Special Report on Islamophobia
Introduction
Islamophobia, which has both deep roots in Western culture and a long history during which a distinctly American form evolved over many decades, is the most pressing problem facing the American Muslim and Arab-American communities. Since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, defamation is the only element of the backlash facing these communities that has unquestionably worsened at every stage. This cannot be said of civil rights concerns such as housing and employment discrimination, civil liberties violations such as unwarranted or unlawful detentions or racial profiling by law enforcement, or hate crimes by bigoted individuals. All of the problems have plateaued, waxed and waned, or improved at least to some extent since 2001. Defamation, on the other hand, has steadily and obviously deteriorated over the past five years, as the worst forms of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate speech - the two being virtually inseparable as cultural phenomena, since most Americans and American discourse constantly conflates the two - have made their way steadily and perniciously towards the mainstream of American discourse.
Defamation affects all sectors of these communities – assimilated and immigrant, well-to-do and working class, Muslims and Arab Christians – no one is immune to the highly negative effects it has on relations with other Americans, including neighbors, co-workers, and even friends. In recent months, some of the most egregious and dangerous trends in Islamophobic defamation have made substantial inroads into the most influential elements of American popular culture, especially in cable television news. The last months of 2006 have seen a number of alarming developments that suggest that the problem of Islamophobia in the United States is currently undergoing a qualitative deterioration of significant and alarming proportions.
The American Muslim and Arab-American communities can no longer afford to deal with the problem in a piecemeal or half-hearted manner. The highly negative perceptions being force-fed to the American public, which often has little or no other information about Islam, Muslims and Arabs, could potentially threaten every aspect of life for these communities. In the event of another tragedy or terrorist attack in the United States, or other dangerous increases in tension between our country and elements in the Middle East or the Islamic world, this cultural atmosphere could easily lead to an explosion of hate crimes, discrimination and civil liberties violations that far outstrips what was experienced after September 11, 2001. The American public is being primed by professional bigots to see American Muslims and Arab Americans as a fifth column that is disloyal, violent and anti-American. Such radical misperceptions pose extreme dangers to the fate of these communities, should events take a turn for the worst.
The experience of the terrorist attacks on our country came as a bolt from the blue to the American Muslim and Arab American communities: a traumatic event which they did not at all anticipate and had no control over in any way, that completely reshaped the political and cultural landscape in which they live and suddenly thrust upon them problems of a nature and intensity that they were, and frankly still are, woefully unprepared to deal with effectively. This experience should have carried with it one over-riding message – organize yourselves and begin to exercise political and cultural power in your own defense, or continue to depend entirely on good fortune and the goodwill of your fellow citizens, which are always risky propositions. The spread of the kind of vicious, hateful propaganda that has been steadily on the rise in American media in recent months and years makes such an approach, which amounts to voluntary surrender to extreme vulnerability, completely unacceptable.
It is essential, in our own defense and for the good of our country and its culture, that American Muslims and Arabs immediately organize a serious, concerted and coordinated response to this crisis of defamation and hate speech. This brief study outlines the history of the development of anti-Arab and Islamophobic hate speech in the United States, some of the principal themes of contemporary American Islamophobia, and how the most extreme and politicized forms of Islamophobia are moving into the mainstream of American culture. This paper is intended to serve as the basis for developing, in concert with many other groups and individuals under the leadership of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a systematic response to this pattern of defamation that seeks to reverse these trends, expose hate speech for what it is and ensure that mainstream media stop indulging in it, and initiate a proactive dialogue with the media and our fellow citizens that decisively counters and heals the damage caused by such hate speech.
