Islamophobia, Secularism, Terrorism and the Delhi blasts
One day after the deadly bombs, speculation is rife as to who the mastermind is. 61 lives and an unknown terrorist group, Inquilab, have claimed responsibility - but I wonder that this must be just cheap publicity for the new outfit.
Will the Indian Govt. step up its anti-terror strategies - it will for a few months, and then once again subside into lethargy.
Islamophobia is a new term coined after Muslim terrorism became a phenomenon like unusual weather. Many people in the West, who live in insular communities have reason for this kind of phobia, but it will never take root in India.
Most Indians, if not all, have Muslim friends and will continue to do so. There is no question of Islamophobia hence. But, the Govt. needs to be seriously worried if its capital is so insecure.
Will the Singh Govt. do anything or will it shy away in the name of secularism? Secularism is a bizarre thing in India, where it has a whole new meaning of “minority appeasement” - will this stand in the way of fighting terror, which is mostly Islamic?
There is nothing wrong in calling black, black. UK has instituted many Muslim-specific measures after the July blasts - Muslim students in the country are monitored, Muslim visa applicants will find it more difficult to obtain one, an Imam or two has been deported etc.
Similarly in Netherlands - they now have a debate as whether to ban the burqa in public places in the country! While I agree that victimizing an entire community for the eccentricities of a minority is undesirable, it gives focus and narrows down the avenues for the Security forces to investigate, thereby improving the chances of nabbing the culprits.
Unfortunate as it may sound, the symptoms of terrorism can be tackled by force. But to deal with its underlying cause, more socio-political study is required. B Raman reasons out that this bombing is because of the recent cozying up to US. But to me it appears to have other fundamental causes.
45% of Muslims live in the Indian sub-continent - this statistic would have sounded OK in the previous decade, but geopolitics and religiopolitics have changed dramatically in the last few years. Oh, and read my earlier post on the tragedy…
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Below is an impression I would love to share, particularly with Jewish members on this list. It is a most disturbing impression that can only be ameliorated through collegial discourse, in my view. So I offer it to this list in hope of promoting discussion instead of slander. Reason can change my views as they are fraught with alarm that would appreciation pacification.
The “Big Red Scare” days of the Cold War were heady days, especially for the once Leninist neocons turned anti-Red propagandists publishing in CIA sponsored media directed at the Left. But those days are gone and many rich careers made in the Conservative Movement fighting the “Red Menace” came to a crashing end. Trade names for think-tanks, publications, publishing houses and other assets could be bought for a nickle on the dollar as the Corporate Establishment and CIA ceased funding of the “Red Scare” propaganda machine and the well payed “experts” had to scramble in search of real jobs.
Many proved to be as good at scholarship and writing as at their past trade of scare propaganda and they found a niche for themselves in academia. But for the neocons it proved business as usual, for they were able to move from the “Big Red Scare” to the “Big Green Scare.” Green is the color of Islam and the neocons managed to parley venture capital from right-wing Zionist extremist entrepreneurs into a “War on Terror” fighting the new Islam scare. Indeed, deeming the Cold War “World War III,” they declared “World War IV” on Islam:
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/podhoretz.htm
To be sure, the internationally waged Zionist campaign to label all Islamists “Jihadists” is not new. In its desperate effort to impede global recognition of the Palestinians as a people with national aspirations, the Israeli Government funded lavishly with American aid-funds all sorts of front organizations that depicted every act of terror a tactical battle in the GLOBAL Islamist War on the West. Recently, Israeli operative Bernard Lewis was honored on his 90th birthday as the first to warn of a new war of the worlds– to the death– between Islam and Christianity which they say he dubbed, a Clash of Civilizations, not Huntington, the author of a book by the same name. Nowhere was his past personal history as agent of an interested party ever mentioned, after all, a basic tenet of this operation is the “Don’t show, don’t tell” inability on the part of us “dumb goyim” Christians to recognize the bias behind his “scholarship.”
To be sure, the neocons would be quick to point out, 9/11 has more than signaled the existence of such a “clash of civilizations.”– but with ALL of Islam? Here again, as in their past Cold War propaganda, the neocons relied on their true and tried tactic of “don’t show, don’t tell,” for we are deemed “dumb goyim” who will not look behind the blaring slogans. The fact is that we, the Christian World, came to Islam to conquer it after it had collapsed as a power, not the other way around. And, armed by Stalin, European Jews created out of nothing the state of Israel. Instead of making the Germans pay for the Holocaust, we, in fact, made the Arabs pay and pay dearly; the most helpless Palestinians, according to Benny Morris, the Zionist historian, suffered a cruel invasion that caused some more idealistic Israelis to name it “Zionazi” for its exterminationist tactics of ethnic cleansing. That 1948 event is, right or wrong, at the root
of 9/11, as well as our imperial protection of our “cheap oil” through corrupt regimes we back and protect against their own subjects.
Through parthenogenesis (eg. self-replication) a plethora of organization was created by a hand full of neocons, much as they did as one time Leninists, to give the impression of a heterogeneous “united front” of view points. For them, 9/11 was not as much of a God-sent as was the coalition they managed to make with the Fundamentalist Christians who believe that the Day of Rapture will only come AFTER Israel comes to dominate the Middle East. Coalition with these “Christian Zionists” (though for reasons that can be considered nothing more than an extension of their anti-Semitic position) proved to be like a Stalinist Coup per the 1936 Dimitrov designed “united front” that, “neutralizes our enemies and brings them to the service of our cause.”
Using the Cold War Era and the opportunist Senator Jackson of Washington State, who really thought the neocons would bring him to the presidency, (his hopes were dashed by a massive and fatal coronary) they campaigned for bigger is better strategic weapons and thus in an influence peddling scheme linked the massive American military-industrial complex– that Eisenhower was so weary of– with that of Israel. There was plenty of money to be made and, to date, none of the neocons nor their progeny suffers from poverty. But, the end of the Cold War seemed to put all that in jeopardy; that is, until 9/11 brought an end to the unachievable sure-fire ABM System and gave cause for a “transformation” of the US military into a global Christian Expeditionary Force chasing Jihadists all over the globe and promoting– they hoped– Israeli domination of the Middle East:
http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/archive/1990s/instituteforadvancedstrategicandpoliticalstudies.htm
But note, no sooner did we reach achievement of one such venture in our war on terror that we abandoned it unaccomplished for yet another. Hence, the masters of 9/11/2001 are still alive and free, today mid-2006, still directing alQaeda in its terrorizing of the world. After all, there’s little to be gained from ending the source of the scare!
In the meantime, the “Big Green Scare” propaganda is in full swing. For example, the same neocon Hudson Institute that championed more-is-better nuclear armaments for the war against the Big Red Scare is now promoting “expert and great scholar” on Islam Bat Yo’er, an Israeli who lives in Switzerland (like many neocons living in “anti-Semite” Europe instead of the “safe homeland” Israel), from where she propagates the concept of “EURABIA,” which means that Europe has already been taken by Islam because of its inherent weaknesses: (1) anti-Jewish nature and (2) loss of Christian zeal to destroy Islam. Now if that doesn’t sound like an obvious attempt to kill two birds with one stone, I don’t know what does. As Anne Norton notes in her book, ” Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire,” Yale university Press, there is an ongoing a full-court-press anti-Semitic campaign against Arabs and Islam in general, run by the neocons, which I would dub the “Big Green Scare.”
This campaign has yet another motive: fear that as more and more Islamics settle and succeed in America, they will acquire the economic wherewithal to match the “Israel Lobby” that Mearsheimer and Walt wrote about in their study– but this AIPAC with “I” for “Islam” instead of “Israel”– one seeking to sway Congress, not on Israel’s behalf as does AIPAC, but on behalf of Islam. Such “dumb goyim” are deemed the Christian Americans in Congress, that the neocons fear that, once the Arabs acquire a foothold in American politics, they will draw Congress away from Israel.
It is most instructive to read how the Neocon Establishment responded to the Mearsheimer and Walt analysis of the Israel Lobby and what is fomented by these neocons– or through their “friends”– about Islam in order to feed the Big Green Scare; it is utter ANTI-SEMITISM!!!
Here is one sample of the way the case is made:
part 1
http://www.reportingwar.com/esman032006.shtml
part 2
http://www.reportingwar.com/esman041006.shtml
and below is the URL for the Mearsheimer and Walt article that caused such a stir:
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n06/mear01_.html
which was so vitriolically denounced by ADL as follows:
http://www.adl.org/Israel/mearsheimer_walt.asp
So, it would seem, Ye’or on “Eurabia” is O.K. but Mearsheimer and Walt on AIPAC is “anti-Semitic.” I leave you all to contemplate and further research what’s behind the BIG GREEN SCARE.
Daniel E. Teodoru