[R-G] Blowback from the GOP's holy war

[Suzanne de Kuyper]

The Islamic community will respond in such a way this
goverment will have to listen, and it will not be with
any violence but with legal arguments, irrefutable
ones.

The hate speech from the G O P is stunningly applied
as if the targets are puppets with no chance of
rebuttal.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  

These wars of choice have costs never ever counted by
the strongest proponents of them and describes an
arrogance so profound as to cause those who speak from
it as quite blind and deaf to reality of the 21st
century.


--- Anthony Fenton <fentona at shaw.ca> wrote:

> Blowback from the GOP's holy war
> The 2008 Republican race has left a bitter legacy of
> sloganeering  
> against Muslims. It may well haunt the party this
> November.
> By Juan Cole
>
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/02/01/islamophobia/
> 
> Feb. 1, 2008 | For much of January, one might have
> thought that the  
> Republican candidates for president were already
> competing against a  
> single opponent. Not one called Hillary or Barack,
> but with a moniker  
> even more chilling in the eyes of hard-line
> Republicans: Islamic  
> fascism.
> 
> The American public, worried about mortgages,
> recession and a  
> seemingly interminable war in Iraq, was unimpressed
> -- those who fear- 
> mongered the most about Muslim terrorists have
> faltered at the polls.  
> Even the remaining front-runners, John McCain and
> Mitt Romney, have  
> said bigoted things about Muslims and their
> religion. But  
> Islamophobia as a campaign strategy has failed, and
> it may well come  
> back to haunt the Republicans in the general
> election.
> 
> Back when the GOP presidential field was still flush
> with tough- 
> talking right-wingers, no one was more outrageous in
> targeting  
> Muslims than Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado, who
> suggested that Muslim  
> terrorists inside America were plotting the imminent
> detonation of an  
> atomic bomb on U.S. soil. How to prevent this Tom
> Clancy scenario?  
> "If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an
> attack on this  
> homeland of that nature would be followed by an
> attack on the holy  
> sites in Mecca and Medina," Tancredo declared.
> "Because that's the  
> only thing I can think of that might deter somebody
> from doing what  
> they otherwise might do."
> 
> That sort of wild-eyed bigotry only fuels the cycle
> of mistrust and  
> vengeance. One can only imagine how much more
> difficulty Tancredo  
> generated for U.S. diplomats attempting to explain
> to America's  
> Muslim allies why a presidential candidate was
> talking about nuking  
> Islam's holiest cities, the larger with a population
> nearly that of  
> Houston.
> 
> But the failure of Islamophobia as a campaign
> strategy is no better  
> illustrated than by the spectacular flame-out of
> Rudy Giuliani.  
> Throughout his campaign (deep-sixed after his dismal
> showing in  
> Tuesday's Florida primary), the former New York
> mayor evoked the  
> Sept. 11 attacks at an absurd rate. Giuliani and his
> advisors  
> appeared to revel in demonizing Muslims. They also
> reveled in their  
> own ignorance -- never learning the difference
> between "Islamic" and  
> "Muslim."
> 
> "Islamic" has to do with the religion founded by the
> prophet  
> Mohammed. We speak of Islamic ethics or Islamic art,
> as things that  
> derive from the religion. "Muslim," on the contrary,
> describes the  
> believer. It would be perfectly all right to talk
> about Muslim  
> terrorists, but calling them Islamic terrorists or
> Islamic fascists  
> implies that the religion of Islam is somehow
> essentially connected  
> to those extremist movements.
> 
> Giuliani complained that during their debates,
> Democratic rivals  
> "never mentioned the word 'Islamic terrorist,'
> 'Islamic extremist,'  
> 'Islamic fascist,' 'terrorist,' whatever combination
> of those words  
> you want to use, [the] words never came up." He
> added, "I can't  
> imagine who you insult if you say 'Islamic
> terrorist.' You don't  
> insult anyone who is Islamic who isn't a terrorist."
> 
> But people are not "Islamic," they are Muslim. And
> one most certainly  
> does insult Muslims by tying their religion to
> movements such as  
> terrorism or fascism. Muslims perceive a double
> standard in this  
> regard: Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols would
> never be called  
> "Christian terrorists" even though they were in
> close contact with  
> the Christian Identity Movement. No one would speak
> of Christofascism  
> or Judeofascism as the Republican candidates speak
> of Islamofascism.  
> Muslims point out that persons of Christian heritage
> invented  
> fascism, not Muslims, and deny that Muslim movements
> have any link to  
> the mass politics of the 1930s in Europe.
> 
> Giuliani's pledge to take the United States on an
> offensive against  
> Islamic fascism, which he also said would be a
> long-term battle,  
> failed to excite the imagination of voters. It may
> well have alarmed  
> them in a way different from what Giuliani intended:
> If, by  
> Giuliani's logic, the United States is only on the
> "defensive" now,  
> with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, what would being
> on the offensive  
> look like? Would Giuliani have started four wars?
> Interestingly,  
> Giuliani did especially poorly in Florida among
> retired and active- 
> duty military personnel.
> 
> Giuliani was also hurt when the co-chair of his
> veterans' campaign in  
> New Hampshire, John Deady praised Giuliani for being
> able to stop  
> "the rise of the Muslims," an effort necessary to
> continue, he said,  
> until "we defeat them or chase them back to their
> caves, or, in other  
> words, get rid of them." When asked if he was really
> condemning all  
> members of the religion, Deady replied, "I don't
> subscribe to the  
> principle that there are good Muslims and bad
> Muslims. They're all  
> Muslims." Deady was forced to resign after a video
> of his remarks was  
> put on the web by the Guardian. Other Giuliani
> advisors have had some  
> bigoted things to say about Muslims as well. Rep.
> Peter King of New  
> York complained that "unfortunately we have too many
> mosques in this  
> country." Daniel Pipes, a professional Islamophobe
> advising Giuliani,  
> once said it would be dangerous to let American
> Muslims vote.
> 
> Meanwhile, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who has done
> well among  
> evangelicals but has had difficulty attracting votes
> from other  
> segments of the Republican Party, had a revealing
> response to the  
> assassination of Pakistani politician Benazir
> Bhutto. "I am making  
> the observation that we have more Pakistani illegals
> coming across  
> our border than all other nationalities except those
> immediately  
> south of the border," he said. He added, "And in
> light of what is  
> happening in Pakistan it ought to give us pause as
> to why are so many  
> illegals coming across these borders." In fact,
> there are almost no  
> Pakistani illegal aliens to speak of in the United
> States. Only 13  
> percent of the estimated 12 million persons in the
> United States  
> illegally are estimated to be Asian, but almost all
> of them are East  
> Asian. Pakistani and Indian immigrants, moreover,
> are among the  
> wealthiest immigrants in the country.
> 
> Current GOP front-runner John McCain has been prone
> to 
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