Home
/
Isiam
/
Politics & Economics
/
The Islamophobia machine, a new growth industry (part 2 of 2)
The Islamophobia machine, a new growth industry (part 2 of 2)
Jul 18, 2025 8:05 PM

  By: Dr. Mohamed Elmasry

  One of Europe’s Islamophobia industry leaders is Matthias Kuentzel, a political scientist in Hamburg, Germany, of whom his U.S. promoters say:

  "Since 2004, he has been a research associate at the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism (SICSA) at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 2006, he became a member of the Boards of Directors of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East. He is the author of the new book, Jihad and Jew-Hatred: Islamism, Nazism and the Roots of 9/11. It was awarded the London Book Festival’s annual grand prize for ‘books worthy of greater attention from the international publishing community’. His essays about Islamism and anti-Semitism have been published inter alia in The New Republic, Policy Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal, Telos, and they have been translated into more than ten languages. In (2008), he is going to present his new book in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Buffalo, Bangor, Augusta and Washington DC."

  Among those European and North American authors in greatest demand these days are a growing number of young Western Muslim women who have forged a public profile by blaming Islam for every problem and disadvantage in the lives of Muslims everywhere - including of course their own. They are strangely vague, or even silent, on the role of poor social and economic conditions that prevail in most developing Muslim countries and about the exploitation of resources in those countries by Western powers, their proxies, or even their operatives within those Muslim countries.

  The Islamophobia industry is also responsible for translating books and opinion articles from other languages into English in order to accelerate the movement of anything that smears Islam and Muslims into the Western media bandwidth.

  It is all too easy to make a career in the Islamophobia industry. Financing is readily available from governments and right-wing special interest groups, all of whom are interested in smearing Islam in order to promote their political agenda of dominating, exploiting, invading, and ultimately occupying Muslim countries and homelands. The power of Islamophobia is thus brought to bear heavily on Muslim minorities in Western countries, who are pressured into silence and the abandonment of their collective political voice.

  Of course, those who work within and on behalf of the Islamophobia industry deny any wrongdoing or ethical compromise in their motivation. In fact, they deny that Islamophobia even exists! And when they are forced to actually acknowledge the term, it is always placed between quotation marks.

  Moreover, they attack any voice coming from among the Western Muslim communities - their primary victimized group. They also cheer on other Islamophobes, as well as defending Muslim profiling by the FBI and the Red Alerts issued by the CIA against Muslim countries.

  Islamophobes, regardless of what they call themselves, blame Muslims for every terrorist attack and find them all guilty-by-association for the crimes of a few. The only "good" Muslims in the view of the Islamophobia industry are those who agree to be stereotyped as "moderate," "modern," "liberal," "progressive," "ordinary" - in other words, socially compliant and politically silent.

  In October 2008, the national media watchdog group FAIR, released a first- of-its-kind report "profiling 12 of the leading Islamophobic pundits and media figures and examining the ways they've negatively influenced media coverage in the U.S."

  The report, called "Smearcasting: How Islamophobes Spread Fear, Bigotry and Misinformation," describes a loose network of right-wing, anti-Muslim partisans "who regularly use innuendo, questionable sources of information and even lies to smear, and effectively marginalize, Muslims in the media."

  Steve Rendall, one of the report's authors and a senior analyst at FAIR, said: "This report takes a fresh look at Islamophobia and its perpetrators in today's media ... We found prominent right-wing pundits and activists using misinformation and innuendo to broadcast hate against an entire community -- in this case, Muslim-Americans -- and major media have either fallen asleep at the wheel or, in many cases, have actively helped to spread the smears."

  "Media should seek various points of view, but the message of the Islamophobes cannot possibly comport with the standards and practices that should constrain media outlets from airing smears against ethnic and religious groups," Rendall continued. "We're talking about double standards."

  The report lists American talk show hosts like Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck; American activists like Michelle Malkin, Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz; and influential writers like Mark Steyn and Robert Spencer.

  The report also features four case studies, or snapshots, that show how "smearcasting" has affected news standards and reporting, including the following:

  Daniel Pipes led a successful campaign to oust the principal of a secular Arabic-language New York City public school by initiating a media-driven pressure campaign. The principal's history of forging interfaith and interethnic alliances was ignored by a campaign that branded her as a "stealth Islamist." Media pressure eventually forced her to resign.

  Columnist and Internet activist Michelle Malkin pressured Dunkin' Donuts into dropping an ad featuring celebrity chef Rachael Ray wearing a black- and-white scarf -- which Malkin falsely identified as a kafiyah (Middle Eastern men’s headdress), calling it a symbol of "murderous Palestinian jihad."

  Inevitably, Islamophobia emerged in the 2008 U.S. presidential election race, from nefarious whisper-campaigns directed at Senator (now President) Barack Obama to the recent distribution of an anti-Muslim propaganda DVD called "Obsession" to 28 million newspaper subscribers in electoral swing states.

  "We're not talking about people raving on a street corner downtown," Rendall emphasized. "These are people who either have a powerful platform at their disposal, or are allowed unfettered access to powerful platforms by reporters and editors in what are considered mainstream publications."

  On a note of warning he added, "These Muslim-bashing attacks have a real impact, not only on Muslims in America but on our civil discourse."

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
Politics & Economics
CIA resists disclosure of records on detention
  The Central Intelligence Agency is refusing to make public hundreds of pages of internal documents about the agency's defunct detention and interrogation program, saying such disclosures would jeopardize national security by revealing classified intelligence sources and operations.   The C.I.A.'s argument to withhold the material, laid out Monday in a declaration...
Kenya drought 'has spared no one'
  In Takaba town in north east Kenya, a crowd of people gather around a camel. The so-called ship of the desert has been weakened by drought and can barely move. When this happens, it takes an entire village to put it back on its feet.   Despite their best efforts the...
World food aid at 20-year low, 1 billion hungry
  Food aid is at a 20-year low despite the number of critically hungry people soaring this year to its highest level ever, the United Nations relief agency said Wednesday.   The number of hungry people will pass 1 billion this year for the first time, the U.N. World Food Program (WFP)...
Rabbis involved in organ sales
  At the end of July when 10 people, among them several rabbis, were arrested in New Jersey, USA, it was assumed that this was little more than a case of tax fraud by another charity. Charities often run foul of the law by failing, quite innocently, of fulfilling their legal...
Africa trial for malaria vaccine
  Scientists in Africa have begun trials of a malaria vaccine.   Developed through two decades of research, the Mosquirix vaccine - also known as RDS,S - is being tested in Africa's biggest ever clinical trial, spanning seven nations, and involving some 16,000 children.   More than 5,000 children have already undergone preliminary...
Atrocities haunt DRC child soldiers
  Militia brigades abducting children and forcing them to become soldiers, porters and sex slaves is a huge problem in the Democratic Republic of Congo.   In the last few months, fighting between the DRC army and Rwandan Hutu rebels and other militias has intensified.   Aid agencies describe the situation as catastrophic,...
'Israel has to be held accountable'
  The postponement of the UN Human Rights Council vote on the findings of Richard Goldstone's report into Israel's recent 22-day war on Gaza has raised many questions.   Sahar Francis, a Palestinian Israeli and a human rights lawyer who testified before the UN fact finding mission led by Goldstone, spoke to...
'Leadership' let down Palestinians
  The position of the Palestinian Authority (PA) mission in Geneva regarding the findings of the UN's Goldstone report on crimes during Israel's war on Gaza earlier this year was rather surprising - even by the norms put in place when it was established in Ramallah following the 1993 Oslo Accords....
Guantanamo conditions 'deteriorate'
  On the night that Barack Obama won the 2008 presidential election, 21-year-old Mohammed el Gharani was sitting in a segregation cell in Guantanamo Bay's high security Echo Block.   He remembers the excitement among his fellow prisoners at the prospect of an Obama presidency. "Everyone was very hopeful; people were saying...
Quds Day rally in Britain demands justice for murdered Gazan kids
  A rally in Britain called on Sunday for an end to Israeli "occupation" and demanded justice for "killers of Gaza children" in a Quds Day gathering thousands of British demonstrators joined despite an attempt of fascist groups to disrupt the peaceful rally, British newspapers said.   Annual Al-Quds Day demonstration in...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2025 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved