, however, Lebanon has shown that we, Arabs and Muslims, can be locked up, tortured, and bombed but we will never stop resisting US and Israeli efforts to beat us into submission.
Nothing captures this better than the words of Kamel, a shopkeeper who refused to leave Nabatiyeh, one of the hardest hit towns in south Lebanon:
"Look around you, they have destroyed much of Nabatiyeh, but that is all they can do, destroy people's homes and livelihoods.
"They can't destroy our spirit and that is what they don't understand and why they will never win this war."
Rami El-Amine/MR Zine