Ihsan

CAIR Conference on "Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism"

Salaams:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is organizing an interesting conference this weekend. The theme is "Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies." The topic no doubt is extremely relevant to a post-9/11 America. However, it is sad that we need these nice, fancy conferences and highly-trained academics to address an issue which really ought to be comprehensible to any second grader.

And what exactly is the issue. Well, all of us "anti-Americans" are accused of tricking folks into subscribing to the extraordinary theory that the US and its policies are NOT EXEMPT FROM THE LAW OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. My fellow Americans, ever heard about these things: our support for dictatorial Arab regimes who suppress the rights of their people, our backing of a brutal colonial regime in Israel that tortures, occupies, and ethnically cleanses the Palestinians, our nanchalant attitude toward the sanctions that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, followed by our bombing of that country into rubble, and then occupying it...

Yeah, these actions might make some folks in the Muslim world supposedly "anti-American" (anti-American here meaning not being too excited about US policies). But you know what makes the Muslim world even more "anti-American": Our focus on the Muslim world as being intrinsically and uniquely "anti-American", and the failure to mention the similar and sometimes more vehement sentiment in much of the Global South (especially in Latin America these days), and now even reaching the "civilized" shores of Europe as well!

posted by Anonymous at 5/12/2005 09:55:00 PM