A New Islamophobia

A New Islamophobia By Ilan Halevi Islamophobia, according to Ilan Halevi, is a growing phenomenon in Western countries. Drawing on prejudices against Islam that have deep in roots in Christian European history and thought, the phenomenon has reached unprecedented heights in the post 9/11 political discourse. Its particular power and danger lies in the potential for a broad alliance of otherwise opposed political forces: Muslims and Islam serve as the embodiment of the ultimate enemy for conservatives and the right wingers striving for Western hegemony and racial purity, and for progressives standing up for freedom of expression, rationality, human rights and rights of women. In this way, Islamophobia today serves similar purposes as Anti-Semitism did in the past, and offers a convenient scapegoat and a battle cry to distract and rally those who see their livelihoods and their way of life threatened by the forces of globalization and global capital. Ilan Halevi is a writer and political activist. He has been the representative of Palestine in the Socialist International since 1983, was a member of the Palestinian delegation in the Madrid and Washington negotiations (1991-1993) and Assistant Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Palestinian Government (2003-2005). This work is licensed under the “Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Germany License”. To view a copy of this license, visit: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/de/ Ilan Halevi: A New Islamophobia A phobia is hatred of a given object. Islamophobia: for the new global enemy, Etymologically, it is the desire to flee away from anonymously referred to as “terror”, now has a that object. In its current usage, it refers to an face and a name, that of Al Qaeda and its alleged aversion, a compelling and irrational fear, or a mastermind Osama Ben Laden, who became disgust, that goes beyond personal taste or overnight a central element in the construction of distaste, as part of a collective phenomenon, akin the new discourse on global war. On a formal to ideology. Xenophobia, hatred of foreigners, is level, it is of course a war waged against a trans- the most common occurrence of this use of the national “Axis of Evil”, but after the rehabilitation of concept, which can be applied to practically every North Korea, this war appears to be focused human group. It can particularly be used as a almost exclusively on states featuring Muslim synonym for all forms of racism: negrophobia for majorities, or groups and individuals hailing from racism against Blacks, judeophobia for racism Muslim societies. against Jews, homophobia for the hatred of homosexuals, etc. Terrorism (a technique, criminal indeed, but not an ideology), is basically the use of violence The term “Islamophobia” has appeared in political against civilians for political ends. On the morrow discourse less than two decades ago, mostly as of the 9/11 atrocities, the US rushed through the an accusation levelled by Muslims against various UN an international convention on “terror and forms of anti-Islamic utterances, attitudes or suicide bombings” defining the former as practices. It was in Durban (South Africa) in “unauthorized violence”. This is still too vague and August 2001, in the course of the “IIIrd World impersonal to be a substitute for the “Global Conference against Racism, Racial Enemy System” or the “Evil Empire” that Discrimination, Xenophobia and all forms of Communism represented, at the time of the Cold related Intolerance”, organized under the auspices War. Hence the necessity to back up the global of the UN Human Rights Commission, that security discourse by notions of a cultural Islamophobia was, for the first time, officially “crusade”, as the American President initially and recognized, and simultaneously condemned and inadvertently called it, in a climate overshadowed outlawed. On paper, the Durban conference was by the idea of a clash of civilizations. It should be a turning point: besides denouncing Islamophobia, clear, in this context, that the multiplication of Durban also retroactively condemned the Atlantic events and activities invoking the dialogue of Slave-Trade, Slavery and Colonialism as crimes cultures, the need for tolerance, interfaith against humanity. encounters and multiconfessional demonstrations of “cultural diversity”, only emphasize the reality of These solemn condemnations, nevertheless, were that rift, the reality of a dominant discourse that to remain without effect, as the US administration defines Islam and Muslims as the essential and its Israeli ally and protégé had taken care to enemy. discredit the conference in advance, claiming it had been “hijacked” by the Palestinians and their This new hostility to Islam, of course, constitutes Arab and Muslim brethren to be transformed into an inversion of the pattern which had dominated an anti-Israeli festival, and hence, that its results the European and Euro-American vision of the would be null and devoid of any moral authority. Muslim world since the end of World War I, when Furthermore, the results of the Durban conference the victors of the day supported Ottoman were practically obliterated by the attacks of legitimacy, and with it the Islamic Caliphate, September 11 only a few days after its closure. As against the Kemalist revolution in Turkey and its a result, any criticism of “The West” was rendered modernizing, secular and nationalist ambitions. next to impossible, and any defence of Islam Between the two World Wars, when France and became highly suspect. At the same time, it was Great Britain shared control of most of the Islamic precisely these events that boosted Islamophobia world (with the exception of Indonesia, the largest itself to unprecedented degrees, to an extent that Muslim country in the world, then under the it appears justified to speak of a new era of domination of tiny Holland) through various forms Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung - Middle East Office, 2008 2 Ilan Halevi: A New Islamophobia of occupation, colonization, mandates, though Islamophobia is growing everywhere, its protectorates and other sophisticated legal particular traits and features in a given setting are fictions, the main fear of colonial powers was the determined by the cultural patterns, intellectual emergence of modern nationalism. Consequently, traditions and specific prejudices of the particular they pursued privileged alliances with the country or region. traditionalist sectors of society, including religious circles. Islamism and Islam The Cold War reinforced this alignment of colonial or ex-colonial powers with religious and Outright and unabashed Islamophobia, as traditionalist forces, liable to counterbalance the displayed by American Evangelists and neo- influence of modern and “secular” liberation conservatives, or by an alarming number of movements, which had the tendency to look European intellectuals, is largely absent from towards the Eastern Block when put under mainstream political discourse. The reason for this pressure. This was the Golden Age of the US- is that it would be politically incompatible with the Saudi alliance, when oil interests and strategic need to include Muslim states and governments in designs converged. Thus the wave of the “War against Terror”, or in specific campaigns Arabophobia unleashed, particularly in the such as the one presently organized against Iran. American media, on the morrow of the October Hence the official discourse underlying the new 1973 Israeli-Arab war, and in the aftermath of the global war is rather that the problem is not Islam energy crisis linked to the Arab oil boycott, did not as such, but certain manifestations of it branded develop into outright Islamophobia until much as “political Islam”, “radical Islam”, “Jihadism”, or, later, when the Soviet “common enemy” had more recently, “Islamo-Fascism”. This claim, disappeared. It remained, at the time, a campaign however, clashes with a number of facts. First of of anti-Arab racism, which did not connect all, since Islam is, according to its own definition, explicitly with Islam. Din, Dounia, wa-Dawla, i.e. “religion, world and state”, it is always political, and there is no such a The turning point seems to have been the Iranian thing as an apolitical Islam. Second, if radical Islamic revolution, which gave political Islam a Islam is more specifically and more radically evil sudden international visibility, and which coincided than radicalism in general, it logically implies that with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Since the moderate Islam is moderately evil. Cold War was still going on, the Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan also engendered “Jihadism”, on the other hand, is a category the last avatar of the old pattern, in a sort of invented by Western Orientalists and anachronistic fashion, an overlap of two eras, as Islamologists, which Moslems do not recognize, often happens in history. For a decade the US while the phrase “Islamo-fascism” still suggests a supported, financed armed and trained the Afghan particular and essential connection between Islam Mujahidin, religiously inspired guerrilla fighters and fascism that does not correspond to any against the Soviet occupation, and gave its tangible reality. The term “Fundamentalism”, blessing to the international recruitment of Islamic drawn from the universe of Protestantism, or that volunteers. In a futile attempt to counter Iranian of “Integrism”, which pertains to the problematic of influence, it subsequently

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