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US: Plight of the Innocent Muslim with the Far-Right | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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This April 19, 1995 file photo shows the north side of the Albert P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the devastation caused by the truck bomb detonated in front of the building. (AFP)


Cairo – Gradually, the unbalance immoral equation that governs the approach of some in the West against Islam and Muslims is being uncovered. This unjust equation shows clear and flagrant contradiction where every attack or threat on human life or property, no matter how great or minor, is blamed on Muslims. Even if this threat is not real or simply a claim, it is blamed on Muslims.

In contrast, every threat that comes from a white man is, at most, described as an “isolated criminal incident” that does not threaten the western way of life or infringe on international peace and security.

On June 24, Britain’s Independent newspaper released a US study by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute on the various attacks that had taken place in the country between 2008 and 2016.

At first glance, the western reader would believe that Muslims are the primary culprits in these attacks, which goes in line with the waves of Islamophobia that the US and Europe are witnessing, especially in the past two decades.

The surprise was that the study revealed that the majority of these terrorist attacks were carried out by non-Muslim extremist groups that have nothing to do with the religion.

The study instead said that the vast majority of the crimes were committed by far-right white Americans inside the US. During the eight-year period covered in the study, some 115 attacks were reported, including the 2015 shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs that left three people dead at the hands of white supremacist Robert Dear. The study said that the perpetrator was a white man, not a Muslim.

In addition, the study highlighted police and security measures at a time of an attack. It said that 76 percent of Islamic attacks were thwarted as opposed to only 35 percent committed by far-right extremists.

At this point, we have to ask: Who is promoting the idea that Muslims are the neo-barbarians inside the United States and that they stand behind every evil?

Media and Middle Eastern Studies professor at Rutgers University in the US and author of “Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire,” Deepa Kumar said that there is a “great opera” that is fabricating facts inside the US.

This is aimed at misleading the American public and keeping it victim to the illusion that law enforcement officials “were working on keeping the US safe from the terrorist Islamic barbarian hordes.” Even with the help of this deception and a justice system that has been completely manipulated to serve the needs of the so-called war on terror, the US government has only been able to issue 20 indictments a year linked to violent terrorist plots.

Take for example the statistics released by the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security. They showed the huge gap between the threats reported in the Islamophobic media and the actual reality, whose figures are in line with those released by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

For example, of the 14,000 Americans killed in 2011, only one was a result of a “Muslim terrorist plot.”

Who killed 150,000 Americans?

A Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security study on Muslim-Americans between September 2001 and May 2011 identified 172 terror suspects or perpetrators. Of those suspects, only 11 indeed carried out attacks inside the US and were responsible for the death of 33 people over an entire decade. What about the rest?

Of the 172 cases, at the time of the study, 29 are awaiting trial, and 63 cases are linked to a secret informer.

Throughout the decade that these cases unfolded, 150,000 murders were committed in the United States. Did Muslims kill all of these victims?

Who is therefore promoting the idea of Islam and Muslim terrorists inside of the US? The answer is undoubtedly linked to a number of American authors, journalists and intellectuals, who are known for their traditional hostility and who are afflicted with the “fear of Islam.”

Among the discriminatory books that were released in the US in the past decade was Bruce Bawer’s “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam is Destroying the West from Within”. The book’s pages are filled with lies and misconceptions that demonstrate the author’s ignorance of the most basic teachings of Islam and place him among the ranks of the most hostile anti-Islam figures. In his book, he seeks to incite the West against Muslims and compares Islam to Nazism. Even though the work was admired by some of the writer’s fans, it was severely criticized by a number of neutral European and American historians and intellectuals, who pointed out to Bawer’s errors.

Another author who share’s Bawer’s sentiment is Jewish American journalist Mark Steyn. The author of “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It” not only criticizes Islam, but directs a harsh attack against Europeans, who have allegedly left the US alone in its war against terror. He said that Europe did not understand that its needs demand that it ally itself with the Americans in this war.

Upon its release, Steyn’s book topped the bestseller lists and was critically acclaimed, which confirms that his lies and discrimination are well received by some far-right anti-Islam readers in Europe and the US.

Given that people tend to struggle to remember events that have taken place more than three years ago, a reminder seems necessary. The Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute study found that the majority of terrorist attacks committed in the US between 2008 and 2016 require a deeper reader, but this does not prevent us from making a few quick highlights.

April 19, 1995 will remain a witness to the reality that the Americans themselves have turned a blind eye to. On that black day, white American Timothy McVeigh carried out a terrorist attack in Oklahoma City, killing 168 Americans in a truck bombing at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. McVeigh chose the timing of the his attack to coincide with the anniversary of the standoff between police and the right-wing David Koresh group in 1993.

Were voices at the time raised to condemn the crimes of the white man and warn of the US far-right years before the September 2001 attack?