Islamophobia: Slogan of Empire's March

Many an academic debates are coming, many a discussion around the targeting of Islam and Muslims are being conducted World over. These are openly propagating against Islam and Muslims. These criticisms are from many a quarters. Even many of those believing in liberalism, an integral part of democracies, are also speaking in the same language. Also those trying to understand the politics behind the current Islamophobia and accompanying demonization of Muslims are conveniently labeled as commies and bypassed by the mainstream of society without giving a due thought to the arguments put forward by them. Britain, the pioneer in democratic movement is riddled with subtle presence of both these phenomenon. Its leaders occasionally adopt a subtle language, which tantamount to depicting Islam as a violent religion and Muslims as the terrorists, with the rider that these “Islamic Terrorists’ can not be compared to other practitioners of violence like the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam and Irish Republican Army’s methods of times not too long ago. There any many like them deliberately undermining the violence; terror, coming from non Islamic groups.

There are also some genuine efforts in the form of meetings at state, and social level to have a inter religious dialogue and many discussions amongst social workers and academics are on to understand the current phenomenon of violence, its relation to religion in general and Islam in particular. Such efforts though not having a total impact do have a very marginal effect in changing the perceptions of broad layers of society. It is not only that one Sikh was killed in US in the after math of 9/11, mistaken as a Muslim, but the phenomenon is operating at different levels in diverse forms. Many a surveys in UK and other places are showing that a large section of population now has some fear of a bearded Arab/Muslim looking man. A typical Muslim man is presented as a bearded Maulana and a woman with burqa.

While the overt manifestation of this mind set has surfaced strongly after 9/11 2002, the real global beginning of these propagations started with the overthrow of Raza Shah Pehlavi, a US stooge, from Iran. It is at that time that Ayatollah Khomeini assumed the power. Around this time Socialist systems started weakening and collapsed shortly there after. Islam was presented as the new threat to freedom and Liberty. The West has been presenting itself as the champion of these values. The US emerged as the sole superpower in this era. During cold war the slogan which the US and allies used against the anti colonial struggles under the banner of communism, was freedom and democracy. Since many anti colonial nationalist struggles were fought under the banner of communism, communism was projected as the main threat to freedom and democracy. The opposition to communist ideology was backed up on one hand through the coups by those wearing military boots and on the other by bombings, the worst of which was seen in Vietnam. McCarthyism is most horrific amongst these, during which the communists were hunted with gay abandon.

As the major goal of empire became control of oil resources, the political stage shifted to the West Asia, and Islam and Muslims came under the ideological attack. The alliance with most reactionary Islamic states like Saudi Arabia, and promotion of political Islam by indirect means was stepped up by the US. Promotion of Al Qaeda and support to the madarsas for training of Al Qaeda terrorists was done by CIA through the conduit of ISI. This laid the foundation of the future invasions in this region, the one in Iraq, 1991, the one in Afghanistan in ht aftermath of 9/11 and the one in Iraq after that. Currently the sword is hanging over Iran and Syria as for as physical attack is concerned. War is the most glaring phenomenon, but the war is given legitimacy in the minds of the people by preparing the ground in the psyche of the people. What Noam Chomsky calls as the manufacturing consent, is launched through sections of media, and other conduits, which win over peoples minds, which shape society’s perceptions, that a particular country or group of people deserve to be attacked to ‘protect’ us, to protect ‘our’ values. This legitimization of invasions is much more necessary in current times where some elements of democracy are struggling to come up despite the odds and obstacles being put forward by the global and local bullies.

The ideological back up of the Islamophobia comes from the theory of ‘Clash of civilizations’. As per this ideology the advanced western civilization is facing the threat to its values from the backward Islam. These theories also go in to generalize the whole communities in the single image, and the inherent diversity of communities is glossed over. All Muslims than fall in a single stereotype of gun totting, bombs throwing fanatics, trying to kill ‘us’ at the drop of the hat. When these ideologues compare the religions, interesting exercise is undertaken. In this the ‘noble values’ of ‘our’ religion are compared with the dastardly practices of a section of follower of ‘other’ religion. The fair game of comparing values to values, practices to practices is given up and the liberal and progressive sections of others’ religious community are pushed to the background of the canvass to project only the criminal elements of ‘other’ religion. Also the mechanism of the genesis of the phenomenon is glossed over, the story always begins somewhere in the middle ignoring the roots of these phenomenon.

While for propagators of Islamophobia, story may begin with tyrannical Saddam rule, the fact that he was armed to teeth by the same powers who are now rampaging Iraq, is put under the carpet. While the designs of Al Qaeda, suicide bombers are the starting point of description of the phenomenon, the fact that the roots of this ideology were consciously cultivated by the imperialist powers is deliberately suppressed. The result is that political goals are presented as the religious goals and the politics itself is hidden in the cloak of religion.

The interesting point is the merger of global Islamophobia with the rise of Hate Muslims in India. This demonization of Islam, intensifies around the same period. Here in India, of course there was a full background of freedom movement during which the communalists, the minuscule streams presented themselves as the representative of that religious community and despite their failure at electoral level were given the legitimacy and recognition as the representatives of that religious community. The case of Muslims in India is very glaring. At no point of time it could get substantial chunk of minority votes, but in the eyes of colonial powers they represented their religion. Also earlier colonialists and now the Empire promote the identity based politics, promote the ethnic and religious identities and base the politics on that ground. In India the Muslim League on one side and Hindu Mahasabha, RSS on the other were not subject of British repression. Today in Iraq, the identities of Shia, Sunni are the major ones, which have not been the case in earlier decades. Today’s Islamophobia in India has been preceded by the long battle between the two competing communalisms here, the Muslim and Hindu one. These communalists coming from the sections of landlords and other feudal segments later joined in by some middle class intellectuals, intensified their hate other campaigns after their massive loss in the 1937 Assembly elections. After partition tragedy many a Muslim communalists left for Pakistan, and Hindu communalism got deflated for some time, especially due to the murder of Mahatma Gandhi by the follower of RSS ideology. It kept itself up by various hate other campaigns and in the decades of 80, matching with the rise of global Islamophobia, rose up in a parallel fashion. What this teaches us is that the ideas demonizing other do get translated into violence in due course, at many places. One must put a caution here that the Hate other, psychology can prevail for a long time, without violence taking place as in many states of India, like Kerala, West Bengal, Haryana etc.

The violence in turn gives rise to fear psychosis, ghettoisation and strengthening of conservative orthodox sections in the community, some thing witnessed to a great extent amongst the Muslim minority in India. This strong coincidence of coming up of global phenomenon with its intensification in India is particularly striking. One is not sure whether this demonization necessarily will go through all these stages. Will the liberal ethos of Western countries protect the Muslims of those countries from what Muslims have undergone in India?

How does one overcome the present impasse? The burden on the shoulders of Islam, the Muslims and humanists is very heavy. One difference from the earlier campaigns against the communists to the present campaign against Muslims is that the latter since it is associated with a religious community, so it seeps down easily at more broad and deep layers in the society. Here one will definitely need more intense ideological propagations, and awareness programs about the humane interpretation of religions. While some efforts are there, the problem demands much more than that.