Spreading Awareness or Smearing a Religion? ("Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" )

The proponents of the ‘Islamofascism’ concept want to play upon emotions rather than really spread ‘awareness’. Their historical analogies are absurd, while their planned week is more than an affront to Muslims. It is an insult to everybody's intelligence, says Gary Leupp.

With much fanfare, a collection of far-right ideologues backed by right-wing "think tank" money are proclaiming an "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week" on college campuses beginning Oct. 22. It is a calculated effort to vilify Islam in general, place Muslim Student Associations on the defensive, and generate support for further US military action in the Islamic world.

Muslims constitute about a quarter of the world's population and around two percent of the US population. They include members of many ethnic groups. Arabs are a minority in the Muslim world; the most populous Muslim countries (Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh) are non-Arab. The Muslim world is complex and divided, religiously (into Sunni, Shiite, and other groups) and politically. There are Muslim absolute monarchies, constitutional monarchies, secular states and Islamic republics. To understand this world, one needs to dispassionately examine it, avoiding stereotypes.

But immediately after 9-11, the Bush administration, having no patience with "nuance," set about trying to link the secular republic of Iraq with the (mostly Saudi) al-Qaeda religious fanatics. It believe that having been attacked by al-Qaeda most Americans would support an attack on the completely unrelated target of Iraq. But what did al-Qaeda and Iraq have in common? The former hated the latter for its suppression of Islamic religious activism, and its tolerance for Christians and other religious minorities. But somehow Bush was able to conflate the two, so that even today about a third of Americans believe Saddam was involved in 9-11. Those on the Christian right are most inclined to this view, and to embrace sentiments like those expressed by right-wing extremist Ann Coulter in National Review Sept. 13, 2001: "We should invade countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." But they're joined by secular neoconservatives like Norman Podhoretz who has called on Bush to bomb Iran, which he calls "the currently main center of the Islamofascist ideology."

Iran is another country with no ties to 9-11 or al-Qaeda, and indeed a mortal enemy of the latter. But it is another Muslim state in the Bush administration's crosshairs, along with Syria-yet another, very different, Muslim country. It's in this context, and that of general disillusionment with the Iraq War, that the radical neoconservatives are pushing this "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week." It's the brainchild of David Horowitz, professional "former leftist" and Fox News commentator, proponent of the Iraq War who called one antiwar demonstration in 2002 "100,000 Communists," and author of a book attacking college professors as "far left" in general. He founded (as a non-student in his 60s) "Students for Academic Freedom" which insists that conservative students are treated unfairly in academe. Horowitz is known for his 1990s ads in student newspapers protesting calls for reparations for slavery, stating that African-Americans should be thankful that they're here. In 2003 he maligned Rachel Corrie, killed by an Israeli military bulldozer while protesting a house demolition in Gaza, as a "terrorist" supporter. He is not about spreading "awareness" but selectively focusing on aspects of the Muslim world that might produce sympathy for more US-sponsored "regime change."

---eoe---

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=22625

:puke:

I hate that term.

Remember when Bush was so careful to say that this was not a war on Islam? I wonder how many people believed him. Of course, this being Bush, it could simply be this:

"I don't care what religion you are! You're standing on my oil! Give it to me or I'll smear you around the world, then I'll destroy your countries and kill your citizens...AND I'LL BE RIGHT!"

i thought fascism was when govt. married corporatism. how does islam do that?

1. Projection. We are certainly in the realm of "christofascist", so accusing our "enemies" of what we're doing is hardly uncommon.

2. "Fascism" is a buzzword- most people don't know what it means, they just associate it with genocidal dictatorship(which is probably why people argue with the idea that America is Fascist). Given that fact, it makes a neat soundbite for the uninformed.

These are the same people who would yelp with righteous indignation should anyone call for a "Christo-Fascist Awareness Week" looking critically at the Religious Right, and would consider labeling the Kahane followers and other members of the far-right in Israel "Judeo-Fascists" to practically qualify as a hate crime. Yet directing the same slander against Muslims is fair game. :eyes:

Well, someone's decided to fight back: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2007/10/christian-fasci.html

:headbang:
rocknation