Category Archives: Islamophobia

History in Century Hindsight

Islamophobia, Orientalism, Turkey

How will the history of the world be written in another century? I am glad I will not be around to find out, although I suspect future historians will look at the post-9/11 operations at home on the patriot front and abroad with patriot missiles as a low point in America’s future past. We can always look back and see how history was written a century ago. Here is a passage from a popular “History of the World” by John Clarke Ridpath, who penned it near the end of the 19th century. Although dated in its racial and ethnocentric overtones, it is refreshing to see some critical assessment on Western stereotypes at work as well. As an exercise, read the excerpt below to sort out the prejudice from the attempt, even if not up to present-day standards, to be less rather than more subjective.

Some allowance, however, must be made for the judgment which the Western peoples have passed upon the Turks. There is no denying the fact that a part of this judgment is prejudiced. The Aryan races have always shown a disposition to reject and contemn those usages with which they themselves are unfamiliar. They have done so. Not because the usages in question have contradicted the laws of right reason, the interests of the state, of the principles of morality, but simply because such facts have been strange, unfamiliar. The intolerance of the Western people in this respect has been as severe and inexcusable as many of the usages which they have contemned and despised. Continue reading History in Century Hindsight →

The Fort Dix Deep Six

Iraq War, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

Things can’t get worse; they can only get worse. No, this is not poor grammar or end-of-semester illogic but my first impression after listening to the hard-to-digest dollop of the morning news. Another suicide bomb killed and maimed scores in Iraq, this time in the Kurdish town of Irbil. The Bush administration suggests that things are getting better in Baghdad since the wall-less security crackdown, but that is debatable. What is not open to debate is that other parts of the country continue to spiral in insecurity, perhaps due in part to the targeted crackdown in one place. None of this seems to matter to Vice-President Cheney who has made a surprise visit to the Green Zone, mainly it seems to convince the Iraqi parliament not to take a summer vacation this year and be nice about dividing up the spoils of America’s, I mean Iraq’s, oil profits.

In this case it is not only the shit hitting the fan, but the gold as well. Gold as in Fort Dix (Fort Knox or whatever…) but I hope not a golden journalistic award to a local newspaper. Continue reading The Fort Dix Deep Six →

Letters of an Egyptian Kafir

Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Orientalism


[Illustration: “Camels and Tombs of the Mamelukes” ca 1870]

While conducting research in Oxford’s Bodleian Library two summers ago, I came across an anonymous work entitled Letters of an Egyptian Kafir on a Visit to England in Search of a Religion, enforcing some neglected views regarding the duty of theological inquiry, and the morality of human interference with it. Published in London in 1839, the plot of the lengthily titled treatise is a series of letters allegedly written by a non-Muslim Egyptian to a Muslim friend back home. I rather suspect these were penned in a learned vicar’s study as an attempt to rationalize the superiority of Protestant Christianity over all comers. There is little to be learned about Egypt and much about the arguments Christians might use at the time to convert these descendants of the pharaohs. Continue reading Letters of an Egyptian Kafir →

Divide and Think You Conquer

Islam in America, Islamophobia, Shi'a, Sunni

The distinction between sunni and shi’a in Islam has both political and doctrinal issues at stake. In a political sense, the original causes are moot. There is no caliphate today, no unbroken record of temporal earthly dominion for successors of Muhammad in the Islamic ummah. In the older sense to identify on a macro-level as sunni or shi’a follows differences in interpretation of the Quran, statements of the Prophet Muhammad, and the continuing role of descendants in the Prophet’s family from ‘Ali. The actual divergences over mostly issues of Islamic law, apart from succession of the Prophet. These are as varied in the sunni schools as they are between sunni and the various shi’a views. Much of the disagreement can be explained on cultural terms as Muslim communities have evolved almost fromt he start outside of the Arabian heartland.

But for anyone interested in disrupting unity or political reconciliation, the embedded historical grievances between sunni and shi’a can be resurrected in a flash. Consider the power-scarred sectarian wedge in the current security chaos of Iraq, where Saddam’s secular Ba’th party had mitigated religious identity politics for several decades. Those in the West who hate Islam, who may even view it as a Satanic plot out to destroy Jews or Christians, must be smiling broadly every time Muslims kill each other, bomb each other’s mosques and treat each other as worse than the “other” infidels. Continue reading Divide and Think You Conquer →

This Is Not an Easter Egg

Humor and Satire, Islamophobia

Christians around the world celebrate Easter with thoughts of the empty tomb and resurrection of Christ. But there is more. Weather permitting, children are let loose in their Sunday best to hunt for Easter eggs, adding a secular, healthy, dietary blessing to the baskets of chocolate bunnies and jelly beans waiting at home. Even the White House lawn is set for the annual Easter Egg Roll (minus the Christian Rock) on Monday. It is as though many Christians are not content to leave the tomb empty. Apparently egged on by the spring fever of long forgotten fertility rites, the main message of Christianity gets sidetracked to a debate of anything but intellectual designing: which comes first, the Easter egg or the Easter bunny?

Eggs are not the exclusive mystical domain of Christendom (although the ludicrous lengths taken to parade a sacred holiday into outrageous bonnets and Texas-shaped eggs suggest we have entered the dispensation of Christendumb). Secular folk and agnostics eat their eggs for breakfast with bacon, toast and diner coffee. But all God’s children like eggs, including Muslims with internet savy and a taste for the miraculous. Take a gander (but do not confuse his spouse’s eggs with those shown here) at the three eggs shown below. What do you see different in the middle egg than the ones on either side (hint: the left is from the White House State of the Union Eggroll and the right is reported from last year’s Easter Sunday):
Continue reading This Is Not an Easter Egg →

Turning the World Upside Down

Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

[Note: The following Islamophobic/Christophilic piece was written by the early 20th century missionary Samuel Zwemer and his wife Amy for Christian children. The overt Orientalism seen here through a virtually complete opposing of Arab Muslims to “civilized” American Christians is chilling; unfortunately it still resonates and not only with conservative Evangelicals intent on converting Muslims to their own brand of Christendom. I offer the following selection (the whole cloth is preserved at Project Gutenberg) as a reminder that the so-called “clash of civilizations” has deep roots. So on this Christmas Eve, as you count your blessings, consider also the many curses you can find in the following excerpt as a Muslim reader. A century or so after this book was written, a different kind of mission embroils Baghdad. On this Christmas Eve, for President Bush, mission not accomplished; for Samuel Zwemer, prayer not answered. For Iraqi Muslims the world has indeed been turned downside up. ]

The story of mission work in Arabia is not very long, but it is full of interest. From the day when Mohammed proclaimed himself an apostle in Mecca until about sixteen years ago when Ion Keith Falconer came to Aden as a missionary, all of Topsy-turvy Land lay in darkness as regards the gospel. For thirteen hundred years Mohammed had it all his own way in Arabia. Now his dominion over the hearts of men, is in dispute, and there is no doubt that the final, full victory will rest with Jesus the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.

Continue reading Turning the World Upside Down →

Map Happy for Jesus

Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia

Map is not territory, as historian of religion J. Z. Smith reminded us several decades ago. But neither is there a territorial monopoly on maps in printed atlases and underutilized map rooms. If you like maps, especially vintage variety, of the Middle East, there is a curious collection at a most anachronistically named website: http://www.muhammadanism.org/maps/default.htm.

As the name implies, this is not a site put out by Muslims. In fact it is a poorly disguised Christian missionary site trying to convert Muslims back into the earlier fold. Continue reading Map Happy for Jesus →

Where Are We Beheading?

Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

The search engine Google can easily become a kind of ouija board for those of us engaged in connected scholarship. There is much useful information just a click away, but also much out there of which to be wary. It is worthwhile to take time out every once in awhile to see what Goggle will offer up for an innocent query. Out of curiosity on October 4, 2005, I decided to type “beheading” into Google and see what came up.

The first 10 sites (of 1,890,000) are instructive (you can see for yourself) of the problem facing the representation of Islam on the internet. Continue reading Where Are We Beheading? →