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The Latest Falsehood from the Advocates
of Civilizational War
Not
All Terrorists are Muslim
By M. SHAHID ALAM
"While it may be true--and
probably is--that not all Muslims are terrorists, it also happens
to be true that nearly all terrorists are Muslim."
Dan Gillerman, Israeli Ambassador
to the UN, March 7, 2006
Terrorism has long been the chief demonizing
marker that Israel and the United States have used in their wars
against Islamic states and peoples who have stood in the path
of their imperial ambitions.
Israel has led the way in charting
this course. With massive propaganda, the Zionists succeeded
in equating the Palestinian resistance with terrorism. In no
Western country did this propaganda encounter greater success--including
Israel itself--than in the United States. Most liberal Americans--and
a few leftists--argued that Palestinian terrorists threatened
Israel's existence.
After the capitulation of Egypt
at Camp David, Israel pursued more lofty ambitions. The original
dream of a Pax Israelica, stretching from Morocco to Pakistan,
now seemed within reach. Only the newly emerging Islamist forces
in the region--notably, in Iran--now stood in its way.
The nascent Islamists offered
both a challenge and an opportunity to Israel. If Israel could
paint the Islamists as a civilizational threat to the very survival
of the West, the American voters could be goaded into supporting
Israel's war against the Islamists: or better still, make this
war their own.
This is not to discount the
lure of Middle Eastern oil for America's power elite. Although
the US is the world's only superpower, its relative economic
position has been declining for some time. Although the US may
not reverse its economic decline, it could solidify its power
by gaining control over the world's oil spigot in the Persian
Gulf. Europe and China could be tamed if they knew that the US
had its hand on the oil spigot.
This temptation was strong,
but it also carried risks. In a democracy, moreover, there stands
another obstacle. Public opinion in the United States would resist
such a major and risky war. Americans, therefore, would have
to be prepared for war by conjuring fears of new Islamic hordes
gathering to attack and destroy the West, especially the United
States.
Israel, the Zionists and their
neoconservative allies in the United States began to work on
these fears. It would not be too difficult to revive the West's
old obsession about fanatical Muslims, forcing their religion
upon infidels at the point of their swords. But these atavistic
fears would have to be decked anew. The Zionist and neoconservative
thinkers would go to work painting Islam as anti-modernist, opposed
to freedom, and inimical to the rights of women and minorities.
In other words, Muslims were the last remaining obstacle to the
final and irreversible triumph of Western values and power.
This was not all. The Zionists
also argued that the Muslims were an active and growing threat
to the survival of the West. The new forces gathering under the
Islamic banner were determined to attack the West. Israel was
only their immediate target. After destroying Israel, they would
go for the United States and Europe, their real targets. Their
goal was nothing less than the imposition of Islamic law on Western
Christendom. Most importantly, the Zionists warned repeatedly,
the Islamists would use terror--the same tactics they had employed
so long against Israel--to destroy the Western economies.
This strategy could scarcely
fail to achieve its objective. On the domestic front, Americans
were being told constantly of Islamic hostility to modernity,
to the West and the United States especially. On the international
front, the US and Israel together deepened their siege of the
Islamic world, with open wars against Palestinians, Lebanese,
Iraqis, Afghans, and threats of new wars against Iran, Syria
and Pakistan.
Under these dire circumstances,
small groups of Muslims--no more than a few hundred at first--broke
away from the mainstream Islamist movements who were battling
the repression and corruption of their own governments. These
splinter groups advocated attacks against the United States,
the 'far enemy' that they argued was the real power behind Israel
and the indigenous tyrannies.
When these splinter groups
began their terrorist attacks in the early 1990s, the Zionists,
neoconservatives, and other assorted right-wing reactionary groups
had gained what they waited for. Here was proof, they proclaimed,
of the malevolent designs of the Islamic terrorists, the Islamic
fundamentalists, nay, of the entire Islamic world. Wake up, the
Zionists began telling the Americans. The Islamic terrorists
who have been attacking us since 1948 have now attacked you.
We face the same terrorist hordes. It is the Islamic world, stupid.
So, when the nineteen hijackers
from al-Qaida attacked the Twin Towers, renewed efforts were
launched to establish a definitive connection between Islam and
terrorism. Some voices proclaimed that all Muslims are
terrorists or at least potential terrorists. The US government
was not going that far yet. It proclaimed that it was waging
war against Islamic terrorists, not against Islam.
What the US government did
after 9-11, however, sent exactly the opposite message. It launched
a war against Iraq, a secular Arab government, opposed to the
Islamists and with no known connection to the perpetrators of
9-11. It gave up its pretense of playing the honest broker between
Israel and the Palestinians. It launched plans to effect 'regime
change' in Syria and Iran. US intentions in the Middle East were
summed up ominously in its plans to bring 'democracy' to the
region. The real plan--long a part of Israel's strategic plan
for the region--was to redraw the map of the Middle East.
The advocates of civilizational
war in the United States were not yet resting on their laurels.
They had not achieved quite what they wanted. They wanted all-out,
open war against the Islamic world. They wanted the US to equate
Islam with terrorism, and Muslims with terrorists. They wanted
to deport Muslims who called the West their home, or shut them
up in internment camps. They wanted to legalize the torture of
Muslims, and their indefinite detention. Indeed, they were celebrating
the loss of their own liberties as a necessary tool in the war
against Islam.
Unremittingly, Israel, the
Zionists and neoconservatives are pushing the United States to
start the total war against Islam. They work openly, covertly
and by deceit. On the ideological front, their goal is to define
all Muslims as terrorist. This goal appears to be nearly
in sight. They have persuaded many Americans that all
terrorists are Muslims even if all Muslims are not terrorists.
A tenuous distinction indeed,
if there was one. If all terrorists are Muslims, and we
cannot tell the bad ones from the good ones, can we then afford
to give 'good Muslims' the benefit of the doubt? Can the West
risk its survival on so fine, so tenuous a distinction? Should
the West risk its survival on this distinction?
The charge that all
terrorists are Muslims is a scarcely concealed advocacy for war
against all Muslims. It does not matter that this equation is
false. The claim that Saddam Hussein had WMDs was also false;
so was his connection with the 9-11 hijackers. But these lies
were used to invade, occupy and devastate Iraq. If this new falsehood
prevails, and it appears to be gaining ground, this is what will
drive the war against Islam--the most deadly after the second
World War. Duped into rage, Americans will stand four square
behind the war of the twenty-first century to defeat the Islamo-fascists,
to eradicate the Islamic terrorists. Once this is over, they
can enjoy the glories of yet another American century.
CounterPunch
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