Islamophobia, the New Anti-Semitism

Columnist Eric Margolis writes:

What we are seeing is an eruption of cultivated anti-Muslim hatred that has been building up for the past nine years since 9/11. Openly attacking Muslims has become the last acceptable public prejudice.

Islamophobia has become the mantra of the right, not only in the US, but across Europe.

I saw the first signs of Islamophobia fifteen years ago when I interviewed Jean Marie Le Pen, France’s far right, Vichyite leader. "Muslims are invading Europe," he told me. "They are spreading crime and disease. We must drive them out."

Today, we witness Islamophobia in normally sensible, levelheaded nations like Denmark, Holland, Britain, Belgium, France and Switzerland.

Hatred and fear of Muslims has become as much a central creed of the right’s thinking as was right-wing hatred and fear-mongering about Jews in 1930’s Europe. Simply replace the word "Muslim" with "Jews" in today’s anti-Islamic screeds and the evil flavor of the 1930’s is revived.

Few politicians or media have dared tell Americans the truth about the real cause of 9/11. Instead, we have had a steady outpouring of junk psychological clap trap about how Islam is a sick religion; how Muslims are innately violent; and how "Islamofascism" supposedly menaces America.

The dragon teeth of religious hatred planted by the Bush administration, and nurtured by the neocons and religious far right, are blooming.

Islam had no more to do with 9/11 than Christianity did with World War II. The men who staged the attacks were Muslims, and spoke in its idiom, as most Muslims do, but their inspiration for this awful act was punishing the US for Palestine, overthrowing Mideast governments, expropriating resources, and imposing brutal tyrannies on the Muslim world.