(The Conversation) – In political communication, a big lie — what is known as the “illusory truth effect” — is when the constant repetition of misinformation makes people more likely to accept it as truth.

Repetition is how lies gain traction. The more exposure to specific ideas and tropes that may be false claims, the more likely it is that this misinformation becomes understood as real.

A plethora of fake news circulates on the internet and social media. Unlike misinformation, which refers to false or inaccurate information, disinformation campaigns deliberately spread propaganda to create fear and suspicion.

Disinformation industries, and the brokers who exchange in this false currency, have an immense capability to circulate propaganda and conspiracy theories to a greater public, outside of their own echo chambers.

Producing social fictions

Through media outlets and co-ordinated networks, Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian tropes and conspiracies are circulated. Eventually, they become regarded as social facts, especially in times of war, conflict and heightened political tensions.

During these fraught times, the ability to authorize wholesale violence relies on circulating dehumanizing tropes and “scare stories.” This targeted propaganda frames entire populations as deviant “folk devils,” responsible for crimes and social problems. This then creates moral panics, used to justify acts of oppression.

A violent threat

In my book, Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation, I document how since 9/11, two billion Muslims globally have faced collective punishment. Constructed as folk devils who imperil western societies, Muslims have been framed as inextricably linked with the support and promotion of violence.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

More recently, this trope was evident in public statements made by Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow described recent Palestinian solidarity rallies and movements as “glorifying” violence and characterized anyone attending these events as “Hamas supporters.”

The ubiquity of Islamophobia has led to generalized stereotypes of Muslims and Palestinians (including those who are not Muslim) as being prone to violence and terrorism. When these racist narratives are espoused by politicians, they falsely equate the support of Palestinian people with support for terrorism and instil fear and moral panic about the Muslim presence in this country and elsewhere.

Anti-Muslim policies

Public belief in the vilifying narratives of violent Muslims can become second nature to people who watch biased news reports on mainstream media and a variety of social media platforms that circulate anti-Muslim narratives.

For instance, negative Canadian attitudes about Muslims were evident in a 2017 Radio Canada poll. Fifty-one per cent of respondents in Canada — and 57 per cent in Québec — felt the presence of Muslims in this country made them “somewhat” or “very worried” about security. Nearly one out of four Canadians — 23 per cent — would favour a ban on Muslim immigration to this country, a level of support that rose to 32 per cent in Québec.

Widespread Islamophobic sentiments translate into anti-Muslim policies and practices. Recently, Markham Public Library in Ontario temporarily removed Islamic Heritage Month displays from its branches after an email was sent to staff saying that, “given the current situation in the Middle East, it is best for us not to be actively promoting the Islamic Heritage Month … .”

Islamophobia also has more deadly consequences. In 2021, four members of a Canadian-Pakistani Muslim family were mowed down and killed by a truck in the Ontario city of London. Evidence introduced at the trial of the man accused of the murders has shown that after his arrest, he repeatedly referred to fabricated scare stories about Muslim “grooming gangs” when being interrogated by police.

Online rumours and disinformation

The unsubstantiated claims of Hamas decapitating and burning 40 Israeli babies were repeated by international heads of state, celebrities and media outlets, despite the fact that there was no official confirmation by Israeli authorities of this alleged horrific act.

TRT World: “Anti-Muslim hate crimes spike in Canada ‘by 1,000%’”

Nonetheless, the repetition of this false story led to the dehumanizing characterization of Palestinians as “bloodthirsty monsters” and “human animals,” fomenting widespread anti-Palestinian racism.

These campaigns of disinformation and demonization also tragically resulted in the murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian-American Muslim boy, in Plainfield, Ill. He was stabbed 26 times, allegedly by his family’s white landlord, who is also accused of repeatedly stabbing Al-Fayoume’s mother, proclaiming, “You Muslims must die!”

Casualties of war

These violent trajectories bring to mind the military maxim attributed to the Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, which warns that “In war, truth is the first casualty.” In times of war and conflict, disinformation is the first weapon to be deployed.

Uncritically consuming political or media narratives is no longer an option. In these dystopian times, the public needs to be able to separate fact from fiction as fabrications masquerade as truth. The consequences are dire.

This article has been updated to include a reference to the ongoing trial in the London, Ont. case.

Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hate acts targeting minorities are not actually free speech, of course.*

The great exponent of mystical Islam, Sayyed Hossein Nasr, argued that if we want to understand the position of the Qur’an in Muslim societies, we should think of it as the way Christians venerate Christ. It is the very “Word of God,” which of course is what Christians call Jesus (John 1:1).

Nasr wrote, “What corresponds to Christ as the word of God in Christianity is not the Prophet Muhammad but the Koran in Islam.”

So burning the Qur’an is sort of like throwing a big wooden crucifix with the corpus of Christ on a bonfire.

Iraqis in several cities, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, held demonstrations for the past two days against the desecration of scripture. On Thursday they had tried to storm the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.

Ironically, the man who burned the Qur’an in Sweden is himself Iraqi, and he had served alongside the Shiite militias in a Chaldean Christian Popular Mobilization Force, fighting ISIL, which targeted Iraqi Christians. A lot of Iraqi Christians are angry about how Muslim fundamentalists in Iraq treated them after the American invasion. Since they are Christian they seem to have been unfairly tagged as somehow related to the American occupiers, but this allegation was untrue. Many Kurds and Shiite Muslims were close to the Americans, though.

It is interesting to me that there are indications in the Qur’an itself of how believers should respond to ridicule and harassment. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad himself, the Qur’an says, pagans in the city of Mecca subjected the early believers to a great deal of humiliation.

I wrote about these peace verses in my edited book,

Peace Movements in Islam, edited by Juan Cole. London: IB Tauris, 2021. Click here. .

Enwrapped 73:10-12 speak of how the believers were to respond to hostile comments: “Be patient with what they say and take your leave of them graciously. Leave to me the affluent who impugn your integrity, giving them a short reprieve, for we possess shackles and a searing abyss . . .”

The notion of leaving vengeance to God can be compared to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 12:19, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

The Prophet was so far away from harboring any ill-will toward his opponents that in Ornaments 43:33-35, Muhammad appears to speak in his own voice with these sentiments: “If it would not have caused all people to observe a single communal path (an yakun ummatan wahida) we would have bestowed roofs of silver and staircases for their houses on those who reject the All-Merciful, and would have furnished their homes with fine doors and couches on which to recline, and gilded ornaments. But all that is merely for the enjoyment of the life of this world, whereas the hereafter is for the God-fearing.”

The Criterion 25:63 says, “The servants of the All-Merciful are those who walk humbly upon the earth — and when the unruly address them, they reply, “Peace!”

The word for “unruly” here literally means “ignorant,” but it was used in that era to refer to people who lacked self-control. They clearly were low-lifes, taunting the believers, who kept their dignity and replied by praying for peace and security for their tormentors.

The Table 5:45 in the Medina period paraphrases Deuteronomy 19:21. Arberry translates it this way: “And therein We prescribed for them: ‘A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, and for wounds retaliation’; but whosoever forgoes it as a freewill offering (tasaddaqa bi), that shall be for him an expiation (kaffara). Whoso judges not according to what God has sent down – they are the evildoers.”

So, as in the Gospels it is urged that the faithful go beyond the principle of an eye for an eye to exercise forgivenes, so in the Qur’an believers are urged to forgo demanding this satisfaction for a wrong against them, and it is implied that exercising restraint in this regard will bring the blessings of divine forgiveness on the believer.

Distinguished 41:33-35 observes, “Whose discourse is more beautiful than one who calls others to God and performs good works and proclaims, ‘I am a monotheist? The good deed and the evil deed are not equal. Repel the latter with what is best and behold, it will be as though the one, with whom you have a mutual enmity, is a devoted patron. Yet to none is this granted save the patient (alladhina sabaru), and to none is it granted save the supremely fortunate.” This remarkable verse goes beyond counseling gracious withdrawal from and forgiveness of foes to urging doing good toward them and returning their evil deeds with good ones, which over time has the prospect of winning them over and making them patrons rather than enemies.

So that’s it. That’s how the Qur’an advises dealing with unruly and hostile harassers. Return good for evil. Win them over. Wish peace on them. If the harassment becomes too much, withdraw graciously.

It might be objected that there are verses in the Qur’an authorizing violence. There are, but they are clearly about permission for self-defense when being violently attacked by marauding enemy warriors. They aren’t talking about how you would behave in peacetime and in civil society. Christian thinkers also made a distinction between war-time ethics and peace-time ones.

The Christian monk Athanasios of Alexandria (d. 373) wrote, “For even in the case of the other actions in life we will find that there are differences based upon the circumstances in which they are done. For example, it is not permitted to commit murder, but in wars it is both lawful and praiseworthy to destroy one’s enemies, so much so that those who displayed valor in war are deemed worthy of the highest honors, and monuments to them are erected to proclaim their achievements. And so, the same action is not permitted in certain circumstance and at certain times, but is allowed and excused in different circumstances and at the right time.”

I also discussed the historical context for these verses in my biography of the Prophet Muhammad:

Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires (NY: Bold Type Books, 2018). Click here.

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*An earlier version of this posting linked to an article alleging that Sweden had banned the burning of the Hebrew Bible. Apparently the person threatening to do so actually withdrew the threat before the police could decide on the issue.

            Republican power tripping didn’t sink to its nadir under Donald Trump. It continues to sink lower as various districts have elected right-wing hate mongers such as Marjorie Taylor Green, R-GA and Lauren Boebert, R-CO to Congress. The 5^th District of Minnesota chose Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to represent them, and they’re entitled to the same level of representation “without prejudice” that Green and Boebert’s constituents enjoy.

            House Republicans voted to remove Omar because she’s a dark-skinned Muslim, and a naturalized citizen who survived civil war and refugee camps in Somalia as a child. On the House Floor, she eloquently argued that House Republicans are now trying to dictate, “Who gets to be an American,” and whose ideas are sufficiently “American” to be protected and promoted.

            Britannica tells us that in German folklore, Doctor Faustus signs over his soul to Mephistopheles, an envoy of Satan, in return for secret knowledge or powers of sorcery for a set term on earth. The editors add, “Faustian bargains are by their nature tragic or self-defeating for the person who makes them, because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact.” The Republican Party has traded its innermost essence for the adulation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, for whom Ilhan Omar is the ultimate threat.Once a party loses integrity, it ratchets further and further toward evil, having lost all sense of decency.

            House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) initiated the move claiming that Omar made, “repeated anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks” throughout her tenure as a House member. Yes she did . . . once; and she apologized for them with sensitivity and eloquence, acknowledging her failure to make the distinction between the political ideology of Zionism and the religion of Judaism. Whoopi Goldberg made a similar mistake and endured an onslaught of brutal, unfair critiques. The common thread is that Jews are not a monolith, while Republicans are. Condemning Israel’s slide into Fascism is not an act of anti-Semitism. Zionism no more defines Judaism, than the Republican Party defines the United States. It’s important to remember that, when so many ignorant and ill-mannered people through the political spectrum, have made anti-Semitic comments based on how Israel is behaving.

           Sadly, Democracy is dead in Israel with the political rehabilitation of PM Benjamin Netanyahu nearly complete. While the guardrails of democracy kept Donald Trump from destroying our democratic republic, Israel is not so fortunate. Now Bibi is trying to remove those guardrails in Israel, as McCarthy is now doing in the House. Both Jews and gentiles object to Netanyahu’s plans; former ADL Director Abraham Foxman who said, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”

            Taking issue with Israeli policy cannot be considered anti-Semitic, considering that many American and European Jews are also aghast at Israel’s current leadership under the criminal cloud of Netanyahu. This is a disingenuous move by McCarthy to reframe terms of engagement and move the goalpost farther back, in order to placate a racist and xenophobic element, empowered by Trump and now McCarthy. The Speaker forfeited his spine and manhood to Trump, just weeks after condemning him for January 6. It was a Faustian bargain that elevated him to Speaker, which also empowered the far-far right fringe of the Republican Party. Though their stated effort is to “own the libs,” they’re trying to own the US Government, and dictate who can participate, in violation of the Constitution.

            Omar said in a Floor speech, “It’s motivated by the fact that many of these members don’t believe a Muslim, a refugee, an African should even be in Congress, let alone have the opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee.” This is political retaliation for Democrats removing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA., and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-AZ from their committee assignments after they made violent comments threatening to incite violence against other House members. Those comments were never retracted, while Rep. Omar apologized for her comments about “the Benjamins.”

            Steve Cohen, D-TN said in a 2019 phone interview of Reps. Omar and Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, “They don’t hate the Jews. They were personally thankful to me when I’ve supported them. . . I recognize that Palestinians, such as Rep. Tlaib, also feel they have right of return. Trump is trying to paint them as the face of the Democratic Party and they are not; Trump wants to Make America White Again. These women don’t hate the Jews.” Cohen is the only Jewish MC, representing a majority black district in Memphis, and one of the more progressive House members.

            This is not the first time Republicans have used xenophobic grandstanding to defame Rep. Omar.  In 2019, they tried to tie her to the 9/11 bombings, and made persistent efforts to play on Islamophobia since she took office. That occurred at a Republican event at the West Virginia statehouse, and led to at least one resignation and a fist fight on the Floor. Such primitive grandstanding and reckless rhetoric endangers the lives of Muslims in public office, and contributes to the madness that fueled January 6.

            Reps. Ken Buck, R- CO and Mike Simpson, R-ID characterized Omar’s banishment as “stupid” and “vengeful,” but then begged reporters not to publish comments they made in a House elevator. Buck cautioned that Omar’s committee expulsion would make her into a martyr. McCarthy accomplished banishing Omar only after some political horse-trading with Reps. Nancy Mace, R-SC and Victoria Spartz, R-IN to get them to change their votes. This was after Spartz had criticized McCarthy the day before for his, “taking unprecedented actions  . . . to deny some committee assignments to the Minority without proper due process again.” She added, “Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress, and start governing for a change.” Now she’s as craven to McCarthy as he was to Trump. So Faustian bargains now characterize Republican political dynamics, along with grandstanding and unconstitutional political persecution.

McCarthy’s planned course of action is ugly and recalls a previous Congressional decision, in 1869. As the site A History of Racial Injustice points out, John Willis Menard was the first Black man to be elected to Congress, from New Orleans. A poet and newspaper publisher as well as politician, Menard handily defeated his white opponent, Caleb S. Hunt. Hunt, like a lot of Republicans today, refused to acknowledge that he had been defeated fair and square in an aboveboard election. His claims were taken up in the halls of Congress, but he did not show, and in any case Hunt’s case was without merit. Menard was permitted to address the House on his own behalf, becoming the first Black man to speak to Congress.

Despite Hunt’s collapse, the House voted by a margin of 130 to 57 to refuse to seat Menard on the grounds that he was . . . Black. James Garfield, then a representative, spoke in favor of refusing to seat the elected representative, saying that it would save the $5,000 salary. Garfield later became president.

A substantial number of voters in Louisiana thus had their political will thwarted by arbitrary and bigoted white men.

Although Omar is a first generation immigrant from Somalia, Muslim Africans have been present in North America for 500 years. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, African Muslim Americans like Omar had played a significant role in US history. The Smithsonian notes,

“African Muslims also fought alongside colonists during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Multiple men with Muslim names appear on the military muster rolls, including Bampett Muhamed, Yusuf ben Ali (also known as Joseph Benhaley), and Joseph Saba. Other men listed on muster rolls have names that are likely connected to Islamic practice, such as Salem Poor and Peter Salem, whose names may reflect a form of the Arabic salaam, meaning peace. These men often distinguished themselves on the battlefield.”

Along with singling out an African-born Muslim woman for marginalization, McCarthy is playing revenge politics. Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi had removed Republican Representatives Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene from their committees. Gosar put out a snuff video about his colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Greene is a 9/11 denier and a school shooting denier who harassed a survivor of a school shooting in the street, and compared vaccine and mask mandates during the pandemic to the Nazi Holocaust against Jews. She also compared Joe Biden to Hitler. She has retracted some of her conspiracy theories but always seems to find more.

Greene and The Lying Man, George Santos, have both been given choice committee assignments by McCarthy, so that his attempt to sideline Omar, along with Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swallwell, is especially egregious and makes a farce of his speakership. Buckle in, folks, we’re in for a Clown Roller-coaster on the Hill.

McCarthy accuses Rep. Omar of antisemitism. As Dean Obaidallah points out, however, some significant number of Omar’s Jewish constituents in Minneapolis disagree, publishing a statement against McCarthy’s move. Undoubtedly, Omar did put her foot in her mouth in some comments on the Israel lobbies, but she swiftly apologized, as Ubaidallah says. The mistakes she made came from an unfamiliarity with how anti-Jewish bigotry has operated in the United States, and she has become more sure-footed as she has settled into her role as a legislator.

It should also be pointed out that some of the charges of Antisemitism against Omar are simply a way of twisting her stance for Palestinian human rights into something sinister, and are in bad faith on the part of vociferous ‘Israel-can-do-no-wrong’ fanatics.

Kevin McCarthy himself tweeted out that Jewish billionaires such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg were trying to “buy” an election. The notion that Jews are somehow especially powerful and control elections behind the scenes is a key trope in antisemitic discourse. McCarthy later deleted the tweets. So he is denying himself committee assignments, right? Nope.

Apparently some principled Republicans are putting their feet down against McCarthy’s petty prejudices. Unlike Garfield in 1869, they may take the path of the American Way, and common decency.

Granada, in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, was the final remnant of Islamic Iberia known as al-Andalus – a territory that once stretched across most of Spain and Portugal. In 1492, the city fell to the Catholic conquest.

In the aftermath, native Andalusians, who were Muslims, were permitted to continue practising their religion. But after a decade of increasingly hostile religious policing from the new Catholic regime, practising Islamic traditions and rituals was outlawed. Recent archaeological excavations in Granada, however, have uncovered evidence of Muslim food practices continuing in secret for decades after the conquest.

The term “Morisco”, which means “little moor”, was used to refer to native Muslims who were forced to convert to Catholicism in 1502, following an edict issued by the Crown of Castile. Similar decrees were issued in the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon in the following decades, which provoked armed uprisings.

As a result, between 1609 and 1614, the Moriscos were expelled from the various kingdoms of Spain. Muslims had already been expelled from Portugal by the end of the 15th century. So this brought to an end more than eight centuries of Islamic culture in Iberia.

For many, the conquest of Granada is symbolised by the Alhambra. This hilltop fortress, once the palatial residence of the Islamic Nasrid rulers, became a royal court under the new Catholic regime. Today it is the most visited historical monument in Spain and the best-preserved example of medieval Islamic architecture in the world. Now, archaeology provides us with new opportunities to glimpse the conquest’s impact on local Andalusi communities, far beyond the Alhambra’s walls.

Uncovering historical remains in Cartuja

Excavations ahead of development on the University of Granada’s campus in Cartuja, a hill on the outskirts of the modern city, uncovered traces of human activity dating back as far as the Neolithic period (3400-3000 BC).

Between the 13th to 15th centuries AD, the heyday of Islamic Granada, numerous cármenes (small houses with gardens and orchards) and almunias (small palaces belonging to the Nasrid elite) were built on this hill. Then, in the decades following the Catholic conquest, a Carthusian monastery was built here and the surroundings were completely transformed, with many earlier buildings demolished.

Archaeologists uncovered a well attached to a house and agricultural plot. The well was used as a rubbish dump for the disposal of unwanted construction materials. Other waste was also found, including a unique collection of animal bones dating to the second quarter of the 16th century.

Archaeological traces of culinary practices

Discarded waste from food preparation and consumption in archaeological deposits – mostly animal bone fragments as well as plant remains and ceramic tableware – provide an invaluable record of the culinary practices of past households. Animal bones, in particular, can sometimes be connected with specific diets adhered to by different religious communities.

The majority of bones in the well in Cartuja derived from sheep, with a small number from cattle. The older age of the animals, mostly castrated males, and the presence of meat-rich parts indicates they were cuts prepared by professional butchers and procured from a market, rather than reared locally by the household.

The ceramics found alongside the bones reflected Andalusi dining practices, which involved a group of people sharing food from large bowls called ataifores. The presence of these bowls rapidly decreased in Granada in the early 16th century. Smaller vessels, reflecting the more individualistic approach to dining preferred by Catholic households, replaced the ataifores. So the combination of large bowls, sheep bones paired and the absence of pig (pork would have been avoided by Muslims) points to a Morisco household.

Politicising and policing dining

The Catholic regime disapproved of these communal dining practices, which were associated with Andalusi Muslim identity, and eventually banned them. The consumption of pork became the most famous expression of policing dining habits by the Holy Office, more popularly known as the Inquisition. Echoes of this dining revolution can be seen today in the role of pork in Spanish cuisine, including in globally exported cured meats such as chorizo and jamón.

Previously focusing on those suspected of clinging to Jewish practices (forbidden in 1492), in the second half of the 16th century, the Inquisition increasingly turned its attention to Moriscos suspected of practising Islam in secret, which included avoiding pork. In the eyes of the law, these Muslims were officially Catholic so were seen as heretics if they continued to adhere to their earlier faith. Moreover, since religious and political allegiance became equated, they were also regarded as enemies of the state.

The discarded waste from Cartuja, the first such archaeological example from a Morisco household, demonstrates how some Andalusi families clung to their traditional dining culture as their world was transformed, at least for a few decades.

Aleks Pluskowski, Associate Professor in Medieval Archaeology, University of Reading; Guillermo García-Contreras Ruiz, Profesor de Arqueología Medieval y Posmedieval, Universidad de Granada, and Marcos García García, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The vote is a sad confirmation that a key plank for the US Republican Party is now hatred of and exclusion of Muslims. Arab-Americans and Muslim-Americans have significant populations in several swing states, including Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Florida. In some states where the presidential vote is extremely close, as with Michigan, they could represent the margin of victory.

Justin Vallejo at the Independent reports that the bill limits the executive’s sphere of action on immigration, forbidding religious discrimination in the giving out of visas. It requires the State Department to come to Congress before it restricts travel. The real teeth of the bill is that it permits anyone injured by restrictions to sue in federal court.

Abbas quotes Rashida Tlaib as saying,

“We’re going to outwork the hate. Congresswoman Dingell and I know there are more people in our country that are for love and acceptance and bringing people together to say no one should be discriminated against based on their ethnicity, faith, color of their skin or their sexual orientation. I’m going to proudly oversee a historic moment today. This is the most significant civil rights bill for Muslim Americans in our country. It’s a very historic moment in our time here in Congress.”

Tlaib is the first Muslim Palestinian woman in Congress, but represents Dearborn Heights, which is largely white and working class. She is up by almost 30 points over her challenger in this year’s election.

Abbas quotes Dingell as saying “This is something that has traumatized our communities. I was very honored to sit for the debate as so many of my colleagues got up to talk about why this is wrong. Many of their families are still in Yemen or Lebanon or Syria and multiple other countries in the Middle East. They are our doctors, nurses, teachers, pharmacists; they are the glue of our community.”

Dingell, who represents Ann Arbor and Dearborn, may represent more Muslim-Americans than anyone else in the House.

The bill was amended at the last minute to allow the president to exclude foreign visitors based on fear of disease spread, as a sop to representatives who felt that removing presidential prerogatives in that regard at this point in time would be imprudent.

Trump campaigned on a complete halt to Muslim immigration to the United States. Dingell pointed out that white supremacists have engaged in far more deadly terrorism than Muslim-Americans. Trump’s visa ban affects Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yemen and Chad. Some officials in North Korea and Venezuela and Eritrea were also banned, but the wholesale prohibition on coming to the US targeted the first five Muslim-majority states. Early in 2020, some restrictions were placed on Kyrgyzstan, Myanmar, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania. Of these, only Myanmar does not have a Muslim majority or plurality. The ban is clearly a Muslim ban, but a few minor restrictions were applied to non-Muslim countries so as to avoid it being struck down as discriminatory by the Supreme Court.

The 1965 Immigration Act forbids discrimination on the basis of religion.

Southeast Michigan has large Iraqi, Yemeni and Syrian populations. Minnesota has a large Somali community. The ban prevents relatives from seeing one another and interferes with university study and employment. Universities figured prominently among plaintiffs in the suits brought against the measures.

The bill will, of course, die in Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell’s graveyard, inasmuch as he will never allow it to come up for a debate or a vote in that body, and the Republican majority would probably in any case vote it down.

If Joe Biden wins the presidency, he has pledge to reverse the Muslim ban on “day one.” If the Dems can take the senate, it is nevertheless important to pass the new bill, since anything Biden does by fiat can just be undone by a subsequent Republican president. Indeed, the Democratic Party has a responsibility to pass a whole raft of laws limiting the president’s ability to do whatever he wants under the rubric of “executive orders.”

—

Bonus video:

PBS NewsHour: “WATCH LIVE: House vote on ‘No Ban Act,’ aims to overturn Trump travel ban on majority-Muslim nations”

Biden said in part,

“I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith. I wish we talked about all of the great confessional faiths– it is one of the great confessional faiths. And what people don’t realize–and one of my avocations is theology — is that we all come from the same root here in terms of our fundamental basic beliefs.

You’re doing what has never been done before– you’re registering turning out one million Muslim voters this November. It matters. Your vote is your voice. Muslim American voices matter to our communities, to our country. But we all know that your voice hasn’t always been recognized or represented or gotten the recognition it deserves. And that’s your right as a citizen. What you’re doing is making a real difference.

[Eulogizes the late Rep. John Lewis and advocacy for voting rights for all.] “It was no surprise that when Trump announced the Muslim ban in his first week in office, John went directly to Hartsfield Int’l Airport in his home district in Atlanta to demand answers of immigration officials. They wouldn’t tell him how many people were being detained. Know what his answer was simply? We don’t we just sit down and stay awhile.”

[Urged new legislation for restoration of Voting Right Act.] Muslim communities were the first to feel Donald Trump’s assault on black and brown communities in this country with his vile Muslim ban. That fight was the opening barrage in what has been nearly four years of constant pressure and insults and attacks against Muslim American communities […and other minorities … ]. Donald Trump has fanned the flames of hate in this country across the board… under this administration we have seen an unconscionable rise of Islamic-phobia, and incidents including kids being bullied in school and hate crimes in our communities. He’s named people with a history of open Islamic-phobia — open, straightforward, who have no business serving in high positions in our government, to key leadership roles in our Department of Defense and the Agency for International Development. It is not only an insult to our values, it weakens our standing in the rest of the world . . . he is making a mockery of what we stand for.

I want to work in partnership with you, make sure your voices are included in the decision-making process.”

Biden in essence gave a lay homily or sermon about tolerance and hate in today’s America. He began by urging that something about Islam be taught in American schools. Of course, US public schools seldom touch religion, including the History of Religions, because of the separation of religion and state. But there has been a lively movement for the teaching of World History, and the history of Muslims is the history of one fifth of humankind, so that would be a good rubric for it. Alas, it is often an elective, and I don’t know how widely it is offered. I took such a class when I was in High School and it obviously made a big impact on me.

People on my social media feeds have wondered what Biden meant by calling Islam one of the great confessional religions. My guess is that this is terminology he imbibed from his Catholic upbringing and reading in theology. He probably meant by it a distinctive set of beliefs that adherents must acknowledge. This Swiss site talks about Protestants and Catholics as “confessions” and says such confessions were seen in 19th century German thought to be instrumentalized for political solidarity. Muslims “confess” that there is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet. This European sense of confession overlaps with what Americans would just call a denomination. Because of its French colonial heritage, Lebanon is a country of such “confessions” (Christian, Sunni, Shiite, Druze), and confessional identity shapes politics there.

He underlined the common Abrahamic origins of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, though he did not use the term “Abrahamic.” As a liberal Irish Catholic, Biden is probably influenced by Vatican II and its religious tolerance (it admitted that some of the light that shines in Christianity is also present in Islam). American Catholics can go either way when the contemplate the increasing hatred of Muslims. They can identify with the Muslims, having themselves been victims of Protestant intolerance. Or they can pile on, like Steve Bannon, and use right wing Catholicism as a stick to beat Muslims with. Biden is among the former.

Biden’s remarks incorporated Muslim-Americans as one thread into the national fabric. He depicts them as the first to feel the full force of Trumpian hatred and prejudice, which, however, is also aimed at other minorities. The Muslim Americans, he said, were in the vanguard of feeling the discrimination that would lead to their children being constantly bullied, and to hate crimes against their communities (under Trump, many mosques have been burned down).

For Biden, all Americans are suffering under Trump, and Muslim-Americans are exemplary in being his first and most exploited victims, via the “vile” Muslim Ban, which Biden vows to undo.

Biden starts at 48:38:

PBS Newshour: “WATCH LIVE: Biden addresses the Million Muslim Votes Summit remotely”

Cesar Sayoc, the would-be pipe bomber, targeted billionaire George Soros, who has been made an object lesson of by the Republican Right for being what they see as a class traitor. Soros as a Jewish American has been singled out for opprobrium for his support of liberal causes and human rights, whereas other, Gentile, billionaires who spend money to influence society and elections, are never attacked on Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Cable News or on the floor of Congress or by Trump on Twitter, or on neo-Nazi bulletin boards. Philip Anschutz, for instance, is a significant political donor, and yet the public does not know his name. He is Christian and gives to the Republican Party. I’m not at all suggesting Anschutz be put in the public eye, simply pointing out that Soros is being treated invidiously.

Sayoc was vicious toward Jews, but he also went after Muslims, falsely calling them rapists and pedophiles.

Those extremists who despise minorities tend to be equal opportunity haters, and to sweep up Jews with Muslims.

Or take the alleged Pittsburgh synagogue shooter, Robert Bowers, whose stomach-turning murderous rampage left us weeping for the victims. He took up Trump’s phony Honduran caravan talking point. A few thousand refuge-seekers coming up through Mexico are not actually that newsworthy nor are they a significant security threat, since they say they intend to apply for asylum. Over a million legal immigrants come into the US every year, and even in these days of sympathy deficit, 45,000 asylum seekers will be admitted this year.

Trump actually asserted that Muslims are sneaking into the US from Central America (this is not true), and implied that all Muslims are dangerous. Trump actually made this lunatic allegation and the supposedly more sane vice president Mike Pence upheld him.

Bowers did some work of his own on this crazy idea and managed to make it even more insane. He said that Jews were the ones bringing Muslim immigrants into the country. In part, he was outraged by Jewish charities that helped refugees and immigrants resettle; some of the latter were Muslim.

It seems clear that US far-right extremism is a hotbed of hatred against both Jews and Muslims, and that its proponents mix the two up.

In reaction, Muslim-Americans have raised thousands of dollars for the Pittsburgh synagogue victims. And groups like Salam Shalom have been founded to work against hatred.

I wrote for The Nation about mass murderer Dylann Roof, who shot down African-Americans in their own church because in his addled mind he began seeing the minority as oppressing the white majority:

It is no accident that Roof was incensed, not only by African-Americans but by Muslim and other immigrants into Europe. He wrote in a manifesto registered to the web under his name:

From this point I researched deeper and found out what was happening in Europe. I saw that the same things were happening in England and France, and in all the other Western European countries. Again I found myself in disbelief. As an American we are taught to accept living in the melting pot, and black and other minorities have just as much right to be here as we do, since we are all immigrants. But Europe is the homeland of White people, and in many ways the situation is even worse there. From here I found out about the Jewish problem and other issues facing our race, and I can say today that I am completely racially aware.

The trope that Europe is being overwhelmed by immigrants or the absurd charge that Muslims will shortly make up 50 percent of the continent’s 500 million residents is pushed by an elaborate and well-heeled Islamophobic network on both sides of the Atlantic, spearheaded by far-right neo-fascist parties such as Marine Le Pen’s National Front in France or the UKIP in Britain, and by professional stalkers of Western Muslims such as Geert Wilders. Among Wilders’s enthusiastic cheerleaders are Pamela Geller and Daniel Pipes. Pipes has warned against allowing Western Muslims to have the vote, and has falsely alleged that they are at the root of a rape epidemic in Europe. In other words, they are taking over the country, raping its women, and must go. Ironically, Geller and Pipes are themselves of Jewish heritage, but have associated themselves with views more often held by the European extreme right wing, which isn’t exactly philo-Judaic. Apparently, they are willing to adopt these smelly bedfellows because of their support for Israeli squatters on the Palestinian West Bank, whom they believe are served by a denigration of Muslims.

Although its members do not advocate violence against Muslims, this Islamophobic network appears to have contributed to some of Dylann Roof’s anxieties about the fate of white people in their supposed European homeland (in fact, Muslims have lived on European soil since the 8th century, beginning only four centuries after Christianity itself was officially promulgated by Constantine).

American society has become permissive toward anti-Muslim bigotry. But permissiveness toward hatred of any minority bleeds over and affects the others. Indian Hindus and Sikhs have been killed by persons intending to harm Muslim Americans.

That the far right, both in the US and Europe, hates Jews and it is dangerous to build them up, should be obvious. But Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, as a leader of the right wing Likud Party, has notoriously been cultivating the far right in hopes of finding allies among Islamophobes. This is sort of like visiting the Everglades with your worst enemy and then luring the crocodiles in hopes they will only eat the enemy.

The hate group Secure America Now spreads around the ridiculous charge that the 3.4 million Muslim Americans might take over the United States, a country of 325 million. Such irrational fears result in prejudice and violence toward this minority. The far right wing billionaire Robert Mercer, who gave us Breitbart, Steve Bannon, and Trump, gives big bucks to SAN.

So imagine my surprise to see in The Forward that Ron Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, gave the hate group $1.1 million to spread its conspiracy theories against Muslims.

And that is the definition of sitting on a bough high above the earth sawing away at it on the part toward the tree trunk.

Mr. Lauder should google “Salam Shalom” if he wants a worthy recipient of his donations, which might actually reduce tensions and work against hate.

——

Bonus video:

CBS Philly: “Robert Bowers Allegedly Made Anti-Semitic Statements Before, After Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting”

Understand this: I’m an American veteran. I’m also a Muslim-American in a country in which, in these years, that hasn’t exactly been the happiest category to fall into. Now, let me tell you a little story.

Recently, I had an ominous dream. It was noon on a grey, cold January 20th, 2020, and Donald Trump was being sworn in for his second term as president. Massive inaugural crowds cheered him exuberantly as a gentle snow fell upon a sea of MAGA red-hats and TRUMP banners waving in front of the Capitol.

In my dream, however, the Capitol wasn’t quite the same as I remembered it from my days stationed there as a young Navy sailor. It seemed almost war-torn as clouds of dark smoke billowed up on the horizon and the sound of gunfire could be heard somewhere in the distance. In my dream — don’t ask me how — I could also hear the terror-filled voices of people screaming or crying out for help as ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents, clad in black uniforms, stormed local Washington homes and businesses, arresting people and loading them onto large unmarked cargo trucks.

Meanwhile, those inaugural crowds — I have no idea if they were the largest in the history of dreams — were flanked by military Humvees as heavily armed soldiers in unfamiliar camouflage uniforms stood behind the president while he delivered his second inaugural address. I could even hear his words eerily reverberating through the Capitol. “The enemy,” he exclaimed, “has infiltrated our great nation because of weak immigration laws allowed by treasonous politicians!”

At that very moment, he told the exuberant crowd, he was already singlehandedly purging “those terrorists and their enablers from our ranks.” The MAGA banners waved ever more frantically and the crowd roared as he declared, “Law and order are now being restored to our great nation once again!”

I awoke in a cold sweat. Unlike the sort of nightmare I’d normally shake off as a fantasy of slumber, the result perhaps of that late night dose of Ben and Jerry’s I had meant to resist, this one stuck with me and, I’m sorry to say, recurred.

American Fear-scapes

Worse yet, these days I no longer have to drop into some deep, unnerving dream state to experience it. Though few of us are likely to admit it, some version of that dream of mine is, in fact, the secret daily nightmare of millions of my fellow Muslim-Americans. In a moment, when immigrants in this country live in a fear-scape all their own, believe me, so do we. In our living nightmare, an administration that can seem not just ineffective but hapless beyond imagining, plagued by scandal, and stocked with staff members heading for the exits (or being escortedoff White House grounds) might nonetheless transform itself into something even more deeply threatening to Americans like us. It might sooner or later consolidate power and, eager to distract the public from its actual plutocratic and other grim policies, turn on us “bigly.” Without dropping into another dream state, I can easily enough imagine how, with the tacit endorsement of Trump’s base, that administration might prepare itself to use a future devastating terror attack, the next Orlando or San Bernardino, to skewer American Muslims or the immigrant community and so pave the way for a true living nightmare.

Buy Alfred W. McCoy’s “In the Shadows of the American Century”

Such a crisis could take many forms, but imagine, for instance, a “dirty bomb” attack (the use of conventional explosives to spread radioactive nuclear waste materials across a wide area of some urban neighborhood). Just such an attack has certainly been a focus of concern in the U.S. intelligence community for years now. In fact, in 1999, while on active duty as a new member of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the first interagency briefing I attended at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, focused on that very issue.

Should that happen or anything like it, it’s easy enough to imagine how the Trump administration might use it to enhance its own power at our expense. With the public cowering in fear, martial law might be declared. Meanwhile, a Congress that, in the face of the imperial presidency, has already abdicatedits constitutional duty to declare war, might grant Donald Trump far greater authority than he already possesses, thanks to the unprecedented post-9/11 powers any president now wields — and the American people (or enough of them, at least) would “rally ’round the chief.”

And then, or so I imagine (and, at least among American Muslims I know, I’m not alone in this), so much worse would begin to unfold and my recurring nightmare would become a nightmarish reality. In the aftermath of such an attack, so much in our world, from the Women’s March to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, would become distant and forgotten memories. Dissent would be denounced as unpatriotic, perhaps ultimately illegal, and basic human rights might be suspended.

By now, I’m sure you see where I’m going. In my nightmare at least — and I’m talking about the waking one now, the one I live with every day — countless immigrants and American Muslims are in camps awaiting who knows what. It’s not as if there is no precedent for anything like that in America, given the experience of Japanese-Americans rounded up and kept in just such camps during World War II.

In this moment of growing Islamophobia, at a time when a president has a desire to simply ban foreign Muslims and cast American ones as the worst of the worst, it’s just one more step into my fears of the future for me to imagine myself, an American veteran, as well as my family and other members of the Muslim community, sitting inside darkened train cars on our way to internment camps, while we desperately try to convince ourselves that surely the Supreme Court will overturn such an injustice.

And given our world, given the history of racism in this country, it’s not that hard to imagine scores of broken men, women, and children already at our destination as we hurtle down the tracks to join them. Nor is it that hard to imagine the Trump administration dismissing those who protest such treatment as disloyal co-conspirators, and then using militarized police raiders to hunt some of them down, too. I can even imagine mosques being set ablaze and synagogues and churches that attempted to protect citizens fleeing all of this being raided at the government’s orders.

Heading for a Dark Destination

In some dark corner of my mind, given what we know about what we human beings are capable of, I can almost imagine some kind of Muslim-American version of the Holocaust, the ultimate nightmare that immigrants and Muslim-Americans have dreaded since Donald Trump’s election victory in November 2016, but dare not whisper. There’s nothing sadder to say than that such fears do not completely lack historical precedent: the world has, of course, been here before.

If the fate of the millions who perished during World War II, thanks to Adolf Hitler and his minions, doesn’t seem real enough to you, just pay a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. There, you can witness the haunting images of our human brethren who, by virtue of their faith or background, were destroyed, some by their own countrymen.

Now, I know perfectly well that those of you who aren’t Muslim-Americans are likely to find such fantasies at best extreme; at worst, beyond conception. The reason isn’t hard to imagine, because of course Donald Trump isn’t Adolf Hitler; White House adviser Stephen Miller isn’t Joseph Goebbels; White House Chief of Staff John Kelly isn’t Hermann Göring; and former CIA Director and next Secretary of State Mike Pompeo isn’t Heinrich Himmler. Yes — but Pompeo, a major Islamophobe in an administration filled with them, has insisted that all Muslims are potentially complicit in terrorism and that “people who deeply believe that Islam is the way” are a “threat to America.” He has also received the “National Security Eagle Award” from a noted anti-Muslim hate group, ACT for America, and has been interviewed more than 20 times by Frank Gaffney, “the country’s most influential Islamophobe,” on his radio show. And when it comes to Islamophobia (and Iranophobia as well), in this administration Pompeo is hardly alone.

Still, not even bans, insults, and a visible loathing for those of us who don’t look like and pray like the president and his men, not even torchlight parades by Trump-supporting American neo-Nazis, get you easily to anything like an American Holocaust. But know, when you read this, that there are those of us out here who, in the dark of night, are indeed haunted by such thoughts anyway and by thoughts as well of those in the 1930s who dismissed the fears of the worst to come as so much hyperbole.

Speaking just for myself, I can’t help but believe that, in our 241-year history that includes a bitter civil war, two world wars, and the Great Depression, this could turn out to be the most crucial moment of all. I can’t help but wonder, at least in my bleaker moments, whether there will be any coming back from the dark destination, whatever it turns out to be, that we, as a nation, now seem headed for. And if not, just remember that no one will be able to say that we didn’t know what we were doing, that there were no warnings as people like me were demonized in our own country.

Whatever hell might still come, for this veteran at least, Donald Trump’s America is already hell enough.

Nate Terani is a veteran of the U.S. Navy and served in military intelligence with the Defense Intelligence Agency. He is currently a spokesperson for Common Defense PAC and regional campaign organizer with Veterans Challenge Islamophobia. He is a featured columnist with the Arizona Muslim Voice newspaper. This is his second TomDispatch piece. Follow him on Twitter at @NateTerani.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power, as well as John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, John Feffer’s dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt’s Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.

Copyright 2018 Nate Terani

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