Opinion

When Rouhani says blaming ISIS on Islam is Islamophobic, is anyone listening?

As you surely know, anti-Semitism is in the news. The New York Times did a big piece on anti-Semitism in Europe, saying that even if you don’t like Israel you can’t blame Jews and Judaism for Israel’s actions. You have to separate the two: “as European criticism of Israel… [has] hardened, many Jews describe a blurring of distinctions between being anti-Israel and being anti-Jew.”

OK, point taken. There’s no excuse for hating Jews, even if Israel just massacred 500 Palestinian children.

But then where’s the big piece on the scourge of Islamophobia? Yesterday I heard Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s excellent speech from Sept. 25 to the UN General Assembly on CSPAN. Rouhani said that when the western media blame Al Qaeda’s terrorism or ISIS’s beheadings on “radical Islam,” it’s smearing Islam. Islam has nothing to do with this violence. It’s anti-western violence, reflecting a history of colonialism and continued western meddling and slaughter in the region.

If you’re going to say that Judaism has nothing to do with Israel’s massacres, then for God’s sake, our press should be covering Rouhani’s argument against Islamophobia!

Thanks to the Times of Israel, here’s Rouhani’s text. Bear in mind he is a Muslim cleric and a constitutional lawyer. The relevant portions:

[The extremists] have a single goal: the destruction of civilization, giving rise to Islamophobia and creating a fertile ground for further intervention of foreign forces in our region….

Today’s anti-Westernism is the offspring of yesterday’s colonialism. Today’s anti-Westernism is a reaction to yesterday’s racism…

To fight the underlying causes of terrorism, one must know its roots and dry its source fountains. Terrorism germinates in poverty, unemployment, discrimination, humiliation and injustice. And it grows with the culture of violence. To uproot extremism, we must spread justice and development and disallow the distortion of divine teachings to justify brutality and cruelty. The pain is made greater when these terrorists spill blood in the name of religion and behead in the name of Islam. They seek to keep hidden this incontrovertible truth of history that on the basis of the teachings of all divine prophets, from Abraham and Moses and Jesus to Mohammed, taking the life of a single innocent life is akin to killing the whole humanity. I am astonished that these murderous groups call themselves an Islamic group. What is more astonishing is that the Western media, in line with them, repeats this false claim, which provokes the hatred of all Muslims. Muslim people who everyday recall their God as merciful and compassionate and have learned lessons of kindness and empathy from their Prophet, see this defamation as part of an Islamophobic project.

Of course if you follow Rouhani’s logic out, you’d see that the mirror of the extremists who speak in Islam’s name are the extremists who speak in Judaism’s name. It’s not likely we’ll see meditations on Israel’s racism and extremist violence in the western press. But at the very least we ought to read stories about the rise of anti-Palestinian racism and violence in Israel.

(Rouhani is as high-minded as Chomsky: they do not see this as a religious conflict but a clash between imperialists and subject nations. Myself I regard this as a conflict that has a religious component on both sides: violent extremists use religion to justify their actions. And just as ISIS is fostering Islamophobia in Rouhani’s view (and Obama’s too), Israel and its lobby help to foster anti-Semitism because they call themselves Jewish and insist on blurring the line between Israel and Jewry. Item: Benjamin Netanyahu says that the Jewish people had a rough summer because of the attacks on “our country.” Item: Jeffrey Goldberg refers to the Israel lobby group AIPAC as a “Jewish organization.” It’s actually a Zionist organization, but the confusion is intentional.)

 

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Thanks Phil.

President Rouhani is right.

Both President Bush and President Obama have repeatedly and forcefully distanced Islam from Al Qaeda and ISIS. Bush most passionately, most frequently and to a constancy where that position probably lost him support. The press covered it.

That being said, Phil I agree with you. Israel is the state that collectively represents the Jewish people. The Jewish people in Israel elect that government and the Jewish people in America and in most other countries support it. It is reasonable to hold Jews responsible for the actions of Israel, in the same way you can hold the French people responsible for the actions of France.

As far as ISIS I don’t think its fair to say it represents muslims. I do think it is fair to say it represents at least strong undercurrents of the Sunnis of Eastern Syria and Northern Iraq. ISIS is clearly drawing broadly from those communities and is able to function in them with broad community support. ISIS doesn’t hold elections but i think it is fair to say that if the Sunnis had a choice to vote between an ISIS government or the Iraqi Shia government they would pick ISIS. I think it is fair to say that the Sunnis of Eastern Syria have picked ISIS over the Alawite government of Assad. Those people might choose a different form of government if/when they are no longer under occupation (i.e. they have a government which represents their interests) but I think it is fair to hold them responsible for ISIS.

I have always objected to the idea that people aren’t responsible for the collective acts of the societies to which they belong. This idea that government have no tie to their population’s political will is simply UN fantasy.

ISIS is the West’s baby

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/sep/25/iraq-outlaw-state/

“Even by the standards of Iraq’s turbulent history, its past few decades have been unusually relentless. Just since 1980 Iraqis have experienced three major wars that wrecked the country’s physical infrastructure and left perhaps half a million dead; an attempt at genocide that permanently alienated Iraq’s five million Kurds; a ten-year siege under the UN’s “Oil-for-Food” program that devastated the economy, ruined the middle class, and forced the most talented into exile; an American invasion that shattered national pride and stoked bitter divisions; and a civil war that displaced as many as 4.7 million Iraqis from their homes and has driven a deep, perhaps irreparable chasm of mistrust between Iraq’s 60 percent Shia Arab majority and the once-dominant 20 percent Sunni Arab minority. Excepting perhaps the Russians from 1914 to 1953, few modern nations have been so cursed by ill luck for such an extended period.”

the disposable heroes give a great intro to the 91 war

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g_t8tQ4zyo

Some of the sunni men now in ISIS were kids in Fallujah in 03

So many things never make it into the narrative and this is a classic of the genre

@Annie Robbins

do. i think it is a fair question. if you’re mouthing daniel pipes, SITE, the weekly standard, WAPO, rudoren.. or some israeli think tank. just spit it out.

I didn’t even know my position that ISIS is indigenous isn’t controversial. If you want a few links:

From 2009 when the foreign influence was dropping in Al Qaeda: http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/11/18/idUSLI176502

David Petraeus on the reason that ISIS has the support of locals: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/iraq-war-on-terror/losing-iraq/david-petraeus-isiss-rise-in-iraq-isnt-a-surprise/

BBC: ISIS in Syria is 60-70% Syrian:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-25460397

The latest CIA estimate was up to 15k foreigners have joined ISIS with 31,500 active fighters. They didn’t know how many of the foreigners had died.

Everywhere I google that’s what I find. As for your NYTimes leak in context it doesn’t appear the NYTimes believes that actor theory and attributes it to trying to rattle ISIS. But you should note that the very article sees the ground forces for ISIS as indigenous and this ploy as trying to get them to view ISIS as doing the bidding of foreigners. So I’m not sure how you see it supporting your case since if ISIS were openly foreign then this ploy wouldn’t work.

JeffB September 28, 2014, 2:09 pm
You are making no sense . Iran did not stop US from planning and carrying out any meaningful establishment of some kind of stable society in Iraq after the war. The planned chaos was in the works before the war. It just got unplanned by the ferocious pushback from everybody in Iraq. That also satisfied the neocons . Check with Daniel Pipes,Krystol,Kuthammaer ,and Ledeen, Zinni, Scheniski, and British intelligence .
You with straight face can say that Iraq was detested[ sanctions ,bombing,and no fly activities are evidence of detestation! ] for Saddam was disrespectful and Saddam was attacked for not supporting war on terror. You are amazing !