Informed Comment

Keith Olbermann and CAIR on the wave of religious intolerance sweeping the US.

Posted in Islamophobia | 1 Comment

This is the ‘I have a Dream Speech’ that Glenn Beck would give at the Lincoln Memorial if he were being completely honest.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from tax increases or increased regulation of your speculative financial instruments. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of government takeover and staggered by the winds of police laxness toward Mexicans and minority crime. You have been the veterans of creative suffering, under our current strange mixture of fascism, communism and Islam (Islamo-commie-fascism as I call it). Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering cannot be cured by a government take-over of health care.

Go back to the Hamptons, go back to Grosse Point, go back to Alaska, go back to Utah, go back to Idaho, go back to the suburbs and exurbs of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation of having an African-American president can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that some men are only worth 3/5s of others.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down and recognize that our president doesn’t like white guys.

I have a dream that one day even the borough of Manhattan, a borough sweltering with the heat of socialism, sweltering with the heat of Islamic fascism, will be transformed into a mosque-free oasis of freedom for people just like me.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their gold portfolios.

I have a dream today. . .

satire

Posted in Uncategorized | 17 Comments

Taliban attacked two US forward operating bases on Saturday a day after home-made bombs killed 3 US soldiers. The Afghan Persian press reports that NATO sources say 11 insurgents were killed and that little damage was inflicted on the US bases or personnel.

On Wednesday, according to official Iranian news sources, Afghan mobs had invaded a base in Badghis to the north and set fire to part of it, as a way of protesting the killing of an Afghan soldier by Spanish troops on whom he had turned.

Documentary film-maker Paul Refsdal has done a unique segment on the Taliban shot while he lived with them…

The attacks came as President Hamid Karzai lambasted the Obama administration for its plans to begin a drawdown from Afghanistan in summer, 2011, saying that the deadline was giving heart to enemies of the new government.

At the same time, the Washington Post has revealed that the US Central Intelligence Agency has a number of officials high in the Afghan government on its payroll, in part as a way of keeping an eye on the unpredictable Karzai.

Posted in Afghanistan | 5 Comments

The raging, swollen Indus River abruptly breached an embankment in the Thatta district in Sindh, Pakistan, on Wednesday evening, unexpectedly sending flood waters toward the town of Thatta and several others in the district. Panicked residents tried to flee in the thousands.

The News writes, “Villagers fled trailing north in vans laden with furniture or crowded into buses, or in carts pulled by oxen. Some people were on foot, leading their livestock. Water lined the road from Hyderabad to Thatta town, as workers frantically used bulldozers to dig embankments only just higher than the flooding, and where people camped out under open skies or in makeshift tents.”

As a result, authorities are calling on a further 500,000 Pakistanis to evacuate. Some 17 million Pakistanis have already been affected by the floods. Some parts of the country look like an inland sea. (About a fifth of the country is underwater and a third of its districts are affected by the catastrophe).

Lord Julian Hunt argues that global warming is responsible for the floods and that such extreme weather events in India and Pakistan are becoming more common as time goes on. Hunt is former director-general of the Meteorological Office in London.

The US government contribution to flood relief is now approaching $200 million; a decision has been taken to divert $50 mn. from the Kerry-Lugar act, which had already authorized development aid, to the relief effort.

Aljazeera English has video on this new challenge:

As if another several hundred thousand people hitting the road with inundations breathing down on them were not bad enough, now the Pakistani Taliban are threatening to attack foreign aid workers trying to help the victims.

PBS News Hour has more.

Posted in Pakistan, Uncategorized | 9 Comments

Scott Kurashige writes in a guest editorial for Informed Comment:

In May 2007, George W. Bush welcomed Queen Elizabeth II to the White House, hosting a ceremony attended by 7,000 guests followed by the first white-tie state dinner of his presidency. If we abide by the twisted logic of some “Ground Zero mosque” opponents, we must now view this affair as controversial, explosive, and offensive.

With Bush and the Republicans in charge, our government honored the monarch of a nation that once invaded America and destroyed much of our capital city. When Bush remarked that the UK had “written many of the greatest chapters in the history of human freedom” he neglected to point out that British invaders had burned down the White House itself—with the First Lady inside of it.

The enemy forces also torched the Senate. House, Treasury, and Library of Congress. The result was a still unprecedented occupation of Washington, DC by a foreign power.

Try as I might, I cannot find any evidence that Newt Gingrich, Charles Krauthammer, or the other self-appointed guardians of our national honor and dignity did anything to stop Bush from letting the royal family set foot on the hallowed ground the British once savagely desecrated. (Bush the Father also invited the queen to the White House in 1991.)

Do they not consider our government’s most cherished structures, our highest symbols of freedom and democracy, to be sacred spaces worthy of their patriotic protection? What message are they sending to the descendants of the 20,000 Americans whose lives were lost (as a direct result of combat or an indirect result of disease) to the War of 1812?

This contradiction speaks volumes to the use and abuse of historical analogy in the service of contemporary political debate. Gingrich and Krauthammer have been two of the most prominent opponents of the proposed Islamic center two blocks from the former site of the World Trade Center. Both have drawn parallels to the suffering of the Holocaust and the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

In the former case, the atrocities are directly attributable to the “Nazis”—leaders of a distinct fascist group that rose to power with Hitler and whose contemporary allegiants are rightly viewed as extremists. Thus, as Gingrich argues, “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the holocaust museum in Washingtion.”

There is, however, no parallel term in American discourse for the latter case. Gingrich didn’t say “the Taisei Yokusankai, a fascist grouping which took control of Japan in the lead up to World War II, has no right establish a monument at Pearl Harbor.” He said, “we would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor.”

In his view, we affix permanent blame for the attack to “the Japanese”—a term which blurs the distinction between people, “race,” and nation.

While we can forgive the British royal family for the tyranny of its ancestors, Americans can seemingly never forget that “the ‘Japanese‘ attacked Pearl Harbor.” This is despite the fact that Japan has been one of America’s most vital and trusted allies for over six decades, that its entire system of government was designed by American overseers, and that its constitution is unique in the world in its dedication to pacifism.

In large measure, as historian John Dower has argued, this attitude reflects the racial discourse of World War II. While the U.S. always believed there were “good Germans” who could be allied against “the Nazis,” the Pacific Theater enemy was routinely labeled “the Japs” and “the Nips”—a savage race marked for extermination because its treachery was part of its blood.

Domestically, the U.S. government upheld the notion that “a Jap is a Jap” as it forced both immigrants and American-born citizens of Japanese ancestry into internment camps. Many politicians argued that the most highly assimilated Japanese Americans professing the greatest loyalty to America posed the gravest danger because they were best positioned to launch a “sneak attack” or a “second Pearl Harbor.” Mass public suspicion of Japanese Americans ran so deep that even babies in orphanages were held behind barbed wires.

It took the actions of the U.S. military itself to begin to cut down the “race war” discourse, which played into imperial Japan’s efforts to rally all of Asia against American white supremacy. Reversing its policy of excluding Japanese Americans from the military, the U.S. inducted Japanese American soldiers to serve in both Europe and Asia. Only by going against popular racist sentiment did the military wind up with the Nisei soldiers who became the backbone of the war’s most decorated American unit.

Had the populist mob carried the day, Japanese Americans would have endured even more than continued internment and a ban on military service. Some political leaders portrayed the American-born Japanese as the product of a 50-year plot by Japan to attack American from within. They called for stripping them of birthright citizenship and even shipping them all off to Japan. Fortunately, this was not carried out even at the height of wartime hysteria.

If the madness surrounding the rapidly degenerating debate over the “Ground Zero mosque” must serve as another one of those “teachable moments,” let it serve to expose the contradictions that rest at the heart of our national identity and history.

We can go back to the “race war” logic of the Pacific War and see ourselves in a clash of civilizations with Islam. But in doing so, we allow our greatest fears and prejudices to triumph over our most democratic ideals and Constitutional rights. We blur the distinction between the 9/11 attackers and an Islamic organization that is a longtime member in good standing of the Lower Manhattan neighborhood and dedicated to promoting interfaith harmony. We stereotype Muslims in America as an inscrutable and untrustworthy group, so that law-abiding behavior and peaceful intentions are less relevant than the future possibility (as Krauthammer suggests) that the Islamic center could one day harbor proponents of terrorism. And we commit ourselves to strategies that are divisive and self-defeating.

Or, as we wrestle with global economic, political, and environmental crises, we can view our struggle to build a democratic, multiethnic society as a pillar of strength that positions us to build harmonious relations with the international community. Just as Japanese Americans died on December 7, Muslim Americans died on September 11. Just as Japanese Americans played a crucial role fighting fascism during World War II, Muslim Americans are integral part of our community and our struggles for peace and justice.

Finally, as we memorialize the World Trade Center, let us not forget that its chief designer was a Japanese American, Minoru Yamasaki, whose international renown as an architect and advocate for world peace symbolized a new spirit of tolerance being born out of the tragedies of war.

Scott Kurashige is Associate Professor in American Culture and History at the University of Michigan and Director of American Culture’s program in Asian/Pacific Islander American Studies

Posted in Islamophobia | 17 Comments

Amy Goodman interviews a close friend of stabbing victim Ahmad Sharif on Michael Enright’s attack on him. Enright asked a lot of questions, including whether Sharif was Muslim and if he was fasting. He was derogatory about the Muslim fast. Then he said, as-Salaamu `Alaykum (peace be upon you, the Muslim greeting), and proclaimed “this is a checkpoint.” And then began slashing at his arm and trying to get at his neck. This was a murder attempt. He would have slaughtered the man if he could have, would have gashed the carotid artery and watched him bleed out.

Sharif’s friend said,

‘ When I talked to Ahmed, you know, when he was still in his hospital bed, when we first saw him, you know, he couldn’t speak. When he was able to speak and I was able to talk to him, the first thing he said to me was we have to get the message out, because we can’t let this escalate, drivers need to protect themselves. He said the environment right now is very serious. There is no doubt in our minds that the fear mongering and the ignorance and the hatred that has been spewing around this Islamic cultural center—which has erroneously been called the “Ground Zero mosque”—we have no doubt that it’s that hatred that’s risen to the surface and that’s led to this violence.’

Although the Muslim-haters have tried to wriggle out of this obvious conclusion by painting stabber Michael Enright as a liberal, their argument holds no water. Enright may have been a freelancer for an organization dedicated to cross-cultural understanding, but his experience being embedded as a documentary film maker with a US military unit in Afghanistan clearly turned him into an Islamophobe.

A ‘liberal’ would not make fun of fasting Ramadan, would not mock the Muslim greeting, would not announce a ‘checkpoint.’ Those are all the discourse of the Muslim-bashing Right wing. So if Enright was ever a ‘liberal,’ he certainly is not now. He has been converted into a hateful criminal and murderer.

But why should we be surprised? Isn’t the hope of Michelle Malkin, Rick Lazio, Newt Gingrich, Bill O’Reilly et al. to convert liberals to whatever they are (I won’t insult conservatives by calling these mouth-frothers by that term).

So they succeeded. Blaming liberals for this attack is like blaming Democrats for Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan had been a Democrat in the 1940s, but converted to the G.O.P. More recently, the GOP went fishing for the soul of Michael Enright,and they got it. No doubt he signed it away to them in blood, and there was the stink of sulphur in the air.

So who would want to establish checkpoints for American citizens? Could it be… Michelle Malkin?

Who makes fun of the idea that Islam is a religion of peace? Glenn Beck has done it. Most rightwingers have done it. Hence the sarcasm when saying ‘Peace be upon you.’

And who makes fun of the Ramadan fast? Try Rush Limbaugh.

‘ Rush Limbaugh Radio Program, EIB Network
August 13, 2010

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Obama will host an Iftar tonight. You know what an Iftar is? You know what an Iftar is, Dawn? Brian? Snerdley? You don’t know what an Iftar is, I-f-t-a-r? …

An Iftar is “a special evening meal observed during” — wait for it — “Ramadan”. This is happening tonight in the White House State Dining Room.

“Obama participated a similar gathering last year. “Celebrations like Iftar dinners ‘remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings’.” This is Obama in a written statement on Wednesday. Iftar celebrations “remind us of the principles that we hold in common, and Islam’s role in advancing justice, progress, tolerance and the dignity of all human beings… Ramadan is a celebration of a faith known for great diversity and racial equality,” wrote Obama, a “reminder that Islam has always been part of America and is that American Muslims have made extraordinary contributions to our country.”

Ahem. A list of those contributions does not accompany the president’s statement. “The dinner comes amid a growing controversy over the proposed construction of Islamic cultural center in downtown Manhattan”. Meanwhile, the White House has been silent on that issue. Charles Krauthammer today has a memorable piece on the entire controversy of the mosque at Ground Zero.

Yeah, I know Bush did Ramadan dinners as well. Now, Iftar means that you’re breaking a Ramadan fast, and I don’t know if Obama has fasted. The only reason I mention this is not so much because he’s doing an Iftar dinner — I just want you to remember that he could not be bothered to go to the Boy Scouts’ 100th anniversary. But he’s got time to do an Iftar dinner out there. (interruption) Well, it’s a good question. What did the Boy Scouts contribute to America? Exactly right, H.R. Thank you for helping me to put this in further context. Just a bunch of kids, exactly right, a bunch of kids with a distorted view of America.

Iftar was also a terrible movie. Wait a minute — Iftar? Extar? Ashtar? What was it, the Warren Beatty — Ishtar! Ishtar, right, not to be confused with Iftar, the Ramadan break-your-fast dinner. We don’t know who he’s invited. I don’t know if he’s — there’s no guest list. There may be nobody. Maybe there is no dinner, it’s just a statement that’s there, who the hell knows? ‘

Oh, yeah, those were liberal sentiments expressed in that cab before the attempted murder. Very liberal.

Posted in Uncategorized | 5 Comments

Rachel Maddow talks to Sohail Khan of the Conservative Inclusion Coalition about the most embarrassing non-Justin Bieber related obsession of today, the rightwing campaign against mosque building in Manhattan.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Posted in Islamophobia | 9 Comments