It was a déjà vu all over again,too, when Republicans in the House of Representatives asked Nancy Pelosi to deny the Council on Islamic-American Relations (CAIR) a capital conference room for a seminar. If religious McCarthyism is the intent of House Republicans, so is their ultimate political intent. They want to peel off Jewish voters from the Democratic base, moving them to the right by an appeal to Islamophobia. That was precisely the strategy behind Karl Rove's gambit of putting Daniel Pipes on the Board of Directors at the Institute of Peace. This latest move also aims to expose the Democratic leadership as unprincipled flip-floppers by hassling Nancy Pelosi until she caves in to their demands. The Republicans want more votes and money from the pro-Israel lobby, while driving the Dems crazy by threatening their base.
So how does one react to terror-baiting? Go on the offensive. The more you try to explain that you're not a terrorist, the more the Islamophobes will control the discussion. Single out your most vulnerable attackers by name and sue them for defamation. Then show how they and their friends are undermining religious liberty in America, and how their political posturing is based on religious bigotry. Show how they support authoritarian government, torture and the Iraq war. Root your arguments in religious and political pluralism, the American constitution, and the American way of life. Show how religious McCarthyism helps the terrorists and besmirches America's good name in the Muslim and Arabic-speaking worlds. Insist that it endangers the lives of our young people in uniform. Fight back with everything in your legal and rhetorical arsenal.
Secondly, we need to find better ways of confronting the underlying problem that drives Islamophobia in America. It's all about Israel, folks, and the way Jews and Muslims get defined by various contending parties to that issue. More than anything we need a frank and open national debate about Israel/Palestine and the future of American foreign policy, but we'll never get there until we confront the pro-Israel lobby head-on
2 comments:
Kinda hard to see this blog-post in context, without clicking on the links to see your source...
That this sort of rabble-rousing appears in "the largest Muslim newspaper in California" is truly disturbing.
"It's all about Israel, folks" -- no, it's not. It's all about a nation that saw airliners crash into skyscrapers -- and that nation doesn't want to see it happen ever again. Let it be noted, for the record, that the 9/11 hijackers were not Israelis.
I believe that the Flying Imams are seen, by the majority of the American people, for what they are -- cynical opportunists at best, and the vanguard of another 9/11 at worst.
Let them continue to push at the boundaries of what airlines permit. If we learned anything at all on 9/11, it was this: if the U.S. government and security services cannot act to protect American lives, ordinary Americans can, and will.
respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline
The sad thing is that, out of "politco-incorrectness-ophobia," many of our fellow American's are silencing (or sacrificing) their common sense to social "politeness" and decorum. If such pathology does not right itself, we all may be sacrificing much, much more.
Sincerely,
Rick in Silver Spring, MD
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