Islamophobia increased since Obama election

Islamophobia increased since Obama election
Sabir Shah

LAHORE: A recent survey report, prepared by the Council on American-Islamic Relations, on the issue of Islamophobia or the everyday incidents of anti-Muslim actions across the United States of America, has noted that 45 per cent of the poll respondents believed Islam to be a religion contrary to the American values.

The contents of this report, compiled by the Washington DC-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, which is America’s largest Muslim civil liberties advocacy group having 33 chapters across the US and Canada, have been unveiled by a leading UAE newspaper ‘Gulf News’ in its June 24, 2011, edition.

Quoting the Council’s survey findings, the ‘Gulf News’ stated Friday: “The study says that Islamophobia has actually increased since the election of President Barack Obama, with right-wing Republicans feeding on anti-Muslim sentiments and fears over Sharia law. According to the report, some 45 per cent of respondents said they believe Islam is contrary to American values.”

This is how Mick O’Reilly, the Deputy Managing Editor of the Gulf News had started his story: “In the middle of a Minnesota winter, Muslim schoolchildren are routinely left to freeze on the roadside by a bus driver. When the pupils do make it to school, their teacher hands out an air freshener, telling the class to spray as the Muslim children walk in. In Arizona, two men are taken off a US Airways flight and questioned after a passenger hears them speaking a foreign language. And in Michigan, a Nigerian man is removed from a plane when other passengers say he spent too much time in the plane’s toilet. He is simply ill.”

Journalist Mick O’Reilly also went on to quote an incident mentioned in the above-cited study report, whereby a Muslim police officer in US had stated that contrary to the post 9/11 situation when he had responded to the Ground Zero with some of his colleagues amidst cheers from the lined-up crowds, he did not have the courage to go anywhere near that site in 2010 as he feared attacks, being a follower of Islam.

A research conducted by The News International has revealed after the Council on American-Islamic Relations was named in 2007 by US prosecutors as one of the nearly 250 organizations that had funded Hamas (the radical Islamic movement operational in Palestine), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had stopped working with it.

Although a US court did clear this organization of all charges on October 20, 2010, it has lost its tax-exemption status very recently this month (June 2011) for failure to file its income returns properly.

Basically, the recent survey report of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has endorsed the findings of various similar exercises that have been undertaken in US and the West since 1995 or even before the 9/11 attacks.

According to a report prepared by the Washington DC-based Arab American Institute, three days after the Oklahoma City bombings of April 19, 1995, more than 200 hate crimes were committed against Arab Americans and American Muslims following this incident that had claimed 168 lives.

A survey in this context was also conducted in November 2004 by the New York-based Open Society Institute, a grant-making foundation, run by George Soros, the renowned Hungarian-American tycoon behind the 1992 financial crisis in the United Kingdom and the man who had led to the consequent downfall of the Bank of England.

The Open Society Institute of George Soros had found out those who had participated in the polling exercise—80 percent people said they had experienced Islamophobia.

An eminent British daily ‘The Guardian’ had reported on November 30, 2004, that a study conducted by the Open Society Institute “has revealed the depth of estrangement between British Muslims and their country. A third of those surveyed said they had been discriminated against at British airports because of their religion; the number of Asians stopped and searched under the Terrorism Act rose 302 per cent between 2001 and 2003, and 80 per cent said they had experienced Islamophobia.”

Most commentators and analysts have argued that Islamophobia has become an issue of an ever-increasing sociological and political importance since Ayatollah Khomeini’s denouncement of Salman Rushdie’s extremely controversial book “The Satanic Verses” and the September 11, 2001, attacks.

However, serious efforts are under way all across the globe to curb the prejudice against Muslims and the growing hatred for Islam.

For example, in January 2001, the Stockholm International Forum on Combating Intolerance had recognized Islamophobia was as a form of intolerance.

In 2006, the Organisation of the Islamic Conference had set up an observatory on Islamophobia to monitor the anti-Muslim activities around the world.

During the accession talks regarding Turkey’s possible entry into the European Union a few years ago, the then prime minister of Holland had opined that Islamophobia should not affect the possibility of Turkey’s inclusion.

Similarly, a former French President Jacques Chirac was urged by thousands of people to consider Islamophobia as a new form of racism. This signed request had reached the then French President after the publication of blasphemous cartoons by a section of the French media.

Following the July 7, 2005, London underground bombings, the British government had also set up the National Forum against extremism and Islamophobia.

Meanwhile, a few previous polls that had asked non-Muslims to give their viewpoint on Islam had also shown that it (Islam) was a barbaric and static religion that was unresponsive to change, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a clash of civilizations.