Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics by Nazia Kazi

Author:Nazia Kazi
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

Liberal Islamophobia

In fact, the Obama presidency was not a reversal of the Islamophobia of the Bush presidency but a continuation of it. Obama renewed and extended the Patriot Act, continued wholesale the surveillance and profiling of Muslim communities, and kept the racist and illegal prison in Guantanamo Bay open. “The truth is that my foreign policy is actually a return to the traditional bipartisan realistic policy of George Bush’s father, of John F. Kennedy, of, in some ways, Ronald Reagan,” Obama said. As Deepa Kumar points out, Obama “deployed 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan, expanded the war into Pakistan, tried to bully Iraq into granting an extension of the US occupation (which failed), carried out drone attacks and ‘black ops’ in Yemen and Somalia and participated in the NATO-led war in Libya.”[18] For such critics, Obama’s gestures of tolerance and inclusion served as little more than a shroud for his much more pernicious anti-Muslim policies.

In 2016, American voters were again offered a shrouded Islamophobia. With Donald Trump calling for bans on Muslim immigrants and hinting at the creation of a Muslim registry, Hillary Clinton’s nods toward inclusion made her the preferable candidate for many Muslim voters. Other Republican candidates addressed the “Muslim issue”: Senator Ted Cruz called for more surveillance and policing of Muslims, while Republican candidate Dr. Ben Carson spoke of Islam’s fundamental “inconsistency” with American constitutional values. Hillary Clinton responded to such statements, calling them “shameful and contrary to our values.” Addressing Muslims, Clinton said, “What you’re hearing from Trump and other Republicans is absolutely, unequivocally wrong. It’s inconsistent with our values as a nation—a nation which you are helping to build. This is your country, too, and I’m proud to be your fellow American.” Clinton, then, drew a line in the sand (as did many voters), designating Islamophobia as the property of Republicans and herself an ally to Muslims.

But Clinton was among those politicians who supported the Iraq War—a decidedly Islamophobic stance, as we will see in the following chapter. As Secretary of State, Clinton also signed off on intensifying military intervention in Muslim-majority countries, throwing her head back in a hearty laugh while proclaiming “We came, we saw, he died” of the brutal murder of Libyan leader Gaddafi. Media mogul Haim Saban, who has endorsed racial profiling of Muslims, was one of her top campaign donors. Clinton also voted for the Patriot Act and its reauthorization.

Clinton came under fire for rendering Muslims “instruments” in the fight against terror, saying in the October 9, 2016, presidential debate, “We need American Muslims to be part of our eyes and ears on the front lines.” Her statement reinforced the assumption that ordinary Muslims have both a special ability and an extra responsibility to prevent acts of terror. But, writes Ismat Mangla, “American Muslims don’t possess some special knowledge of terror attacks. . . . Their citizenship shouldn’t come with conditions—it’s not contingent on how ‘useful’ they are in the war on terror.”[19] We certainly don’t ask white Americans to be our eyes and ears on the battle against mass shootings in suburban schools.

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