Return to Racism
There are some who used to brag in the
US and in the UK that racism has been
irreversibly rolled back, at least officially.
Not any more.
Under the cover of the much trumpeted
‘war on terrorism’, racial
prejudice and religious bigotry, which
had previously gone ‘under cover’,
have now made a respectable comeback.
‘Hate speech’ – instead
of being reviled – is, in effect,
being tolerated or justified in mainstream
Western circles.
In the greater Washington area, a radio
talk show host on the popular radio
station WMAL-AM urged listeners to watch
out for “criminal aliens who are
in this country destroying this country,
stealing jobs, running drugs, raping
people.” Significantly, WMAL talk
show hosts incited anti-Muslim hatred
by calling Islam “a terrorist
religion” and accusing it of teaching
Muslims to lie.
A case in point is a July 29 article
by a Wall Street Journal editor/columnist
of Hindu descent, Tunku Varadarajan,
entitled “The Feeling of Being
Under Suspicion” wherein the scribe,
who previously was condemnatory of Muslims,
was lamenting the fact that he has come
under visual suspicion because he fits
the visual profile:
“The fact that I am neither Muslim
nor Pakistani is irrelevant: Who except
the most absurdly expert physiognomist
or anthropologist could tell from my
face that I am not an Ali, or a Mohammed,
or a Hassan; that my ancestors are all
from deepest South India; and that my
line has worshipped not Allah but Lord
Shiva ….”
To quote verbatim a CNN story of August
3: “Crimes motivated by religious
hatred have jumped by nearly 600 percent
in London since the July 7 bombings,
according to [Scotland Yard].”
Racial profiling is being used in London
in the current stop-and-search policy
which targets a specific ethnic and
religious group. Some New York officials
are endorsing similar racial profiling
in New York. In fact, profiling against
Pakistanis already appears to have occurred
there. The Boston Globe reported on
August 14 that “Little Pakistan”,
a community in Brooklyn, New York, has
been the target of US immigration authorities.
Since 9/11, the article states that
“4,000 residents have been arrested,
detained, or deported, and 15,000 Pakistanis
have left New York City,” with
many deciding to go “rather than
face questions” from US officials.
An August 4 article in the British newspaper,
The Independent, entitled “Britain’s
Muslim Scapegoats” talks of a
“huge rise in race attacks on
all ethnic minorities across Britain.”
It seems that when Britain’s much-vaunted
liberalism was tested, it failed the
test. To cite the Monitoring Group:
“It is not just abuse, a frightening
level is actually attacks.”
The virus is spreading. The 1.5 million
Muslims in Italy are coming under greater
scrutiny. Many of them, despite living
there for years, have a remote chance
of getting citizenship. In Copenhagen,
Kaj Vilhelmsen, a Danish owner of radio
station, Radio Holger, has called for
Muslims to be “expelled from Western
Europe in order to fight terrorism and
that they should be terminated …
and to kill some of them.”
Similarly, in Holland, hate crimes have
soared against Dutch Muslims in the
aftermath of the slaying of the grand-nephew
of Dutch painter Van Gogh, who was making
scurrilous movies about Islam.
A voice of sanity, however, comes through
a Washington Post article of July 30
by Colbert King: “You can’t
fight terrorism with racism.”
What is clear from the above is that
the 20 million Muslims in Europe plus
the nearly 1 crore Muslim in America
are coming under a systematic assault
which, if left unchallenged and unanswered,
may permanently marginalize, ostracize,
and stigmatize the Muslim presence in
the Western world.
Western policymakers often extol the
virtues of moderation in the Muslim
world while exempting themselves from
practicing what they preach. One example
is the article by US Defense Secretary,
Donald Rumsfeld, in the Financial Times
of August 2, the caption of which “There
Can Be No Moderate Solutions to Extremism”
is both self-explanatory and self-contradictory.
Oxfam, the international aid organization,
has accused the US of being lukewarm
or evening blocking a proposed international
standard that would hold governments
responsible for protecting their civilian
populations from human rights violations.
Given the spiraling escalation of violence
and hate, the moment is now for policymakers
in the West and the Muslim world to
take stock of the situation and strategically
reassess the current course of action
and direction which is propelling the
world toward catastrophe.
Meanwhile, Muslims in the West still
have a few options: shun isolation,
be intellectually prepared, and reach
out to build alliances. Their existing
posture only makes them weak and vulnerable.
Remaining quiet and submissive is no
longer an option.
