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Today's
Stories
December 1, 2003
Bill Christison
US
Foreign Policy and Intelligence: Monstrous Messes
November 29 / 30, 2003
Peter Linebaugh
On
the Anniversary of the Death of Wolfe Tone
Gary Leupp
Politicizing War on Fox News: a Tale of Two Memos
Saul Landau
Lying and Cheating:
Bush's New Political Math
Michael Adler
Inside a Miami Jail: One Activist's Narrative
Anthony Arnove
"They Put the Lie to Their Own Propaganda": an Interview
with John Pilger
Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
Stephen Banko, III
A Soldier's Dream
Forrest Hylton
Empire and Revolution in Bolivia
Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
Ben Terrall
Don't Think Twice: Bush Does Bali
Standard Schaefer
Unions
are the Answer to Supermarkets Woes
Richard Trainor
The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
Bridge
Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
Dave Lindorff
They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
November 28, 2003
William S. Lind
Worse Than Crimes
David Vest
Turkey
Potemkin
Robert Jensen / Sam Husseini
New Bush Tape Raises Fears of Attacks
Wayne Madsen
Wag
the Turkey
Harold Gould
Suicide as WMD? Emile Durkheim Revisited
Gabriel Kolko
Vietnam
and Iraq: Has the US Learned Anything?
South Asia Tribune
The Story
of the Most Important Pakistan Army General in His Own Words
Website of the Day
Bush Draft
November 27, 2003
Mitchel Cohen
Why
I Hate Thanksgiving
Jack Wilson
An
Account of One Soldier's War
Stefan Wray
In the Shadows of the School of the Americas
Al Krebs
Food as Corporate WMD
Jim Scharplaz
Going Up Against Big Food: Weeding Out the Small Farmer
Neve Gordon
Gays
Under Occupation: Help Save the Life of Fuad Moussa
November 26, 2003
Paul de Rooij
Amnesty
International: the Case of a Rape Foretold
Bruce Jackson
Media
and War: Bringing It All Back Home
Stew Albert
Perle's
Confession: That's Entertainment
Alexander Cockburn
Miami and London: Cops in Two Cities
David Orr
Miami Heat
Tom Crumpacker
Anarchists
on the Beach
Mokhiber / Weissman
Militarization in Miami
Derek Seidman
Naming the System: an Interview with Michael Yates
Kathy Kelly
Hogtied
and Abused at Ft. Benning
Website of the Day
Iraq Procurement
November 25, 2003
Linda S. Heard
We,
the Besieged: Western Powers Redefine Democracy
Diane Christian
Hocus
Pocus in the White House: Of Warriors and Liberators
Mark Engler
Miami's
Trade Troubles
David Lindorff
Ashcroft's
Cointelpro
Website of the Day
Young McCarthyites of Texas
November 24, 2003
Jeremy Scahill
The
Miami Model
Elaine Cassel
Gulag
Americana: You Can't Come Home Again
Ron Jacobs
Iraq
Now: Oh Good, Then the War's Over?
Alexander Cockburn
Rupert Murdoch: Global Tyrant
November 14 / 23, 2003
Alexander Cockburn
Clintontime:
Was It Really a Golden Age?
Saul Landau
Words
of War
Noam Chomsky
Invasion
as Marketing Problem: Iraq War and Contempt for Democracy
Stan Goff
An Open Letter to GIs in Iraq: Hold on to Your Humanity
Jeffrey St. Clair
Bush Puts Out a Contract on the Spotted Owl
John Holt
Blue Light: Battle for the Sweetgrass Hills
Adam Engel
A DC Lefty in King George's Court: an Interview with Sam Smith
Joanne Mariner
In a Dark Hole: Moussaoui and the Hidden Detainees
Uri Avnery
The General as Pseudo-Dove: Ya'alon's 70 Virgins
M. Shahid Alam
Voiding the Palestinians: an Allegory
Juliana Fredman
Visions of Concrete
Norman Solomon
Media Clash in Brazil
Brian Cloughley
Is Anyone in the Bush Administration Telling the Truth?
William S. Lind
Post-Machine Gun Tactics
Patrick W. Gavin
Imagine
Dave Lindorff
Bush's
Brand of Leadership: Putting Himself First
Tom Crumpacker
Pandering to Anti-Castro Hardliners
Erik Fleming
Howard Dean's Folly
Rick Giombetti
Challenging the Witch Doctors of the New Imperialism: a Review
of Bush in Babylon
Jorge Mariscal
Las Adelitas, 2003: Mexican-American Women in Iraq
Chris Floyd
Logical Conclusions
Mickey Z.
Does William Safire Need Mental Help?
David Vest
Owed to the Confederate Dead
Ron Jacobs
Joe: the Sixties Most Unforgiving Film
Dave Zirin
Foreman and Carlos: a Tale of Two Survivors
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert, Greeder, Ghalib and Alam
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher David Vest: Winner of 2 Muddy Awards for Best
Blues Pianist in the Pacific Northwest!
November 13, 2003
Jack McCarthy
Veterans
for Peace Booted from Vet Day Parade
Adam Keller
Report
on the Ben Artzi Verdict
Richard Forno
"Threat Matrix:" Homeland Security Goes Prime-Time
Vijay Prashad
Confronting
the Evangelical Imperialists
November 12, 2003
Elaine Cassel
The
Supremes and Guantanamo: a Glimmer of Hope?
Col. Dan Smith
Unsolicited
Advice: a Reply to Rumsfeld's Memo
Jonathan Cook
Facility
1391: Israel's Guantanamo
Robert Fisk
Osama Phones Home
Michael Schwartz
The Wal-Mart Distraction and the California Grocery Workers Strike
John Chuckman
Forty
Years of Lies
Doug Giebel
Jessica Lynch and Saving American Decency
Uri Avnery
Wanted: a Sharon of the Left
Website of the Day
Musicians Against Sweatshops
November 11, 2003
David Lindorff
Bush's
War on Veterans
Stan Goff
Honoring
Real Vets; Remembering Real War
Earnest McBride
"His
Feet Were on the Ground": Was Steve McNair's Cousin Lynched?
Derek Seidman
Imperialism
Begins at Home: an Interview with Stan Goff
David Krieger
Mr. President, You Can Run But You Can't Hide
Sen. Ernest Hollings
My Cambodian Moment on the Iraq War
Dan Bacher
The Invisible Man Resigns
Kam Zarrabi
Hypocrisy at the Top
John Eskow
Born on Veteran's Day
Website of the Day
Left Hook
November 10, 2003
Robert Fisk
Looney
Toons in Rummyworld: How We Denied Democracy to the Middle East
Elaine Cassel
Papa's Gotta Brand New Bag (of Tricks): Patriot Act Spawns Similar
Laws Across Globe
James Brooks
Israel's New War Machine Opens the Abyss
Thom Rutledge
The Lost Gospel of Rummy
Stew Albert
Call Him Al
Gary Leupp
"They
Were All Non-Starters": On the Thwarted Peace Proposals
November 8/9, 2003
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Zionism
as Racist Ideology
Gabriel Kolko
Intelligence
for What?
The Vietnam War Reconsidered
Saul Landau
The
Bride Wore Black: the Policy Nuptials of Boykin and Wolfowitz
Brian Cloughley
Speeding Up to Nowhere: Training the New Iraqi Police
William Blum
The Anti-Empire Report:
A Permanent Occupation?
David Lindorff
A New Kind of Dancing in Iraq: from Occupation to Guerrilla War
Elaine Cassel
Bush's War on Non-Citizens
Tim Wise
Persecuting the Truth: Claims of Christian Victimization Ring
Hollow
Toni Solo
Robert Zoellick and "Wise Blood"
Michael Donnelly
Will the Real Ron Wyden Please Stand Up?
Mark Hand
Building a Vanguard Movement: a Review of Stan Goff's Full Spectrum
Disorder
Norman Solomon
War, Social Justice, Media and Democracy
Norman Madarasz
American Neocons and the Jerusalem Post
Adam Engel
Raising JonBenet
Dave Zirin
An Interview with George Foreman
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Albert and Greeder
November 7, 2003
Nelson Valdes
Latin
America in Crisis and Cuba's Self-Reliance
David Vest
Surely
It Can't Get Any Worse?
Chris Floyd
An Inspector
Calls: The Kay Report as War Crime Indictment
William S. Lind
Indicators:
Where This War is Headed
Elaine Cassel
FBI to Cryptome: "We Are Watching You"
Maria Tomchick
When Public Transit Gets Privatized
Uri Avnery
Israeli
Roulette
November 6, 2003
Ron Jacobs
With
a Peace Like This...
Conn Hallinan
Rumsfeld's
New Model Army
Maher Arar
This
is What They Did to Me
Elaine Cassel
A Bad
Day for Civil Liberties: the Case of Maher Arar
Neve Gordon
Captives
Behind Sharon's Wall
Ralph Nader and Lee Drutman
An Open Letter to John Ashcroft on Corporate Crime
November 5, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Just
a Match Away:
Fire Sale in So Cal
Dave Lindorff
A Draft in the Forecast?
Robert Jensen
How I Ended Up on the Professor Watch List
Joanne Mariner
Prisons as Mental Institutions
Patrick Cockburn
Saddam Not Organizing Iraqi Resistance
Simon Helweg-Larsen
Centaurs
from Dusk to Dawn: Remilitarization and the Guatemalan Elections
Josh Frank
Silencing "the Reagans"
Website of the Day
Everything You Wanted to Know About Howard Dean But Were Afraid
to Ask
November 4, 2003
Robert Fisk
Smearing
Said and Ashrawi: When Did "Arab" Become a Dirty Word?
Ray McGovern
Chinook Down: It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Vietnam
Woodruff / Wypijewski
Debating
the New Unity Partnership
Karyn Strickler
When
Opponents of Abortion Dream
Norman Solomon
The
Steady Theft of Our Time
Tariq Ali
Resistance
and Independence in Iraq
November 3, 2003
Patrick Cockburn
The
Bloodiest Day Yet for Americans in Iraq: Report from Fallujah
Dave Lindorff
Philly's
Buggy Election
Janine Pommy Vega
Sarajevo Hands 2003
Bernie Dwyer
An
Interview with Chomsky on Cuba
November 1 / 2,
2003
Saul Landau
Cui
Bono? The Cuba Embargo as Rip Off
Noam Chomsky
Empire of the Men of Best Quality
Bruce Jackson
Midge Decter and the Taxi Driver
Brian Cloughley
"Mow the Whole Place Down"
John Stanton
The Pentagon's Love Affair with Land Mines
William S. Lind
Bush's Bizarre Korean Gambit
Ben Tripp
The Brown Paste on Bush's Shoes
Christopher Brauchli
Divine Hatred
Dave Zirin
An Interview with John Carlos
Agustin Velloso
Oil in Equatorial Guinea: Where Trickle Down Doesn't Trickle
Josh Frank
Howard Dean and Affirmative Action
Ron Jacobs
Standing Up to El Diablo: the 1981 Blockade of Diablo Canyon
Strickler / Hermach
Liar, Liar Forests on Fire
David Vest
Jimmy T99 Nelson, a Blues Legend and the Songs that Made Him
Famous
Adam Engel
America, What It Is
Dr. Susan Block
Christy Canyon, a Life in Porn
Poets' Basement
Greeder, Albert & Guthrie
October 31, 2003
Lee Ballinger
Making
a Dollar Out of 15 Cents: The Sweatshops of Sean "P. Diddy"
Combs
Wayne Madsen
The
GOP's Racist Trifecta
Michael Donnelly
Settling for Peanuts: Democrats Trick the Greens, Treat Big Timber
Patrick Cockburn
Baghdad
Diary: Iraqis are Naming Their New Babies "Saddam"
Elaine Cassel
Coming
to a State Near You: The Matrix (Interstate Snoops, Not the Movie)
Linda Heard
An Arab View of Masonry
October 30, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Popular
Insurrection and National Revolution in Bolivia
Eric Ruder
"We Have to Speak Out!": Marching with the Military
Families
Dave Lindorff
Big
Lies and Little Lies: The Meaning of "Mission Accomplished"
Philip Adams
"Everyone is Running Scared": Denigrating Critics of
Israel
Sean Donahue
Howard Dean: a Hawk in a Dove's Cloak
Robert Jensen
Big Houses & Global Justice: A Moral Level of Consumption?
Alexander Cockburn
Paul
Krugman: Part of the Problem
October 29, 2003
Chris Floyd
Thieves
Like Us: Cheney's Backdoor to Halliburton
Robert Fisk
Iraq Guerrillas Adopt a New Strategy: Copy the Americans
Rick Giombetti
Let
Them Eat Prozac: an Interview with David Healy
The Intelligence Squad
Dark
Forces? The Military Steps Up Recruiting of Blacks
Elaine Cassel
Prosecutors
as Therapists, Phantoms as Terrorists
Marie Trigona
Argentina's War on the Unemployed Workers Movement
Gary Leupp
Every
Day, One KIA: On the Iraq War Casualty Figures
October 28, 2003
Rich Gibson
The
Politics of an Inferno: Notes on Hellfire 2003
Uri Avnery
Incident
in Gaza
Diane Christian
Wishing
Death
Robert Fisk
Eyewitness
in Iraq: "They're Getting Better"
Toni Solo
Authentic Americans and John Negroponte
Jason Leopold
Halliburton in Iran
Shrireen Parsons
When T-shirts are Verboten
Chris White
9/11
in Context: a Marine Veteran's Perspective
October 27,
2003
William A. Cook
Ministers
of War: Criminals of the Cloth
David Lindorff
The
Times, Dupes and the Pulitzer
Elaine Cassel
Antonin
Scalia's Contemptus Mundi
Robert Fisk
Occupational Schizophrenia
John Chuckman
Banging Your Head into Walls
Seth Sandronsky
Snoops R Us
Bill Kauffman
George
Bush, the Anti-Family President
October 25 / 26,
2003
Robert Pollin
The
US Economy: Another Path is Possible
Jeffrey St. Clair
Outsourcing US Guided Missile Technology to China
James Bunn
Plotting
Pre-emptive Strikes
Saul Landau
Should Limbaugh Do Time?
Ted Honderich
Palestinian Terrorism, Morality & Germany
Thomas Nagy
Saving the Army of Peace
Christopher Brauchli
Between Bush and a Lobotomy: Killing Endangered Species for Profit
Laura Carlsen
Latin America's Archives of Terror
Diane Christian
Evil Acts & Evil Actors
Muqtedar Khan
Lessons from the Imperial Adventure in Iraq
John Feffer
The Tug of War on the Korea Peninsula
Brian Cloughley
Iraq War Memories are Made of Lies
Benjamin Dangl
and Kathryn Ledebur
An Uneasy Peace in Bolivia
Karyn Strickler
Down
with Big Brother's Spying Eyes
Noah Leavitt
Legal Globalization
John Stanton
Hitler's Ghost Haunts America
Mickey Z.
War of the Words
Adam Engel
Tractatus Ridiculous
Poets' Basement
Curtis, Subiet and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Project Last Stand
October 24, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Ashcroft's
War on Greenpeace
Lenni Brenner
The Demographics of American Jews
Jeffrey St. Clair
Rockets,
Napalm, Torpedoes and Lies: the Attack on the USS Liberty Revisited
Sarah Weir
Cover-up of the Israeli Attack on the US Liberty
David Krieger
WMD Found in DC: Bush is the Button
Mohammed Hakki
It's Palestine, Stupid!: Americans and the Middle East
Harry Browne
Northern
Ireland: the Agreement that Wasn't
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
December
1, 2003
Unholy Alliances
Zionism,
US Imperialism and Islamic Fundamentalism
By FAWZIA AFZAL-KHAN
Since 9/11, I have written and published several
essays examining the reductive discourses that sprang up, mushroom-like,
in mainstream media particularly within the US, to explain that
apocalyptic moment in terms of an "Us/Them" binary.
Many of these limited, and in my opinion, spurious analyses (written
and promoted by the likes of Bernard Lewis, Daniel Pipes etc)
need to be challenged for obvious reasons. The most important
of these, as far as I am concerned, is that linking Islam to
terrorism does absolutely nothing to vitiate the anger and resentment
millions of Muslims around the world feel toward the West in
general and the United States in particular in this unipolar
world, for what are essentially political reasons: the economic
lop-sidedness of a top-down, winner-take-all globalization that
serves to increase the wealth and power of the richer nations
at the expense of the poorer ones.
The egregious example of the state of
Israel, which is supported unequivocally by the USA militarily
and economically to serve as its watchdog and policeman in the
Middle East whose oil resources continue to fuel (no pun intended!),
the imperial interests of the USA and other western nations,
underscores for the vast majority of third world peoples, of
whom Muslims comprise a substantial portion, the connection between
the maintenance of global hegemony and colonial usurpation of
indigenous peoples ' lands and resources and their concomitant
subjugation and dehumanization. The ire against Israel that is
manifesting itself increasingly vocally across not just the third
world but within the heartland of Europe, should thus be seen
for what it is: not as evidence of a "rise in anti-semitism"
as supporters of Israel wish to paint it (including, unsurprisingly,
prominent cabinet members of Ariel Sharon's right-wing government
that is busy erecting yet more settlements in the Occupied Territories
on a daily basis), but as the legitimate frustration of the world's
have-nots against the haves. Israel, seen in this light, is simply
the example par excellence, of the oppression and injustice upon
which the contemporary world class system, the New world Order
with USA at its head, is based. Insofar as the state of Israel
proclaims itself to be a state for "Jews only," the
expressions of anger directed against it (in its capacity as
Colonialism's last outpost)--necessarily take on what appear
to some to be the markings of anti-semitism, but are, in fact,
the ire of colonized and neo-colonized peoples against the colonial
Master.
In two previous essays of mine, "Here
are the Muslim Feminist Voices, Mr. Rushdie!" and "Islam
and Identity," I critiqued Salman Rushdie for his abject
willingness to mouth the most cliched of colonialist rantings
against the Islamic world: that there are no intellectuals worth
their salt within Muslim societies, particularly no Feminist
intellectuals, since Islam is an utterly regressive and at bottom,
profoundly anti-modern religion (are Judaism and Christianity
profoundly modern, then??)--whose followers are "anti-semites"
and whose critiques of Israeli state policies are labeled by
Rushdie as "Islamic slander against Jews" (Op-Ed page,
NYT, Nov 2, 2001). Such a sweeping indictment of Muslims and
of Muslim societies is repulsive because it panders to dangerous
stereotypes of Muslims-as-fundamentalist-terrorists, which is
precisely the kind of thinking that has gotten us to the apocalyptic
juncture of world history we are so unfortunately witnessing
today, with battle positions hardening on both sides: the avenging
(yet seen in their own eyes as "liberating") Judeo-Christian
armies of the West on the one hand, and the terrorist Muslim
barbarian hordes massing on the gates of "Civilization"
on the other hand. Such a dangerous, but surely cartoonish vision
of the world into these simplistic binaries was popular only
amongst the lunatic fringe, I used to think. However, that "fringe"
has expanded since 9/11, to include most of the US citizenry
today, what with the various polls revealing high levels of support
for President Bush up until very recently (even now, a majority
of Americans support his "war on terror," despite angst
over the mounting numbers of American dead, and no evidence to
date of WMDs; these folks still believe, as one of my students
wrote in an angry response to an anti-war poem I had them read
in class, "just because we haven't found them, does not
mean these weapons of mass destruction do not exist")! What
is interesting, and more than a little frightening to observe,
is that this type of fanatical, extremist way of thinking/carving
up the world into "Us" and "Them," has reared
its ugly head on college campuses as well, those bastions of
so-called "liberal thought" and "academic freedom."
I would like to comment on a recent incident on my own campus,
Montclair State University, that reveals the overlapping and
intertwined agendas which are shared, paradoxical though this
may seem, by right-wing neo-conservatives on both sides of the
ideological divide.
Even more frightening, however, is the
fact that this neo-con agenda, which is increasingly being adopted
by Zionist Jewish intellectuals as a way to serve the cause of
Israeli state aggression against the Palestinians, is aided and
abetted by the so-called fundamentalist Muslims whose extremist
views on a host of issues (including the "proper role"
of women) can be used as evidence of their overall regressive
mentality leading to terroristic behavior. This is so clearly
an apolitical, ahistorical analysis of the contemporary Muslim
world that it continually astonishes me as to how anyone can
believe it. Yet, Israel supporters can, with the help of these
conservative Muslim groups, "sell" the US public the
myth that Israel is a western-style democracy defending itself
against Palestinian (re:Islamic, even though approx 7% of Palestinians
are Christians) terrorists hell-bent on destroying it through
the pathetic acts of suicide bombers whose Israeli victims to
date number barely a fraction of the thousands of Palestinian
civilians killed, maimed, rendered homeless on a daily basis
by Israeli tanks, gunships and Apache helicopters all supplied
by US, and engaged in state-sponsored terrorism against Palestinians
whose lands have been and continue to be occupied by Israel in
contravention of International law since 1967.
This type of analysis then extends itself
as an explanatory prism through which to view ALL critics of
Israel, especially if they happen to be Muslim, as potential
terrorists, and indeed, such a way of thinking has already led
Congress to pass a bill that would, in effect, police academics
teaching in Middle Eastern and other Area Studies programs across
the US.
On Oct 21st, 2003, the US House of Representatives
unanimously passed a bill, HR 3077, that, if passed into law,
could require international studies departments to show more
support for American foreign policy or risk their federal funding.
Its approval followed hearings this summer in which members of
Congress listened to testimony about the pernicious influence
of the late Edward Said in Middle Eastern studies departments,
described as enclaves of debased anti-Americanism. Stanley Kurtz,
a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a right-wing think
tank, testified," Title-VI funded programs in Middle Eastern
Studies (and other area studies) tend to purvey extreme and one-sided
criticism of American foreign policy." Evidently, the House
agreed and decided to intervene. (Goldberg 2)
Clearly, if this bill passes into law,
it will curtail federal grants to Middle Eastern studies departments
and programs across US universities unless they can prove that
their faculty are not inspiring "terrorist" thinking
in their students simply by teaching them to critically examine
US foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere! The bill,
sponsored by pro-Israel lawmakers and inspired by American-born
Israeli citizen, Martin Kramer, wants to tie federal funding
to an explicit mandate to heads of these programs to hire pro-Israeli
professors in their programs, on the grounds that these programs
are overstuffed with left-wing pro-Arab, pro-Islamic radicals,
who constitute an intellectual fifth-column in the country. That
such a"deranged fantasy" as Professor Juan Cole of
the U of Mich points out, could be taken seriously as a basis
for a Congressional bill, is a scary thought. Most of the "experts"
receiving Title VI grants, according to Cole, are pro-Israeli
hawks: Leonard Binder, political scientist at UCLA, actually
fought on the side of Israel in the 1948 war, others, like Ellis
Goldberg at Washington U, Joel Migdal at Harvard, Marc Tessler
at U of Michigan, Gary Sick at Columbia, are all supporters of
Israel. Thus, it is indeed disturbing that the fast-approaching
obsolescence of academic freedom is being promoted by Zionist
academics who have tremendous power in this government and within
academia, and who are determined to prevent any criticism of
US foreign-policy regarding Israel and the Middle East from affecting
the minds of the American people, who might then reconsider the
"war on terror" from quite a different analytic angle,
one in which Zionism, Islamophobia as well as fanatical Islamicism
and capitalist oppression of "others" all conspire
together to preserve a status quo that is literally driving the
world into the abyss of annihilation.
So, how are certain Muslim groups helping
to further this conservative, capitalist agenda which supports
injustice and oppression in the world as a fundamental precondition
of its own power? The Muslim groups I am talking about in this
particular instance are the various chapters of the Muslim Students
Association found across the USA today. Most of these attract
young immigrant or first generation Muslims looking for an identity
to hold onto in the midst of confusing times. Unfortunately,
it is the most regressive variety of Islam that holds sway in
these organizations, and so, for instance, the students who are
office bearers of the MSA at MSU are men who sport beards and
name themselves in Saudi/Arab fashion (since Arab Islam, particularly
of the Saudi variety is seen as the "authentic" version
by conservatives), even when they happen to be of different ethnicities
and backgrounds (case in point: the President of the MSA is a
young man from India, who calls himself Anwar bin Omar--an appellation
that has no roots in India but is in fact, an Arab construction).
Women similarly present themselves in the most conservative way
possible, heads covered in Arab-style hijabs, often wearing long
coat-like garments to conceal their body shapes.
To these young men and women, Islam is
essentially a conservative ideology of life which can help resolve
the contradictions of life in a consumerist, inegalitarian, capitalist
society where everything, including the female body, is a commodity
in the marketplace--by "restoring" the balance between
men and women that has been disrupted by modernity (delinked
from a class analysis). According to this logic, if women stay
home and defer to their men, in a gesture mimicking subservience
to God, all will be well--and ofcourse, an important part of
that subservience has to be in the form of dress, since to expose
the body is tantamount to disruption--creating "fitna"
or chaos which is misogynistically linked to women's bodies,
women's sexuality under the patriarchal class system common to
all religious ideologies, including Islam. Thus, this conservative
reading of Islam serves the ideological purposes of pro-Israeli
cohorts on US campuses and everywhere else, for that matter,(which
include the Christian right wing groups of which Jerry Falwell,
Billy Graham, Tom Delay and indeed, the entire US White House
staff appear to be a part of)-- since it is a short logical step
to connect the "oppression of women" endemic to the
philosophy of such groups to their penchant for violence in other
arenas. Indeed, in her review of Stern's book, Terror in the
Name of God, Isabel Hilton points out the similarity between
fundamentalist Jews and fundamentalist Muslims by quoting one
of the former as reported by Stern:
Here in Israel, we don't like to say
this very loudly, but the radical right Jewish groups have a
lot in common with Hamas.
Both, Stern goes on to add, have twin
political and religious objectives and both use selective readings
of religious texts and of history to justify violence over territory
(NYT Book Review Section, p. 50, Sun Nov 16, 2003, my emphasis).
Control over the bodies of women conceived
as the territory or possession of men for instance, is a form
of violence that is discursively similar to that enacted against
the inhabitants of Occupied Territories--in both cases, it is
naturalized through discourse--religious in the case of the former,
and nationalist/Zionist in the case of the latter. What is elided
in both cases is that such ideological ruses (even when they
are adopted by victims claiming "freedom of choice"
as in the case of Muslim women who insist their covering of themselves
is a "happy choice") ultimately paper over the real
issue of oppression of the many by the few: in other words, such
an ideology serves to keep the status quo of a capitalist patriarchal
world order in tact, with ruling-class men, be they named Bush,
Sharon , Saddam or Osama, doing their best to keep the world
in a perpetual state of War, which, as Orwell had so presciently
foretold in his novel 1984, was the only way to keep the elite
in power in their palaces and the rest of us disenfranchised
and hungry to one degree or another.
My attempts, then, at finessing these
links that I see between "Islamic" terrorism and Israeli/US
terrorism, between the oppression of women and the oppression
of the poor, the disenfranchised, the homeless (epitomized in
the inhuman treatment of Palestinians by the Israeli government
which serves as our colonial enforcer in the region) are basically
aimed at deconstructing the links between Islam as a religion
that has been hijacked to serve the ends of western imperialism
and Muslim patriarchal control, and Islam as political rallying
cry for the oppressed and the disenfranchised of the world, who
are fed up with being subjected to new forms of colonialism through
the globalization-from-above paradigm being forced down their
throats. Yet, this de-linking, or re-linking of patriarchy, religion
and realpolitik, if you will, has had equally unsettling effects
on my liberal colleagues at MSU, including the Women's Studies
faculty on whose Advisory Board I have served for many years,
as well as on the Muslim students; I have become a persona-non-grata
with the Zionists on campus in this and other organizations,
as well as with the religious Muslims. And those who are affiliated
to neither camp, are more often than not, afraid to speak up
and defend positions like mine, because they are afraid of "insulting"
people who inhabit/identify with either extremes.
Thus, when a number of organizations
on campus--with the Global Studies Institute spearheading the
initiative, led by an ardent promoter of Israel, followed by
Women's Studies, the Women's Center, the Department of Religion
and Philosophy, and the MSA-- decided to plan a year-long series
called "The Many Faces of the Muslim World," they,
quite deliberately, left me out of their planning sessions. Nor,
unsurprisingly, did they deign to invite me as a speaker at any
of their listed events, despite the fact that I am perhaps the
only faculty member on campus who is both a Muslim and a scholar
of Islamic Feminism--with many published works in the area. A
Muslim woman who says what I say is anathema to all these groups
since I can neither be marshalled as evidence of Oppressed Muslim
Womanhood, nor as a mouthpiece for pro-Israeli, anti-Islamic
rhetoric, nor as an apologist for Islam.If I don't inhabit a
binary position, I don't exist.
I would like to conclude this essay simply
by suggesting that there is a dangerous convergence, not just
of right-wing forces representing all religious ideologies, but
what is perhaps worse, of scared intellectuals in various disciplines
that are supposed to be committed to speaking truth to power
(Women's Studies being one of these supposedly exemplary fields)--where
the conspiracy to silence around certain "sacred cows"
such as the topic of Israel-- outweighs the need to speak out
unequivocally against injustice wherever it occurs. Such a convergence
contributing to a pervasive culture of fear must be challenged
if we are to reclaim our integrity not just as academics and
scholars, but as human beings committed to finding just solutions
to the problems and inequities of the world we live in.
Fawzia Afzal-Khan is a professor in the Department of English
at Montclair State University in New Jersey. She can be reached
at: khanf@mail.montclair.edu
Bibliography:
Goldberg, Michelle. "Osama
University?", Salon.com
Hilton, Isabel. Review, Terror in the
Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill By Jessica Stern. In
The New York Times, Book Review Section, Sunday, Nov. 16, 2003,
p. 50.
Weekend
Edition Features for Nov. 29 / 30, 2003
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Anthony Arnove
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Greg Weiher
Why Bush Needs Osama and Saddam
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Toni Solo
The "Free Trade" History Eraser
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Standard Schaefer
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The Political Economy of Earthquakes: a Journey Across the Bay
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Mark Gaffney
US Congress Does Israel's Bidding, Again
Adam Engel
The System Really Works
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They, the Jury: How the System Rigs the Jury Pool
Susan Davis
Framing the Friedmans
Neve Gordon
Arundhati Roy's Complaint for Peace
Mitchel Cohen
Thomas Jefferson and Slavery
Ben Tripp
Capture Me, Daddy
Poets' Basement
Kearney, Albert, Guthrie and Smith
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