Funding Islamophobia in the United States

 Exploiting the global political climate in the aftermath of 9/11, Muslim governments were blackmailed by the US and forced to explain their innocence and disclose details of Islamic organisation activities on the pretext of investigating links to the Al Qaeda organisation in their countries. 

by Latheef Farook

Funding Islamophobia to generate hatred towards Islam and Muslims have become an industryby itself in the United States. According to a recent report inciting hate toward American Muslims and Islam is a multibillion-dollar business.

January 11, 2022 report titled “Islamophobia in the Mainstream,” was published by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, a civil rights group and political lobby. 

Released by Cair and University of California Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender, the report names 74 groups it says contribute in some way to Islamophobia in the US. Of those groups, it says, the primary purpose of 33 “is to promote prejudice against, or hatred of, Islam and Muslims”. 

Corey Saylor, author of the report and director of Cair’s department to monitor and combat Islamophobia, said: “The hate that these groups are funding and inciting is having real consequences like attacks on mosques all over the country and new laws discriminating against Muslims in America.”

Saylor added that the Washington-based Center for Security Policy and Actfor America have the most impact, because they are trying to push their anti-Muslim rhetoric beyond their formerly fringe following.

The government sanctioned campaign ofdemonsing Islam and Muslims to justify US-European-Israeli invasion of Muslim countries began in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 tragedy at the World Trade Centre in New York and Pentagon.

As disclosed by many reports it was an inside job and the Muslims had nothing to do with these attacks. However former President George Bush, perhaps as planned well in advance, accused Afghan Taliban of attacking WTO and exploited the tragedy to launch a global campaign against Islam and Muslims.

Such a campaign is needed  for the US government to justify its wars against Muslim countries and destroy them as they have  done in Somalia, Afghanistan,Kuwait,Iraq, Syria,Libya,Lebanon andYemen.

THE war against terrorism, spearheaded by Bush in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks at the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington was so comprehensive that it struck at the very root of political, military, economic, financial, social, religious and even cultural life of Muslims all over the world.

Therein began the well-planned and carefully orchestrated campaign against Islam and the dehumanisation of Muslims on a global scale to engineer conflicts and thrive on human misery. 

Every Muslim man with beards and woman with headscarves were, afraid to move freely walk especially in the West. Most people from the Gulf and the Middle East, instead of travelling to the US and Europeturned to Malaysia and other Asian countries for their annual vacation, eager to avoid harassment  in the US and European countries. 

The hatred towards Muslims has become so widespread that the world was shocked in September 2004, when former celebrity pop icon Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam, regarded internationally as a peace activist, was humiliated when he arrived in New York from London, and was put back on a flight to London for no obvious reason. 

The only factor one could attribute to this humiliation is that he is a practising Muslim propagating Islam. If this is how a celebrity (who still has a following of thousands of pop fans in the US) is treated by so called freedom-loving America, imagine the plight of the millions of faceless Muslims all over the world.

Exploiting the global political climate in the aftermath of 9/11, Muslim governments were blackmailed by the US and forced to explain their innocence and disclose details of Islamic organisation activities on the pretext of investigating links to the Al Qaeda organisation in their countries. 

Many Muslim countries and almost every country in the Middle East supplied plane loads of documents to the US giving detailed accounts of all Muslim Associations, their activities and the people involved in their respective countries. In doing so, these regimes tried to ensure their own survival rather than the interests, the dignity or security of their countries.

As pointed out by former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir MohamedMuslim countries are being attacked and bombed with impunity; Muslims are tortured and killed, their religion and prophet mocked. Muslims are among the poorest people in the world and their countries the least developed. Ironically, this is despite immense wealth.

Islamophobia entered Sri Lankan in the aftermath of the ethnic war in May 2009 when the government opened the country to anti-Muslim forces such as Israel and RSS front BJP with their evil   agendas.

Without any valid reason government backed racist elements attacked Muslims   and  burnt their commercial, residential and industrial properties and mosques.

This senseless campaign continued until the April 21 Easter Sunday attacks on churches  massacring innocent worshippers. Few Muslims were involved in the attacks and the Muslim community as a whole was not involved at al.

Yet in the GeorgeBush style Maithri -Ranil government unleashed violence against the entire community causing untold misery. The strange similarity between the two tragedies,like in New York, here in the island too the mastermind is yet to be traced.