Let’s move to the other side of the globe: The historic xenophobia of the racist white supremacists in the US, the chief supporter of the Israeli settler colony, resulted in two major and many more US-led invasions of Muslim states in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims were slaughtered. When Americans freely and openly elected Donald Trump, he unleashed the most hateful campaign of terror and intimidation against Muslims in the United States. His infamous Muslim ban, sustained by the US Supreme Court, is the legal manifestation of this abusive treatment of Muslims.
The “historic xenophobia,” the “racist white supremacists,” the “Israeli settler colony” — Dabashi’s cup runneth over with bile. If America suffers from xenophobia, hatred of foreigners, then why is it the nation of immigrants par excellence, of people welcomed from all over? This country of “racist white supremacists” in recent years elected, and then re-elected, a black American to be President. This country of “racist white supremacists” has been going out of its way to promote “diversity” and “inclusivity” until the cows come home — in universities and colleges, in housing, in the workplace. And Dabashi again tells us Israel is a “settler colony,” though a “colony” of what country he does not say. He also overlooks several thousand years of history that connect the Jewish people to that little sliver of land — Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel — that made them. For Dabashi, that history doesn’t exist. The Jews — for some unfathomable reason Dabashi dares not discuss, decided to “settle” in Palestine. Why “Palestine,” of all places? Then, he claims, they proceeded to manufacture a false history to connect them to that land. There’s been plenty of false history about Palestine, all right, but it hasn’t been coming from the Jews.
As for Israel’s existence having “resulted in two major and many more US-led invasions of Muslim states in which hundreds of thousands of Muslims were slaughtered” — here Dabashi demonstrates his convenient historical amnesia. The Americans rescued — has he forgotten? — the Muslim Bosnians from the Serbs. The Americans, again, rescued another Muslim people, the Kuwaitis — has he forgotten? — from the Iraqis who invaded their country in August 1990. As for those “two major....invasions of Muslim states,” Dabashi is referring to Afghanistan and Iraq. American troops went to Afghanistan not because of Israel, but as everyone knows, because of 9/11 and the need to confront Al Qaeda, which had its headquarters in Afghanistan at the time. In so doing, the Americans took on the Taliban as well, earning the gratitude of many ordinary Afghans who had suffered from their calamitous rule. The Americans then went to war against Saddam Hussein, not because of Israel, but because they believed, wrongly, that there was some connection between the Iraqi regime and Al Qaeda. In both cases, the Americans naively believed they could bring democracy, free elections, and a better life for the Muslims of Afghanistan and of Iraq. It wasn’t America’s fault that it didn’t work out that way.
In Europe too, the historic hatred of Muslims rooted in their version of Christianity have now reached epidemic proportions among racist, xenophobic, and proto-fascistic movements, best evident in the Brexit crisis but equally staged [sic] in the rest of Europe.
Whatever “historic hatred of Muslims” there might be in Europe, based on 1,400 years of Islamic conquest and subjugation of many different Christian lands, from Coptic Egypt and Catholic North Africa and Spain in the west, to the Orthodox in the Byzantine Empire to the east, it certainly was not evident when, beginning a few decades ago, European countries began allow into their midst millions of Muslim migrants. There are now 44 million Muslims in Europe. And they are not just in Europe, but are receiving from those “racist, xenophobic and proto-fascistic” peoples every possible kind of benefit: free housing, free medical care, free education, family allowances, clothing and food allowances, even unemployment benefits. If there has been a considerable cooling in the attitude of many Europeans, it is because of the observable behavior of Muslim migrants — their uneagerness to work, their high rates of criminality, their unwillingness to integrate into the larger society. Such things as the Muslim grooming gangs in the U.K., (Rotherham, Rochdale, etc.) that may have claimed as many as a million English girls as their victims, the mass sexual assaults by Muslims on German women in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, 2016, the street crime, the vandalizing of cars, the attacks on Jews and homosexuals, the rubbishing of churches — all this has naturally had its effect on the attitudes of Europeans. So, too, have the aggressive Muslim demands for accommodations to their needs, ranging from prayer rooms in schools and workplaces, and being given time off from the workday or the school day to pray, to offering halal meals in prison and school canteens, to allowing niqabs or burkas to be worn, despite the security problem that wearing such clothing poses.
In Australia too, where Prime Minister Scott Morrison just recognised west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, anti-Muslim racists enjoy wide-spread support among xenophobic nationalists. He is in the good league [sic] of the notorious Australian MP Pauline Hanson who believes her country is about to be “swamped by Muslims.”
Recognizing West Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has nothing do with “anti-Muslim racism.” It does have to do with recognizing that Jerusalem has been the capital of the Jewish people for several thousand years, that it is now where all the important government offices in Israel,, including the Knesset, are located, and is where diplomats conduct their business. It was to right an historical injustice, not to engage in what Dabashi claims is “anti-Muslim racism,” that Scott Morrison recognized West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. It is not “racist” to recognize the Jewish claim to Jerusalem as its capital. For that matter, even if such recognition were judged, absurdly, to be an “anti-Muslim” act, it would not be “racism.” How many thousands of times must it be repeated at this website? Islam is not a race. Disliking Islam is not “racism.”
