- Recently media and legal circles within the United States
have been showing signs of paranoia and deliberate misunderstandings of
the Muslim communities throughout the United States. There has always been
something like an in-built bias against Muslims and Arabs and Palestinians
in American culture. One of the best barometers of this American skewed
vision of Muslims is Hollywood and the entertainment industry. The average
American has been fed a continuous staple of Arabs and Muslims who are
centered around their lusts or who can never catch up with the "real
world." To this end the motion picture industry has produced the
"camel-jockey,"
"Ahab the Arab," and the seductive "haram." All these
years and generations of anti-Arab stereotypes have yielded a more sinister
and a more lethal Arab: the "terrorist." And now the Arab
terrorist
is no longer a Hollywood pass-time. Now the Arab terrorist is the
"business"
of the highest governmental departments in the country: the executive,
the judiciary, and the legislative. But how did all this distaste and
aversion
for the comical and vulgar Arab turn into raw hatred and military
hostilities
recently? Why has the official American policy of war against terrorism
become in fact and in practice something like an all-out war against
Muslims
and peoples of the Islamic faith?
-
- To answer this question we would have to go back to the
nature of the "Israeli-Arab" conflict. Nothing so defines the
image and the status of Muslims and Arabs in the United States and in the
West for that matter more than the ups and downs of the Israeli-Arab
dispute.
This is demonstrated by the case of Egypt. When Egypt, under the leadership
of president Jamal 'Abd al-Nasir, was in a belligerent position
vis-Ö-vis
Israel Egypt itself was perceived by the American public as a country
unworthy
of respect or equal treatment. But when Egypt entered into a capitulation
position with Israel during the time of president Muhammad Anwar al-Sadat,
all of a sudden, Egypt became a country worthy of diplomatic status and
of Middle-Eastern fame! On a larger scale, this is what is happening to
the Arab and Muslim populations in the West. But the question is still
around: why are Muslims, by and large, considered nowadays by the media
outlets as well as official personages to be "terrorists" or
"would-be terrorists" or "latent terrorists" or
"potential
terrorists"?
-
- 1st To answer this question
we would have to go back to the feud in the Middle East between Israelis
who come from a Jewish current of history and Arabs who come from an
Islamic
current of history. As much as there are secular minds that want to isolate
the incidents between Arabs and Israelis away from their religious context,
the fact of the matter is that the more we proceed into the future with
an increasing and intensifying magnitude of clashes and violence, the more
we realize that these bloody exchanges between the two opposing blocs
(Israelis
and Arabs) are extracted from the respective context of each one's
religious
depths. This should not be hailed as a scientific discovery that has been
the undisclosed enigma of the Middle Eastern problem. The fact of the
matter
is that the veneer of secularism that has shrouded the discourse on Middle
Eastern politics for the past century or so has stupefied and confused
this core and parallel element on both sides of the issue. And no one can
deny that in the last twenty to thirty years there has been an exponential
growth and expansion of Islamic self-assertion throughout the whole Middle
East. This Islamic re-affirmation includes within its many expressions
the political and ideological as well as the military articulation of the
majority Muslim people living in that Holy part of the world, and beyond.
Obvious the first to feel the effects of this Islamic revival of collective
will and social-self are the Israelis who are surrounded from all
directions
by a sea of Islamic populations. For this reason --- and not for this
reason
alone --- we notice that the first Western comments on this Islamic
self-determination
comes from Israeli pundits, commentators, and government officials. And
because of the intimate relationship between the United States and Israel
the internal Israeli concern for security quickly becomes an internal
American
concern for security. It need not be that way; but the osmosis of Zionism
into Imperialism has rendered many an observer of the American and Israeli
societies confused as to whom wags the other: is it the American government
that wags the Israeli tail or is it the Israeli government that wags the
American tail? But this is another subject to be deferred to the future
where the level of events will finally expose the true nature of the deadly
political embrace between the Zionist officials in Tel Aviv and their
counterparts
in Washington.
-
- The Zionist Conspiracy and Its Matrix of
Events
-
- The on-again off-again war between Israelis and Arabs
is bound to have its unruly and refractory effect within the corridors
of power in Washington, D.C. and throughout the West; but particularly
in America. And the symptoms could not be more pronounced. Leading the
battle against the Muslims in the United States are hard core Zionist
Americans.
The Zionist American infrastructure is well established and well organized.
AIPAC is a seven hundred pound gorilla that swings its weight between the
White House and Capitol Hill. It does not miss a branch or a bough around
the Capitol Mall between these two positions. This American Jewish lobby
has not had a word of sympathy expressed towards Islamic causes anywhere
in the world. This American-Jewish lobby is reinforced by a network of
American Jewish civic and religious activities ranging from affiliates
of the ACLU to members of Christian evangelical churches throughout the
land. With this background it is no surprise to note that the first verbal
shots against American civic activity coming from American Muslims was
fired by a Yossef Bodansky, an naturalized American who was/is an Israeli
citizen. [Yossef Bodansky is described by a Swedish expert on terrorism,
Mr. Magnus Rhunstorp, as being unreliable and should be considered the
equivalent of an isolated iceman living in the middle of nowhere. About
Bodansky's information, this Swedish expert added that it is drivel and
lacks credibility --- source: Sidsfinka newspaper, 2-2-2002] Mr. Bodansky
wrote a book entitled: Target America: Terrorism in the U.S. Today. What
may have given his book a guise or respectability was the fact that Mr.
Bodansky was the director of the House Republican Task Force on Terrorism
and Unconventional Warfare. In this book of fixation and mania Islamic
organizations and associations such as the Islamic Society of North America
(ISNA), the Muslim Students' Association (MSA), the Muslim Arab Youth
Association
(MAYA), the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), and the International
Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) among other Islamic religious and
social
organizations were suspect and even fronts in an Islamic Internationale
that is out to get Israel. While McCarthy was seeing red behind every shady
object, Bodansky was seeing green. Annual conferences and occasional
meetings
held by these Islamic organizations at which distinguished scholars and
speakers were discussing religious, cultural, and social issues --- these
conferences in the eyes of Bodansky and his likes were conspiratorial,
subversive, and of course anti-Israel! To add octane to Bodansky's alarmist
presentations the chairman of the House Republican Task Force on Terrorism
and Unconventional Warfare, Bill McCollum of Florida, continued to support
Bodansky and even wrote an introduction to his book.
-
- As a sequel to Bodansky's Target America: Terrorism in
the U.S. Today and a couple of years afterwards another panicky figure
comes along and produces an American prime-time presentation: Jihad in
America. [Frontline, 1994]. This new alarmist is Steven Emerson. Emerson's
bottom line is that there are Islamic fundamentalists and terrorists who
are already settled and situated in the United States with their families
and their professional jobs, who are waiting for the signal to go on behalf
of the Islamic Internationale and bomb and kill where-ever and when-ever
the call of duty arises! In the glow of his TV special Jihad in America
and in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing Emerson was approached
by the media for his professional opinion as an expert on terrorism about
this horrible explosion; and he said that it had the print of Islamic or
Middle Eastern terrorism all over it! Of course it turned out that it was
Timothy McVeigh who was behind this terrible event, and Mr. Emerson
withdrew
into his Investigative Project shell and wait for the propitious moment
when he would re-emerge with a bang.
-
- In the mean time a profile was readied and an argument
was stitched together to convince the American public that the
"Muslims
are coming." In January 1993, Mir Aimal Kansi shot five employees
of the CIA in Langley, Va. Killing two of them. Chalk that up as the first
suggestion that Muslims do have an impulse to kill American officials,
or something along these lines.
-
- In February of the same year, an explosion goes off at
the World Trade Center in New York city in which six people were killed
and scores of others were injured. Four Muslims were held responsible for
this atrocious act while 118 others were marked as potential un-indicted
co-conspirators. Mark this as another incremental implication that Muslims
are out to get the United States! In June 1993, the Muslim scholar Sheikh
'Umar 'Abd al-Rahman and nine others from within his "inner
circle"
were arrested. They were charged with a plot to bomb the United Nations,
the George Washington Bridge, the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels as well as
a federal office building. Add this plot to the "grand Islamic
strategy"
of terrorizing the US. In March 1994, some Lebanese opens fire on a bus
carrying fifteen Hasidic Jews on the Brooklyn Bridge, and this too is
tagged
to the "Islamic profile." In February 1997 opens fire at the
Empire State building. One tourist is killed and six others wounded before
he turns the pistol and kills himself. This, too, helps makes the case
that Muslims are methodically targeting Americans! In July 1997, an Arab
was arrested by New York City police. They said that he was planning to
bomb the subway system. And once again anything that combines an Arab with
criminal activity or potential criminal activity is added to the list to
make the case that the Muslims are terrorists. Then came proof positive:
on September 11, 2001 the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon
in Washington, D.C., and the plane that crashed in rural Pennsylvania,
these were all strung together to build a solid case for the Israeli
argument
that the Muslims are at war with the United States. Nearly three thousand
Americans died on this villainous day. And Steven Emerson and his ilk were
reborn and re-positioned in front of the world-wide TV and media broadcasts
to make their claims that there is an Islamic Terroristic Internationale.
Bodansky, Emerson, and company were resurrected from the ashes of ground
zero. The media cannot get enough of them. Many times Emerson and his
tutors
and counselors are filling the air-waves. With a touch of magic Emerson
may appear on three different and separate TV programs at the same
time.
-
- And now Mr. Emerson comes out with his new book American
Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us. Recent information from Steven
Emerson
also indicates that he is pushing for another TV special to further
alienate
the American Muslims. The title of this new Emerson project is What Went
Wrong? (The Birth of Jihad and the War to Destroy America and the West.)
What goes unnoticed in this sequence of events is that the effort to
demonize
Muslims in the United States and the West is proportionately related to
the mounting military and psychological pressure exerted by Islamic
freedom-fighter
movements such as Islamic Jihad, Hamas, and Hizbullah. When these Islamic
militias turn the pressure up on the Israeli officials in occupied
Palestine,
the surrogates of these Israeli officials throughout the Western world
and in particular within the United States begin to try to pressure Muslims
by such things as movies, books, "documentaries," tampering with
the US legal system, and federal and law enforcement raids into Muslim
owned businesses and institutions, as well as into Muslim homes! It would
seem like the strategy of Emerson and his equivalents is to whip up an
air of Islamophobia by which they hope to de-humanize Muslims as a means
to discrediting Muslims from any significant or noteworthy participation
in the American political process.
-
- Emerson is no Archimedes who happened to stumble across
"Islamic Fundamentalism" while he was bored one day in Oklahoma
City, as he asserts in his book American Jihad. Emerson did not shout
"Eureka"
when he began hearing in Muslim conferences the depth of Israeli injustice
that is reflected in the lectures and words of Muslim scholars. It is no
secret that Muslims the world over feel a deep sense of obligation to
liberate
the Holy Land from political Zionism and its racist Israeli nation-state.
Rather, Mr. Emerson stumbled upon the time-coordinates of the
intensification
of the anti-Israeli Islamic Jihad on one side of the world and the Zionist
felt necessity to recruit the United States of America into an Israeli
military campaign against this Islamic anti-Zionist drive.
-
- The Israeli Connection: The Beginnings
-
- All of this dovetails very well with the Israeli Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin's declared war on international Islamic terrorism.
After the first Palestinian Intifadah (1987- early 90's) and a wave of
what the Israelis call "suicide bombings" and the Muslims call
"martyrdom operations" the high ranking Israeli officials were
convinced that they could not take the steam out of this Palestinian
military
opposition except by tracking down and eliminating the operational
masterminds
of what they have been systematically calling the "Islamic terror
web." While Rabin and company were encircling the military leaders
of the Palestinian people and targeting them with assassination operations
and booby-trap detonations, Emerson and company were busy spinning their
stories about an international Islamic support system for this Islamic
terror.
-
- We should point out that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF)
in militarily occupied Palestine and the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai
Brith (ADL) in politically occupied America were working hand in hand.
The grand scheme comes from the Zionist minds of the Israeli establishment:
a four pronged approach: 1) demanding increased cooperation from Yasser
'Arafat's Palestinian Authority; 2) planning an erection of a massive
security
fence in the West Bank to keep Palestinians and Israelis apart; 3) boosting
intelligence gathering efforts inside Gaza and the West Bank, with extra
funds and manpower allocated; and 4) cracking down on known activists and
on Hamas and Islamic Jihad-linked institutions...
-
- In this grand Israeli strategy of taking on the Islamic
"enemy" every effort had to be exhausted to have the United
States
on the Israeli military side. It was not enough for the Israelis to have
the United States protect them with their vetoes at the United Nations;
it was not enough for the Israelis to have the US government locked into
a strategic military pact with the government in Tel Aviv; and it was not
enough to have the US routinely unload its sophisticated military hardware
at Israeli military and civilian airports in occupied Palestine. The
Israeli
leadership of Rabin, Perez, Netanyahu, Barak, and now Sharon, they all
require the United States government to be in the Israeli front line
locking
up, taking out, and knocking off every Muslim who may eventually become
an active opponent of Zionist Israel. Noteworthy in this regard is the
continuous feedback that American intelligence (especially the Federal
Bureau of Investigations (FBI)) receives from Israeli intelligence. Israeli
Intelligence services are reported to have been streamlining classified
information to the FBI about Islamic organizations in the United States
that gives these organizations a terrorist twist. Mossad, Shin Beth, and
Shabak channel their information to the American intelligence agencies
to have the latter believe that Islamic organizations operating within
the US are either an extension of or support groups for Hamas and Islamic
Jihad in the West Bank and Gaza. It was along these "intelligence
feed" (American intelligence agencies and federal government
departments
being baited by Israeli intelligence) that the United States government
began to turn its legal and official wrath against American Islamic
organizations.
To this end, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development among
many other Islamic charity organizations were virtually raided and shut
down by the Federal Authorities. Its assets were frozen; and in effect
it was rendered inoperable.
-
- With Yossef Bodansky, Judith Miller, and Steven Emerson
leading the charge against the Muslims in the media, and with Daniel Pipes,
Martin Kramer, and Bernard Lewis concocting and thinking up anti-Semitic
(or anti-Arab) ideas in academia, and with the likes of Richard Perle and
Paul Wolfowitz strategizing a "war on terrorism" the Israeli
jigsaw puzzle is coming together.
-
- September 11th : The Trigger Mechanism
-
- With this backdrop and setting and these long years of
Zionist demonization of almost anything that hints at Islamic
self-determination
the inevitable was about to happen. And it did. On March 20, 2002 the
inhumane
and the un-American came to pass: a contingent of American law enforcement
agencies swooped down on friendly Islamic organizations in what may be
called a dragnet. The Customs, the Secret Service, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms, the FBI, the Immigration and Naturalization Service,
and maybe a couple of other law enforcement agencies entered into Muslim
educational institutes, charity offices, and private homes and in an
operation
that continued for hours took whatever they suspected of having information
to incriminate these Islamic organizations and individuals! They even took
baby pictures, passports, drivers licenses, computers, and - listen to
this - a wedding card of a Muslim young lady who got married the previous
week! These searches were conducted by an estimated 150 law enforcement
officers. The Customs Service said 14 search warrants were executed in
Northern Virginia and one was used in Georgia, but that no arrests were
made.
-
- The American Muslim community today is like the American
Jewish community during the McCarthy era. Many Jews in the fifties were
suspected of being communists or communist sympathizers -- and many Muslims
today are suspected of being terrorists or terrorist sympathizers.
-
- In the weeks and months leading to these raids, the two
major newspapers in the Washington, D.C. area (the Washington Post and
the Washington Times) ran articles about Islamic Schools in the Washington,
D.C. metropolitan area. And in these articles it was said that the
curriculum
at these schools promote anti-Jewish sentiments. Muslim children at these
schools are taught to "hate."
-
- Solidarity International - USA listed the organizations
and homes that were raided on Wednesday March 20, 2002:
-
- Muslim World League, International Relief Organization
(IRO), International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), Success
Foundation,
American Muslim Foundation (AMF), International Institute of Islamic
Thought
(IIIT), Fiqh Council of North America, Graduate School of Islamic Social
Sciences, SAAR Foundation, SAAR International, Safa Trust, Mar-Jac
Holdings,
Inc., Mar-Jac Investments, Inc., Mar-Jac Poultry, Inc., Mena Cooperation,
Sterling Charitable Gift Fund, York Foundation, York International, African
Muslim Agency, Aradi, Inc., American Muslim Foundation, Heritage Education
Trust, Humana Charitable Trust, Grove Corporate Inc., Reston Investment
Inc., Sterling Management Group, Inc., The homes of Dr. Jamal al-Barzinji,
Dr. Ahmad Totunji, Dr. Yaqub Mirza, Dr. Mohammoloraghlit, Dr. Taha Jabir
al-'Alwani, Dr. Iqbal Yunus, Tarik Hamdi, Muhammad Ashraf, and home of
M. 'Omar Ashraf.
-
- This grand operation by the Fed's is called "Green
Quest," and it amounts to a full-scale violation of American Muslims
whose only crime appears to be guilt by association - religious
association.
Nowadays, it seems like (from the federal perspective) anyone who is a
Muslim may be a "terrorist." President Bush seemed to be assuring
when he told the Muslim Americans that this war is against terrorism and
not against Islam. But day after day and event after event the American
Muslims cannot avoid the distinct impression that this is proclaimed war
against terrorism is turning into a war against Muslims. Operation Green
Quest is said to be carrying out more than 300 probes into
"terrorist"
finances. Since it began about four months ago it says it has seized about
$10.3 million in smuggled US currency and $4.3 in other assets. The whole
operation so far has resulted in 21 searches, 12 arrests, and four
indictments.
-
- American Muslims and the Absence of Due
Process
-
- As the Muslim Americans have become more and more
familiar
with buzz-words like "national security" and "secret
evidence"
and "profiling" their civil liberties as well as their human
rights are becoming cliffhanger affairs. The fall into the abyss of
discrimination
and the absence of due process is haunting law-abiding and decent American
Muslim citizens.
-
- In the run-up to these Federal raids Muslim intellectuals
and professionals were rounded up and detained on the flimsy information
provided to American courts of law as "secret evidence" and for
purposes of "national security." Dr. Sami al-'Arian, Dr. Mazen
al-Najjar, Dr. Anwar Haddam, and many others have been threatened with
legal procedures and law-suits or hauled out to prison on the
unconstitutional
basis of "secret evidence" in which the accused do not know what
they are charged with and because of that cannot even defend themselves
in a court of law.
-
- If the United States government wants to approach the
issue of terrorism without showing favoritism to American Jews then it
should also lock up suspected Jews on the same basis of "secret
evidence"
and "national security" unless of course there is no longer any
difference between American national security and Israeli national
security.
Even by the standards of the American Department of State there are two
or three Israeli Terrorist Organization: Kach, Kahane Chai, and The Jewish
Defense League (JDL). And if this is the case why haven't we heard of the
FBI, the IRS, the INS, the Secret Service, and other federal law
enforcement
agencies looking into the finances of these Israeli Zionist terrorist
organizations?
These pro-Israel Zionist organizations also have a list of committing or
attempting to commit crimes on US soil against Palestinians, Arabs, and
Muslims most of whom are Americans? Are there American Jewish equivalents
of the Muslim World League, the Fiqh Council of North America, the Graduate
School of Islamic Social Sciences, the International Institute of Islamic
Thought, and others that may be considered by reasonable people to be a
support system or an "infrastructure" for terrorists who support
the racist policies of the apartheid regime in Tel Aviv?
-
- Why doesn't the Justice Department seek to conduct
voluntary
interviews with 5,000 predominantly Jewish, foreign nationals who are
conceivably
violent supporters of the Zionist officials in Tel Aviv?
-
- Singling out American Muslims without considering their
American Jewish counterparts in the extended Arab-Israeli conflict is
unmistakably
prejudicial and damaging to the civic fabric of American society.
-
- For starters, may the American Muslims respectfully ask
Secretary of Justice Ashcroft to find out which Yeshivas, Synagogues, and
Jewish philanthropic organizations have any links to Jewish fundamentalists
and "terrorists" and raid their offices and homes? Or would Mr.
Ashcroft and the whole American Republican administration of Mr. Bush be
afraid of being called "anti-Semitic?"
-
- No thanks, but due to the Israel-firsters in high places
and influential offices in subsequent American administrations the Israeli
war generals and the American prosecutors have discovered that they have
a common enemy: Palestinian Muslims and American Muslims and every Muslim
in-between! The Israeli Zionist crowd is riding roughshod over the American
legal process and the American Muslims have become the scapegoats for the
political lack of progress in solving the Israeli-Arab conflict!
-
- Conclusion
-
- It appears from the sequence of events placed in their
proper national and international context that the Zionist crowd and their
cheer-leaders have two basic things on their mind. First, they want to
equate an international war on terrorism with a particular war on
Palestinians.
For this reason they keep on reminding us that Yasser 'Arafat is the
Palestinians
Bin Laden and Ariel Sharon is George Bush. According to this biased
reasoning
the war against Palestinians is necessarily a war against international
terrorism; and divergently the war against international terrorism is ipso
facto a war against the Palestinians. Within this reckoning the US
government
should have all the right in the world to harass, pursue, indict, imprison,
deport, and even bring back the assassins to finish off those who are
deemed
outside a court of law as being with the "terrorists." Because
as president Bush said in so many words: if you are not with us, you are
against us. Could the following months and years interpret that to mean
that if you are not a Zionist you are a "terrorist?"
-
- Second, the Zionist drive is on to diminish and destroy
American Muslim organizations that have been working they way up on the
American political ladder and making headway as far as American foreign
policy is concern. The Zionist lobby was feeling the beginning of the
competition
with those who do not agree with it --- more specifically with the
pro-Palestinian
grassroots and lobbying efforts so, now, they are out to get them. The
Zionist have recruited the American government to their side. President
Bush has been saying all along that the war against terrorism is not a
war against Islam; these admirable words are contradicted by actions on
the ground. The descending of law enforcement agencies and the frequent
violation of legal immigrants and American Muslims' legal rights (contrary
to time-honored American values and principles) is proof that the spillover
effect of the Middle East problems are beginning to inundate the lives
of millions of decent and law-abiding Americans: of Muslim, Arab,
Palestinian
and other origins. To this end, the United States is being contaminated
with the vices of the Zionist interest by virtue of its Zionist lobby.
It is high time for the decision makers in Washington to realize that
American
interests have been hijacked by Israel; and if corrective action is not
taken soon enough it will become impossible to distinguish between the
American interest and the Israeli interest. Or in the words of Dr. Maher
Hathout, Senior Advisor of Muslim Political Affairs Council (MPAC),:
"the
United States has become the most hated country in the world, competing
sometimes with Israel." (Addressing a Capitol Hill audience, April
5, 2002.)
-
- ___
-
- Dr. Ahmed Yousef is Director of United Association for
Studies and Research (UASR) and Editor-in-Chief, Middle East Affairs
Journal.
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