Contributions of RSS to Indian Society

by T H Sreerama

Anti-Minority attitude

Brahmanism

Communalism

Divisive beliefs

Educational destruction

Fascism

Godse worship

Hatred

Islamophobia

Jumlebaazi

Killing institutions

Lynching

Manuvaad

National chauvinism

Othering minorities

Patriarchy

Quelling resistance

Riots

Saffron sickness

Terrorism of majority

Unconstitutional act legitimisation

Violence

War mongering

Xenophobia

Yelling

Zombie creators in form of lynchers and rioters

Sreerama is a poet and earlier worked with Central Warehousing Corporation (CWC)

KL Summit 2019 is to improve Muslim lives, says Dr M

KUALA LUMPUR: The Kuala Lumpur Summit 2019 is aimed at improving the lives of Muslims, overcome Islamophobia and address the shortcomings in the Muslim world, said Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.

The Prime Minister said Malaysia wanted to hold the summit because it felt that it had to do something to improve the lives of Muslims the world over.

"We feel that we need to overcome Islamophobia. We need to find a way to address our shortcomings, our dependency on non-Muslims to protect ourselves against the enemies of Islam," he said in the opening address at the opening dinner of the summit here.

"We hope at the end of the summit, we will be able to affirm a few specific initiatives that can be the catalyst to bigger things," added Dr Mahathir, who is the chairman of the summit.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have arrived in Malaysia for the summit while the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani is expected to attend on Thursday (Dec 19).

Uzbekistan will be represented by its State Advisor to the President, Rustam Kasimov.

Dr Mahathir said the summit was also an opportunity for countries to get closer "to our Muslim brothers and sisters as enjoined in the Quran that all Muslims are brothers."

"While the majority of Malaysians are Muslims, we have a substantial minority who are from different faiths, cultures, customs and ways of life," said the Prime Minister.

"We will never claim to be the perfect Muslim or the model of a good Muslim nation, but we can attest that we have been able to live with our non-Muslim citizens in peace and harmony for decades and this tradition had existed since our independence," he said.

"Admittedly, there have been minor racial and religious conflicts but they are rare and few, insignificant if we are to compare with the period of peace, goodwill and prosperity. To our mind, that is what Islam enjoins us to do – to live peacefully with our non-Muslim citizens and work together to build a nation that is prosperous, peaceful and harmonious," said Dr Mahathir.

With some 450 delegates from 56 countries of the Islamic world present, issues such as the rise of Islamophobia, the incarceration of Muslims around the globe and mass migration of Muslims due to civil wars are expected to be highlighted at the conference.

The participants of the summit, which carries the theme ‘The Role of Development in Achieving National Sovereignty’, comprise of thinkers, intellectuals, politicians and community leaders.

Discussions at the meeting will be framed by seven main thrusts, namely national development and sovereignty; integrity and good governance; culture and identity; justice and freedom; peace, security and defence; trade and investment; as well as technology and internet governance.

As the Islamophobia index increases: On being Muslim in America

By Yuram Abdullah Weiler

“I think the real question is not whether America is afraid of Islam (and its adherents) but whether Muslims should be afraid of the US and Americans especially in this post-9 /11 world.” —Attorney Diana Mae Cabili

Being Muslim in America carries the risk of being reviled, insulted, discriminated against, humiliated publicly or, worse yet, physically attacked. Despite having been a part of the American landscape since 1501, Muslims have faced discrimination, suspicion and hatred bordering on public hysteria, especially since the 9/11 attacks. With the ascendancy of Donald Trump and his virulent anti-Muslim diatribes, the prospect of a McCarthy-era-like internment of Muslims in the United States does not appear to be off the table given current policy trends.

Make no mistake about it; Islamophobia in the U.S. not only is on the rise but also is condoned public policy. The Institute for Social Policy and Understanding (ISPU) with support from the Bridge Initiative of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University has developed the National Index of Islamophobia based on responses to various survey questions designed to uncover the deep-seated beliefs of respondents in five particular anti-Muslim stereotypes, which regrettably are often utilized by U.S. political leaders during campaigns to gain voter support. 

These five anti-Muslim stereotypes are that most Muslims living in the United States: are more prone to violence than other people; discriminate against women; are hostile to the United States; are less civilized than other people, and are partially responsible for acts of violence carried out by other Muslims. These five stereotypes are linked to constituent support for policies, enacted by government officials, which discriminate specifically against Muslims, such as the surveillance of mosques, racial profiling and heightened security scrutiny of Muslims at airports.

Here in the quiet border community of Las Cruces, New Mexico, people seem to be generally tolerant and supportive of Muslims. Perhaps this is because Hispanic Americans are five times as likely to hold positive views of Islam and Muslims as negative views.  Ironically, the only place where I have been even questioned aggressively about my Shi'a Islamic faith and connection to the Islamic Republic has been at the local mosque. But Las Cruces appears to be an exception to a general U.S. trend towards increasing Islamophobia. Over one quarter of Americans surveyed in a recent poll conducted by the ISPU endorsed negative stereotypes of Muslims and Islam. In fact, White Evangelicals are twice as likely to hold negative views of Muslims as positive ones.

As a Muslim living in the United States, I, too, have been discriminated against. Past employers have made it difficult for me to do salaat at the proper times, and have even suggested that I do the prayer in a filthy janitor’s closet so as not to bother or distract other employees. I have been threatened with loss of employment for exhibiting support for the oppressed Palestinians, who have been the perpetual targets of Israeli violence. I have been reprimanded for speaking out against possible U.S. military action against Iran.  I have been told that I should be shot for simply wearing a small flag of the Islamic Republic of Iran on my jacket. All this and more has taken place in the alleged bastion of human rights and religious freedom known as the United States of America.

However, I am not alone. Seventy-five percent of my brothers and sisters in Islam believe there is a great deal of discrimination against Muslims in the United States. Nearly the same number of Muslims is worried by the actions of the current U.S. president, and do not feel Islam is considered to be part of mainstream American society. About half feel that being Muslim in America has become more difficult and have themselves personally experienced an act of discrimination. Yet in spite of their Islamophobic environment, nearly nine out of ten Muslims in America claim to be proud to be Muslim and, astoundingly, proud to be American.  I myself, while proud to be a Muslim, do not profess membership in the latter group, seventy percent of whom still hold fast to the American dream.

Unfortunately, Islamophobia seems to be a commonality uniting a number of disparate hate groups in the United States. The Southern Poverty Law Center, a forerunner in confronting racial, ethnic and religious hatred, has identified 33 Islamophobic groups operating openly on Facebook, all of which engage in anti-Muslim imagery and promote Islamophobic stereotypes to attract members.  Some of these hate groups actually have avoided being screened out for hate speech and Islamophobic content by claiming to be educational forums. For example, the group “Infidels United for Truth” claims to be “for the education and sharing of information globally about the dangers of Radical Terrorism and how it is affecting all of the world.”

Professor of computer science at Elon University Megan Squire has done preliminary research on Islamophobia and has found it to be a common thread among hate groups. Squire’s findings indicate that those groups holding anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant views do have significant common membership. Moreover, analysis of the data shows that “anti-Muslim ideologies, in particular, can serve as a bridge between mostly disconnected communities, such as between anti-government and white nationalist communities.”

Yet the categorization of Islamophobia as merely “anti-Muslim” animosity overlooks the systemic racism inherent in the Orientalist world view that permeates and, in fact, predates the creation of the United States. Concerning this danger professor of law at the University of Detroit Mercy Khaled A. Beydoun warns, “To reduce Islamophobia to ‘anti-Muslim animus’ and nothing more overlooks its expansion and penetration into American culture, news, media, law, and political parlance.” As clearly evidenced by the “Muslim ban,” the Trump regime has endorsed Islamophobia as state policy, which legitimatizes anti-Muslim stereotypes widely held by private U.S. citizens. 

To see the systemic nature of Islamophobia in the United States, it is only necessary to note that Muslims are viewed as a “racial and socioeconomic monolith.”  In other words, Americans tend to view Muslims as a race, just like Blacks, Native Peoples, or Japanese, and given the endemic nature of racism in the U.S., we see that Islamophobia is another virulent strain of racism. The IPSU concurs, noting that “Islamophobia is just one branch on a bigger tree of bigotry.”

Continuing with the IPSU’s tree metaphor, we can understand that merely loping off the branch of Islamophobia does next to nothing to cut down the tree of American racism that nourishes its growth.   Fertilized by Facebook and other social media, the ugly branch of Islamophobia, after pruning, will not only sprout anew but also more vigorously than before. The same holds for another branch sprouting from the same tree, Iranophobia.

As far as Facebook is concerned, it is no exaggeration to call it fertilizer for the tree of bigotry, as can be seen by the central role played by Zuckerberg’s social media platform in the genocide of the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar. According to Marzuki Darusman, chairman of the U.N. Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, Facebook has “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict, if you will, within the public.” U.N. Myanmar investigator Yanghee Lee, concurring, noted, “I’m afraid that Facebook has now turned into a beast, and not what it originally intended.” Similarly, Equality Labs, a South Asian community technology organization, found that most hate speech violations on Facebook India are Islamophobic, and 93 percent remain posted.

Given that Islamophobia and Iranophobia are both flourishing branches on this mammoth tree of systemic American bigotry, it is self-evident that the tree itself must be felled and the stump of residual racism uprooted. Muslims should not be afraid of the United States and Americans, as Ms. Cabili has suggested in the epigram. Instead, we Muslims must carefully sharpen the Ax(is) of Resistance, uniting in our Islamic Revolution to cut down the tree of bigotry once and for all.

India’s Parliament approves controversial citizenship bill that excludes Muslims

In the state of Assam, in northeastern India, where a huge number of Indian Muslims have lived for generations without citizenship, thousands have joined in the protests. The Indian army has reportedly been deployed to the region.

TMV Team

India’s Parliament has voted in favor of a controversial citizenship bill that will grant citizenship to persecuted minorities from the neighboring countries of Bangladesh, Afghanistan, and Pakistan – except this bill will exclude all Muslims who are currently living in India. Dubbed the ‘anti-Muslim’ bill, this new bill will specifically only grant citizenship to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who have either fled to or moved to India. All Muslims who fall under this same category will not be granted citizenship.

This new legislation by Modi’s leading Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has been labelled by many critics as yet another example of the growing Hindu-nationalist policies put in place by the BJP, in where many Indian Muslims, including those in Kashmir, are under growing threat.

Sonia Gandhi, the leader of the main opposition Congress party, stated:

The passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill marks the victory of narrow-minded and bigoted forces over India’s pluralism.”

Despite criticism from both opposition party members and human rights groups, Modi has celebrated this decision by calling it “a landmark day for India and our nation’s ethos of compassion and brotherhood”:

Narendra Modi

✔@narendramodi

A landmark day for India and our nation’s ethos of compassion and brotherhood!

Glad that the #CAB2019 has been passed in the #RajyaSabha. Gratitude to all the MPs who voted in favour of the Bill.

This Bill will alleviate the suffering of many who faced persecution for years.

93K

21:11 - 11 Dec 2019

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Numerous protests have also erupted across India, with many upset and in shock that a citizenship bill like this would so blatantly exclude an enormous number of Indian Muslims who will not be granted citizenship. In the state of Assam, in northeastern India, where a huge number of Indian Muslims have lived for generations without citizenship, thousands have joined in the protests. The Indian army has reportedly been deployed to the region, with police using teargas to contain the situation.

Faizan Mustafa, a constitutional law expert and vice chancellor at NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad, spoke to Al Jazeera on the deteriorating situation that a bill like this could cause in India:

It is arbitrary because it’s not based on reasonable classification, it doesn’t have rational objective to achieve, it does not cover all the neighbours, it doesn’t cover all the persecuted minorities. It is constitutionally suspect and legally untenable.”

In a country where Modi’s Hindu-nationalist BJP government is forcing many Indian Muslims to feel like second-class citizens, a bill like this is even more worrying. The situation in Kashmir, where the Muslim-majority region was stripped of its previous autonomous powers, the citizen’s register in the state of Assam that left 1.9 million mostly Muslims stateless, and now this controversial citizenship bill all point towards the growing trend of dangerous nationalism in a country that prides itself in multi-culturalism and religious diversity.

Revealed: Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib targeted in Israeli fake news operation

By David Smith, Michael McGowan , Christopher Knaus and Nick Evershed

"Information Clearing House" -  Two Muslim US congresswomen have been targeted by a vast international operation that exploits far-right pages on Facebook to inflame Islamophobia for profit, a Guardian investigation has found.

A mysterious Israeli-based group uses 21 Facebook pages to churn out more than a thousand coordinated fake news posts per week to more than a million followers around the world. It milks the traffic for revenue from digital advertising.

Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, who earlier this year became the first Muslim women to serve in the US Congress, have been singled out for vicious attacks by the coordinated effort.

Somali-born Omar is the most frequent target. She has been mentioned in more than 1,400 posts since the network began two years ago. Tlaib has been mentioned nearly 1,200 times. Both totals are far higher than any other member of Congress.

Omar and Tlaib are members of a group of progressive women of color known as “the squad” that also includes Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts. They have been subject to racist insults from Donald Trump.

The Guardian uncovered contacts between a group of mysterious Israel-based accounts and 21 far-right Facebook pages across the US, Australia, the UK, Canada, Austria, Israel and Nigeria.

The posts exacerbate Islamophobia by amplifying far-right parties and vilifying Muslim and leftwing politicians. Their content is a blend of distorted news and pure fabrication.

Using web archiving services and domain registry information, the Guardian has been able to confirm a key figure in the network is Ariel Elkaras, a thirtysomething jewelry salesman and online operator living on the outskirts of the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.An analysis by Queensland University of Technology’s digital media research centre indicated a single entity is coordinating the publication of content across the Facebook pages.

Several of the network’s websites were either taken down or had large amounts of content removed soon after the Guardian approached Elkaras for comment. Public posts on his Facebook profile were also deleted.

Elkaras did not respond to multiple requests for comment via email and phone, but the Guardian was able to track him down in the Israeli town of Lod, near Tel Aviv, where he denied involvement in the network. “It’s nothing related to me,” he said through a translator.

The uncovering of the network is likely to fuel concerns that Facebook is failing to tackle disinformation and hate groups ahead of next year’s presidential election in the US.

Abbas Barzegar, director of research and advocacy at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said: “Spreading disinformation and faux-reporting through pre-networked social media accounts and pseudo-news websites has been the preferred tactic of the Islamophobia industry for a very long time.

“These actors create entire media and information ecosystems that inscribe dangerous ideas and narratives in audiences across the world. The impact isn’t personal prejudice, alone. Rather, such disinformation impacts our political climate, actual laws, policies and overall culture.”

Somali-born Omar, the first member of the House of Representatives to wear a hijab in the chamber, has been subject to hundreds of online death threats. In September she accused Trump of putting her life at risk after the president retweeted a post that falsely claimed she partied on the anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Omar told the Guardian: “As this report makes clear, foreign interference – whether by individuals or governments – is still a grave threat to our democracy. These are malicious actors operating in a foreign country, Israel, spreading misinformation and hate speech to influence elections in the United States. The goal of these anti-Muslim hate campaigns is clear – they put Muslim lives here and around the world at risk and undermine our country’s commitment to religious pluralism.”

She also slammed Facebook for its role in allowing users to spread misinformation.

“I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Facebook’s complacency is a threat to our democracy. It has become clear that they do not take seriously the degree to which they provide a platform for white nationalist hate and dangerous misinformation in this country and around the world. And there is a clear reason for this: they profit off it. I believe their inaction is a grave threat to people’s lives, to our democracy and to democracy around the world.

“When private corporations don’t act, we as a nation need to think seriously about ways to address the spread of misinformation while protecting core values like free speech.”

When the Guardian notified Facebook of its investigation, the company removed several pages and accounts “that appeared to be financially motivated”, a spokesperson said in a statement.

“These pages and accounts violated our policy against spam and fake accounts by posting clickbait content to drive people to off-platform sites,” the spokesperson said.

“We don’t allow people to misrepresent themselves on Facebook and we’ve updated our inauthentic behavior policy to further improve our ability to counter new tactics.

“Our investigations are continuing and, as always, we’ll take action if we find any violations.”

Islamophobic View of Turkey’s History

Cherry-picked histories trigger the guns of scapegoating

Hayy Yaqzan

After the deadly assaults on two masjids in Christchurch, New Zealand in March 2019, it was revealed that the attacker kept no secrets about his inspiration. Not only did he publish a 74-page “manifesto” to explain why he targeted Muslims, but he also inscribed several names onto his weapons. One of the names was that of Milos Obilic, a Serb nationalist projected as a “hero” who supposedly fought against the Ottomans at the Battle of Kosovo (1389) and assassinated Sultan Murad I. Also transcribed was “Turkofagos,” Greek for “Turk-eater.” As Jasmin Mujanovic, a political scientist, observed, these references were “steeped in toxic, faux-historical narratives about ‘defending’ white Christendom.”

I was thinking of none of this earlier this year as I excitedly packed my bags for my trip to Istanbul, Turkey. I had never been to Istanbul before, but had for years read about the remarkable history of this city. It was also my first solo trip to anywhere other than the US; I knew that traveling alone would allow me to make the most of my time in Istanbul without worrying about bothering others. I was enjoying the thrill of it all before I even boarded the flight.

I hit the ground running in Istanbul, where I would only be staying for less than three days. Dropping my bags off at the hotel and with my ears still ringing, I rushed to pray Maghrib at the Sultan Ahmet Masjid, also known as the Blue Masjid. As I walked around the masjid, admiring the architecture, it hit me for the first time that having studied the history of many of these buildings and the city as a whole, I was going to experience them very differently from someone who is only awed by their aesthetic beauty.

The Sultan Ahmet Masjid was built in the early-1600s, as part of the sultan’s effort to reassert his power after ending the long Ottoman wars on two fronts, one with the Habsburgs of Europe and the other with the Safavids of Iran. He built it on the ancient ruins of the Grand Palace, once home to Byzantine (Roman) emperors. Byzantium (after the Greek king, Byzas) was the oldest known name of this 2,700-year-old city.

The next morning, I went to visit what was, for me, the most important place in Istanbul: the grave of a well-known companion of the Prophet (pbuh), Abu Ayyub al-Ansari. He was buried here because he had joined an early Muslim expedition (in 669ce) to this city, then known as Constantinople. He passed away and was buried outside its walls. What many people perhaps do not know is that for years, his grave was also venerated by many Christians of the city. They would pray here for rain and good health, and a fountain is said to have sprung up next to his grave at which the sick would wash themselves. One Greek Orthodox cult dedicated to St. Basil even associated him with Abu Ayyub!

Everywhere in Istanbul, there are echoes of history that defy simple explanation. My next stop, close to the grave of Abu Ayyub, was the 1,500-year-old Church of the Holy Saviour at Chora, which was destroyed not by the Muslim Ottomans but by Christian Crusaders. Also close by were the haunting Theodosian Walls, built to defend the city. I was able to climb part of the ancient walls, amazed that they were still here.

I thought of all those who had come face-to-face with the walls of this city. Here’s a brief list of those who actually managed to get past them: Darius, the Spartans, Athenians, Alexander, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans, Italians, French and British. That’s not to speak of the many failed attempts to capture the city — including 17 attempts by Muslims. The Ottomans, in May of 1453, became the only Muslim force to successfully claim Istanbul.

My next few stops were the imperial mosques and tombs of the most famous Ottoman sultans, Mehmet II (died 1446), Selim I (died 1520), and Suleyman (died 1566). Each stop brought up memories of what I knew of that sultan and his time — the good, the bad and the ugly. During the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent, the Lutheran Book of Common Prayer used in faraway Iceland asked God to save them from “the cunning of the Pope and the terror of the Turk.” They likely had not heard about the school for medical research that he built into his mosque, or the ground-breaking book on dentistry — one of the first in the world — written by the sultan’s physician, a Jewish refugee from al-Andalus.

Brenton Tarrant, the accused Christchurch shooter who has incredibly pleaded “not guilty” to all the charges, apparently traveled to Turkey multiple times and spent an extended time there some years before his killing spree in New Zealand; however in his later travels, he only consumed there what fueled his pent-up racism.

I tried to see and do as much as I could. In the Istanbul Archeological Museum, I saw an original copy of the world’s oldest peace treaty. Right outside of it were Gülhane Park, home to a Roman-era column celebrating a victory over the Goths, and on the other side, the city’s first madrasah (Islamic seminary). The must-see Topkapi Museum, which is adjacent to Gülhane Park, offered a glimpse into the private lives of the Ottoman dynasty. Also not too far from here is the Grand Bazaar, one of the oldest markets in the world.

On the other side of the Golden Horn, I climbed up the Galata Tower, built by Genoese merchants as part of the castle defending their colony. Around 1,500 years old, it is one of the oldest towers in the world. In 1204, it was attacked by the Crusaders, causing many Jews and Genoese to be trampled to death as they scrambled in the same stairwells that I was climbing. A few centuries later, the first “intercontinental” flight also took place from here: Hezerfan Çelebi took off from the tower, in Europe, in something like a glider and landed on the other side of the Bosporus Strait, in Asia!

Further north along the Bosporus, I also climbed up Rumeli Hisari, the Throat-Cutter, a fortress built by Sultan Mehmet II which was key to his conquest of the city. Over the centuries it was also used as a customs checkpoint and a prison.

And of course, there was the Aya Sofya, a breathtaking building that stands alone even in a city as dazzling as Istanbul. Stepping inside, I felt almost overwhelmed by the history that had played out in the space in front of me as the 1,500-year-old church became a mosque and then a museum. I could see Ibn Batutah refusing to enter the church because he was told he would have to bow down, and he refused to bow except to Allah (swt). I could see Sultan Mehmet II kneeling outside the church as he toured the city after conquering it, picking up dust and sprinkling it over his head to remind himself to remain humble.

The assailant at Christchurch could see none of this. The history he was focusing on may contain some truth but he was focusing on the shriveling tree in a thriving forest, the dying star in a brilliant galaxy. Experiencing a city such as Istanbul reminds a person that history can simultaneously be cruel and beautiful, and the aspect of it that we focus on is our own choice. Islamophobic narratives may try to draw on history to justify their violence, but they are really only the products of twisted, self-serving minds.

Islamophobia and the Media

Editor

A lie is halfway around the world before truth has had time to tie its shoelaces, is an old adage. While coined a long time ago, it is even more applicable today in the age of the internet and virtually instant communications. What is disturbing is that while communications have become superfast, what is communicated is not always factual or true. On the contrary, the internet and other forms of communication have become vehicles for disinformation.

This is clearly evident in the spread of Islamophobia, especially in the West, under the rubric of free speech. Every form of vile propaganda against Muslims is justified; complete lies are peddled. The West’s wars against Muslim countries are justified by accusing Muslims of indulging in terrorism. The term remains undefined but its use and abuse is widespread. People struggling against foreign occupation and invasion are branded as terrorists while those indulging in actual terrorism — threatening or using force against people to make them change their policies — are considered normal. The propaganda war of words is the psychological warfare that both precedes and attends the war of bombs, shock and awe, and boots on the ground.

While Muslims are the principal victims of this vile policy, there is little or nothing that Muslims at any level have done to confront this alarming threat to their very existence. Muslim reaction has been sporadic and largely confined to each country’s own priorities. Even that would be acceptable but the trouble is that in every country, despotic rulers use the media as a sloganeering outfit to heap encomiums upon those who would have otherwise been known for doing nothing, or less.

Some regimes have gone on a media buying spree to ensure only one message — the one they approve of — is projected. This is especially true in the Muslim East where some regimes with deep pockets have corralled media outlets in many different countries. These media outlets specialize in two things: projecting the ruler of the country that owns the media, as a gift to all humanity and, targeting their Muslim enemies as evil. The actual enemies of Muslims — imperialists and Zionists — are seldom if ever mentioned.

Is this about to change? In September, during his visit to the United Nations General Assembly Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan announced that together with the leaders of Turkey and Malaysia, they had decided to launch an international television channel that would confront Islamophobia. While this is welcome news, details are sketchy. Apart from financial commitments, the questions that need to be answered are where will it be based, who will staff it, and what kind of programming will it air?

We can offer some unsolicited advice. The TV channel should not be used to promote the sponsoring leaders. Its role should be to expose the root causes of Islamophobia, to put the spotlight on those that are involved in financing it, not merely the front men and women — the mules — who do the dirty work and have become the public face.

Islamophobia is a multi-billion dollar industry with powerful players operating behind the scenes. They have a specific agenda: Muslims have to be demonized and projected as the enemy. Only then can wars of aggression against Muslim countries and the murder of millions of people be justified. Further, constantly promoting hatred of Muslims helps divert attention from the crimes being perpetrated by the imperialists and Zionists against Muslims.

What would this anti-Islamophobia channel be called? Will it have the freedom to bring up these issues and debate them candidly? While we await more details, we hope the proponents of this proposal would give it serious thought to make it a worthy venture.

 

Islamophobia and Canadian Elections

Fearmongering against Muslims a part of all “democratic” party platforms

Hayy Yaqzan

In mid-September, as Canada’s federal election campaign formally got underway, a cartoonist from Quebec going by the name of Ygreck published a cartoon that serves to remind Canadians one of the most disturbing election “issues” is, in fact, a particular minority community in Canada: Muslims.

The cartoon shows Prime Minister Justin Trudeau taking a selfie with a shark fin dressed as a Muslim woman in hijab. Under the water, the “shark,” labelled “Islam Radical” in French, has an evil grin on its face. The message is quite clear: “radical Islam” is getting away in Canada while Trudeau panders to the Muslim vote.

When the cartoon was released, the prime minister had a bigger problem to deal with — and it, too, had to do with Muslims. Over the course of a few days, several photos emerged in which a younger Trudeau from the 1990s and early-2000s is seen wearing brownface or blackface. Using makeup to darken one’s face for the purpose of entertainment is deeply offensive to those who have faced discrimination due to their non-white skin, including (but not limited to) Canadian Muslims of African or South Asian descent.

In one of the pictures, blackfaced Trudeau is dressed as Aladdin, the main character from the famous Arabian folktale first published in the Syrian writer Hanna Diyab’s version of One Thousand and One Nights some 400 years ago.

Trudeau quickly apologized for these insensitive blunders from his past. Interestingly, one of the first people to publicly “accept” his apology was his own government’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland, a Ukrainian-Canadian who likely has never faced discrimination due to her race or religion. Other Liberal MPs and supporters of the Liberal Party chose to downplay the entire episode, some of them essentially telling Canadians to “focus on real issues” and “we’re not as racist as the other guys.”

The entire situation was a fitting reminder that despite the Liberals’ encouraging track record on counteracting Islamophobia — the kind of positions that get Justin Trudeau caricatured in cartoons or regularly accused of being a closeted Muslim — the ignorance that feeds into racism and Islamophobia can be lurking just beneath the surface, even among them.

The public’s focus on Trudeau in mid-September allowed two of the other major contenders in the elections to do some cleaning of their own ranks. On September 12, the Green Party’s candidate for the Simcoe North riding, Erik Schomann, resigned after a Facebook post emerged suggesting that he wanted to send a pig’s carcass to Muslims. Schomann said that what he did was “stupid” and he had to accept responsibility for it. He also said that he lived among Muslims for several years, particularly in Nigeria, and that he has “no gripe with Islam, certainly.”

And then Schomann turned the story around to make it sound as if he was the victim in this situation, saying he was “attacked rather brutally on social media” with people calling him “disgusting” and an “embarrassment.” And the timing of his post being exposed also led him to believe that someone was looking through his Facebook posts in a “calculated” move.

The Green Party, of course, does not officially tolerate Islamophobia. And yet, the local riding association in Simcoe North was “devastated” to lose Schomann and that “the consequences for this one post are out of proportion to the offense and are detrimental to our democracy.” It is not difficult to imagine that no Muslims, and probably no racialized minorities, were involved in drafting such an ignorant statement.

Also on September 12, Cameron Ogilvie, the Conservative candidate for Winnipeg North, stepped down after his derogatory posts about Muslims and others surfaced. Ogilvie reportedly deactivated his social media accounts earlier in the year when he was being screened before being approved as a candidate — clearly indicative of the fact that he was aware there may be content he has posted that would be too much even for the Conservatives.

After all, the Conservatives have a history of downplaying concerns about Islamophobia. After the masjid attacks in Christchurch, New Zealand earlier this year, the party’s leader Andrew Scheer initially refused to even mention that Muslims had been purposefully targeted. His current campaign manager is Hamish Marshall, a past director of Rebel Media, a notoriously Islamophobic outlet. Scheer has also shared the podium with the white supremacist “journalist” Faith Goldy, and has allowed one of Goldy’s “best friends,” Justina McCaffery, to be a Conservative candidate from Ottawa. The list could go on.

The New Democratic Party (NDP) has not been faced with any Islamophobia in its ranks as of this writing. However, they have not entirely steered clear of the “Muslim” issue in this election. Earlier this year, the NDP felt compelled to drop Rana Zaman, their candidate for the Dartmouth-Cole Harbour riding in the Halifax area. The reason for this was a series of tweets by Zaman from June 2018, in which she expressed her support for the Palestinian people.

“If Israel is so advanced then why can’t they avoid shooting defenceless paramedics and journalists, unless they’re killing innocent people deliberately,” she wrote. “Israel’s injustice and arrogance can no longer be defended and people are wise to Israel’s tired old rhetoric.” The last straw for the NDP was Zaman’s tweet comparing Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. Zaman’s candidacy was cancelled and she issued an apology, to the delight of B’nai B’rith Canada. Independent Jewish Voices (IJV) was the only group that spoke in her support, saying the NDP is “betraying its progressive roots by allowing itself to be manipulated by the Israel lobby and throwing a progressive woman of colour under the bus.”

Finally, there is the recently formed People’s Party of Canada, a small but loudmouthed offshoot of the Conservatives. In mid-September, the far-right party’s leader Maxime Bernier received an invitation from the CBC to take part in its political leaders debate. This sent the message that the CBC was bestowing some legitimacy onto a party that has strong links to racism, white supremacy, and Islamophobia. At the party’s very first conference last year, the keynote speaker claimed that Muslims were “infesting” the Liberal Party. It only takes a quick glance through Bernier’s daily barrage of tweets to realize that this party has a serious Islamophobia problem.

These attitudes do not emerge in political circles from a vacuum. A 2017 poll, conducted soon after the Quebec City masjid shooting, showed that nearly half of Canadians had a negative view of Islam. Four in five Canadians also said that Muslims face discrimination in Canada. There are many similar statistics demonstrating that even in a country known for its inclusivity, ignorance is often simmering just beneath the surface.

Keeping all this in mind, for Canadian Muslims and, in fact, all conscientious Canadians, it is imperative to put local candidates on the spot this October and demand that they say plainly where they and their party stand on rising Islamophobia in Canada, and what plan they have to actively dismantle it if they are elected.

The Rambo Saga films through the eyes of US imperial foreign policy

REZA JOHN VEDADI

[Rambo: Last Blood spoiler alert]

With the release of yet another Rambo movie in one of the longest-running action franchise in Hollywood history, we examine the progression of the Rambo films through the eyes of US foreign policy, Republican nationalism, and white saviour tropes, along with anti-Soviet and recent anti-Mexican sentiments thrown in. To understand the plot background and motivations for all of the Rambo films, one must have an understanding of the foreign wars and policies that the US governments have been involved in during the release of each film. 

The first film in the series was First Blood released in 1982. It was based on a more violent novel of the same name published in 1972, written by David Morrell. First Blood the movie tells the story of Rambo, a Vietnam war veteran returning to the US and wandering the country, as he finds it hard to settle down due to the post-traumatic stress disorder suffered during his time in combat. 

The film sheds light on how the US found it hard to deal with the remnants of the US combat troops who returned from one of the bloodiest chapters in US foreign policy. The war in Vietnam created thousands of soldiers who lost their lives in combat and became ill physically and psychologically. Rambo returns home to find anti-war groups waiting for him, “protesting me, spitting, calling me baby killer”, as Rambo explains to his commanding officer Trautman in the ending of the first film of the series.  

The second film in the series Rambo: First Blood Part II was released in 1985, and co-written with James Cameron who later went on to direct the global box office successes like Titanic (1997) and Avatar (2009). First Blood Part II was released 6 months into Ronald Reagan’s second term as US president. President Reagan was a staunch anti-Communist and Republican. Sylvester Stallone, who plays John Rambo and has written the screenplay for the last four movies, is known to support and endorse Republican candidates throughout his career without being an outright Republican party member. It is no surprise that the second movie in the franchise becomes a poster for US Republicanism, as Rambo is flown into Vietnam, this time to assist in the rescuing of American prisoners of war (POW) held captive in communist Vietnamese jungle prisons assisted by evil Russian Soviets communists. 

The one thing this second film promotes above all is that the communists, with the assistance of Russian Soviets, are hurting US interests even in South East Asia, and it requires a strong, fighting ideology to counter them, something that then US President Reagan was offering in bucket loads. The US spent approximately $3 trillion on their defence budget during the two terms Ronald Reagan was president. Compare that to China’s GDP over the same period which came to $2.5 trillion. The US spent more on its military than the Chinese economy generated in the same period. To justify such high defence budgets and war mongering foreign policies by the US government, films like the Rambo series have gone a long way to promote the scourge and threat of international communism and the Soviet enemy. 

President Reagan in 1985 was quoted as saying: “Boy, after seeing ‘Rambo’ last night, I know what to do the next time this happens,” about dealing with the next hostage crisis. A dangerous case of life imitating art, which in turn was inspired by the dangerous policies of that reality. 

“You can’t squelch patriotism,” Sylvester Stallone was quoted as saying after the release of First Blood Part II and its box office success. Peddling US patriotism in the 80s was a lucrative formula for Stallone, as six months after First Blood Part II, he released another film of his iconic franchise Rocky IV (1986). This time Rocky Balboa beats the heartless, muscular and powerful Russian Soviet communist challenger in his own home country, and wins over the hostile Soviet crowd. 

This Soviet communist bashing continues into Rambo III released in 1988, towards the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term presidency. The Rambo in this film ends up supporting the Afghan Mujahedeen against the Soviets, but little did Rambo know that the same Mujahedeen he defended end up fighting the US and creating the second Vietnam of the US foreign military wars. In the search for finding creative ways of representing Soviet communist in as many movies as possible, and to prop up support for the US foreign policy in Afghanistan during the 1980s against the Soviets, Stallone may have got carried away and partnered with the wrong resistance fighters, if only hindsight was 20/20.

The fourth instalment of the series Rambo was released in 2008, during the last year of George W. Bush’s second term as president. There is no surprise that Myanmar has become the new landscape for John Rambo’s rampage, and no surprise that Myanmar is governed by a socialist government. This film in the series contains more violence than the previous films in the franchise, which is not an easy accomplishment, considering how violent the previous films where. 

The newest instalment of the series Rambo: Last Blood (2019) focuses on Rambo’s return and life in the US. He has inherited his father’s ranch in Arizona and has built a simple but idyllic life with a Mexican friend Maria and her granddaughter Gabrielle. Gabrielle decides to visit Mexico alone to find out why her father left her and her mother when she was young. She is then kidnapped and sold into forced prostitution against her will. 

Rambo tries to free her and fails at the first attempt, and is beaten and hurt badly. He then makes a second attempt and manages to save Gabrielle from a brothel, but it is too late as she dies from a drug overdose on the way back home to Arizona. 

From that point the film takes a turn towards classical revenge plot line. 

Last Blood is set in the Republican era of the Donald Trump presidency, and does not have the Soviet or communist enemy to defeat, even though currently the liberals in the US are trying hard to create an enemy of the Russians. President Trump in 2015 famously said: “They’re sending people that have a lot of problems… They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Basically that quote sums up the latest Rambo film’s plot. 

The Mexican character archetypes of Last Blood are only two types: helpless and villain. They either need Rambo to save them and protect them, or they are so bad and evil that Rambo ends up dealing with them through violence, usually with death as the end result. 

Hidden in the last four Rambo films is the ideology of the white saviour, most evidently in this latest film. It is true in some of the films Rambo saves other American soldiers and his own commander, however in film two and three he saves Vietnamese and Afghans and in the Last Blood, he saves Mexicans from the Mexican cartel. In one of the most blatant anti-Mexican parts of the film, the local Mexican police are shown raping girls in the movie, which in no way forwards the plot, thus perpetuating the myth that all Mexicans are rapists and cannot administer justice, in the era of Make America Great Again.         

Not only does Last Blood promote Trump’s racist and xenophobic rhetoric, but it is not even an original or well-written film, as it turns out to be a basic revenge movie. The Rambo creator and author David Morrell even goes as far as saying: “The film is a mess. Embarrassed to have my name associated with it”.

Maybe it’s time John Rambo hangs up his bow and arrow and goes into retirement.

Reza John Vedadi

MA in Film Production & MA in Islamic Studies, film and documentary director, producer and writer based in London.

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Sources:

Sylvester Stallone on Donald Trump, Republicans and Running for Office

US Military Spending

National Bureau of Stats on China

Trump’s Comments on ‘Rapist’ Mexicans

Is ‘Rambo: Last Blood’ any good? Critics call it a ‘MAGA fantasy,’ ‘orgy of death’

David Morrell Agrees with Critics