NBC News (1/25/17) covers Donald Trump signing the immigration ban.
President Donald Trump’s executive order banning travel from seven predominantly Muslim nations justifiably led to much outcry from activists, politicians and foreign leaders. The list—currently struck down by a federal judge in Seattle—was arbitrary, motivated by disjointed racist panic and was reportedly causing deaths worldwide. But while it’s important to lay primary blame for the ban at the feet of the man who signed it, years of Islamophobic coverage in corporate media—right-wing, centrist and “liberal”—laid the propaganda groundwork to get us here.
Surveys have found support for Trump’s Muslim ban ranging from 42 to 47 percent. This in line with the 43 percent of Americans willing to admit to having at least some prejudice against Muslims. Trump’s order exploits an irrational fear that media have spent at least 15 years conditioning.
Attention has rightly been paid to the Islamophobia industry—a loose consortium of professional far-right trolls such as Pam Geller, Frank Gaffney, Steve Emerson, Breitbart, Infowars, etc. And while these forces certainly were major factor in creating the Trump-friendly Muslim-fearing climate, it’s important not to lose sight of at least three other media phenomena that also had a major role: 1) the presentation of “terrorism” as a unique, existential threat, arbitrarily defined as applying almost exclusively to Muslim violence, 2) New Atheist liberal bigots and 3) disproportionate news coverage of the ISIS spectacle.
‘Terrorism’ as Muslim political violence
As FAIR has shown time and again (5/1/11, 4/15/14, 6/22/15, 6/14/16) over the years, media unjustifiably reserve the word “terrorism”—and the corollary breathless coverage it entails—overwhelmingly for political violence leveled by Muslims. Indeed, this past week provided one of the starkest examples of this asymmetry: White supremacist Alexandre Bissonnette’s January 30 attack on a Quebec mosque was not generally described as “terrorism” by the press, and despite killing six times more people than the October 2014 attack on Ottawa’s Parliament Hill by Muslim Michael Zehaf-Bibeau, it received only one-sixth as much coverage by US media (FAIR.org, 2/4/17).
As the “War on Terror” drags on into its 16th year, liberal and mainstream media have largely accepted the premise that “terrorism” is a separate and urgent manifestation of violence worthy of a global, generational struggle. This elevation to a separate moral order of a particular kind of crime—whose definition, in practice, is arbitrarily restricted to perpetrators from a specific religious background—justifies throwing all sense of proportionality out the window. The very concept of a never-ending “global war on terror” laid essential groundwork for our current fever pitch of anti-Muslim sentiment.
‘New Atheist’ Islamophobia
Bill Maher, Real Time
Bill Maher is a fan of Bernie Sanders, a huge Obama booster and a frequent subject of write-ups on liberal websites for his latest dig aimed at Republicans. Maher is also a pro-war ideologue with a long history of bigoted statements about Muslims.
On his popular HBO show Real Time, Maher has repeatedly railed against Muslim immigration into Europe and the United States. He once declared that “civilization begins with civilizing the men; talk to women who’ve ever dated an Arab man. The results are not good.” Maher has repeatedly downplayed the killing of Palestinians in Gaza, even once comparing Hamas to a “crazy woman” whose wrists you could only hold “so long before you have to slap her.” Some other gems:
- “Islam is the only religion that acts like the Mafia that will fucking kill you if you say the wrong thing.”
- “The Muslim world has too much in common with ISIS.”
- “People who want to gloss over the difference between Western culture and Islamic culture and forget about the fact that the Islamic culture is 600 years younger and that they are going through the equivalent of what the West went through with our Middle Ages, our Dark Ages”
Bill Maher is a so-called “New Atheist”—those who use the pretense of reason and liberal enlightenment to advance otherwise banal conventional wisdom about American and Israeli aggression in the Middle East.
Other New Atheists, such as Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins, routinely provide faux-liberal cover to the most vulgar aspects of anti-Muslim sentiment. Dawkins tweets things like “All the world’s Muslims have fewer Nobel Prizes than Trinity College, Cambridge,” and had a much-mocked weeks-long feud with a 14-year-old Muslim kid over a clock he built for school, often times devolving into embarrassing conspiracy-mongering.
Sam Harris has turned anti-Muslim sophistry into a high art, focusing heavily on the pernicious influence of Muslim immigrants and the dangers they pose. Here’s Harris in 2006:
Islam is the fastest growing religion in Europe. The demographic trends are ominous: Given current birth rates, France could be a majority Muslim country in 25 years, and that is if immigration were to stop tomorrow. Throughout Western Europe, Muslim immigrants show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their host countries, and yet exploit these values to the utmost—demanding tolerance for their backwardness, their misogyny, their antisemitism and the genocidal hatred that is regularly preached in their mosques. Political correctness and fears of racism have rendered many secular Europeans incapable of opposing the terrifying religious commitments of the extremists in their midst.
Harris’ screeds on Europe find an echo in the manifesto of Dylann Roof, the white supremacist who murdered nine people in a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, in June 2015:
From this point I researched deeper and found out what was happening in Europe. I saw that the same things were happening in England and France, and in all the other Western European countries. Again I found myself in disbelief. As an American we are taught to accept living in the melting pot, and black and other minorities have just as much right to be here as we do, since we are all immigrants. But Europe is the homeland of white people, and in many ways the situation is even worse there.
That the “demographic” threat is demographically groundless is no surprise; a 2016 Pew Research poll showed that people often wildly overestimate how many of their compatriots are Muslims. In France, for example, respondents said they believed 31 percent of the population was Muslim, when the number is actually 7.5 percent. In the United States, people put the number at 17 percent, when the actual figure is less than 1 percent. This distortion of reality is promoted by the “demographic threat” fear that Harris sows.
Graphic: Guardian (12/13/16)
It’s difficult to measure exactly how much the New Atheists contribute to today’s anti-Muslim trend, but their cable TV shows, public intellectual status, large followings and nominally liberal appeal certainly help normalize what would otherwise be considered rank bigotry. Indeed, Harris has spent the past week boosting voices defending the underlying logic of Trump’s Muslim ban, while pouting at those calling it “Islamophobic.”
Manufactured ISIS plots and the problem of meta-terror
Americans’ perception of terrorism is, for the most part, not informed by actual terrorist activity, but rather what we call “meta-terror,” or the fear caused by the coverage of terrorism, unconnected from any actual threat. Meta-terror has five manifestations: 1) the media disseminating ISIS threats in the form of video or audio; 2) reports about speculative terror attacks (e.g., LA Times, “A Freeway Terror Attack Is the ‘Nightmare We Worry About,’ Law Enforcers Say,” 12/21/15); 3) media treating “ISIS plots” manufactured by the FBI as actual ISIS plots, despite the fact that no one in ISIS was actually involved; 4) FBI and DHS “terror alerts” that never precede any actual attacks; and 5) the whole-cloth creation of fake ISIS stories.
In all five of these categories, it bears repeating, there is no actual act of terrorism. There is simply the specter of a threat, or a Potemkin plot. Taken together, meta-terror inflates the perception of Islamic terrorism, inflaming anti-Muslim prejudice.
There is no doubt the so-called Islamic State has killed tens of thousands under its brutal rule. In the lead-up to the war in fall 2014, however, this legitimate threat was consistently magnified wildly out of proportion by US media, especially as it related to the group’s direct threat to the US “homeland.”
As FAIR (2/15/15) noted at the time, in the second half of 2014, there was basically no story involving ISIS media wouldn’t publish. Fox News told us ISIS was building training camps in Mexico, ABC News published a scary-as-hell “ISIS caliphate map” that was lifted from a neo-Nazi website, a fake story about ISIS imposing female genital mutilation, an even faker story about a $425 million bank robbery in Mosul, a church burning that never took place—none true, but all reported as such by mainstream outlets. Again, while ISIS’s crimes are not in doubt, the rush to exaggerate and fabricate the scope of its horrors inflated the threat to an apocalyptic fervor.
One of the key elements to selling the expansion of the war to Syria in the summer and fall of 2014—that ISIS’s social media sophistication was recruiting dozens and dozens of Americans—also fed greatly into the broader fear of Islamic terrorism. “More than 100 Americans” are fighting for ISIS, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told Congress in fall 2014, which media dutifully repeated without question.
“More than 100 young home-grown Muslims, including some from Gotham, are being trained to become an enemy within by Al Qaeda–inspired groups like ISIS,” declared the New York Daily News (6/19/14). “More Than 100 Americans With Syrian Rebels,” a CNN headline (8/27/14) insisted. Americans, we were told again and again, were being seduced to fight in Syria en masse.
But wait. Two days after the US began airstrikes on Syria, this number was quietly reduced by 88 percent by FBI Director James Comey. “Around 12 Americans Are Fighting in Syria, Not 100,” the AP (9/26/14) reported.
The inflated terror threat didn’t stop there. As FAIR has documented repeatedly (4/1/15), FBI-contrived terror plots (ones where the FBI is the primary mover—buying materials, making plans, etc.) are frequently reported by the media simply as “ISIS plots.” For example, when former CIA deputy director Michael Morrell went on CBS This Morning in June 2015, referencing this map as evidence of recently unraveled ISIS plots, he omitted that every single one of these was created with the assistance of the FBI, and none ever posed any actual threat:
Another notable such case was an “ISIS nuclear plot” in 2015 that never actually involved either ISIS or nuclear weapons (FAIR.org, 10/9/15)—but one would hardly know this, reading or watching US media:
As FAIR wrote at the time:
What takes place, before our very eyes, is a kind of War on Terror transubstantiation. Representational terror plots become real ones, fake enemies become Russo-Jihadi crime syndicates, and an American public, once again, is presented with a cartoonish, wildly inflated threat profile that’s increasingly divorced from reality.
Then there’s the images. ISIS trades on violent and extreme images that our corporate media dutifully disseminate. For months and months, the average American was inundated with the most vile and over-the-top ISIS propaganda (FAIR.org, 5/26/15):
It’s no wonder, after years and years of FBI- and media-created “ISIS plots,” the playing of ISIS agitprop on loop, and endless terror warnings that never bear fruit—and a definition of “terror” that includes any Muslim who follows the wrong Twitter feed but excludes white supremacists who want to start a race war—that many Americans’ perception of Muslims would grow negative at a corollary rate. So-called centrist or liberal media cannot spend the better part of the past three years running non-stop Islamo-panic, then turn around and act shocked when Trump exploits the fallout.
It’s important to document the way the right stokes hatred of Muslims. But it’s also essential to note how that hatred seeps into mainstream and liberal circles as well. The rise of Trump did not happen in a vacuum, nor do the intellectual threads that led to many Americans supporting his arbitrary, hate-motivated Muslim ban.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst for FAIR.org. You can find him on Twitter at @AdamJohnsonNYC.
Your definition of “New Atheists’ is stupid and offensive, Adam. To lump this anti-religious movement that has taken on so many sacred cows with such rational fervor with “those who use the pretense of reason and liberal enlightenment to advance otherwise banal conventional wisdom about American and Israeli aggression in the Middle East” is cultish nonsense.
One “New Atheist” does not correlate to many, let alone all. Hitchens became idiotic, as you have done so with this smear, about Iraq, but where has Dawkins allied with Pence/Clinton/ your sainted Sanders/Obama in furthering Israel? Where has PZ Myers done so? How about Sikivu Hutchinson, Michel Onfray, and the other now 25% of non-religious people of America, plus the majority of Europeans not given to your cosmic bafflegab?
Every “movement” has its erring “leaders.” Atheism is still the most despised affiliation in cult-saturated America, but here is a FAIR opiner trying to lump it in with all the other social ills of this benighted era, as if is the almighty New Atheists who occupy the White House, or Congress, or the Facebook CEO position, or corporate-endowment college presidencies, or FAIR’s holy quarters.
Yeah, Adam, it’s all those atheists’ fault. Now get them back on their knees, right?
I think Adam is rightfully withholding exemptions for Islamophobia based on atheist arguments, not necessarily saying all “New Atheists” are at fault. The fact is that I have seen many atheists use problematic speech about Islam and/or Muslims on many online forums, period. Just because it’s based on atheist reasoning doesn’t make it less hateful. Christians aren’t the only ones who can be Islamophobic.
Islamophobia is the official goal of islam itself. Islam openly endorses terrorism in order to foment a fear of muslims in all infidels. Their most official sharia manual, the Hedaya, openly proclaims that all muslims, even muslim toddlers, are to be regarded as “Objects of Fear!” by all infidels, to the extent that said infidels will all hurry to cross the street to avoid even said muslim toddlers!
Well written, Unk! But never lose sight of Brig. S.K. Malik in “The Quranic Concept Of War”: “terror is at once the means and the ends; the condition we wish to impose.”
You both make the same error of analysis that leads Muslim, Jewish, or Christian extremists to reach their own mistaken assessments of the world they live in. Specifically, you all see other religions and ethnic groups as having the same goal as the few members of that group you have become familiar with through sensationistic media reports. You, Meir Kahane and Osama bin Laden share the belief that the majority of those identifying with the other branches of the Judeo-Christian tradition practice their religion in a fundamentally strict, intolerant form that only a minority of their own group practice it. Its an oversimplification used by simple people that makes it easy to justify their own intolerance as being merely defensive reaction to “their” violence against “us”.
That you have no concept of the diversity of beliefs and values found in the Muslim world is revealed with statements like “Islam states……” or “Muslims believe…..”. Which Muslims? What branch or Sect? When? You fail to realize that most Muslims, like most Christians, are non-observant and who only identify as such because of the culture they grow up in, not because of their religiosity. This practice is typical throughout the world.
Did you know that in Azerbaijan, a majority Muslim country (98.1%), where only 1% or less claim another religion as their own, the Constitution ensures freedom of religion and specifically identifies Azerbaijan as a “secular country”. Furthermore, in a Gallup poll taken about a decade ago, only 21% of Azerbaijanis claimed religion played an important part in their daily lives, making the country one of the least religious in the world and one that pays far more heed to its constitutional mandate as a secular nation than the United States certainly does.
So go finger, huh? A Muslim nation with fewer extremists per capita than most Western democracies?
There’s no need to be so defensive, it’s not all atheists fault that their biggest spokesmen are reactionaries that are all too ready to fear monger and give talking points to the military-industrial complex. Have you heard about homonationalism, where queer peoples’ criticisms of anti-LGBT countries are used to justify war against them? It’s the same sort of thing, ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, this is why we need to see things intersectionally.
Homonationalism is hugely connected to Islamophobia, too, obviously. That’s a good example.
Since first hearing or reading F.D.R.’s famous line from his first inaugural address, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance,” I understood the words and the basic historical setting, but never viscerally felt the need for the statement and the reason for its subsequent, historical acclaim. Living in this country since 9/11 has been, and continues to be, an experience that has allowed me to truly and well appreciate the value of the 1933 sentiment.
Wouldn’t it have been nice if one of our three post 9/11 Presidents had been an FDR?
FDR saved a failing democracy by creating jobs. Comparing that time in American history with the arrival of a new President who is mentally unbalanced is ridiculous. We should certainly fear Trump, all of us, all the time.
What sort of La La Land are you recommending?
You know that old saying, “We have nothing to fear, but fear itself!”?
It’s STUPID! And criminal, too!
Fear is only the first step of the binary two-step thinking process: one must heed one’s initial fears in order to identify the mistakes and problems which cause the pains one fears, in order to be able to progress to correcting those mistakes and solving those problems in order to have the hope of avoiding those pains and thus cancelling the fears!
Simply ignoring them and saying “I’m not afraid!” only defines one as too scared to admit mistakes or solve problems!
Without FEAR, we cannot think for our selves AT ALL!
And it’s ALWAYS a case of Authority VERSUS true Morality!
Bottom line: criminals hate other people (potential victims and/or potential opponents) thinking about their crimes, just as they hate the admitting to them selves of being criminals. They prefer to substitute distractions like idolatrous false hope for valid fears of their crimes.
And hating thinking has always had a perfectly valid label: “Psycho-Path” (literal translation: “Thought-
Killer”).
The real Truth is:
“We have nothing to fear, but (the mistakes and problems which cause the) pain itself!”
;-)
Fearing fear AS pain, and then deciding to attack it BY ignoring it, in stead of listening to and learning from it, is the first lie all hypocritical criminals tell themselves (AND their victims)! It’s the root cause of all blustering criminally negligent outrages and “sins!”
The ability to learn from mistakes, to solve problems, also leaves us able to (choose to) NOT learn from those same mistakes, and to refuse to solve problems (both of which choices define “Sin.”)
And “Sin” is a synonym for Crime, and “sinner” = criminal.”
The only real “thought crime” is to refuse to think at all!
The worst way to show weakness is to be afraid of showing fear.
Fear is only the generalized memory of specific pains, projected to the future. So it’s the very start of the
thinking process itself.
Without fear (or by ignoring it as literal psycho-paths aka thought-killers choose to do) one is unable to
address and thereby solve the problems or fix the mistakes which cause the pains we fear the most. Nor can we, without fear, achieve hope – which is only the generalized memory of specific reliefs from pains, also future-projected.
And while it’s true that we aren’t beholden to an immediate response to our enemy’s attacks – we shouldn’t have, for instance, to only respond to their crimes while they yet remain a ‘clear and present danger,’ as liberal cucktards always insist – we should eventually respond in retaliatory and dissuasive self-defense – an often-belated process which is even endorsed by the courts themselves, and is best known as JUSTICE.
For as even the falsely-sundered “civil” and “criminal” laws still agree: One must pay for what one takes. And even “only” attempted crimes, are still crimes – it’s the mens-rea / guilty-mind intent or thought that always counts!
;-)
Excellent and infomative post. I’ve never listened to Maher but knew that he is viewed askance by some; now I know why. I am really saddened to ready the Sam Harris quotes; I found his book Waking Up very insightful – I don’t recall any reference to Islam, though.
wtf is “new” atheist anyway? something wrong with plain atheism?
Thank you for writing this article Adam. It’s amazing how such a small outlet can produce so much well-researched and argued content. FAIR is invaluable.
Great review Adam Johnson.
I would not include atheists/non-theists as a big player in Islamophobia. The “New Atheists” don’t have as much reach as I think you give them. And although their criticism at this latest and critical circumstance of US aggression, maybe feeding US mass prejudice of Islam doesn’t mean their criticism isn’t in the ball park of warranted.
The high profile un-appointed spokespeople of atheism are generally revealed by regular non-theists. I call them a Godsend. Together with our global science teachers, atheists spokespeople represent a universal renaissance. The condemnation of Islamic nonsense and immoral and dangerous practices is fundamental in critiquing all world religions and condemning their aspects of nonsense and immoral and dangerous practices. The “New Atheists” generally address all religion’s ignorance and harm, not just Muslim type, under equal application of the laws of evolution and nature. Something you would expect from well resourced, independent thinkers seeking truth.
I have my reservations about Bill Maher, –and it’s possible Dawkins/Harris/Hitchens have a stage in the world of the establishment because of the anti-Islamic rhetoric they include on that stage– but generally non-theists are addressing the monumental pot of ignorance where all prejudice and pericusion is stored. I hope they believe as I do that when it comes to elliminating terror and advancing human rights, all faith based institutions have to come under the microscope as do state allegiances and agendas, and worldwide economic/currency forces. If such a thing were to succeed in elevating people and survival it would be an epic leap of humankind since the first stories of the universe were made up and told.
It’s very important not to do anything to muzzle atheists who are aligned with science. They must be encouraged to address not just the absurdity and harm of religion but investigate the Earthly powers today that perpetuate them and the ways and means to overpower.
As great and important Adam’s report is, I realize that the real story is mentioned in the second last paragraph “white supremacists who want to start a race” -it already started and is in full profit swing – stating with Bush.
Thank you Adam. You are absolutely on point!
Get a clue: read the Qur’an and Sahih Bukhari. At minimum, Surahs Al-Anfal & At-Taubah along with Bukhari’s Volume 4. For the short course, visit my blog, click on “Islam 101 For Politicians” and read “What’s Wrong With Islam & Muslims?”
Allah’s book sais he would and did cast terror. Moe said he was made victorious with terror. A Pakistani strategy manual: “The Quranic Concept Of War”, pg. 58-60 informs us that terror is at once the ends and the means, the condition they wish to impose.
Muslims are commanded, in 8.39 & 9.29, to conquer and dominate the world. They are commaned i 8.57 & 8.60 to “strike fear” & “terrify”. In 9.120, they are promised Brownie Points for acts of terrorism. In 9.123 they are commanded to fight the disbelievers “nearest you”.
Think long and hard about 9.38/-39; it means: “go to war or go to Hell”. Contrast that with 9.111 & 61.9-12. That is why the war is unending.
If you remain clueless, there are two clues for you: the report of the commissioners, qoted in Wikipedia’s article on the First Barbary War and the Muslim explanation to the Persians qoted in Sahih Bukhari 4.53.386.
“Allah’s book” and “Moe” are the only words I need to see in your post to know it’s post-factual Islamophobia. Folks, remember you have to read the Holy Qur’an in context in the original Arabic.
Musli8ms must read the Qur’an in Arabic and recite it in Arabic ‘cuz its magic is only effective in the original tongue. Translations reproduce the meaning, not the magic, which sane people do not believe in. Hadith confirm the obvious meanings of the imperatives and shari’ah codifies them. Read those texts together and you will, if intellectually competent, perceive a pattern.
Facts: Qur’an Surah Al-Anfal 8.39 “fight them untill “…
Sahih Bukhari 1.8.387 “I have been ordered to fight…
Reliance Of The Traveller o9.8 “The caliph makes war”… o929 “The caliph fights all other peoples until”…
Pattern: imperitive, execution, codification. But you can’t see it.
Islam is terrible and all but your complaints seem more like pearl clutching political correctness. It sounds like you’ve never read Sun Tzu, making the enemy too afraid to fight is literally a basic military strategy, and you’re being disingenuous by pretending like only Islamic militarists try and make their enemies afraid. Have you heard of a little thing called nuclear deterrence? Sounds like terrorism to me.
The probvlem, Ken, is aggression. Allah and his slaves are Hellbent on global conquest. America is not. We are the prey, Muslims are the predators. But Muslims can not be deterred by MAD. Refer to “The Quranic Concept Of Waqr”, page 60.
Describing Sam Harris’s shtick as “sophistry” suggests at best a baseless ad hominem, and at worst a gross ignorance about Harris’s views not just about Muslims, but about the importance of intellectual honesty.
Anyway, providing even a single example of “sophistry” next time you level the charge at someone will do wonders for your argument.
@Martin
It isn’t so much that “New Atheism” is full of rotten people. What’s happening is they are goaded into providing a false explanation for how, why, and to what degree religion plays a corrupting role in society. They use antagonism and sensationalism to distract from their own foibles, which happens to be what most criminal states are trying to do as well, creating a perverse syncretism.
Dawkins never had the same bite that Harris and especially Hitchens had but do evidence routine respect for “cultural Christianity” and “JudeoChristian values” that serve as furniture for white supremacist and imperial arguments to relax in. The phrase “Judeo Christian” intentionally omits non-Western faiths, which happen to be practiced mainly in the countries he and his followers are not living in, but are being targeted for coups, wars, and exploitation.
What is this “false” explanation that the Gnus are supposed to be promulgating?
There seems to be this absurd commenting culture, one that Adam Johnson here exemplifies, where one nobody makes up all sorts of assertions and connections with scant proof.
There is nothing “sensationalistic” about uncovering the irrationalism and perverse sufferings engendered by monotheistic religions, of which Islam is but one. If there’s “perverse syncretism” in atheism it’s probably in the clothes they wear, or what is on their Amazon wish lists, but compared to the whoppers of Trump and W. Bush and the Falwells and now Adam Johnson, there’s a comparative straight line of thought.
Enough of parsing out what Dawkins never said, or who he was a little mean to, or how New Atheists just aren’t as evolved in their all-around love of all things religious the way Adam Johnson has wrapped his own moral goodness. you’ll notice Johnson hasn’t deigned to answer the charge of absurd over-reach and shameful bandwagon -hopping to bash the New Atheists here – he’s got nothing.
Every imperialist project begins with an investigation of the natural resources and co-opting of parts of society known to cooperate.
The Atheist movement serves as a heuristic device to this end. They stand over the lesser peoples of the world and diagnose and uplift their suffering. And sooner or later that muscle feeds back into their ideology. Who wants to read that BUT white supremacists?
Recall that Hitchens literally threatened Sam Husseini with the authorities in a debate. Sam Harris in his explicitly discusses US military policy in favorable terms, despite being the only country condemned for international aggression.
When Bill Maher says sometimes you have to bomb the heck out of Palestinians like a dirty woman, he’s playing to a select base, young white men. This is sensationalistic because it is due to over-reporting on violence, a hypervigilance that pushes people toward a punishment culture friendly to neoconservatives, the incarceration state.
Impressionable minds being corrupted by this clique-ish scholarship is creating an insular movement. There might be nicer people in the movement and even dissent, but certain leading figures unmistakably bear responsibility for refusing to challenge their own ideas, drawing young men in particular to white supremacist ideas like how IQ relates to poverty or criminality. The appeal to white separatist beliefs gives a false sense of protection, along with a loosely organized flak campaign.
The “Atheistic movement” is not a “heuristic device” – who drummed such nonsense into your head? The atheist movement stands against religion – Catholic, Jewish, and yes, Muslim. Remember, this ridiculous post by Adam Johnson is headlined with some alarum about “corporate media,” but then stretches way over the line of moral purity to accuse “white liberal atheist bigots” as somehow spear-heading this corporate onslaught against the Muslims of the Middle East. This is stupid, infantile, and without foundation – no American General asks Richard Dawkins for bombing advice. No Halliburton operation is supervised by Sam Harris.
FAIR makes a wholly unfounded claim to seem holier-than-thou, seeing the targeting of Muslim countries carried out by George W., a Christian fanatic, and Barack Obama, another in the line of American Christian imperialists, as the covert project of the mean public atheists who occasionally Twitter-offend the folkish propriety of the campus spiritualists.
You want to talk about the foibles of certain leaders, why not concentrate corporate funders of FAIR who make huge profits off of technowar and mass incarceration? What about the historcial and on-going oppressions of radicals, free-thinkers, unionists, kittens and puppies that you are allied with in your affinities and dealings?
Maher and Harris imbibed anti-Muslim sentiment while raised in Jewish households. I would like them to be BDS supporters, but thier biases inhbit them on this score. Hitchens became a born-again Rightist chickenhawk in his late drunken louche stages. Dawkins, a lifelong scholar, has some peculiar liking for anti-feminists. Yet what each has published about monotheistic religion took guts and intellectual talent, and for this moronic FAIR nobody to lump them in with Cheney and Flynn and the Joint Chiefs and the Christian dominionists is reprehensible.
Somebody you don’t like is going to be attracted to one of your ideas. Does that make your ideas wrong?
Your assertions about “cliquish scholarship” and an “insular movement” are unsupported and wrong, just like Johnson’s yellow journalism. If atheism does not meet your complete purity test, then you are free to join in prayer with Trump, Devos, and the FAIR board.
This poor excuse for a well reasoned argument explains why the author blocked me for challenging some of his tweets.
It’s not that atheism is always a heuristic device, it’s that it can and does sometimes act as one in the case of certain individuals, in this case white individuals. It’s an abuse of a philosophical position to otherize and thus demean Islam and Muslims by asserting the intellectual superiority of atheism over Islam.
Oppression takes many forms!
I’m done with Fair after this absurd article.
^ shut up islamaphobes and go join the alt-right if you haven’t already
Already have. Richard Spencer for President 2020.
Excellent write-up, as usual. One bone, however. You write, “There is no doubt the so-called Islamic State has killed tens of thousands under its brutal rule.”
The hyperlink you provide to support this claim leads to a (seemingly official) report written by an academic research program created and funded by DHS (an agency with a clear agenda of scaring the crap out of people). Further, its sources are mainstream propaganda outlets like CNN, NYT, BBC, ABC, USA Today, Reuters, and the Telegraph… also in the fear-mongering business.
So, I have to disagree. Considering the sources, there most certainly IS doubt about ISIS, its origins, its agenda and its actions.
“Throughout Western Europe, Muslim immigrants show little inclination to acquire the secular and civil values of their host countries…”
I think it’s a worthwhile point in this regard to challenge the Western colonialist mindset that its version of “modernity” is the “most modern.” All cultures have their own ecosystems built over millennia, and the cultures of the Islamic world are no different. What I don’t want to see is Islamophobes exploit people like the New Atheists mentioned with the common arguments that Islam disrespects women, etc. The uproar over the hijab is illustrative here.
Fighting Islamophobia requires accepting Islam on its own terms and according to its own understanding. It works according to its own ecosystem, not the Western Christian Enlightenment model. I believe Jesus said you can’t put new wine into new wineskins. It would be a mistake – and frankly Islamophobic – to try to force the Western model on Islam in the way some perhaps well-intentioned progressives want to do.
Islam isn’t an “ecosystem” at all LOL! Nor is it a “religion” (at all, much less one “of peace!”) or a “race” at all (much less one of poor oppresses swarthy People Of Of Color”)! NOPE! In fact, islam is only the world’s largest and oldest, ongoing extortion-racket CRIME-syndicate, one whose holy-mobster “muslim” gang members assign to them selves the holy right and duty to their “god,” to extort, enslave, and murder all the non-members of their gang in the entire world. The only “religious” part in islam, is where they say:
“God told us to commit these crimes!”
(CAPISCE?)!
Right in the Qur’an is: the permission to murder Jews and Christians (Surah 9:29), to terrorize all non-Muslims (8:12), to rape young girls (65:4), to enslave people for sex (4:3), to lie about one’s true goals (3:54), and the command to make war on all the infidels (9:123) and subjugate the entire world to Allah (9:33).
“It would be a mistake – and frankly Islamophobic – to try to force the Western model on Islam in the way some perhaps well-intentioned progressives want to do.”
Right. But Islam is trying to force it’s own value system and culture on Western countries.
Is it, though? What (real, credible) evidence to you have of this?
OR … you could have actually bothered to read the travel ban first, before calling it “arbitrary” “disjointed” “racist” “panic” (which is pretty obviously what you your self are *projecting* here, as you virtue-signal)!
The temporary 3-month ban only restricts 7 of the 49 muslim-majority countries in the world, and does NOT include, for instance, Pakistan, Turkey, Afghanistan, or Saudi Arabia. Hmm! How strange, no? Further, those 7 countries are the EXACT same 7 countries which had travel bans applied to them by the OBAMA regime.
Curiouser and curiouser, isn’t it? Even more, 6 of those 7 are still completely banned by KUWAIT itself.
(How full of “disjointed racist panic” are those evil racist Arab muslims in Kuwait, to ban those 6 countries?)!
Now, just for fun, let’s actually bother to READ the EO (and Obama’s and John Kerry’s rationales, too)!
http://unclevladdi.blogspot.ca/2017/02/the-truth-about-trumps-muslim-ban.html
Am I the only one able to see the cognitive dissonance in the comments? With one hand, you condemn all religious belief, assigning to it grave damage & danger, with the other you condemn all objection to and questioning of Islam as unreasoning fear.
Islam gives an imprimatur of divine sanction and imperative to intra-species predation. It motivates its votaries to genocidal conquest with the carrot of plunder, reward of eternal orgy and stick of eternal damnation. Islam is a perpetual motion war machine set in motion for Moe’s personal emolument: he got all of the fei, all of the jizya and the top 20% first pick of the ganimah.
Your use of Big Words might confuse the poor leftopathic snowflakes who infest this site! And let’s not forget that “cognitive dissonance” really only ever means “hypocrisy” which said double-standards leftards embody.
Cognitive Dissonce exemplified, Unk: “all religions are damaging and destructive” && “Islam is a great religion of peace, unrelated to terrorism”. Holding both opinions at once is cognitivie dissonance.
What does the western countries with only 10 % of the world population expect? only since 9/11 killed more than 1,3 millions civilians. Daily bombing, from the USA and his alliances? Terrorismus is the war from the poor with the western illegal wars. Since the world war two, more than 40 illegal wars, how many regime changes, how many deals with despots like Gaddafis and Saddam Hussein, and the lie there was never found mas of destruction weapons until to day?
Brilliant article! Very informative and helpful. I’m impressed. Thank you!
I’m a hard atheist and the new atheists don’t speak for me. I listen to them and wince. There they are, the supposedly educated, enlightened, rational voices of reason denouncing Islam in an emotive, aggressive tirade in a world already divided between those who are Muslims and those who are not. We’re sitting on a bloody powder keg and the gentleman of reason are throwing lit matches. It just goes to prove one can be both incredibly clever and incredibly stupid in the same breath. Perhaps it’s because I’m a woman, but much of the messrs Dawkins, Harris, Maher etc sound like they’ve got a case of the big swinging dicks going on.
Nonsense. Take a long look at the cultural enrichment taking place in Europe, where women in countries like Sweden and Germany are having to alter their social behavior for fear of inciting physical molestation.
Fake news, yawn.
Islamophobia is not the out lash at Islam – Islamophobia is the selective out lash at Islam over other religions including one’s own.
When it comes to world religions and the way each feeds war, injustice, terror and destruction their is much to be extremely outraged about.
Not sure if you even watch this show, but “Blindspot” featured an FBI entrapment “terror plot” on last week’s episode. It wasn’t against Muslims–it was anti-government farmers in upstate New York. In it, the assistant director (Kurt Weller) shuts down the operation and then fires the FBI agent who set it up. If only that would happen in real life…
12.02.2017 America’s Civil War Has Begun with Balkanization to Follow
USA in the World Soon after taking office, President Trump issued an executive order banning legal residents of the United States and unnamed “others” based on their place of birth in seven nations cited as “dangerous.” All named nations are predominately Muslim but make up only a small minority of Islamic nations.
http://journal-neo.org/2017/02/12/america-s-civil-war-has-begun-with-balkanization-to-follow/
So, 43% of Americans admit to having ‘prejudice against Muslims’? I question the use of the word ‘prejudice’ here. Prejudice means pre-judging without evidence. Having an unfavorable opinion of a person or group doesn’t constitute prejudice. The unfavorable opinion may be based on evidence from various sources, including one’s eyes and ears.
great piece Adam, I enjoy your pieces a lot and I’m so glad you brought up people like Sam Harris, Bill Maher and Richard Dawkins who have muted or no comments to make about Ultra Zionism. Its funny Sam Harris was on Real Time two weeks ago and he and Maher were promoting themselves as being different from Trump when Maher clearly always paints all Muslims with a broad brush saying most of them deep down are ISIS sympathizers, believing in backwards Sharia law and think death comes to people who draw Muhammed and leave the religion. Bill Maher said that we should ban Syrian men, and that those fleeing we should let them in but then train them to fight back in Syria and Sam Harris who endorsed torture during the Bush era and said Ben Carson would be a president then Noam Chomsky based on Carson’s Islamaphobic views. Then they both promote Ayaan Hirisi Ali a notorious conwoman who was never the victim of Radical Islam, and Majid Nawaz and some other writer of the Daily Beast an ex Muslim woman of sorts who also promotes Trump’s Muslim ban and voted for him. So for me while they claim they are different from Trump in reality they aren’t different from Trump regarding Islam and how to go about it.
Ugh. You embarrass yourself by how badly you misrepresent the views of people like Maher and Harris. Did you even watch the interview? Because they specifically address and dismantle the “broad brush” point you make so I’m guessing you did not. If you’re going to present a valid case for why someone’s view is wrong, you AT MINIMUM have to be able to summarize that view accurately. And you’ve failed spectacularly at even this baseline requisite.
I don’t think Youri embarrassed him/her-self at all. I’m a regular viewer of Real Time, and Maher doesn’t shy away from making his views of Islam known, when the subject comes up. I’m a long-time fan of Bill Maher and I agree with him on most issues, however, this is the one area I disagree with him. But to be fair, it’s important to note he is no fan of religion, period.
Youri set the stage for his critique by saying “Maher clearly always paints all Muslims with a broad brush saying most of them deep down are ISIS sympathizers.”
This is a baseless caricature if Maher’s views. Again, if you can’t summarize the ideas you’re trying to oppose accurately, then your counter argument is doomed from the start.
I’m a regular viewer of Bill Maher from his very first start on HBO, and the last several seasons he has been painting Muslims with a broad brush. Everytime people mildly accuse him of Islamphobia he keeps repeating this study done by Pew if i’m correct that says most Muslims sympathize with Sharia, think leaving the religion or drawing a cartoon of Muhammed means you get what’s coming to you. That’s fact, and everytime a terror attack by Radical Islam or the subject of Radical Islam Bill Maher keeps repeating this ad naseum thereby saying there aren’t no moderate Muslims and clearly painting a broad brush and has said though i’m paraphrasing now that most Muslims are deep down ISIS sympathizers. Important to add that Bill Maher is strong supporter of Israel which I find funny for someone who “hates all religions” and yet doesn’t slam the Ultra Zionists in Israel who keep getting voted in Israel. Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins almost have nothing to say about Israel unless its denouncing the extremists in Palestine. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali a notorious conwoman said Bib Netanyahu should get the Nobel Peace Prize. She supported the Iraq War and Harris has written he supports torture and think despite “collateral damage” the US is good at heart and thinks Ben Carson would be a better president then Noam Chomsky for Carson’s views on Islam.
I mean Maher and Dawkins went after the 10 year old kid Ahmed for fuck sakes and he did say on his show that we should only allow Syrian women and children in, he did say on his show and on CNN’s Van Jones that we should take a number in but then train them to go fight ISIS. Imagine putting that logic to those who fled The Holocaust or any conflict where warfare and mass slaughter was taking place. Therefore While Sam Harris and Bill Maher two or three weeks ago paint themselves as being different from Trump who called for a total ban on Muslims entering the US, when you’ve seen the many episodes of Bill Maher I’ve seen regularly there two sides of the same coin.
thanks TeeJae! I find Bill Maher to be practically unwatchable now, not just for the Islamphobia but him acting as an Obama-Clinton apologist, peddleing the Russian conspiracy theories, his smearing of Snowden and hostility to Glenn Greenwald twice and Jeremy Scahill when he was last on the show, then Sanders supporters who protested what WikiLeaks exposed the DNC and their allies in the media did to Bernie as well as who John Podesta really is. But his invite of Milo Yionapolous (butchered spelling the name) and having a bromance with him and agreeing “that’s perfectly reasonable” when Milo called for banning trans people going to the bathroom or locker that coordinates with their gender identity. I mean there’s only so much I can stomach now and I’ve liked Bill Maher but just can’t tolerate it anymore. Same goes for Keith Olbermann whose been a Russia conspiracy theorist now.
I agree, Youri. It’s no secret he leans Democratic (although I think he’s technically independent), but I was so disappointed when he supported Hillary in the election. But we have to remember that HBO is part of the corporate media (owned by Time Warner), so his hostility toward Greenwald, Snowden, Schall, et al (i.e. those who counter the official Washington narrative) and his peddling of the ‘Russia did it’ nonsense is not surprising.
The same can be said of John Oliver’s show ‘Last Week Tonight.’ While he usually does insightful segments on some very important issues, he’s also done a few smear segments (e.g. against Jill Stein during the election, against Putin last week) which reminded me that he, too, is beholden to his corporate masters.
Even The Daily Show and Colbert Report on Comedy Central (owned by Viacom) – while overall were great at spotlighting important issues – had their moments of toeing the Washington narrative line. It’s sad that even satire has to be watched with a critical eye.
exactly! they’re part of the problem not the solution. And its why Bill Hicks was censored so heavily because he went after the Democrats, why George Carlin though celebrated mostly would never be given his own TV show on top of both critical of Israel, and thank god we have people like Jimmy Dore who is unafraid and uncompromising in his attack of the Democratic establishment. Have you seen his video going after John Oliver when he smeared Jill Stein (he’s also criticized Bill Maher and the Daily Show) and the humanist Report like Adam Johnson of FAIR and some of the folks at AlterNet even had to deconstruct and mythbust John Oliver and the Daily Show for their shameful hit pieces of Jill Stein, and Bill Maher, and luckily we also have Abby Martin and Citizen Radio to put them into account. Sad that even comedy stand up or satirical shows there is a limit to how far they and their narrative can go, which vindicates what Noam Chomsky once said to the BBC’s Andrew Marr when he claimed he doesn’t self-censor and bla bla bla lol Chomsky goes “I’m sure you perfectly believe everything that you say, I’m just saying if you were to think otherwise you wouldn’t be in the position your in” hehe!
I hadn’t heard of Jimmy Dore. I’ll have to check him out. Hopefully, he doesn’t suffer the same (questionable?) fate as Hicks or Carlin (for speaking too much truth to power).
ohhh check him out on youtube the Jimmy dore show, he’s epic and lol yes he does speak too much truth to power which is why sadly he’ll never get HBO wanting to give him a stand up show or comedy central and why he has to be solely on youtube and part of the TYT network. but do check him, I guarantee you will be binge watching a lot and subscribing to him.
oh i’m a he! LOL :)
The corporate media could not have pulled off their anti-muslim racism without the complicit silence of FAIR on the hard evidence of 9/11. The basic laws of physics are not a “conspiracy theory” by any stretch of the imagination, but FAIR acts as if it is and then tries to put all the blame for the ensuing racism against Muslims on the corporate media? Who are you trying to impress? FAIR is just as culpable for enabling this racism as the corporate media.
In short, when you have architects and engineers from all over the world saying that the 3 buildings that fell on 9/11 were controlled demolitions, then that’s what they were whether we like it or not. But I guess some people need it to be trendy and safe before they speak out.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-inside-job-hypothesis-of-the-911-attacks-and-the-american-left/5579911