Could It Happen
Here?
By Dr. Ghulam M. Haniff
St. Cloud, MN
Among the plethora of name-calling words from
the neo-conservative propaganda machine none has
elicited greater reaction than the President George
Bush’s recent use of the term “Islamic
fascists.” The maturing Muslim community
in America sees the objective in that usage the
attempt to malign the followers of Islam, to isolate
and demonize them.
The Christian fundamentalist and the radical right
agenda has been and continues to be to make Islam
disappear from America. They have recently found
allies, with interests in the Middle East, to
launch a strengthened joint effort to badger Islam
until it is expunged from the country.
Nothing could be more absurd than hanging the
label of fascism on the Muslims. Fascism is based
on the worship of the state, the nation-state,
as an object of adulation and highest loyalty.
It is an idea rejected by the teachings of the
Qur’an.
The notion of fascism is a product of European
racist thinking in the context of corporate industrial
state. However, the seed of this idea goes back
to the white man’s encounter with the “natives”
half millennium ago.
The intention in linking fascism with Islam is
to attribute the horror and bloodshed of the European
making that created havoc in much of the world
about half a century ago, to the present day Muslims.
It is a disingenuous attempt to connect Islam
with the “evil” that prevailed in
that conflict. The neo-conservatives are out to
invent an enemy without which the present neo-colonial
venture cannot be sustained.
Many labels have been developed to equate Muslims
with barbarians, savages, fascists and even racists
to irreversibly demean them in the eyes of the
world. That message is communicated around the
globe on a daily basis and has become the standard
currency of discourse in almost every European
country.
The terminology neo-conservatives employ stigmatizes
Muslims in an ugly way that ought to be unacceptable
in any civilized society. Derogatory labels used
to denigrate groups are odious, hateful and hurtful.
It is said that name-calling portends ominous
signs for the targeted community. In recent years
Muslims have openly speculated about their future
and see historical parallels with cultural groups
on the receiving end of hate in Europe of the
twentieth century.
Historians tell us that the building of crematoriums
in Germany did not begin with mortar and bricks.
It started with the use of words. The words used,
and the phrases turned out, taunted and demonized
a whole community until they were equated with
“evil” and their elimination considered
desirable. That systematic killing, known as the
holocaust, of a religious minority was meant to
expunge the “devils” from contaminating
the racially “pure” Germans.
Words or phrases have a power of their own. They
construct and define reality. The Germany of 1920s
showed the world how stigmatizing labels can put
a community under pressure and hasten its destruction.
The model created at that time on the assumption
of the white man’s inherent racial superiority
is at work again right in front of our eyes. Fascism
and racism are the two sides of the same coin
responsible for slavery, colonialism and countless
genocidal wars that the white man has imposed
on the rest of the world.
The concept of fascism was first defined and applied
by Benito Mussolini in the 1920s. Its best definition
comes from the book ‘The Anatomy of Fascism’,
authored by Professor Robert Paxton of Columbia
University. Its essential ideas boil down to the
presence of siege mentality in an aggrieved nation
that looks for ways to assert itself without regard
for legal and moral restraints. It thrives on
foreign conquests with support from the jingoistic
elements in the society. It demands loyalty and
any equivocation is condemned as traitorous.
None of the Muslim groups, or countries, opposing
the US venture in the Middle East fit that model,
nor do the Muslims of America, yet they are all
painted with the same broad brush of fascism.
One neo-conservative has argued that to compare
today’s Islamic militants with last century’s
fascists “gets at the incredibly aggressive
nature of the conflict, the craziness of it”
with implications that “these are not rationally
calculating people.”
In a speech to the American Legion in Utah the
President argued that Islamic militants are the
successors of fascism, Nazism, communism and totalitarianism.
These enemies are no different from the ones in
World War II.
The war fever that has been generated under the
pretense of fighting ‘the third world war’
against global enemies is now brimming with hatred
for anything Muslim.
The Democles’ sword of annihilation is hanging
over their heads and it behooves them to think
about the unthinkable. That unthinkable is the
probability of a holocaust of the Muslims in America
resembling the European experience. The template
perfected in that era was recently used to initiate
genocide against the Muslims in Bosnia.
Perhaps a preview of what could happen in this
country was dramatized by the movie ‘The
Siege’ that played in your neighborhood
theaters just a few short years ago.
If Muslims don’t assert their rights to
fight back, build coalitions and make activism
their frontier than all hope is lost. Like the
victims of Nazi Germany if they just beg for their
lives they are already half-way to the gas chambers.
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