Intl Relations Book Review

Chapter 9 Green Scare : The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy W hen a petite, blond, green-eyed woman from Philadelphia was arrested on terrorism-related charges in 2010, the media went wild trying to explain and understand what had happened— Colleen LaRose, dubbed “Jihad Jane,” looked nothing like what they expect terrorism suspects to look like. The subsequent media frenzy involved plenty of hand-wringing and deep soul-searching to explain why such an all-American woman might convert to Islam and become involved in “terror plots.” CNN concluded that “the indictment of Jihad Jane shatters any thought that we can spot a terrorist just by appearance.” 1 The underlying logic here is that brown men can indeed be correctly identified by appearance as terrorists— although terrorists, who seem to be everywhere, come in all shapes, sizes and colors. What this event also illuminates is that by the end of the first decade after 9/11, there was a shift in the language of Islamophobia that emphasized the enemy within. Whereas the Islamophobia of the immediate post-9/11 period focused largely on the enemy “out there,” against which the United States supposedly had to go to war from Afghanistan to Iraq to protect itself, now the enemy was inside the country’s borders. The tone of the earlier period, set by George Bush, was “we’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here.” 2 In a West Point speech in 2002 he stated, “We must take the battle to the enemy, disrupt his plans and confront the worst threats.” 3 The “terrorists” in our midst were those sent from the outside who “hate our freedoms.”Thus even though, as we have seen, thousands of innocent Arabs and Muslims 159 Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 17:55:29.

160 Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire were racially profiled in the aftermath of 9/11, the emphasis wasn’t on “homegrown terrorism.” This shift occurred around 2009, when there was a spike in the number of Muslim Americans identified as “homegrown terrorists.” That year, forty-eight Muslim Americans (defined as those who have stayed in the United States for a long period) were included in terrorism statistics, in contrast to two in 2008. 4 This spike came in part from the inclusion of seventeen Somali Americans who allegedly joined al-Shabaab in Somalia. 5 These figures precipitated a discourse around “homegrown terrorism.” The backlash against Islam and its practice in the United States was not yet as harsh as it was in Europe. Building on the centuries-long history of racism against Muslims discussed in chapter 1, European conservatives seized the opening created by 9/11 and went on the offensive, arguing that Muslims were not properly “integrated” into society and therefore susceptible to Islamist propaganda. They began introducing measures to ostracize Muslims and ban veils, minarets, and other symbols of Islam. Liberals and social democrats echoed these arguments, stressing the limits of multiculturalism and the need to preserve European Enlightenment ideals. 6 This dimension of Islamophobia blossomed in the United States only at the end of the decade, when mosques and Islamic community centers came under attack from California to New York. A network of right-wing Islamophobes had been attempting to unleash anti-Muslim racism almost since 9/11 through a series of campaigns against Arab professors, Muslim community centers, and schools, but their breakthrough into the public sphere happened only after liberal Islamophobes cleared the way. Building on the media furor around “homegrown terrorism,” President Obama unveiled his “Af-Pak strategy” and announced plans to send more troops to Afghanistan and increase drone strikes on Pakistan. Liberal imperialists and the mainstream media raised the alarm about “terrorists in our midst,” providing the far-right “Islamophobic warriors” with the opening they had been waiting for. In the summer of 2010, they were successful in making the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy (discussed in detail below) large enough to whip up fear and hatred against Muslim Americans and their cultural and religious symbols. An anti-Sharia campaign followed, leading about two dozen states to consider banning its use in the justice system. By the end of the decade, the turn inward was complete, with the birth of a new “green scare” akin to the red scare of the Cold War. This chapter lays out the anatomy of this green scare. Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 17:56:52.

Green Scare: The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy Manufacturing the Green Scare 161 In 2009, several US citizens or legal residents were arrested for alleged connections to “terrorist” activity. In the latter part of the year these became high-profile cases that drew sustained media attention. 7 Following hard upon this media frenzy, in December 2009 the Obama administration announced plans to escalate the war in Afghanistan by sending in more troops and by stepping up drone attacks on Pakistan, in what came to be known as the “Af-Pak strategy.” Almost a full year into his presidency, the “peace president” had failed to fulfill his campaign promises to shut down Guantanamo Bay and undo the violations of civil liberties unleashed by Bush. The “homegrown terrorist” threat being whipped up by the media served well to continue the status quo. The first prominent case was that of Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan citizen and legal US resident who was arrested in September 2009 on charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. This was followed by David Coleman Headley, a US citizen arrested in October for planning to attack a Danish newspaper. In December, revelations surfaced that Headley might have conspired with operatives of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Pakistani group, in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. In March 2010 he pled guilty to all charges in an Indian court. On November 5, Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed thirteen people and wounded thirty at Fort Hood outside Killeen, Texas. The ensuing media circus focused on Hasan’s religion and continued the trend of conflating Islam and violence. 8 Later that month, the federal government indicted eight people in Minnesota for allegedly recruiting approximately two dozen Somali Americans (citizens and legal residents) to fight with an insurgent group in Somalia. That December, five young men from northern Virginia were arrested in Sargodha, Pakistan, accused of traveling there to fight alongside Taliban militants in Afghanistan. Though none of the “homegrown terrorism” cases mentioned above lacked for sensational media treatment, the case of “Jihad Jane” caused the biggest uproar. While the Virginia case prompted speculation in the press about why five “normal” young men might be moved to fight with the Taliban, it was accepted that this was a possibility for young Muslim men. LaRose’s gender, ethnicity, and “Main Street” Pennsylvania background meant that anyone could be a terrorist. Like the McCarthy-era red scare that imagined Communist spies lurking in every neighborhood, Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 17:58:33.

162 Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire school, and workplace, the “green scare” encouraged Americans to view not only Muslims but anyone who converted to Islam as a threat. Coming as they did in quick succession, these cases spurred the rapid development of a new media lexicon around “homegrown terrorism.”The Washington Post was typical: “The arrests came at a time of growing concern about homegrown terrorism after the recent shootings at the Fort Hood, Tex., military base [by Hasan] and charges filed this week against a Chicago man [Headley] accused of playing a role in last year’s terrorist attacks in Mumbai.” 9 Even though scores of Muslim Americans had been arrested in the past, often with little or no basis, this consistent attention cast Muslim citizens and legal residents as enemies of the state, marking a new turn in the rhetoric of the War on Terror. The groundwork was being laid for the new green scare. The most virulent expression of this green scare was articulated by NYU professor Tunku Varadarajan. In a November 2009 Forbes article titled “Going Muslim,”Varadarajan argued that what precipitated the tragedy at Fort Hood was not the racist harassment that Hasan faced in the army or the emotionally debilitating pressure of his job as an overworked army psychiatrist, but rather a condition that he suggests is inherent to all Muslims: the tendency toward violence. 10 He argued that Hasan didn’t “go postal”—that is, break down and become violent (the term became popular after a 1986 shooting by a postal worker). Rather, Varadarajan argued, Hasan was simply enacting, in a cold and calculated manner, the teachings of Islam. He was “going Muslim.” As Varadarajan put it, “This phrase [‘going Muslim’] would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated MuslimAmerican— a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood— discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans.” In short, for Varadarajan all Muslim Americans are “imminently violent,” and while they appear to be integrated into American society, they are in fact ticking time bombs who will inevitably explode into violent, murderous rage. The logic of biological racism is intertwined here with the logic of cultural racism. The homegrown terrorist, identified as brown, male, and Muslim, is inherently violent despite all semblances to the contrary. What makes “those people,” including the occasional white person like LaRose, threats is their religion; they are culturally pro- Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 17:59:47.

Green Scare: The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy 163 grammed by Islam to carry out murder and mayhem, like jihadist Manchurian candidates. In making this argument,Varadarajan was simply echoing the logic of “preemptive prosecution” and theories of radicalization long employed by the law enforcement apparatus. The cases of Hasan and Zazi (the “friendly donut vendor”) and the overall hysteria around “homegrown” terrorism created a space for the articulation of such arguments in the mainstream. Rather than push back against this racism, President Obama— who has several Muslim relatives, has spent time living in Indonesia (the country with the largest Muslim population in the world), and presumably should know better— used these high-profile cases in a speech unveiling his strategy to escalate the war in Afghanistan. One might speculate that a White House eager to prime public opinion for a troop surge of thirty thousand may even have encouraged a pliant media to devote attention to “homegrown terrorism.” Obama said in a speech at West Point: “I am convinced that our security is at stake in Afghanistan and Pakistan. This is the epicenter of violent extremism practiced by al-Qaeda. It is from here that we were attacked on 9/11, and it is from here that new attacks are being plotted as I speak. This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat. In the last few months alone, we have apprehended extremists within our borders who were sent here from the border region of Afghanistan and Pakistan to commit new acts of terror.” 11 Obama’s speech capitalizes on the climate of fear whipped up by the continuous and sustained coverage of the Zazi, Headley, and Virginia cases, all of which were related to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Obama’s reference to “extremists within our borders” thus added to the hype about the grave danger that terrorism and “violent extremism” allegedly pose to US citizens, a threat dire enough to justify sending thirty thousand more troops to Afghanistan. The reality, however, flies in the face of this rhetoric, as the last chapter showed. Interestingly, even the Rand Corporation, a right-wing institution, admitted that the danger posed to Americans by “terrorism” is limited. In the Los Angeles Times , Gregory Treverton noted that in “the five years after 2001, the number of Americans killed per year in terrorist attacks worldwide was never more than a hundred, and the toll some years was barely in double figures. Compare that with an average of 63 by tornadoes, 692 in bicycle accidents and 41,616 in motor-vehicle-related accidents.” 12 Indeed. Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:00:14.

164 Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire In 2009, the State Department reported that the number of Americans killed that year around the world due to terrorism was a grand total of nine. Fourteen people were injured, and four were kidnapped. 13 To put those numbers in perspective, the Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 4,340 deaths due to workplace events or exposure in 2009. 14 Deaths from car accidents numbered 30,797. 15 Yet no one declared war on corporations or auto manufacturers. What’s more, a State Department terrorism report released in April 2009 states that “al-Qaeda . . . and associated networks continued to lose ground, both structurally and in the court of world public opinion.” Nevertheless, the report asserted that these organizations “remained the greatest terrorist threat to the United States and its partners.” 16 All this reveals not only the disconnect between rhetoric and reality but also the mechanics involved in mobilizing a politics of fear. It is worth emphasizing that the threat from terrorism is a manufactured crisis , one that is useful to justify war and continued violations of civil liberties domestically. The green scare is just as useful today as the red scare was during the Cold War. The essentialism involved in painting all Muslims with the brush of violent jihad fits neatly into the Orientalist “clash of civilizations” rhetoric. This presented something of a problem for the Obama administration, which at the time was making a concerted effort to eschew that argument in favor of a “counterinsurgency” strategy, as discussed in chapter 7. The realist think tank CSIS released a report outlining Zazi’s and Headley’s cases and argued that while the United States needs to clamp down on “Internet radicalization,” it must balance this with efforts to “puncture” the “clash of civilizations” narrative— not because it is inherently objectionable but because al-Qaeda uses the same argument in its recruitment efforts! 17 This balance requires some rhetorical finesse— a specialty of the liberal imperialists in the Obama administration, who were indeed able to pull it off. Thus, the report approvingly notes that “White House officials already have discarded phrases like ‘war on radical Islam.’” Yet, the authors add, such rhetorical gestures are insufficient given the reality of war. The key challenge is “how to balance the need to combat global terrorism” (read: expand the empire) “with the drawbacks of large-scale, direct military intervention” (read: large-scale casualties and the problems of occupation). This was the challenge inherited by the Obama administration. Despite self-consciously dropping the use of phrases like “War on Terror” and mitigating some of the worst Islamophobic rhetoric of the Bush ad- Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:00:48.

Green Scare: The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy 165 ministration, the challenges of empire and, in the following years, the failure of the counterinsurgency strategy would eventually lead the Obama administration back into the arms of counterterrorism and its corresponding rhetoric. The “Ground Zero Mosque” Controversy The immediate consequence of the “homegrown terrorist” hysteria was that the far-right-wing Islamophobes (more on them in the following chapter) who had long hoped to capture the national debate were able to do so. They took center stage in the wake of a controversy they generated around the construction of an Islamic community center in downtown Manhattan. In 2009, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who had served as a cleric in downtown Manhattan for more than a quarter century, proposed the construction of a center modeled on the 92nd Street Y and the Jewish Community Center in Manhattan. The goal of the proposed center was to promote greater understanding of the Muslim community. Its name, Córdoba House, refers to the city of Córdoba, Spain, a leading cultural center of the Muslim empire that ruled the Iberian Peninsula (see chapter 1). Córdoba represented not only a high point of intellectual development but also a period of peaceful coexistence among Muslims, Christians, and Jews. Imam Rauf, who positions himself as a “moderate Muslim,” envisioned a community center with recreation facilities like a swimming pool, basketball court, gym, culinary school, art studios, a child care center, and badly needed prayer space for the neighborhood Muslim community. His plan was to enable people of all faiths to interact. Rauf is an establishment figure who has conducted trainings for the FBI and the State Department since 9/11; we met him in chapter 7 in relation to the 2007 policy group’s advice on improving US relations with the “Muslim world.” The Obama era, it was believed, would be a time when “good Muslims” could reshape the political agenda. When the New York Times ran a front-page story on Cordoba House in December 2009, the overall tone was positive, even though it noted with some alarm what it might mean for a Muslim community center to be built so close to Ground Zero. Rauf told the Times , “We want to push back against the extremists.” 18 A mother of a 9/11 victim also publicly backed the Islamic center. 19 New York mayor Michael Bloomberg supported the project, Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:05:27.

166 Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire as did city officials. Even right-wing Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham seemed unperturbed: in an interview with Cordoba House cofounder Daisy Khan in December 2009, Ingraham supported the project. Even while arguing that Muslim-majority countries from Saudi Arabia to Lebanon are intolerant toward Christians, she told Khan, “I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it. . . . I like what you’re trying to do.” 20 On May 6, 2010, the New York City Community Board voted unanimously to approve the project. As Salon reporter Justin Elliott has documented, the Cordoba House project did not become controversial until May 2010. 21 In response to the community board’s decision, Pamela Geller, a right-wing blogger, posted an entry titled “Monster Mosque Pushes Ahead in Shadow of World Trade Center Islamic Death and Destruction.” In it, she wrote, “This is Islamic domination and expansionism. The location is no accident. Just as Al-Aqsa was built on top of the Temple in Jerusalem.” The next day, her group Stop Islamization of America (SIOA) launched “Campaign Offensive: Stop the 911 Mosque!” 22 While this wasn’t the first time the organized Islamophobes had blogged about the community center, their moment had finally arrived in the aftermath of the “homegrown terrorism” hysteria, which created space for the hard right to fan the flames of racism. Stop Islamization of America, whose name is based on the notion that Muslims are conspiring to take over the United States, called a protest for May 29 against what Geller called the “911 Monster Mosque.” Geller is a fan of far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders (the feeling is mutual, given his glowing blurb for the book she coauthored on the Obama presidency) and an admirer of open fascists and street gangs such as the English Defense League that routinely attack Muslims and immigrants. She once claimed that Black South Africans are launching a “genocide” against whites. 23 A staunch Zionist, she wrote a column in an Israeli newspaper in which she referred to the term “Palestinian” as “fallacious” and exhorted Israelis to “stand loud and proud. Give up nothing. Turn over not a pebble. For every rocket fired, drop a MOAB. Take back Gaza. Secure Judea and Samaria.” 24 Subsequently, the NewYork Post began running articles that extensively quoted Geller and her vitriolic rhetoric. One article falsely claimed that Cordoba House’s opening date was set for September 11, 2011. This was the moment, Elliot suggests, when this story spread like wildfire, gaining Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:01:51.

Green Scare: The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy 167 media attention not only on Fox News and other conservative outlets but also in the mainstream media. However, even at this stage, the community center was still far from becoming a symbol of Muslim “insensitivity.” When Mark Williams, a Tea Party leader, attacked Imam Rauf, New York City politicians came out against Williams and asserted their support for the center. 25 Williams’s blog posts were despicable. He wrote: “The animals of allah for whom any day is a great day for a massacre are drooling over the positive response that they are getting from New York City officials over a proposal to build a 13 story monument to the 9/11 Muslims who hijacked those 4 airliners. The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists’ monkey-god and a ‘cultural center’ to propagandize for the extermination of all things not approved by their cult.” 26 The far right continued its well-funded campaign against the Islamic community center. The conservative blog Pajamas Media , which received $3.5 million from the notorious Islamophobe and right-wing Zionist Aubrey Chernick, used its platform to oppose the community center. 27 Neocon Frank Gaffney wrote in June that the “Ground Zero mosque is designed to be a permanent, in-our-face beachhead for Shariah, a platform for inspiring the triumphalist ambitions of the faithful.” 28 Newt Gingrich echoed this point on Fox News, stating that the center represented Muslim “triumphalism.” 29 The talking points were well orchestrated; neocon Daniel Pipes used the same wording, stating that the building “reeks of Islamic triumphalism.” 30 But this line of attack was not restricted to the right-wing media world of Fox News, the Washington Times , and the New York Post . When Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin added their voices, the “debate” spread to the mainstream. Gingrich ranted that “Nazis don’t have the right to put up a sign next to the Holocaust Museum in Washington. We would never accept the Japanese putting up a site next to Pearl Harbor. There is no reason to accept a mosque next to the World Trade Center.” 31 In short, political figures used their credibility to legitimize the rants of the far right. After May, more and more voices critical of the project started to find a home in the mainstream media. The pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League weighed in, saying that it was insensitive to build the center “in the shadow” of the World Trade Center because it would cause pain to the victims of 9/11. 32 Rudy Giuliani called the mosque a “desecration.” 33 To be sure, some of the mainstream media defended Muslims, the center, Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:06:10.

168 Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire and by extension, the United States’ image as a tolerant multiracial society. Mayor Bloomberg defended it in a speech delivered with the Statue of Liberty in the background. 34 Mainstream liberal figures like Keith Olbermann, Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert also took a tough line against the bigots and exposed the racism at the heart of their project. The New York Times featured a front-page story titled “When an Arab Enclave Thrived Downtown,”that advanced the proposition that Arabs (and Muslims) are an integral part of American society. 35 Time did a cover story that asked, “Is America Islamophobic?” 36 Under this question on the cover is the symbol of Islam, the crescent and star, filled in with the US flag. Yet this coverage was contradictory. While Time defended Muslims against racist attacks, its article stopped short of showing the connections between Islamophobia and the War on Terror. Moreover ,Time ’s cover just a few weeks prior to this issue featured an Afghan woman whose nose had been cut off, with the title “What Happens If We Leave Afghanistan”— both reinforcing the connection between Islam and violence against women and recycling the old “white man’s burden” argument. 37 The far right’s effort to brand the center as the “victory mosque” was successful because it built on the media hysteria whipped up in the previous months by the Obama administration. The frenzy around “homegrown terrorism” opened the door, and it was just a matter of time before the far right came waltzing (or perhaps goose-stepping) in. These forces, along with sectors of the Republican Party, were so successful in setting the terms of the debate that anywhere between 54 and 68 percent of Americans expressed opposition to the project at its proposed location. 38 This opposition arose in no small part due to the role played by Democratic Party politicians, whose positions on the community center ranged from neutral to downright hostile. House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s response was to ask who was funding the opposition. The following day she added that the location of the project was a “local decision” and that freedom of religion was a constitutional right. 39 This rather tepid defense paled in comparison to the rhetoric used by the other side. Pelosi’s counterpart in the Senate, majority leader Harry Reid, decided to speak out against the project, stating that while the First Amendment protects freedom of religion, he believed that the “mosque should be built someplace else.” 40 Jeff Greene of Florida, running in the Senate primary, said that “common sense and respect for those who lost their lives and loved ones gives sensible reason to build the mosque someplace Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:06:37.

Green Scare: The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy 169 else.” 41 Then came liberal Democrat Howard Dean, who argued that this was “a real affront to people who lost their lives” in the 9/11 attacks. In an interview with a New York radio station, he said he would like to see the center built in another, less controversial location. 42 As this lopsided debate unfolded, President Obama qualified his earlier statements in support of the project by saying that while he affirms religious rights of all people, he was not in saying this commenting wisdom of making a decision to put a mosque there.” 43 Obama quickly adapting to right-wing pressure; when Gainesville, Florida, minister Terry Jones announced his plan to burn the Koran on September 11, Obama did not argue that such an act was offensive, that it constituted an attack on religious freedom, or that it was reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan cross burnings in the South, but that it threatened “national security” and would put US soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan “in harm’s way”: “This could increase the recruitment of individuals who’d be willing to blow themselves up in American cities or European cities.” 44 Obama’s summoning the specter of suicide bombers in America’s cities only further stirred the pot of Islamophobic hatred. Polls in mid-2010 showed that close to 20 percent of Americans believed that Obama was a “secret Muslim” and that this made him an unfit president. Rather than challenge the racist assumptions of his accusers, Obama chose instead to emphasize his Christian credentials. This posture only gave credence to the notion that there is something wrong with being Muslim. In short, with a few exceptions (such as Keith Ellison, the first Muslim to be elected to Congress), the liberal imperialists in the Democratic Party pandered to the far right on this question. It is therefore not surprising that the right was able to set the terms of the discussion. the “on the was The Rise of the Islamophobic Network The Cordoba House controversy was, of course, not the far right’s first attack on Muslims. As Max Blumenthal notes, the “Ground Zero mosque” controversy is “the fruit of an organized, long-term campaign by a tight confederation of right-wing activists and operatives who first focused on Islamophobia soon after the September 11th attacks, but only attained critical mass during the Obama era.” 45 He explains that the efforts began in the early 2000s, when a coalition of Jewish groups ranging from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the American Jewish Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:07:51.

170 Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire Committee (AJC) to AIPAC came together to address what they saw as a sudden increase in pro-Palestinian activism on college campuses. The key targets on campuses were Middle East scholars whose work challenged the right-wing narrative of Middle East politics generally and of the Arab-Israeli conflict in particular. Martin Kramer’s Ivory Towers on Sand: The Failures of Middle Eastern Studies in America (published in 2001) provided the intellectual ballast necessary to make the argument that Middle East scholars were unAmerican because of their criticisms of Israel and of US foreign policy. 46 Kramer, who studied under Bernard Lewis, produced a book that fueled an effort to target and stifle critical thought. As Joel Beinin notes, “Kramer and his ilk were emboldened by their links to officials in the upper-mid levels of the Bush administration,” and particularly to the neocons who shared their worldview. 47 He adds that the “neo-cons have much more powerful political connections than those that the AJC, the ADL and AIPAC were able to mobilize.” But this unity was not coincidental. Rather, if Lewis, Zakaria, and others were the intellectual core brought together to formulate the propaganda war after 9/11 (as discussed in chapter 7), Kramer, Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, and others served as the activists out in the world policing critical thought. Their job was to ensure that the War on Terror brand remained uncontested and that their propaganda was not punctured by scholars with the knowledge and ability to expose the lies. Bush even nominated Pipes to a seat on the board of directors of the federally funded United States Institute of Peace, which was supposed to produce knowledge to aid in conflict resolution. Pipes’s nomination was scuttled, but this move represents the neocons’ penchant for thought control. Pipes went on to found the website Campus Watch, which asserts that Middle East scholars are un-American. In terms that barely disguise its racism, the website explains why this might be so; one page, since removed, stated that “Middle East studies in the United States has become the preserve of Middle East Arabs” who “have brought their views with them.” 48 The next logical step was to target Arabs. Indeed, Campus Watch’s first prominent attack occurred against Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University. The David Project, a Hillel-funded group founded explicitly to influence campus debates on Israel, produced a documentary film titled Columbia Unbecoming which claimed that Jewish students were being intimidated by Arab professors and that Columbia’s Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:08:22.

Green Scare: The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy 171 campus climate was rife with anti-Semitism. David Horowitz contributed to this attack by calling Massad “dangerous” in his book The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America . Funds poured in from a network of sources (discussed in greater depth in the next chapter), and pressure on the Columbia administration intensified. Democratic congressman Anthony Weiner added fuel to the fire by calling for Massad to be dismissed. In the end, however, Columbia students and faculty launched a campaign in defense of Massad that defeated the Islamophobes. Massad not only earned tenure but won the prestigious Lionel Trilling Award for excellence in scholarship. Undaunted by this defeat, the David Project turned its attention to the Islamic Society of Boston, which had been trying to build a center to serve the Muslim population in Roxbury. The David Project unleashed a campaign of lawsuits and propaganda, claiming that the center was receiving money from sources such as the Muslim Brotherhood and the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia. The right-wing media jumped into action, from Murdoch’s Boston Herald to the local Fox affiliates. The Boston Globe also echoed this argument in a series of reports that advanced the notion that the center could become a place to train underground terror cells. 49 Yet again, however, the Islamophobic network failed. This time it was defeated by an interfaith effort launched by liberal Jews, who successfully pushed back against the fearmongering. In 2008, the community center was built; none of the David Project’s dire predictions were ever realized. However, as Blumenthal notes, the “local crusade established an effective blueprint for generating hysteria against the establishment of Islamic centers and mosques across the country, while galvanizing a cast of characters who would form an anti-Muslim network which would gain attention and success in the years to come.” 50 Indeed, their first success was a campaign against Debbie Almontaser, who was to serve as the principal of Khalil Gibran International Academy. The academy, a secular public elementary school with an English-Arabic curriculum, was proposed for construction in Brooklyn as one of sixtyseven bilingual schools in the New York City system. Almontaser, a longtime educator of Yemeni descent, was accused of being a jihadist and a 9/11 denier by Stop the Madrassa, a coalition launched by the Islamophobia network. Pamela Geller, who was just cutting her teeth as an Islamophobic warrior, blogged that Almontaser “opposed the war on terror,” was associated with the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), and Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:08:56.

172 Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire had even had the audacity to accept an award from this “radical” group. If that was not enough, she went on to accuse Almontaser of “whitewash[ing] the genocide against the Jews.” 51 Daniel Pipes, who also took part in the campaigns against Massad and the Boston Islamic center, claimed the school should be stopped because “Arabic-language instruction is inevitably laden with Pan-Arabist and Islamist baggage.” 52 The campaign reached fever pitch when the Islamophobes found a picture of a T-shirt with the slogan “Intifada NYC” produced by the group Arab Women Active in the Arts and Media (AWAAM), a local Arab feminist organization. The weak connection between AWAAM and Almontaser is that they share an office with the Yemeni-American association on whose board Almontaser sits. This was all the Islamophobes needed to brand Almontaser as a jihadist. The New York Post carried a story that stated that the T-shirt was “apparently a call for a Gaza-style uprising in the Big Apple.” 53 Almontaser’s efforts to explain the meaning and significance of the term intifada were countered with an ADL spokesperson who called AWAAM “an active supporter of the terrorist groups Hezbollah and Hamas.” The usual suspects all chimed in and the pressure mounted. After enduring an intense campaign of personal harassment and intimidation, Almontaser was forced to resign when her former supporter Mayor Bloomberg caved. The Khalil Gibran International Academy was eventually established, Almontaser sued the city, and the Islamophobic network learned valuable lessons on how to wage a successful campaign and apply pressure on elected officials. It wasn’t long before another opportunity fell into their laps in the form of the Cordoba House project— though even here their victory was only partial. They did manage to sway public opinion. Attacks on mosques and community centers across the country escalated, and Cordoba House’s founders changed its name to the more neutral “Park51.” However, plans to construct the center continued and it eventually opened in 2012. N N N This chapter focused on the turn inward from the Muslim enemy “out there” to the “terrorists” in our midst. While the Islamophobic warriors played a key part in intensifying the attacks on Muslims, they could not have succeeded had the liberal Islamophobes not paved the way. Obama’s strategy of escalating the war on Afghanistan relied on the mainstream media to generate hysteria about “homegrown terrorists.” Once the cur- Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:09:27.

Green Scare: The Making of the Domestic Muslim Enemy 173 tain was raised, the Islamophobic warriors (who were waiting eagerly in the wings, rehearsing and fine-tuning their attack campaign strategies) seized the moment with the “Ground Zero Mosque” controversy. In the following chapter I examine this Islamophobic network in greater detail, outlining their funding sources and their connections to think tanks and the foreign policy establishment. Kumar, Deepa. Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire : The Cultural Logic of Empire, Haymarket Books, 2012. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/umboston/detail.action?docID=1020727. Created from umboston on 2019-12-08 18:10:15.