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Deep
Roots of Islamophobia
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Anti-Islamic
graffiti
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America's
long festering animus toward Arabs and Islam has finally arrived.
From black tie affairs to your local barbecue, you can see it in the
USA. You can hear it, too, whispering in the White House and booming
from Capitol Hill. Language that would get people fired if applied
to blacks or Jews now passes without comment when used against Arabs
and Muslims. It can be found somewhere, every day, in almost every
newspaper and TV news show in the land. We tend to view this
disturbing trend as the result of two, or twenty, or fifty years of
politics and events. But we are children of a history we do not
know. The roots of our "new" bigotry stretch through our
racist American past to a thousand-year old blind spot, one big
enough to drive half the world through. It's time to learn where we
came from.
It's
true that our reaction to September 11, twisted and amplified
through the gov-media input stream, opened a dark door in the
American heart. Softened up by decades of neoconservative,
fundamentalist, pro-Israeli and Hollywood propaganda, we were easy
marks for politicians brewing a spirit of national retribution.
But
we had already shown our stripes, long before the bigotry got
organized enough to establish its own think tanks. From our
demonization of Nasser and the PLO to the Iran hostage crisis of
1979, when Iranian-American citizens instantly became "sand
niggers" and victims of mobs and hate crimes from coast to
coast, we had revealed a wide seam of hatred for Arabs and Islam in the bedrock of our
national character.
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We
had revealed a wide seam of hatred for Arabs and Islam in the bedrock of
our national character. |
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Today,
after years of diligent polishing by powerful friends, this obdurate
stone of intolerance is passed off as a sparkling gem, a dynamic,
no-nonsense political point of view enjoying the highest official
approbation. Bush’s foreign policy and the continuing round up and
incarceration of Arab citizens and immigrants make the identity of
the enemy crystal clear.
We
have returned to our former habit of publicly attacking races,
cultures and religions as a matter of national politics. American
racists once again have a "legitimate" language to express
their hatred. No longer must the dirty business be kept behind the
curtain when the nation is willing to watch, mute and compliant.
Instead, we hide the enemy, especially if she is dead. It seems to
be easier to accept what's going on, if she has no humanity, if the
dead and dismembered civilians can't be seen, if their race and
religion are inferior, if "they will have to change anyway, one
way or another," as Tom Friedman might put it. We slip into it
so easily, it's as if we've been doing it for a thousand years.
Have
you ever stood so close to a Monet that the image dissolves into a
sea of swimming color? Step back a pace and the background begins to
resolve. Back another pace and the foreground jumps out with a
sudden force. If we take a few steps back into the deep history of
our problem with Islam, we may see the background for what it is.
And that may help us to resolve the turbulent foreground of our
picture.
For
example, what is the background to the new bigots' favorite claim,
that Islam is a "uniquely violent religion"? The
scriptural perspective is simply embarrassing. Both the Old
Testament and the Torah chronicle God's recurring commands to the
Hebrews to wipe out everyone in sight, so copiously that the Qur'an
looks downright tame by comparison. Christian and Jewish
fundamentalists defy their own scriptures when they defame Islam as
a violent religion.
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The
Qur'an looks downright tame in comparison to the Old
Testament and Torah. |
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Empirically,
since the beginning of Islam fourteen centuries ago, the Europeans
have been far more bloodthirsty, perhaps by a power of ten or more,
than the followers of Mohammed. ("Christendom" casts a
wider net than my argument intends, so I will use the term
"Europeans," i.e. people of European stock and heritage,
wherever they may be.) Not only did Europeans leapfrog the Muslim
world in developing sheer killing power, they have also been at each other's throats in large
conflicts far more frequently than have Arab Muslims in their own
sphere. And of course, Europeans nearly invented large scale
genocide and colonization of foreign lands as a state-commercial
enterprise. What do Muslims have in their history that even begins
to compare with the seizure, annihilation, and occupation of an
entire hemisphere?
And
what, to cite just one example, do Europeans have to compare with
the Moorish occupation of Spain? Instead of sowing lasting bloodshed
and dispossession, Islamic Spain allowed Muslims, Christians and
Jews to live together in fairly peaceful co-existence for 800 years,
as they co-developed the beautiful Spanish language and culture. You
could study a lot of Spanish in a lot of American schools without learning much of anything about this rich and instructive heritage.
In
a recent article in the New Statesman, Ziauddin Sardar gets to the
heart of the matter when he writes that "the west's hatred of
Islam stems from, more than anything else, the denial of its true
lineage. The western world as we understand it is a child of Islam.
Without Islam, the west - however we conceive it today - would not
exist. And, without the west, Islam is incomplete and cannot survive
the future."
If
you're having trouble with "the western world… is a child of
Islam," welcome to your blind spot. Happily, it's not about
theology, but to clear it up we'll have to go back thirteen hundred
years, to the first contacts between Islam and Christian Europe. You
may experience some embarrassment along the way, especially when you
realize that it's a natural and important part of the history that
Arabs and Muslims learn today.
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We
learned the roots of our culture and democracy at the feet
of our Islamic neighbors. |
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In
the year 700, Islam and the Arabic language were on the move. Soon
their influence would stretch from India to Spain. Europe was
entering its Dark Ages, nursing its dwindling links to a dead Roman
culture. Arabic scholarship, science and invention surpassed Europe
in every way. Arabic scholars would soon include Greeks, Persians,
Indians, Africans, Christians, Jews and more. Arabic would become as
essential as English is today. Europe would cling to Latin, already
a dying
language.
Four
hundred years later, Europe began to catch on. Translating more
Arabic texts to Latin, we began to learn. Not only did we imbibe the
fundamentals of our math, science and technology in Arabic, we
learned the very roots of our culture and democracy at the feet of
our Islamic neighbors. At a time when very few in Europe could even
read Greek, the Arabs were already rescuing the genius of ancient
Greece from oblivion. They translated Aristotle, Plato, Socrates,
Pythagoras, the whole pantheon of Greek learning and art into
Arabic, and brought it back to life in Islamic culture.
We
learned "our" Greek heritage by translating the Arabic
translations into Latin. For centuries, the fundamental texts of
budding European scholarship were based on Arabic translations, and
Europe's scholarship continued to be informed by its more learned
Arab contemporaries. Europeans even copied principles of Islamic
scholarship and academic organization in building their own nascent
academies. But soon we were spinning the myth that we'd got it all
directly from "our" Greek ancestors. Which may have made
it easier to launch the Crusades, to begin murdering our teachers.
The
injection of ancient Greek learning and art into Church-bound Europe
is generally held to be the engine of the Renaissance, and the
beginning of our humanist traditions. The fact that we learned it
all from our Islamic intellectual superiors has been blotted out of
Western history for a thousand years. The language of algebra and
the concept of zero were also vital to the growth of Europe. By the
year 800, Arabic mathematicians had learned these tools and the
place-valued decimal system from the scholars of India. Four hundred
years later, Fibonacci wrote his groundbreaking Liber abaci to
introduce modern (Arabic) numerals and the Hindu-Arabic decimal
system
to a Europe still muddling with Roman numerals.
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We
are at best Islam’s kid brother. The one that likes to
blow up frogs with firecrackers. |
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The
word 'algebra' is Arabic, from the book "Hisab al-jabr w'al
muqabala," written around 830 by the renowned astronomer and
mathematician Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khowarizmi. When translated into
Latin, it caused a sensation in Europe - 310 years later. Where
would Newton have been, without the Arabs? On what would he and
Leibniz have based the calculus? Whither Maxwell and Einstein,
without Islam? How can we receive such gifts and perpetually rebuke the giver?
There
are many other examples, including the Arabic roots of European
music and musical instruments, and the rich Islamic/Arabic influence
spanning the people and cultures of southern and eastern Europe, to
name but two. We have a lot of history to recover. Who would we be,
without this cornucopia of gifts?
Even
the engines of our world dominance are built with intellectual hand
tools forged in the Muslim mind. If we are not the child of Islam,
we are at best its kid brother. The one that likes to blow up frogs
with firecrackers.
Being
a kid brother myself, I know the signs, when it's time to grow up
and show your big brother some love and respect. A time to reconcile
the past, and talk man to man. You find out he's not such a bad guy
after all. And he sure knows a lot.
Do
you have an opinion to share on this article? Click
here to participate in our ongoing discussion.
James
Brooks of Worcester, Vermont, is a writer and former business owner.
His articles have been published by several Web sites covering the
Middle East, investigative journalism and alternative politics.
Currently Brooks serves as webmaster for Vermonters for a Just Peace
in Palestine/Israel (www.vtjp.org)
and publishes News Links, an e-mail digest of in-depth Middle East news and commentary.
You can reach him at jamiedb@attglobal.net
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