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Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire

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Highlights

The focus on “radicalized” Muslim Americans serves not to keep the American people safe, but to whip up a sense of fear and paranoia which can then be used to squash dissent and win consent for violations of civil liberties at home and wars abroad. — location: 174 ^ref-20727

Islamophobia is about politics rather than religion per se; it therefore needs to be fought on that terrain. — location: 190 ^ref-12826

politics of international solidarity that links domestic attacks on Muslims with the goals of imperialism, that Islamophobia can be successfully defeated. — location: 197 ^ref-60805

those who rule a society tend to set the terms of discussion. — location: 240 ^ref-45965

the diversity that marked al-Andalus found its reflection in the Ottoman territories; Christians and Jews not only lived in an atmosphere of tolerance but also experienced prosperity. — location: 419 ^ref-47912

Prior to the nineteenth century, European colonialism was explained primarily through the lens of Christianity. — location: 610 ^ref-17547

The shift from religious to “scientific” justifications began in the eighteenth century. — location: 616 ^ref-11980

the eighteenth century saw the development of notions of European superiority, particularly through the association of the West with democracy and the East with despotism. — location: 621 ^ref-42008

Rather than examine the historical context of Muslim societies, philologists simply pursued textual analysis. It is no wonder then, as Rodinson notes, that despite the “tremendous amount of accurate information and precise documentation, which the specialists were able to assemble, the rift between their intellectual efforts and the world of objective reality continued to widen.” — location: 641 ^ref-56098

It followed from this that Islam, as defined by its classical texts, was the key lens through which Muslim-majority societies could be understood. — location: 645 ^ref-27224

Starting from this idea that Muslims are a race, Orientalists claimed to be able to explain the “Muslim mind” or the “Arab mind.” — location: 660 ^ref-61317

the Orientalist view of the East as it emerged in the nineteenth century was based on a racial and civilizational vilification of Muslims. — location: 681 ^ref-2389

homo islamicus — location: 695 ^ref-27554

it was not until World War II that the United States began to approach the study of the Middle East systematically, — location: 725 ^ref-29088

US universities turned toward the production of knowledge instrumental to serving the needs of empire. Two approaches guided the study of the Middle East: Orientalism, which was still dominated by philologists, and social scientific research, from which a new model known as “modernization” would be developed. — location: 736 ^ref-33655

Such sweeping generalizations, characteristic of Orientalist scholarship, were influential in the United States because they provided a quick and easy way to grasp a large and complex region. — location: 745 ^ref-59582

an American-dominated world would ensure liberty and democracy for all through the mechanism of free-market capitalism. — location: 772 ^ref-26811

newly decolonized nations were not to oppose economic imperialism and the United States’ access to markets and investment opportunities around the world. — location: 781 ^ref-54554

This new form of imperialism required a new language; that language was called “modernization theory.” — location: 788 ^ref-59273

Modernization theorists didn’t speculate about contemporary societies based on classical texts: they conducted empirical research and gathered data which was evaluated using quantitative data analysis techniques. This time it was real science—it had to be correct! — location: 798 ^ref-41498

Orientalist assumptions about the “Muslim world” were accepted and even taken for granted by the liberal establishment. — location: 836 ^ref-23392

some images of Muslims that have persisted to the point of becoming “common sense”—ideas — location: 851 ^ref-50429

It is only by denying the diversity of Islamic history and practices that one can then argue that Islam has certain inherent, unchanging characteristics that render it antidemocratic, violent, sexist, and so on. — location: 865 ^ref-9538

The homogenization of Islam and of Muslims is so taken for granted that it functions as the basis of all of the other myths. — location: 889 ^ref-31082

there “is no subject connected with Islam which Europeans have thought more important than the condition of Muslim women.” — location: 897 ^ref-36676

it should come as no surprise that President George W. Bush, whose policy record was firmly antiwoman, should masquerade as the rescuer of Afghan women. — location: 912 ^ref-51537

The fight against terrorism is also a fight for the rights and dignity of women.”11 In reality, conditions for women in Afghanistan, particularly in rural areas, deteriorated after the US invasion. — location: 921 ^ref-29503

the great “liberal” Western tradition is not only mired in sexism but—as the case of Egypt shows—has even played a part in curtailing women’s rights in the East. — location: 979 ^ref-17105

biological racism of the kind seen above has more or less been replaced by cultural racism. — location: 1011 ^ref-36446

nonviolent protest movements in Muslim-majority societies which are largely unknown. — location: 1082 ^ref-30150

after Saladin, the sultan of Egypt, successfully retook Jerusalem from the crusaders, he forbade acts of vengeance and violence against the crusaders, gave Jews state money to rebuild synagogues, and left churches untouched. — location: 1101 ^ref-43105

the United States has never had an interest in bringing democracy to the people of the Middle East, or to any other people for that matter. — location: 1156 ^ref-46273

beginning in the 1950s, the United States tried to project the king of Saudi Arabia as an “Islamic pole of attraction” against the secular nationalism of Egypt’s Nasser. — location: 1237 ^ref-60538

One lesser-known aspect of the Eisenhower Doctrine was the “Islam strategy.” This strategy consisted of bolstering Islamist organizations against secular nationalists and trying to create an Islamic pole of attraction in King Saud of Saudi Arabia. — location: 1275 ^ref-46959

Saudi efforts to Islamicize the region were seen as powerful and effective and likely to be successful. We loved that. We had an ally against communism. — location: 1301 ^ref-36835

“Islamic finance repeatedly relied on right-wing economists and Islamist politicians who advocated the privatizing, free-market views of the Chicago school.” — location: 1361 ^ref-5766

the terms “terrorist,” “fanatic,” and “extremist,” which earlier had been used to describe secular nationalism, were projected onto Islamism. — location: 1387 ^ref-65102

For the first time it seemed as if a global “community of believers” had come together to fight against infidel encroachment, thanks to the United States and its allies in the region. — location: 1444 ^ref-30816

The United States, despite its pious lip service to freedom and democracy, was more than happy to forge a relationship with the Taliban in order to establish a pipeline to oil and natural gas resources in the Caspian Sea. — location: 1457 ^ref-44599

Zionist ideology was not explicitly anti-Muslim until the 1970s. — location: 1474 ^ref-3253

Israeli politics shifted to the right in the mid-1970s as the parties of the religious right started to play a more prominent role in mainstream politics. This shift inaugurated the use of more prejudicial language against Arabs and Muslims in the public sphere. — location: 1477 ^ref-23693

Some have argued that at times Israel even funded the Islamists.49 The Islamists, in turn, routinely clashed with secular nationalists and far-left forces. — location: 1489 ^ref-53331

the dominant thinking in policy circles was that violent Islamists were one force among many that could upset its post–Cold War vision. However, pockets of the ruling elite, particularly the neoconservatives, began to write about “Islamic fundamentalism” as a potential key threat to US interests. The Israeli political class similarly tried to win the United States and Europe to viewing Islamism as their new larger-than-life enemy. — location: 1538 ^ref-21364

In the 1990s, liberal imperialism held the day. — location: 1572 ^ref-11323

Orientalists—whose view of the world is driven by texts—fall easily into the trap of not separating religious claims from actual reality. — location: 1678 ^ref-55848

al-Ghazali (1058–111), who openly advocated a division of labor between the caliph and the sultan. — location: 1679 ^ref-5280

Islamic revivalism might have been confined to the dustbin of history had it not been for the collapse and defeat of secular nationalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s. — location: 1791 ^ref-55604

The typical Islamist of this era was an engineer born sometime in the 1950s whose parents were from the countryside. — location: 1983 ^ref-52339

the rise of contemporary political Islam is not the reemergence of a medieval clergy crusading against modernity but rather a modern urban phenomenon born of the crises created by capitalism. — location: 1987 ^ref-25469

Hamas has recruited heavily from the refugee camps created by Israel, and while it has the support of businesspeople, the middle class, merchants, and the wealthy, its leadership and cadre are largely drawn from the refugee camps. — location: 2003 ^ref-53333

With few exceptions, Islamists are in practice strong advocates of capitalism and neoliberalism and therefore cannot offer real solutions to the people who turn to them as a political alternative. — location: 2021 ^ref-9384

pattern of ascendance and decline is likely to continue until a left alternative can present itself and arrest this dynamic. — location: 2035 ^ref-53051

Political movements led by the middle classes cannot offer real solutions to the problems faced by the vast majority. — location: 2040 ^ref-5331

any struggle that weakens the Zionist colonial enterprise and by extension the United States—the world’s biggest, best-armed, and most violent imperialist power—is a victory for ordinary people in the region and around the world. — location: 2072 ^ref-8470

One of these shifts is the downplaying of its Islamist ambitions and a corresponding emphasis on its nationalist politics. — location: 2082 ^ref-7196

political Islam is the product of specific historic conditions. These conditions include the failure of secular nationalist movements due to their own internal weaknesses; the inability of Stalinist parties to offer an effective alternative; and economic crises in various countries that could not be resolved through state capitalist methods and that neoliberalism exacerbated. — location: 2144 ^ref-1328

This vision of the United States as a unique “beacon for other nations” because of its liberal values is taken for granted within the policy establishment as a whole. — location: 2194 ^ref-26805

Krauthammer continued, it was necessary to marginalize the arguments of the realists and the isolationists in the policy establishment, who did not realize how important it was for one hegemonic power to rule in order for there to be global stability. — location: 2218 ^ref-63682

Several neocons and their sympathizers began to advance this notion that “Islamic terrorism” needed to be viewed as the new post–Cold War enemy, — location: 2242 ^ref-2750

Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) in 1998. MEMRI mainly seeks out news media articles from Middle East sources that cast the region and its politics in a negative light and translates them for domestic media consumption. — location: 2272 ^ref-24524

The terrorist, Benzion continued, “speaks of ‘humanitarian’ and national causes, he pretends to fight for ‘freedom’ against oppression, he keeps speaking of ‘legitimate rights.’” — location: 2321 ^ref-54155

To counter this, he argued that this terrorist actually has “no moral restraints” and “respects no code of law.” — location: 2322 ^ref-4618

However, these sentiments did not prevent the Likud party from using the precursor organization to Hamas, the Mujamma, for its own purposes. When the Israeli state recognized and formally licensed the Mujamma in 1978, the logic was simple—the Islamists’ hostility to the secular left made them useful. Some have argued that Israel even funded these forces. — location: 2360 ^ref-4345

linkages between Islamism and fascism begin to take root, the product of an interchange between Western Orientalists and Likud political thinkers in Israel. — location: 2366 ^ref-51874

The Liberal Defence of Murder — location: 2383 ^ref-25044

Humanitarian Imperialism: Using Human Rights to Sell Wars — location: 2388 ^ref-41964

More than a million died. — location: 2450 ^ref-24831

For a while it appeared that the neocons were unstoppable—but they overplayed their hand. — location: 2525 ^ref-9477

The key characteristics of liberal Islamophobia are the rejection of the “clash of civilizations” thesis, the recognition that there are “good Muslims” with whom diplomatic relations can be forged, and a concomitant willingness to work with moderate Islamists. Liberal Islamophobia may be rhetorically gentler than conservative Islamophobia and (as we will see in chapter 10) the language of the “Islamophobic warriors,” but it is nonetheless racist and imperialist in that it takes for granted the “white man’s burden.” — location: 2584 ^ref-18961

Almost always the surveillance and information gathering start with a swarthy group of strangers—American blacks, Italian immigrants, Jews, Arabs. Ethnicity and race are infused with a ‘foreign ideology’—anarchism, socialism, Communism, black nationalism, ‘jihadism.’ Fear fertilizes the public soil, governmental power drives the plow.” — location: 2658 ^ref-13012

At the beginning of the decade, Brooklyn was home to about a quarter-million people of Pakistani origin. By 2003, as many as fifty to sixty thousand of them were reported to have left; they had been jailed or deported, or had fled the witch-hunt mentality pervading the city. — location: 2671 ^ref-41021

The net result is a spectacle of terrorism that is constantly kept alive in the American imagination. — location: 2678 ^ref-62640

a violent act committed in Munich by a handful of Palestinians became the basis on which all Arabs were designated as suspicious and therefore worthy of investigation. — location: 2687 ^ref-28474

JDL was one of the most active terrorist groups (as classified by the FBI) for more than a decade. — location: 2690 ^ref-38432

“the law serves not only to reflect but to solidify social prejudice, making law a prime instrument in the construction and reinforcement of racial subordination.” — location: 2706 ^ref-54417

pseudoscientific theories of “radicalization” — location: 2748 ^ref-10793

Under the Radar: Muslims Deported, Detained, and Denied on Unsubstantiated Terrorism Allegations — location: 2773 ^ref-5231

Charges brought against Muslim immigrants “are almost always ordinary immigration violations,” the report states, yet the government has routinely insinuated connections to terrorism without providing any proof of these allegations. — location: 2778 ^ref-48031

How Does It Feel to Be a Problem?: Being Young and Arab in America, — location: 2804 ^ref-11123

The logic underlying these cases is that Muslims are naturally “predisposed” to commit violent acts and should therefore be put away. — location: 2826 ^ref-30293

the false stereotype that all Muslims are predisposed to commit terrorism. If they are sufficiently ‘Muslim,’ they are sufficiently ‘predisposed.’” — location: 2828 ^ref-5095

Material support charges have been used to target a wide variety of people. — location: 2853 ^ref-21459

he was put into prison for four years, three of them spent in solitary confinement. — location: 2863 ^ref-7118

“government’s informants introduced and aggressively pushed ideas about violent jihad and moreover, actually encouraged the defendants to believe that it was their duty to take action against the United States.” — location: 2894 ^ref-47779

The informants also goaded the defendants to acquire violent videos and weapons which were later used to convict them, and even went so far as to pick the locations that were to be attacked. — location: 2896 ^ref-46019

Hussain not only picked the sites and drove the four men there, he provided them with bombs—and — location: 2904 ^ref-30639

the specter of “Islamic terrorism” kept alive. — location: 2918 ^ref-25753

the government creates an atmosphere of hysteria and confusion to cover the lack of any substantive evidence that a real crime was committed. — location: 2934 ^ref-59560

Of the fourteen thousand Americans murdered in 2011, not one death was the product of Muslim “terror plots.” — location: 2942 ^ref-53901

In fact, more Americans died from lightning strikes and dog bites in 2010 than from terrorism. — location: 2961 ^ref-45485

the domestic War on Terror is not really about keeping Americans safe as much as it is about creating a spectacle of fear. — location: 2966 ^ref-61308

radicalization models claim to be able to predict future behavior, thereby operationalizing and justifying racial profiling and preemptive prosecution. — location: 2981 ^ref-9656

all young Muslim males from middle-class and immigrant families fall into the pre-radicalization stage. In short, simply being a member of this group places one on a conveyor belt aimed toward “radicalization.” — location: 2986 ^ref-21269

Another characteristic of “self-identification” is political awareness and community activism. — location: 2989 ^ref-22912

many such groups form “militias” and hold regular paramilitary training camps. — location: 3011 ^ref-51950

while white supremacists are allowed to train with guns at sites all over the United States, if a regular Muslim American so much as acquires a weapon, he or she is deemed suspicious. — location: 3014 ^ref-27449

The underlying logic here is that brown men can indeed be correctly identified by appearance as terrorists—although terrorists, who seem to be everywhere, come in all shapes, sizes and colors. — location: 3056 ^ref-57591

One might speculate that a White House eager to prime public opinion for a troop surge of thirty thousand may even have encouraged a pliant media to devote attention to “homegrown terrorism.” — location: 3131 ^ref-35756

Massad not only earned tenure but won the prestigious Lionel Trilling Award for excellence in scholarship. — location: 3301 ^ref-59183

Their task was to feign authority, authenticity, and native knowledge by informing the American public of the atrocities taking place in the region of their birth, thereby justifying the imperial designs of the United States as a liberation.”51 — location: 3587 ^ref-2050

Ali, who is originally from Somalia, was forced to resign her seat in Parliament after it was revealed that she lied in her application for political asylum in the Netherlands. — location: 3593 ^ref-58049

Islamism, a modern political movement, which they (incorrectly) take to be analogous to Stalinism or fascism. Islamism is regarded as an appropriation of modern European totalitarianism that is basically alien to “traditional Islam.” — location: 3621 ^ref-6510

they are part of the establishment and exist within foreign policy think tanks, universities and colleges, the political class, and the security apparatus — location: 3654 ^ref-5339

it is from the ranks of ordinary people that activists emerge to challenge racism in all its forms. — location: 3693 ^ref-33677

Islamophobia is about politics and not religion; it is therefore in the realm of politics that Islamophobia must be fought. — location: 3702 ^ref-29393

National Defense Authorization Act, which, among other things, allows the military to detain “terror suspects” who are US citizens indefinitely without charge. — location: 3737 ^ref-52322

On September 11, 2010, progressives far outnumbered the bigots in two parallel demonstrations in downtown Manhattan. Thousands of New Yorkers of all shades and sizes marched to oppose Islamophobia, chanting, “Asalamu alaikum, Muslims are welcome here.” — location: 3799 ^ref-57914

activists explicitly connected the NYPD’s targeting of the black and Latino communities and the savage repression of OWS protestors with its racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims. — location: 3809 ^ref-60245

Working-class Americans of all races have nothing to gain from the spoils of empire—and everything to lose. — location: 3819 ^ref-7281

Only a politics that links the attacks on civil liberties with US imperialist policy can show that anti-Muslim bigotry is about creating a political climate in which the United States can invade other countries at will and suppress dissent at home. — location: 3823 ^ref-10149

Stephen Jay Gould’s excellent The Mismeasure of Man — location: 4015 ^ref-53002

“Islam” Means Peace: Understanding the Muslim Principle of Nonviolence Today — location: 4024 ^ref-38985

American Orientalism, — location: 4041 ^ref-38203

Gerges, America and Political Islam: Clash of Cultures or Clash of Interests? (Cambridge: — location: 4070 ^ref-57239

Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia — location: 4107 ^ref-15997

Devil’s Game — location: 4116 ^ref-32066

Fateful Triangle: The United States, Israel and the Palestinians — location: 4270 ^ref-13080

Chomsky, New Military Humanism, — location: 4303 ^ref-63192

“Minority Rights in a Nation-State: The Nixon Administration’s Campaign against Arab Americans,” — location: 4361 ^ref-1336

Victims of America’s Dirty Wars, — location: 4398 ^ref-36022

Project Salam is analyzing about 750 cases, of which it has found 150 to be cases of preemptive persecution. See the database of cases at projectsalam.org. — location: 4399 ^ref-9837

“Chart: Only 15 Americans Died from Terrorism Last Year—Fewer Than from Dog Bites or Lightning Strikes,” — location: 4431 ^ref-55386

“Fort Hood Fallout: Cultural Racism and Deteriorating Public Discourse on Islam,” — location: 4472 ^ref-47602

Kundnani, “Islamism.” — location: 4647 ^ref-16185

“U.S. Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam,” — location: 4653 ^ref-17670

“The United States of Islamophobia,” — location: 4681 ^ref-55012