Islamophobia: the new anti-Semitism

As the massacres go on in Iraq and Afghanistan, as a result of the "wars" of the transnational elite, and the parallel massacres in Palestine continue unhindered, a new war rages all over Europe and the USA: the war against the "internal enemy" -- that is, immigrants from Muslim countries. This war is, for the time being, mainly an ideological one, and is being carried out by parts of the transnational elite (i.e. the transnational political elites, the international mass media, the various international foundations, think tanks etc) as well as its associates (Hollywood plays a crucial role in this context—see e.g. "Borat", a film created by a devout Jew which parodies the anti-Semitism of an imaginary journalist from Muslim Kazakhstan who, in the midst of various appalling anti-Semitic "jokes", sings the song 'Throw the Jew Down the Well')[1].

This war has already led to a new anti-Semitism – as is well known, the Arabs belong to the family of the ancient Semitic peoples and began to appear during the 5th century BC as Nabataeans —which is growing daily, and is already reminiscent of Nazi anti-Semitism before the launching of the mass persecutions that led to the concentration camps. The aim of this war, which is part of the "war against terrorism", is to enforce the obedience of the millions of Muslim immigrants who live in Western countries to the plans of the governments that host them, in other words, the plans to secure the full integration of the wider Middle East area (and its energy deposits, on which the very continuation of the "growth economy" depends!) into the New World Order.

It is worth mentioning that this new anti-Semitism is flourishing in an era in which the old type of anti-Semitism has all but been extinguished as a significant social phenomenon in the West, now being upheld by no more than a few token neo-Nazis and some Muslim immigrants, whose well-justified rage against the crimes of Israeli Zionists has been pushing them to an unjustified anti-Semitism. No wonder that the Jewish population in Germany, the country in which the most systematic mass persecution of Jews in modern History was born, is the fastest growing in Europe. Neither is it surprising that, according to Rabbi Walter Rotschild, who is based in Berlin, "in the 30s and 40s people were forging papers not to be Jews…now they are forging papers to be Jews. For the first time in 2,000 years it is an advantage to be Jewish.[2]

On the other hand, it is, today, an unblemished curse to be a Muslim in the supposedly “democratic” West, as I will try to show. This is not only the case in the USA, where reborn Christians, in association with the all-powerful American Zionists, still support the disastrous “war against terrorism” in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also in Europe where, nowadays, the Far-Right seeks the support even of its old enemies in its campaign against Islamists! For instance, Filip Dewinter, leader of Belgium's Vlaams Belang, (a Far-right party with very strong local roots), described Antwerp's large Jewish community as natural partners "against the main enemy of the moment, the radical Islam, fundamentalism".[3] In fact, the results of local elections in Antwerp last October produced large gains for the extreme-right party which ran on an anti-immigrant platform, and which would have won control of Antwerp but for an unlikely rainbow coalition whose only common cause was keeping the city out of the hands of the far right.

However, let us examine in more detail the main forms that Islamophobia takes in the two main “castles” of the transnational elite -- the USA and Britain.

In the USA today, a significant part of the political, economic and cultural elite is talking about a new kind of fascism threatening us all: Islamofascism. Hence the current re-christening of the “terrorist” organisations fighting the occupiers of Iraq and Afghanistan (Al-Qaida etc), as well as of pure national-liberation movements (Hamas, Hezbollah et.al.), as “Islamofascist”! This, despite the fact that, as Stefan Durand[4] points out, none of the Islamist movements that Bush has lumped together under this term meet the criteria for fascism, as traditionally defined by writers such as Hannah Arendt, Renzo de Felice, Stanley Payne and Robert Paxton. Such characteristics missing from Islamofascism are, among others, expansionist nationalism, corporatism (in the sense of the almost total merging of state, industrial enterprises and professional bodies), bureaucracy, support from a significant part of capital and the absolute control of the mass media. By contrast, some of these characteristics are prominent among the authoritarian client regimes of the transnational elite (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and, also, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the Emirates etc)! It is, therefore, clear that the myth of Islamofascism (which has also been adopted by parts of the Left, statist and libertarian alike!) disguises a different agenda: the enhancement of Islamophobia with the aim of frightening people into adopting the strategy of the preventive war, given that this "fascist threat" requires a massive response that is justified whatever the cost in human lives may be. Not surprisingly, the neocon response to criticism when Zionist F-16s dropped hundreds of fragmentation bombs on residential districts in Lebanon was: "The allies bombed Dresden". The effects of this dirty campaign against Muslims in the “domestic front” are obvious, with incidents reported that even Muslim clerics have been removed from a US passenger plane just because “ witnesses said the men prayed in the terminal and made critical comments about the Iraq war”![5]

Similarly, in Britain, a climate of a “consensus state terrorism” was created in the aftermath of the July 2005 bombings, which has mainly been affecting the immigrants of Muslim origin who have become the bogey of the British population, despite the fact that they constitute just 3% of it. Thus, they are under constant pressure from the security services, who stop and search any dark-skinned people who look suspicious to them, enter their houses, arrest them and hold them without charge for a period up to 28 days (Brown, the designate leader of the new social-fascist Labour party, plans to extend this period to a maximum of 3 months!). Furthermore, 'Asian looking' students are now being targeted and British universities are being urged to crack down on “extremism”, while campus staff are being asked to volunteer information to the special branch and not wait to be contacted by detectives[6]. This climate, in combination with the daily direct attacks by the populist yellow press, as well as the indirect attacks by the rest of the mass media against Muslims who do not approve of the British government’s crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, is already fuelling physical attacks on the streets. No wonder that, as the deputy secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain stresses, verbal and physical attacks on Muslims have surged alarmingly, women have had their scarves ripped off, mosques and Islamic centres in Preston and Falkirk have been attacked and firebombed, beatings have occurred in the streets etc.[7]

In this context, a campaign against the niqab — the Muslim veil that covers all but the eyes -- was launched by the British political elite lately, via that well-known supporter of all the transnational elite’s wars, the ex-Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, which led to the dismissal of a 23-year-old classroom assistant from a junior school in Yorkshire on the grounds that she refused to remove her niqab in class. This led to the launching of a hysterical campaign in the mass media on the basis of Straw’s pseudo-argument that the veil was a "statement of separation"! Although any religious symbol worn in public does, of course, separate people, it is preposterous indeed for the social-fascists of the “new” Labour party to see the separation of Muslims from the rest of British society as being caused by the wearing of the veil, rather than by the fact that Muslim unemployment is three times the national average, or that 33% of Muslims live in the most deprived areas and 41% in sub-standard housing, 33% have no qualifications and two-thirds of children from families of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin are growing up in poverty![8] In reality, of course, the effective banning of the Muslim veil, which is being introduced in several European countries at the moment, constitutes a unilateral measure aiming to introduce a new set of discriminations against Muslims, since it is not being accompanied by a parallel banning of the public wearing of any other religious symbol, either Christian, Jewish or whatever else.

The inescapable conclusion from the above is that Muslims in today’s Western “democracies” are considered citizens only as long as they pay their taxes and agree with the characterisation of resistance Islamist organisations as “terrorist” or “Islamofascist”-- or else they risk joining the ranks of “suspects” and enjoying the corresponding treatment…

* The above text is an extended version of an article which was first published in the fortnightly column of Takis Fotopoulos in the mass circulation Athens daily Eleftherotypia on 25/11/2006

[1] Arifa Akbar, “Baron Cohen comes out of character to defend Borat”, Independent, 17/11/2006
[2] Jess Smee, “A belated victory against the Nazis”, Guardian, 3/11/06
[3] Stephen Castle, “Far-right party calls for Jews to join war on Islam”, Independent, 5/10/06
[4] Stefan Durand, “The lie that is `islamofascism'”, Le Monde diplomatique, November 2006
[5] http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061121/ap_on_re_us/passengers_removed
[6] Vikram Dodd, “Universities urged to spy on Muslims”, Guardian, 16/10/06
[7] Daud Abdullah, “Incitement to violence”, Guardian, 17/10/06
[8] Wendy Kristianasen, “Britain's multiculturalism falters”, Le Monde diplomatique November 2006 & Madeleine Bunting, “Jack Straw has unleashed a storm of prejudice and intensified division”, Guardian, 9/10/06