CLASS, IMPERIALISM, AND IDEOLOGY: THE MANUFACTURE OF ISLAMOPHOBIA IN THE UNITED STATES Chuck OConnell UCI 2011 preliminary

y draft Historical background: After the end of World War II in 1945, the United States relied upon Great Britain to police the Middle East and the Persian Gulf region. British bases and alliances were used to keep the area free from foreign encroachment and from any internal rebellions that might topple pro-Western regimes and disrupt the flow of oil. For Britain, however, the cost proved too much and in 1968 it announced that it would, by 1971, abandon its role as guarantor of regional stability. This announcement came at an inopportune moment for the U.S. ruling class because, with a war in Viet Nam (a war that involved invading two countries and bombing four) and with a powerful domestic antiwar movement, the U.S. was not in a position to deploy troops to the Middle East as a replacement for the British. Thus, the Nixon Doctrine was announced in 1969 stating that the U.S. would rely on local powers to provide regional security. Known as the two pillar strategy it involved the Americans arming Saudi Arabia and Iran as the two key U.S. allies. This arrangement lasted until 1979. In that year two major events destroyed the two-pillar strategy and lead to the proclamation of the Carter Doctrine: the Islamic Revolution in Iran transforming Iran from ally to adversary and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan bringing Soviet power much closer to the Mideast oilfields. Subsequent to these events President Carter announced that, because Persian Gulf and Middle East oil was vital to the security of the U.S., its flow to market would be militarily guaranteed by the United States itself. To back up this pledge the U.S. created a new military command (the Central Command or CENTCOM) in the 1980s for projecting American power into the Middle East and Central Asia. The first work of CENTCOM was to obtain access rights for military facilities in the Middle East and to then stockpile ammunition and fuel at these facilities in preparation for future war. By 1990 this was accomplished. Creating the enemy: Wars, however, require not only logistical preparation; they also require the psychological preparation of the people who will pay for and fight the war. Thus, in the 1980s the American mass media through its news reporting and through its entertainment industry (Hollywood) began prepping Americans for combat against Arabs (not all of whom are Muslim) and against Muslims (not all of whom are Arab). In order to wage war Americans had to acquire the politically necessary perspective. This work was done by the mass media through its framing of news events in the Middle East. The interpretative frame has been one that avoids class analysis and the imperial character of modern capitalist economies. American presence in the Middle East is presumed to be necessary and beneficent; any opposition to that presence is therefore wrong. Additionally, the indigenous people are depicted as culturally flawed: they are said to be anti-modern peoples held back from the modern world by their religion: Islam. Not only were television and radio news and opinion shaping talk shows used to advance this view; Hollywood did its part to prepare Americans for war by producing several anti-

Arab, anti-Muslim films during the 1980s and 1990s (for an extensive discussion of Hollywoods anti-Arab bias see Jack Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs). After the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 and the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan (Oct. 7, 2001) and Iraq (March 18, 2003), the ruling class increased the demonization of Muslims. This was done for four reasons: 1. To prepare American soldiers for war in Afghanistan and Iraq by dehumanizing Muslims. 2. To foster indifference to the killing of civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq by building hostility towards Muslims. 3. To intimidate into silence those Muslim-Americans who might be critical of U.S. war policies by creating fear of persecution. 4. To minimize social contacts between Muslims and non-Muslims by creating fear and distrust of Muslims by non-Muslims. Fear, Inc. - How Islamophobia Appeared: The creation of an ideology of Islamophobia was not left to accident. According to an August 2011 report from the Center for American Progress entitled Fear, Inc: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America the emergence of the politics of Islamophobia is the result of the work of misinformation experts spreading lies and distortions about Islam through the media and grassroots organizing; this work has been funded by a few key foundations. Between 2001 and 2009 these foundations gave $42.6 million to certain individuals and their organizations to produce anti-Islamic ideology. The leading anti-Muslim writers, speakers, and scholars men such as Daniel Pipes, David Horowitz, Steven Emerson, Frank Gaffney, and Robert Spencer all were sponsored by the following foundations: Donors Capital Fund, Richard Mellon Scaife, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Newton and Rochelle Becker Foundation, the Russell Berrie Foundation, Anchorage Charitable Fund, William Rosenwald Family Fund, and the Fairbrook Foundation. This foundation funding has paid for the operation of groups designed to spread fear and distrust of Muslims. The groups and their experts identified by the Fear, Inc. report are: - The Center for Security Policy (Frank Gaffney) - Society of Americans for National Existence (David Yerushalmi) - Middle East Forum (Daniel Pipes) - Jihad Watch and Stop Islamization of America (Robert Spencer) - The Investigative Project on Terrorism (Steven Emerson) The experts from these organizations actually have visited state legislatures to advocate legal bans against the threat of Islamic Sharia law. Their claims that the majority of mosques in the U.S. have members who are either terrorists or terrorist sympathizers have been repeated in the media. Other political groups such as the Freedom Center of David Horowitz and even U.S. politicians such as Congressman Peter King (R-NY)

promote anti-Muslim ideology. The result, according to Fear, Inc., is that an anti-Muslim movement has spread to more than 23 states and is driving the national and global debates that have real consequences on the public dialogue and on American Muslims. The report cites a Washington Post-ABC opinion poll of September 2010 reporting that the percentage of Americans holding an unfavorable view of Islam had risen from 39% in 2002 to 49% in 2010. Critique of Fear, Inc: While the report, Fear, Inc., is valuable for describing the process by which anti-Islamic ideology becomes a material force, it frames the intentions and the consequences in politically correct language that avoids issues of class and imperialism. This is done in three ways. First, the report traces the funding for Islamophobic writings to seven foundations but fails to identify them for what they are: the charitable institutions of a ruling class that has an economic interest in imperialism. These funding organizations are not simply giving money because a few rich guys hate Islam; they give money to get people prepared to kill Muslims in the name of national security. Second, the report refers to the men and women promoting Islamophobia as misinformation experts when it more be more accurate to describe them as the paid intelligentsia for the ruling class. To call them misinformation experts portrays them as either confused men who cant get the information right or as men motivated by religious intolerance (or, as Americans like to say, by hate). Taking this point of view makes them appear as somewhat dim-witted and irrational and as men with ethical shortcomings. It is more likely, however, that they are entirely rational: they are quite aware that the ruling class will pay good money and give you a bit of public fame if you can ideologically advance the cause of imperialism. The fact that they buy into the intolerance they advocate just adds emotional force to their arguments by giving them the appearance of a deep and passionate sincerity. Third, the report frames the problem of Islamophobia as a problem of religious intolerance that threatens the fabric and strength of our democracy and our national security when the real problem of Islamophobia is that it inhibits the development of an anti-imperialist political consciousness within the working class. It would seem to be difficult to see the people of the Middle East as consisting primarily of workers who have the same class interests as American workers if youve been taught to see them as culturally inferior beings with a retrograde religion. The reports references to our democracy, our national security, and our Constitution indicates the authors embrace of nationalism and explains their failure to see Islamophobia as nothing more than a pernicious form of religious intolerance. Failure to see the United States as a class structured society in which the ruling class uses war to solve an ongoing crisis of overproduction leads to a failure to see the imperialist purpose behind Islamophobia as an ideology and a political movement.