Islamophobia and Gun Violence in America

[Riaz Haq]

President Barack H. Obama finally asked the questions that many American Muslim victims of Islamophobia have been asking for a long time: How many Americans have been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade?  And how many Americans have died in gun violence.

Here's the exact quote from Obama's speech after yet another mass shooting--this time in rural Oregon:

“I would ask news organizations – because I won’t put these facts forward – have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. “We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”

The President's question got the media attention. CNN, among others, compiled the data and put the following graph on its website:

Sources: CDC and US Security Officials Via CNN

The US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has reported 316,545 people deaths by firearms on U.S. soil from 2004 to 2013. This figure is 1000 times higher than the total deaths of 313 Americans by terrorism at home and abroad in the same period.

Aided by the gun lobby and its conservative supporters, anti-terrorism and Islamophobia have emerged as major new US industries in the wake of the terrorist attacks of 911. Anti-terror industry is worth trillions of dollars. Islamophobia industry, estimated at $200 million, reinforces and promotes the fear of Islam and Muslims for its own gains. With their entrenched vested interests, the growth of these industries has served to distract attention from the 1000X bigger problem of gun violence. The National Rife Association, also know as the gun lobby, has taken full advantage of the situation by buying out the majority of US Congress which opposes even most modest gun safety regulations.

In addition to distracting Americans' attention from growing gun violence, increased spending on Islamophobia is having a significant impact on Americans' perception of Muslim Americans. Results differ by political party, with the majority of Republicans holding negative views of both Arab-Americans and Muslims. Democrats gave Arab-Americans a 30 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 33 percent unfavorable rating, while Republicans gave Arab-Americans a 54 percent unfavorable rating and Muslim-Americans a 63 percent unfavorable rating, according to public opinion survey conducted by Zogby Analytics.

I'm glad to see President Obama finally highlighting the issue of gun violence as the biggest public safety issue in America, far bigger than the issue of terrorism. I hope the President will continue to use his bully pulpit to highlight the problem of gun violence and persuade Americans to not vote for those to US Congress who oppose gun control legislation. I also hope that other individuals, organizations and the mass media will support Mr. Obama's campaign to bring about a sea change in American thinking about gun rights.

 Related Links:

Haq's Musings

Silicon Valley Stands Against Islamophobia

US Gun Violence 

Money is Free Speech in America

King's Hypocrisy

FBI Entrapping Young Muslims

Saudi Prince Funding Hate in America

[Riaz Haq]

The so-called ‘Islamic rape of Europe’ is part of a long and racist history


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/02/18/the-so...


The narrative of an Islamic or Arab takeover of Europe, though hardly new, has gained real traction in recent months, propagated by both xenophobic activist groups as well as populist political leaders and parties.

To be sure, there are legitimate security concerns posed both by the surge in new arrivals as well as the continuing instability and conflicts in the Middle East. The attacks in Cologne, writes the Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud, were a reminder to the West of the Muslim world's "sick relationship with women" -- a product both of patriarchal and religious norms as well as the stifling legacy of authoritarian rule.

But perverse, misogynist behavior is not the province of just one culture or society. And much of Europe's anti-refugee hysteria, as my colleague Adam Taylor charted this week, has been overblown and fueled by often misleading innuendo and rumor circulating on social media.

Very few of the identified culprits in the Cologne attacks were themselves refugees. And countries like Poland and Hungary, while leading the conservative charge against E.U. policies that would allow in desperate Middle Eastern asylum seekers, still have minuscule Muslim populations of their own. The risk of a cultural invasion somehow contaminating their societies is, frankly, a phantasm conjured by fear-mongers.

That's precisely what wSieci's cover image aimed to achieve: Fear. It did so, moreover, by borrowing from a long-established set of racial codes.

It didn't take Twitter users very long to spot the parallels. The Polish magazine's rendition of a young white woman, violated by hairy, dark-skinned men, carries immediate echoes to nationalist propaganda of an uglier historical moment.

See, for example, the poster in the tweet above of a World War II-era Italian fascist call to arms, showing a dark foreign soldier seizing a European woman. Or see the Nazi-era imagery in the tweet below of a scheming Jewish spider eyeing a blonde fraulein or a French colonial soldier groping another girl.

[Riaz Haq]

Idaho state Lt Governor Janice McGeachin waves gun and Bible in video questioning existence of #COVID19 #pandemic. #Republican legislators are calling for an end to #coronavirus restrictions in the #US state of #Idaho. #guns #religion #Christianity https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/idaho-governor-ja...

Idaho Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin waved a gun and a Bible during a video in which she and other legislators seemed to question the existence of a global pandemic that has claimed some 230,000 lives in the US.

Ms McGeachin, 57, appeared alongside 10 other GOP figures in a short clip published by the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a libertarian think-tank....

[Riaz Haq]

Christopher Clary
@clary_co
I've always found this graphic by
@kjhealy
to be very effective at showcasing that the United States is uniquely homicidal country. Even accepting that there is evil everywhere, you need a story about why evil in the United States disproportionately kills so many more here.

https://twitter.com/clary_co/status/1529908675871223808?s=20&t=...

[Riaz Haq]

Christopher Clary
@clary_co
I've always found this graphic by
@kjhealy
to be very effective at showcasing that the United States is uniquely homicidal country. Even accepting that there is evil everywhere, you need a story about why evil in the United States disproportionately kills so many more here.

https://twitter.com/clary_co/status/1529908675871223808?s=20&t=...