RSSLahat ng Entries Na Naka-tag Sa: "Isabel Macdonald"

pagpapahid: Paano kumalat ang mga Islamophobes ng takot, pagkapanatiko at maling impormasyon

PATAS

Julie Hollar

Jim Naureckas

Paggawa ng Islamophobia na Mainstream:
Kung paano i-broadcast ng mga Muslim-basher ang kanilang pagkapanatiko
Isang kahanga-hangang bagay ang nangyari sa National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) nominasyon noong Pebrero 2007: Ang karaniwang mataas ang kilay at mapagparaya na grupo ay hinirang para sa pinakamahusay na libro sa larangan ng kritisismo ng isang aklat na malawak na tinitingnan bilang nanlalait sa isang buong grupo ng relihiyon.
Ang nominasyon ng While Europe Slept ni Bruce Bawer: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within didn’t pass without controversy. Past nominee Eliot Weinberger denounced the book at the NBCC’s annual gathering, calling it ‘‘racism as criticism’’ (New York Times, 2/8/07). NBCC board president John Freeman wrote on the group’s blog (Critical Mass, 2/4/07): ‘‘I have never been
more embarrassed by a choice than I have been with Bruce Bawer’s While Europe Slept…. Its hyperventilated rhetoric tips from actual critique into Islamophobia.’’
Though it didn’t ultimately win the award, While Europe Slept’s recognition in the highest literary circles was emblematic of a mainstreaming of Islamophobia, not just in American publishing but in the broader media. This report takes a fresh look at Islamophobia in today’s media and its perpetratrators, outlining some of the behind-the-scenes connections that are rarely explored in media. The report also provides four snapshots, or “case studies,” describing how Islamophobes continue to manipulate media to in order to paint Muslims with a broad, hateful brush. Our aim is to document smearcasting: the public writings and appearances of Islamophobic activists and pundits who intentionally and regularly spread fear, pagkapanatiko at maling impormasyon. The term “Islamophobia” refers to hostility toward Islam and Muslims that tends to dehumanize an entire faith, portraying it as fundamentally alien and attributing to it an inherent, essential set of negative traits such as irrationality, intolerance and violence. And not unlike the charges made in the classical document of anti-Semitism, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, some of Islamophobia’s more virulent expressionslike While Europe Sleptinclude evocations of Islamic designs to dominate the West.
Islamic institutions and Muslims, of course, should be subject to the same kind of scrutiny and criticism as anyone else. For instance, when a Norwegian Islamic Council debates whether gay men and lesbians should be executed, one may forcefully condemn individuals or groups sharing that opinion without pulling all European Muslims into it, as did Bawer’s Pajamas Media post (8/7/08),
“European Muslims Debate: Should Gays Be Executed?"
Ganun din, extremists who justify their violent actions by invoking some particular interpretation of Islam can be criticized without implicating the enormously diverse population of Muslims around the world. Kung tutuusin, reporters managed to cover the Oklahoma City bombing by Timothy McVeighan adherent of the racist Christian Identity sectwithout resorting to generalized statements about “Christian terrorism.” Likewise, media have covered acts of terrorism by fanatics who are Jewishfor instance the Hebron massacre carried out by Baruch Goldstein (Extra!, 5/6/94)–without implicating the entirety of Judaism.