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 The new Islamophobia
Muslims as nemesis of the "civilized world"?
Reza Zia-Ebrahimi
June 10, 2002
The Iranian
French text
During a trip I met an American tourist. It was the time of hostage taking of Western
tourists in the Philippines by members of Islamist commando Abu-Sayaf. This young
woman asked me if I was "feeling responsible". I didn't understand what
she wanted to insinuate. Responsible for what and for whom?
"As a Muslim, you should feel responsible for what your coreligionists commit.
It seems normal, specially for someone sensible," she said.
I had a very hard time believing what I was hearing. I, an Iranian child of the
Middle East, living thousands of kilometers away from the Philippines, and, frankly,
having no knowledge of this country, should feel responsible (this is nothing to
take lightly) about what Abu-Sayaf was committing there in the name of Islam? Regardless
of who I am or what my beliefs are? My being born Muslim should be enough to engage
my person and my responsibility?
"Yes, I feel responsible," I replied. This seemed to satisfy her, as she
was surely thinking that she was having a sensible Muslim as a rare specimen in front
of her.
"And you, do you feel responsible?" I asked her.
She frowned; she didn't seem to grasp my question.
"Responsible for what?" She asked me in turn.
 "For what your coreligionists committed? The Inquisition,
Crusades, Saint-Bartholomew massacre, colonization, genocides, slavery, serfdom,
Napoleonic Wars, First World War, the Holocaust, the 60 million of human casualties
of the Second World War, the atomic bomb, Vietnam, and the devastation of Iraq, to
cite only the most atrocious."
She thought there was no comparison Indeed there was none, because among Muslims
there is no individuality. We only form a single fabric, although we are more than
one billion in number. An act committed by one of us is enough to accuse us all.
That's the least of what people like her think.
And this interesting dialogue took place long before the events of September 11,
before Islam became unofficially but openly the vociferous nemesis of our beautiful
Western values of democracy and human rights. Something must have replaced Communism
following its demise. Another negative pole must have been found to justify political
acts, military actions and wars against terrorism. World's polarization must have
regenerated.
We are truly experiencing the new Islamophobia. On both sides of the Atlantic,
demagogic voices, terrifying of violence scourge Islam, the so-called Islamic civilization,
and Muslims. These voices dangerously recall anti-Semitic lampoons of late 19th century
or even Mussolini and Hitler's racist discourses. It makes one believe that the world
retains no historical lessons.
Mr. Silvio Berlusconi, the present chief of the Italian prime minister declared
that "Muslim civilization is inferior to Europe and its history." Berlusconi
occupies the seat that half a century ago was Mussolini's. And the honorable American
professor Samuel P. Huntington echoes his "clash of civilizations".
Can these levelheaded personalities give us a definition of what they call "Islamic
civilization"? A Senegalese, in the depth of sub-Saharan Africa, an Arab from
the Middle East and an Indonesian of the farthest Far East are members of the same
"civilization" on the pretext that those among them who practice Islam
turn toward Mecca to pray?
Again, Muslim individuality is not recognized. Muslims became pawns of a supranational
and supra-individual concept: Islam (or Islamism), a very poorly understood concept
because of its actual absurdity, supposed to regroup all Muslims under a single enormous
label.
I would even not evoke what Muslims have contributed to the world; I will not
talk about the pioneers in mathematics or medicine; I would not like to lower myself
to the level of engaging in "comparison of civilizations" as if it was
a question of height measurement, or rating Hollywood films.
An Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci just published a book, "Anger and Pride".
This book has had record sales in Italy and Spain. Ms. Fallaci carries out a strongly
grotesque amalgam between Muslims, delinquent immigrants, and terrorists and pretends
to uncover the real face of Islam.
She exploits all hyper-mediatic themes of our sad era: terrorism, insecurity in
Europe, prostitution, and fundamentalism; she blames them on Islam, incites racial
hatred, and thus sells books. She pretends that Muslims "urinate in baptisteries
and multiply like rats".
Imagine for a single instant if a personality as much enlightened as Ms. Fallaci
holds similar talks about Jews. He would be accused of being anti-Semite or revisionist,
and it would be highly probable that his book would not be published at all. Trials
would justly shower down upon him.
But when racism and revisionism target Islam and Muslims, it apparently does not
disturb anyone. It is rare for intellectuals to raise their voices against it. Does
a cause need a holocaust to be intellectualized?
Islamophobia has evidently a much harsher and more repulsive face in the United
States by conjugated action of the latent ignorance of the American people on this
subject, Zionist glorification and the events of September 11. In the U.S., being
a Muslim often equates with exclusively being a Palestinian terrorist. (Let's suppose
there are are 10,000, of these terrorists. What do they represent in a total Muslim
population of 1.1 billion?)
In the U.S., even the evocation of an eventual Palestinian state and talking about
the sufferings of Palestinians is politically incorrect and can result in you being
a engaged in "anti-Semitism" and subsequently "anti-Americanism".
It happens daily during political meetings or academic conferences. The American
alternative press reports it every day.
The mass culture which wants Islam to be equal to violence, terrorism and rejection
of peace is reinforced by the silence of intellectual and political authorities and
their failure to refute such categorizations.
Misinformation amplifies this phenomenon. The Arab-Israeli conflict is reported
by mainstream media (often right-wing and conservative) through an exclusive siding
with one specific party's viewpoint: Israel.
One of the techniques commonly used by Islamophobes is the arbitrary reference
to Koranic texts, taken out of their context and presented to the masses to demonstrate
a so-called intimate and organic relation between Islam and violence.
An American personality, whose confession and political orientation have no importance
here, appeared recently on radio with many references to the Koran in order to claim
that the holy book of Muslims encourages Jihad (implying crusade in this case), expansionism,
and consequently violence and war.
I could also devote myself to this idiotic and malicious game by citing such reference
in the Torah (Deuteronomy 7, 23 & 24), which uses even more extreme terms than
the Koran:
"But the LORD thy God shall deliver those nations unto thee, and shall destroy
them with a mighty destruction, until they be exterminated. And he shall deliver
their kings into thine hand, and thou shalt destroy their name from under heaven:
there shall no man be able to stand before thee, until thou have exterminated them."
Taken out of its context, the above phrase sounds like nothing more than inciting
genocide.
On CNN, a very media savvy American priest maintained, with many references taken
out of the Koran too, that because a religion like Islam not recognize women's rights,
it can not be fair and peaceful. I could, in reply to this honorable lover of Christ
and of its apostles, evoke this injunction announced by the Apostle Paul in his first
epistle to the Corinthians (chapter 11):
"The head of the woman is the man. Therefore if a woman is not covered, let
her also be shaved. A man indeed ought not to have his head covered, being the image
and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of the man. Neither was the man created
for the sake of the woman, but the woman for the sake of the man. For this reason,
the woman ought to have a sign of authority on her head."
All racist discourses based on religion are interchangeable. Muslims today have
enemies called amalgamation, ignorance, misinformation, propaganda, intolerance and
demagogy. The repeated attacks of the media and of some dark and repulsive personalities
like Oriana Fallaci, who make themselves out to be intellectual elites of our era,
bring me out of my reserve.
 One should not be surprised if confronting such a perception
shared by so many non-Muslims, being Christian, Jewish, or even Hindu, would in retaliation
inspire Muslim youth of the four corners of the world to sustain fundamentalist organizations:
the only haven validating their identity.
Meditate on this simple fact: in Gujarat and in Ramllah, men and women are assassinated
because their only crime is being born a Muslim, not a Hindu or a Jew. In Italy a
book sells based on its abusiveness and despise towards and for Muslims.
Without an intent of downplaying events, victims of what is called "Islamophobia"
incomparably outnumber those of the Twin Towers or those of Ben Yehuda street in
Jerusalem. And all this seems to occur in an atmosphere of general indifference.
French text
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