Boston Marathon bombings unleash a new wave of Islamophobia

Sharia
An anti-Park 51 protester in New York City in September 2010
(Photo: David Shankbone/Wikimedia Commons)

It’s happening again: another collective freakout steeped in Islamophobia. The Boston Marathon bombings have unleashed the anti-Muslim sentiment that bubbles under the surface and always shines bright in times of national hysteria. The current wave of Islamophobia the country is perpetuating and experiencing–and it’s only the beginning–is the first since the Park 51 fracas in 2010.

The news that the main suspects in the bombing are Chechen Muslims will fuel the ugly hate that has intensified since September 11. But the hate was unleashed immediately after the attack, even before the public knew that Muslims were involved. How little is needed for the brash and bigoted side of this country to come out swinging against the “Muslim enemy” we have been been so trained to fear.

It’s very easy to see the most blatant manifestations of the ugly phenomenon of Islamophobia, which casts collective blame on all Muslims. The right-wing is always the place to start. But it’s also emanating from our mainstream institutions and figures, where it’s a little more difficult to identify the Islamophobia. It’s there, though. Powerful institutions and figures are focusing on Muslims and trying to justify even more animus and surveillance targeting the Muslim community in the United States.

Let’s begin with the easiest of places: the Islamophobic media. The New York Post led the charge on this front. In the immediate hours after the Boston attack, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid fingered a “Saudi national” who was injured in the blast as a suspect. It turns out he had nothing to do with the attack.

The other easy place to see anti-Muslim hate is, of course, the Islamophobic blogosphere. Pamela Geller went from freaking out about the Saudi to freaking out about two innocent people featured on the Post’s front page to freaking out about a missing university student to finally arriving at where everybody else is: freaking out about the Chechen suspects. What tied them all together was they all looked “Muslimy,” the term Wajahat Ali aptly used in Salon, and denotes how Muslims have become racialized in this country. There was also Steve Emerson, the faux terror “expert” welcomed by AIPAC with open arms, who opined about the “Saudi national” on television, as Ali Gharib documented.

And then there are the anti-Muslim hate crimes. ColorLines has chronicled some of them. They include: a white man punching a Palestinian woman who wears a hijab in Massachusetts; and Latino men beating up a Bangladeshi in the Bronx because he looked “Arab.”

But how easy anti-Muslim sentiment migrates over into the mainstream. Sure, this form of Islamophobia is not as blatant as Pam Geller’s. But it’s just as dangerous–if not more so, since more people imbibe what the mainstream tells them.

The mainstream media is busy speculating about whether Islam played a role in the decision to blow up the bombs at the Boston marathon. I heard one reporter ask the uncle of the suspects whether they were “radicalized” in a local mosque, apparently not knowing that the vast majority of mosques in the nation are nowhere near “radical.” This is the soft bigotry the mainstream is engaging in.

Another culprit that has bought into Islamophobia, and therefore legitimizing it, is law enforcement. Return back to the Saudi national story. As The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson writes, “he was the only one who, while in the hospital being treated for his wounds, had his apartment searched in ‘a startling show of force,’ as his fellow-tenants described it to the Boston Herald, with a ‘phalanx’ of officers and agents and two K9 units.” Davidson goes on to ask: “Why the search, the interrogation, the dogs, the bomb squad, and the injured man’s name tweeted out, attached to the word ‘suspect’?” The question answers itself. He was Saudi. He was Arab. That’s enough for a lot of people, including law enforcement. It speaks volumes that the only injured person to have his home searched by law enforcement was the Saudi national.

Finally, let’s look at the man who runs the city that suffered the nation’s most catastrophic terrorist attack. Mayor Michael Bloomberg sought to reassure New York City in the aftermath of the Boston attacks. But he ended up exploiting the attacks for his own political purposes. At a press conference on Tuesday, he crassly said: “The moment that we let our guard down, the moment we get complacent, the moment we allow special interests to shape our security strategies, is the moment that the terrorists are waiting for. As a country, we may not be able to thwart every attack. We saw that yesterday. But we must do everything we possibly can to try.”

“Security strategies.” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that Bloomberg is referring to the New York Police Department’s tactic of spying on Muslim communities with no regard as to whether people are innocent or guilty of any crime. Don’t get complacent: stop criticizing the NYPD, the mayor says. They’re doing their job, and their job is to map Muslim communities, eavesdrop on conversations and catalog innocent people in police documents related to terrorism. And those “special interests”? That’s a clear as day reference to the Muslims who are fighting back against the spy program and to the allies who have joined them in that fight.

What Bloomberg doesn’t acknowledge is that the police department itself has admitted in court that their surveillance program has not stopped a single act of terrorism. Not one. Which begs the question: how can the “security strategies” Bloomberg is defending help prevent the next Boston? They can’t. But Bloomberg wants to justify a program that is Islamophobic at its core.

So here we are, nearly 12 years after September 11 unleashed a new wave of anti-Muslim hate. 44 percent of Americans say they have an “unfavorable” view of Muslims, according to a recent poll–and that was before the Boston bombings. How little has changed.
 

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It’s truly sickening.

Thanks Alex.

within an hour of the Boston Marathon bombings I fully expected to see the neocon usual suspects on tv pushing for a U.S. war on Iran to clog our media endlessly … did they miss an opportunity?

“The moment wé allow special interests to shape our security policies “….
Dude , that point was passed decades ago. Eisenhower warned about it .

So let me get this straight.
Two Muslim guys commit a terrorist act with casualties in a major US city.
And all you care to write about is why the media is not acting in a tolerant
PC manner.
Are you for real?

● RE: “[T]he moment we allow special interests to shape our security strategies, is the moment that the terrorists are waiting for.” ~ Bloomberg

● SPEAKING OF THE U.S. ALLOWING “SPECIAL INTERESTS” TO SHAPE OUR SECURITY STRATEGIES, the NRA is making common cause with Israel and the pro-Israel lobby. I saw David Keene, “El Presidente” of the NRA on the boob sh-t screen and he said that when the December shooting at the school in Newtown, Connecticut (the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting) occurred he just happened to be (surprise, surprise**) in Israel. It was from Israel that he got the idea that there should be a policeman at each and every school in the U.S.* (like they have in Israel).
This is yet another reason I fear that Revisionist Zionism and Likudnik Israel (specifically by virtue of their inordinate sway over the U.S.) might very well be an “existential threat” to the values of The Enlightenment.
I do not want to live in a police/garrison state like Israel! ! !
Give me liberty, or give me death.

* ● SEE – NRA President’s Report: David Keene on the Push to Protect Our Children [VIDEO, 12:10] – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_Iy-LVL5dU

** ● FOR A NICE EXAMPLE OF THIS (A COUPLE OF MONTHS LATER), SEE: “Israel Project brags on planting story in CNN and taking 38 journalists on helicopter trips in Israel”, by Philip Weiss, Mondoweiss, 4/18/13
LINK – http://mondoweiss.net/2013/04/planting-journalists-helicopter.html

● THE BLOG ‘GUN WATCH’ (Note the Israeli flag to the right) – http://gunwatch.blogspot.com/2012/12/youtube-video-nra-presidents-report.html

AND HERE’S THE NRA’S CHIEF ‘HIRED ASSASSIN’ “LUCKY (LA) PIERRE” : “NRA calls for armed police officer in every school”, By Phillip Elliott and Nedra Pickler, Associated Press, 12/21/12

[EXCERPT] . . . The nation’s largest gun-rights lobby broke its weeklong silence on the shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary School with a defiant presentation. The event was billed as a news conference, but NRA leaders took no questions. Twice, they were interrupted by banner-waving protesters, who were removed by security.
Some had predicted that after the slaughter of a score of elementary-school children by a man using a semi-automatic rifle, the group might soften its stance, at least slightly. Instead, LaPierre delivered a 25-minute tirade against the notion that another gun law would stop killings in a culture where children are exposed daily to violence in video games, movies and music videos. He argued that guns are the solution, not the problem.
‘‘Before Congress reconvenes, before we engage in any lengthy debate over legislation, regulation or anything else; as soon as our kids return to school after the holiday break, we need to have every single school in America immediately deploy a protection program proven to work,’’ LaPierre said. ‘‘And by that I mean armed security.’’
He said Congress should immediately appropriate funds to post an armed police officer in every school. . .

ENTIRE ARTICLE – http://www.boston.com/news/education/2012/12/21/nra-calls-for-armed-police-officer-every-school/szKGbsScZhaVP1sXxNfoIM/story.html