By Stephen Lendman
Global Research
US-led Western states promote Islamophobia.
It’s part of seeking dominance over other nations — notably by endless preemptive wars and related hostile actions against nonbelligerent states threatening no one.
It’s the wrong time to be Muslim in the West, notably in the US, Britain and France.
Muslims are war on terror scapegoats. Dirty war targets them unjustly.
Waging war requires enemies. When none exist they’re invented. Muslims are targets of choice, notably in the oil-rich Middle East.
Ignored is what Islam is all about. It has common roots with Judeo/Christian principles.
Its tenets foster love, not hate; peace, not violence; charity, not exploitation; and just, fair societies for people of all faiths.
Islamophobic hate-mongering rages anyway, notably because of US-led wars by hot and other means in the predominantly Muslim Middle East.
They’re all about seeking control over the region’s vast hydrocarbon resources, along with serving Israeli interests.
Both countries seek to redraw the Middle East’s map, replacing independent governments with pro-Western puppet regimes — along with partitioning Iran, Iraq, Syria, and other regional countries for easier control.
For generations, Muslims have been maligned by the West.
Samuel Huntington called for “exploit(ing) Islamic states to support…Western values and interests.”
Like Huntington, Bernard Lewis promoted the notion of a clash of civilizations.
Edward Said called their hostile to Islam views “belligerent,” adding:
They shamefully treat Islam(ic) identity and culture in “cartoon-like” fashion.
It’s similar to how “Popeye and Bluto bash each other mercilessly.”
When active, ideologues like Huntington and Lewis relied on stereotypes and gimmickry — ignoring reason, shunning reality.
So-called Western values are responsible for unparalleled amounts of mass slaughter, vast destruction and human misery worldwide — what’s been going on for generations.
The US-led West fosters might makes right extremism, no matter how misguided, destructive or hateful.
In his notable work titled “The Heart of Darkness,” Joseph Conrad said “the conquest of the Earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion, a slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much.”
That’s what US-led imperial wars by hot and other means are all about, the human cost ignored, including by supportive media.
Tribute to Samuel Paty, professor assassinated in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, organized in front of the town hall in Saint-Denis on October 17, 2020. (Source: Wikimedia Commons)
In response to the grizzly slaying of history teacher Samuel Paty in Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, a Paris suburb — stabbed multiple times and beheaded, French President Macron responded with police state actions against what he called “a typical Islamist terrorist attack (sic).”
The incident, his rhetoric and actions aroused greater Islamophobia in France than already, a nation with nearly six million Muslims, about 9% of the population.Who Should be Blamed for “Muslim Terrorism”?
Like many times before in the US and other Western countries, Muslims have been unfairly maligned, hunted down, rounded up, and detained — many times falsely charged for crimes they didn’t commit.
The same thing followed in response to Paty’s murder — including hundreds targeted for deportation.
France’s Muslim population is the largest among Western countries.
Muslim organizations in France are at risk of dissolution, their leadership and members threatened with retaliation for what they had nothing to do with.
Yet in a public address, Macron said “Islamists cannot be allowed to sleep peacefully in our country.”
What type society condemns an entire segment of its population for a crime of one individual against another.
Since no one has been tried and convicted, it’s a travesty of justice to automatically consider a suspect for the killing guilty as charged.
That’s for a fair judicial process to decide, according to the rule of law.
It’s highly unlikely to turn out this way because of inflammatory rhetoric by Macron and other French officials.
By ordering retaliation against French Muslims, Macron and other high level officials are in flagrant violation of UN Charter principles and other international law.
According to UN founding principles — applicable to all member states:
“The rule of law is a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions and entities, public and private, including the State itself, are accountable to laws that are publicly promulgated, equally enforced and independently adjudicated, and which are consistent with international human rights norms and standards.”
“It requires measures to ensure adherence to the principles of supremacy of the law, equality before the law, accountability to the law, fairness in the application of the law, separation of powers, participation in decision-making, legal certainty, avoidance of arbitrariness, and procedural and legal transparency.”
“The rule of law is fundamental to international peace…security…stability, (and the) fundamental” rights of all people everywhere.
In cahoots with the US, UK, other Western states, Israel, and their imperial partners, France long ago abandoned governance of, by and for all its people equitably, along with rule of law at home and abroad it ignores.
On Tuesday, Macron’s interior minister Gerald Darmanin defied reality, claiming:
The threat of Islamic terrorism in France is “very high (sic).”
Ordering a crackdown on what he called “rampant Islamism which is arming people ideologically,” he called for combatting an invented internal enemy of the state.
In response to hostile anti-Muslim rhetoric by Macron and others in his government, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani slammed French disrespect to the Prophet of Islam, adding:
“Insulting the Prophet is a violation of ethics and an insult to all Muslims, Prophets of God, and human values.”
Most of what Western officials call radical Islam was made in the West, notably by the US, earlier by the UK, part of their imperial projects.
It was used against Russia during and after the Cold War, along with seeking regime change in Syria, Libya, and other predominantly Muslim countries, including Afghanistan against Soviet Russia’s occupation and post-9/11.
In 1999, the year he succeeded Boris Yeltsin as Russian President, Vladimir Putin said the following:
“We are up against a very serious enemy, one that is in fact armed and trained abroad.”
“What’s actually happening is that the extremist part of the Islamic world – and only the extremist part, let me emphasize that has a solid infrastructure in the West, in North America and in Western Europe.”
Stressing the folly of surrendering part of Russian territory they seek, he added:
(W)e can give them the territory, but then we have to be prepared for the fact they’re not going to leave it at that.”
“They will go on to create an extremist Islamic State.”
Post-9/11, it became a US creation, largely eliminated in Syria after infesting the country and seizing large parts of its territory earlier, other US-supported jihadists doing the same thing.
Russian Defense Minister Shoigu believes ISIS is largely neutralized in Syria.
Yet pockets of its US-supported elements still operate in the country and elsewhere.
US-backed jihadists show up wherever the Pentagon and CIA want them deployed.
Adherents to core Islamic principles threaten no one, only radicalized elements that exist in various forms of all faiths in parts of the world.
A Final Comment
In discussing an East/West dichotomy years earlier, Edward Said explained the Western notion that might makes right.
Notably in the Middle East, Islam mischaracterizations are rife. It’s diverse, not monolithic.
It’s not inherently violent or intolerant.
While Western societies preach democratic values they abhor and don’t tolerate anywhere, they accuse Islam of fostering terrorism.
So it’s up to the West to modernize, restrain and tame it, their leaders claim.
It’s a pretext for endless wars to transform independent nations into pro-Western vassal states, their resources plundered, their people exploited.
That’s what the scourge of US-led imperialism is all about.
It’s the real threat to humanity, not Islam, a religion fostering peace, stability, charity, and respect for people of all faiths.
What Western establishment media should explain, they systematically suppress, supporting what demands denunciation.
*Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
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