Islamophobia is racist poison
The wealthy and powerful want us to hate two billion Muslim people, a quarter of the human race. While Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has killed over 20,000 Palestinians in Gaza with U.S.-made bombs, a green light is given to racism against Muslims everywhere.
Super bigot Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, in the Dec. 6 Republican presidential candidates’ debate, mocked the robes worn by many Muslim men as “man dresses.” This is the traditional clothing in many parts of North Africa and West Asia, most suitable for the climate. Most Christian depictions of Jesus show him wearing a robe. Catholic priests also wear robes.
DeSantis — who wants to kick Black history out of Florida schools — deliberately said “man dress” to appeal to homophobic and transphobic bigotry along with attacking Muslims. DeSantis was a Navy lawyer at the Guantánamo concentration camp, where Muslim inmates were tortured.
Another Republican candidate, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, is no better. He rose to prominence as the U.S. attorney who framed the Fort Dix 5: Mohamad Ibrahim Shnewer, brothers Dritan Duka, Shain Duka and Eljvir Duka, and Serdar Tatar.
The five Muslims were entrapped by the FBI and framed on fantastic charges of planning to murder soldiers at the Fort Dix army base in New Jersey. They’ve been jailed since 2007.
Framing the five was key to Christie becoming New Jersey’s governor, where he attacked teachers and their unions.
The Fort Dix frame-up was carried out in the wake of the anti-Muslim witch-hunt that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Hundreds were arrested and/or deported, including the operators of the newsstand at a Newark, New Jersey, railroad station.
Racism flows from the top
Anti-Muslim hate comes from the top of capitalist society. Former U.S. State Department official Stuart Seldowitz was arrested in November for harassing Mohamed Hussein, a Muslim food vendor on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Seldowitz called Hussein a terrorist.
Seldowitz screamed, “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, it wasn’t enough.” This pig had actually been deputy director of the State Department’s Office of Israel and Palestinian Affairs. How many other U.S. “diplomats” are like Seldowitz?
Comedian Bill Maher is notorious for his bigotry against Muslim people. On his HBO show in 2010, Maher said he was afraid that so many babies with the name Muhammad were being born in Western countries.
Maher continues to have his TV show, while Mehdi Hasan, a Muslim, had his MSNBC show canceled. Hasan had been “vocal for human rights in Gaza,” as one report of the cancellation put it.
Within his first week as president in January 2017, Donald Trump placed travel bans on residents from seven Muslim-majority countries. This bigotry went hand-in-hand with Trump calling Haiti a “s—hole country.”
At the time, thousands of people flooded airports across the United States to protest Trump’s executive order against Muslims and refugees.
Joe Biden’s sending thousands of bombs and shells to the Israeli apartheid regime worth billions of dollars is worse. The blood of 10,000 murdered children in Gaza is on Genocide Joe’s hands.
Biden claimed he saw pictures of Israeli children who were beheaded by Palestinian freedom fighters. The White House had to walk back this big lie. There were no pictures because there were no beheaded children.
The massive propaganda campaign claiming the Palestinian resistance soldiers committed mass rapes is also a filthy lie.
The fighters were on a disciplined, tight schedule, trying to safely capture as many people as possible so they could be exchanged for thousands of Palestinian political prisoners. It was the Zionist state’s military that killed many of the Israeli soldiers and settlers by indiscriminate shooting,
The accusations of mass rapes are being used to justify the massive bombing that has killed thousands in Gaza. That’s how the Ku Klux Klan defended lynchings.
9-11-01 and ‘Christ killing’
United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza are “simply starving.” Civilians in Gaza “are being told to move like human pinballs – ricocheting between ever-smaller slivers of the south, without any of the basics for survival,” he said.
The United States was the only country to vote against, and thereby veto, a United Nations Security Council resolution demanding a ceasefire in Gaza. A few days later, 153 countries representing over 90% of the world’s population voted for a ceasefire in the UN’s General Assembly on Dec. 12.
The Israeli military is parading nearly naked Palestinian men to humiliate them. It’s reminiscent of how, in 1970, former Philadelphia Police Commissioner Frank Rizzo had his cops strip naked Black Panther Party members.
Bigotry against Muslims and the Islamic religion is considered acceptable within broad sections of U.S. politics, certainly among Trump supporters. Leading the way are many Protestant evangelical preachers.
Racism and religious bigotry have long been part of these ministers’ toolkits. The largest protestant denomination — the Southern Baptist Convention — was founded in 1845 to defend slavery.
During the 1960 presidential race, the Rev. W. A. Criswell of the First Baptist Church in Dallas — the largest in the SBC — condemned John F. Kennedy for being a Catholic. Criswell, who defended racial segregation, later became SBC president.
Now, these preachers are telling us to hate Muslims. In the 1930s, bigots fought to keep Jewish refugees out of the United States.
Time magazine referred to French premier Léon Blum as “Jew Blum.” Capitalists blamed Jewish people for the Bolshevik Revolution, which inspired workers and oppressed people around the world.
The Set. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon are being used as a “Christ killing” charge against all Muslims. This was the old lie that Jewish people were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ, a Jewish rebel crucified by the Roman Empire.
Anti-Muslim bigotry went hand-in-hand with hatred against Jewish people. Both Jews and Muslims were expelled from Spain in 1492. Hundreds of thousands of Jewish people were given refuge in Muslim lands.
People flocked to Mohamed Hussein’s food cart after the former State Department diplomat attacked him. It didn’t hurt that Hallal food is clean and tasty. The poison of Islamophobia has to be exposed and fought.
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