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Posted on March 11, 2008

Islamophobic Gibberish Taints US Media

Discourse on Middle East
By Rami Khouri, Middle East Online

My travels around the United States for the past two weeks, during an intense
political moment leading up to two crucial presidential primaries Tuesday, have
reinforced my sense of a dark hole in public political life of this country.
At a time when the United States is deeply involved militarily in the Arab-Islamic
region of the world, serious, balanced and in-depth analysis or coverage of this
region and its people remain elusive.
Other issues that are important for America's well-being, such as climate change,
education reform, or immigration, are covered with much more depth, accuracy and
balance.
The political campaigns, especially among conservative Republicans, have
aggravated an already grim situation. Republican front-runner John McCain in
particular wastes no opportunity to rally his supporters with emotional commitments
to use every ounce of energy in his body to fight "radical Islamic militants." He'll
chase them to the "gates of hell," he thunders. And the happy crowd roars approval --
not quite sure who the radical Islamic militants are, or why the combined powers of
the world's mightiest democracies and allied Third World tyrannies have not even
chased the rascals out of the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan, or suburban
London, let alone to hell itself.
The crescendo of McCain's simplistic appeal is always that "I'll never surrender!" and
the happy crowd roars again, secure in the knowledge that surrender is not an option
-- though still blissfully confused about whom exactly one might surrender to if
surrender were ever an option.
Other intellectual hooligans and cultural skinheads -- like Glenn Beck on CNN every
night -- reflect a widespread tendency among conservative media commentators and
hosts to replace sensibility with emotion, to act tough when that is easier than being
smart and realistic.
Fox News panders to similar sentiments, simultaneously affirming a determination to
fight bad Muslims and terrorists who threaten the United States, while proudly
waving the American flag as an emotional symbol of one's commitment to something
-- though what that something is remains unclear.
I suspect that the emotional patriotism and macho militarism that increasingly define
the conservative side of the United States -- half the country, probably -- have
increasingly come to serve as a substitute for consistent ideology and sound foreign
policy. Many scholars, religious leaders, businessmen and -women, and civil society
groups increasingly reflect the best of American traditions, by making the effort to
grasp that a few criminal Arab-Muslims in the world are dwarfed by the billion-plus
law-abiding Muslims and 300 million-plus Arabs who share most American values.
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The political and media public space, however, is dominated by images, words and
innuendo that overwhelmingly portray Arab-Muslims who are violent, extremist,
religiously fanatic and generally alien, and therefore dangerous.
In the past two weeks in the United States, I have kept my eyes and ears open for
signs of news media reports about Arab-Muslims that portray them as they really are
-- normal people, usually politically placid, occasionally angry and very occasionally
violent. Those images and reports are extremely rare, in a way that they are not rare
in coverage of other population groups around the world or within the United States.
Sadly, more than six years after 9/11 and five years after the American-led attack on
Iraq, the public debate on these issues in the United States -- with only a few
exceptions -- remains mired in intellectual mediocrity, factual inaccuracy, analytical
selectivity, cultural insensitivity and political values more worthy of a horse barn than
a powerful and otherwise decent nation.
Politicians play on the ignorance and fear of their fellow citizens to rouse emotional
responses in a desperate quest for votes; commercial media personalities do the
same thing in pursuit of larger audience shares, in order to sell more advertising.
Both appear irresponsible and uncaring that their simplistic emotionalist and
reactionary chauvinism fosters a fresh form of racism that can only generate new
tensions and greater conflicts down the road.
There is much to admire this season in the American political system. But we also
clearly see much that is repugnant -- where the dark sides of American racism and
xenophobia is hideously promoted in speeches -- and this repulsiveness shamelessly
hidden by wrapping it in the flag.
We should not fall into the same moral morass that these few racists and hucksters
have adopted as their home: This sort of deliberate exploitation of racist fears and
ignorance is the sickness of a small minority of Americans living in a strange and
desperate world of media and political competitiveness.
We should not brand all Americans as ugly and stupid because a small minority of
them choose to be so, just as Americans should not see all Arabs and Muslims as
dangerous fanatics because a small minority of them choose to be so.
Rami G. Khouri is editor-at-large of the Daily Star and director of the Issam Fares
Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of
Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.