A Discussion of the "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" Report Published by the Center for American Progress in August 2011
The report summarized in the following article has been long-awaited, and arrived in a timely manner, a decade after the events of September 11, 2001. It presents a unique examination of the Islamophobia network in the United States, identifying the main proponents and supporters on various levels, and dividing them into such categories as the intellectuals, the funders, the media, and the political demagogues.
This is an important report, which lays out the various aspects of the Islamophobia network in America. Unlike other reports, it avoids becoming caught up in theoretical details such as attempts to define the phenomenon of Islamophobia, or its political and social contexts. This makes it an important contribution which deserves careful reading and also deserves to be translated into Arabic, so that the interested Arab reader will be able to benefit from its content.
The report was published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning American think-tank. It exposes how extensive the Islamophobia network in America has become over the past decade, the rapid exponential rise of this phenomenon which has noticeably increased since 2001, and the disturbing rise in Islamophobia over the past two years.
Defining Islamophobia, and its dangers
The study defines Islamophobia as the "exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America's social, political, and civic life."[1]
" Islamophobia is "an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization." "
This means that Islamophobia is not overt bias against Islam and Muslims due to lack of knowledge or ignorance, a simple suspicion that could be corrected and dissipate at the nearest opportunity, but rather that Islamophobia is an excessive fear and animosity that is not confined to emotions or thoughts, but has transcended them into action aiming to incite against, or participate in the marginalization of, Muslims and Islam as a group and a religion from all aspects of American public life, as well as to distort their image. The study cites many examples of authors, politicians, writers, policies, protests and populist movements that have behaved in this manner.
The study describes Islamophobia as an extension of American hate groups, numerous groups as old as America itself, which at various historical junctures have targeted different sectors of American society such as African-Americans, immigrants, and certain Christian religious sects for various reasons. The study states that:
Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.[2]
Adding, This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians' talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric. [3]
This means that the Islamophobia network in America was not born after the events of September 11, but had existed for years before that. The report gestures to the writings and public positions of some of the pioneers of Islamophobia, inc., such as Steven Emerson, founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which dates back to the early 1990s. The huge Islamophobic leap in the United States occurred in two phases. The first phase immediately followed the September 11 attacks, when the phenomenon of Islamophobia grew widespread among experts, the media and the American right wing movements, and led to a deterioration of the image of Islam and Muslims. American opinion polls indicate that Islam is the most negatively regarded religion in the United States at the moment. Only 37% of Americans regard Islam in a positive light, the lowest rating in a decade, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in 2010. This viewpoint has been translated into mainstream American society's social rejection of American Muslims. A Time Magazine survey conducted in 2010 indicated that 28% of American voters do not believe that Muslims should have the right to serve on the US Supreme Court, and approximately a third of Americans believe that Muslims should be banned from running for the presidency. The second phase of Islamophobia began after 2008, and continues unto the present. The report argues that the ousting of Republicans from power and the ascendency of current president Barack Obama led to greater extremism in American rightwing movements, which have now been given free rein to attack Islam and Muslims; some even present Barack Obama and American Muslims as a common enemy. These individuals have deliberately portrayed Obama as a Muslim, or a secret Muslim hiding his faith, or a Muslim sympathizer, and they have poured their resentment and anger onto Obama and onto Muslims, describing them as being part of a joint conspiracy against America.
The report highlights a number of dangerous reports against Obama and Muslims. Frank Gaffney, which the report identifies as one of the stars of the American Islamophobia network, founder and director of the Center for Security Policy, authored an article entitled, "America's First Muslim President?" in which he declared, "there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."[4]
The Islamophobia Network
The report states that Islamophobia, as defined above, did not spread spontaneously across the United States, or as a result of the friction in relations between the United States and some Muslim countries, nor due to old tensions, nor the misreporting of the American media coverage of Islam and Muslims.
Instead, the study argues that Islamophobia in America is deliberate, instigated and fueled by a group of extreme right-wing organizations, which the study calls the Islamophobia network.
This means that there are a number of organizations collaborating closely to spread Islamophobia on various fronts. This also means that these different organizations work in different fields: some are producing ideas, others are funding, a third group is disseminating these ideas in the media, and a fourth is publishing them in policy papers and in the popular press. Yet another group translates these ideas into policies, laws and government decisions.
Clearly, attacking this network is not an easy operation, and the authors of the Center for American Progress study consider their work to be a "first step towards [exposing]
the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America."[5] The report identifies six main links in the chain, each of which consists of a number of specialized organizations.
The first link is the category of funding. This includes a number of charitable organizations that fund research and science. These organizations pump millions of dollars to the second link of the Islamophobia network, which includes a group of experts who study terrorism, Islam, and American Muslims, as well as America's relations with the Muslim world. These false experts wear the mask of science and the guise of experts and intellectuals, and they use some scientific tools to produce research, articles and books which are generally unscientific and full of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. This material is the intellectual foundation upon which the rest of the Islamophobia network builds its material, which is defamatory of Islam and Muslims.
The third link is the American religious right wing, in which several leaders play a dangerous role in disseminating anti-Islam and anti-Muslim thought in the extremist Christian ranks, with the collaboration of the fourth link, the populist organizations, or the organizations which work on the political and populist levels, agitating on the popular level to spread fear of Islam and Muslims across America. These organizations specialize in organizing at the grass-roots level as well as at the political level, using experts with special skills in American politics who use the most recent technology (electronic and traditional) in order to mobilize people, unify them, and bring them together in workgroups, conferences and protests decrying Islam and Muslims in America.
" Islamophobia in the United States is deliberate, propagated and disseminated by a number of extreme right-wing organizations. "
The rise and spread of these groups in this new form dates back to 2008; such organizations are dangerous because they transform a hatred of Islam and Muslims into organized populist action which on one hand, allows it to spread, and on the other, allows anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiment to become an organized political campaign, as if Islam and American Muslims were an extreme danger that necessitated such an organized political and grass-roots counter-movement. I consider the emergence of these organizations in the manner described by the study to be a beacon of danger, and a cause for concern.
The fifth link of the chain of the Islamophobia network in America includes the extremist rightwing American press, which hosts experts, populist activists, and politicians from the Islamophobia network, as well as clergymen who support its agenda, thereby transforming them into opinion-makers whose thoughts and news are widely broadcast and disseminated. They then become an indispensable part of the media coverage of events and news, which further spreads the message of Islamophobia and turns activists into celebrated authorities and experts.
The sixth and final link, sadly, are rightwing American politicians who have adopted the calls of Islamophobia and have spoken about it and sometimes have transformed them into laws, and congressional hearings, which has only given the Islamophobia network more authority and legitimacy, which some have attempted to translate into laws and policies, and have transformed it into a political issue that divides American politicians into opponents and supporters.
The Leadership of the Islamophobia Network
The study cites many examples of the major exponents in the Islamophobia network, some of whom have a higher public profile than others. The list also features many new names, whose impact is difficult to discern and recognize save by experts following the issue from inside America, a sign of the growing development of the Islamophobia network.
Of course, it is difficult to list all these names and organizations, but in the following section, I have listed some of the major players.
First: The donors. The list states that there are seven charitable organizations which gave 42.6 million dollars to research foundations that spread Islamophobia between 2001 and 2009. This considerable sum is an indication of the funding that these research institutes which instigate Islamophobia receive. Some of these organizations are known for their support of rightwing US and Israeli issues, but others are less well-known.
These donor organizations support rightwing research groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which is known for being a bastion of neo-conservatism in Washington.
The report also states that these donors "provide critical funding to a clutch f right-wing think-tanks and misinformation experts who peddle hate and fear of uslims and Islam"[6]
Second: The Islamophobia experts. The report focuses on Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Steven Emerson and Robert Spenser. Each one of these individuals has a long history with Islam and Muslims, as well as a clutch of defamatory books.
These people adopt ideas focused on attacking Islamic sharia law as a "totalitarian ideology" or a "politico-legal-militaristic principle". They contend that sharia is a problem, and that mosques are the "Trojan horses" introducing sharia into America, that America is vulnerable to jihad, and that a "secret jihad" aims to spread sharia in America.
These individuals focus their attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, and argue that it controls America's Muslim organizations. They also believe that Obama is a "hidden Muslim", that he is part of a Muslim conspiracy to spread sharia in America, and that he is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, which funds 80% of all America's mosques.
These individuals believe that the solution lies in banning American Muslims from "infiltrating" American state institutions, by combating them and the American groups that support them, and for this reason they have mounted concerted attacks on some American Muslim activists and some Muslim youth who work in Washington DC, in addition to attacking some American politicians who support them.
Unfortunately, these ideas have also found their way - via the Islamophobia network - into American society and politics, and their words are being repeated, sometimes literally, and at other times paraphrased, in the media, grassroots and religious media apparatuses of the Islamophobia network.
Third: The grassroots organizations mentioned by the report include a number of recently-established groups, at the top of which is Stop the Islamization of America, headed by Pamela Geller and Act! For America headed by Brigitte Gabriel. The report also exposes these organizations' cooperation with the rising American Tea Party movement.
These groups transform the misinformation produced by the Islamophobia experts into grass-roots campaigns using the latest tools of popular mobilization and political action, both electronic and traditional. Act! For America claims to have 573 branches across the United States, and to have 170 thousand members. The organization's budget for 2009 was approximately one million dollars, funds that are adding to the budget and resources of the Islamophobia network, its members and its activities.
" Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and is more widespread now than at any time in the previous decade; it has dramatically increased since 2008. "
Fourth: The previous links all benefit from the support of the rightwing Christian fundamentalist leadership in the United States. The study examines the roles of several evangelical leaders who have played a growing role in the spread of Islamophobia across America, at the head of which are Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Ralph Reed, and Franklin Graham. These individuals are all well-known American religious and political leaders, and even conservative estimates put the numbers of their supporters in the tens of thousands. These figures adopt the discourse of the Islamophobia experts and activists, and imbue it with the authority that they have for their audiences.
Fifth: The role of the rightwing American media. The study identifies several major media players, at the head of which is Fox News, the Washington Times, TheNational Review, and CBN, which is owned by Pat Robertson. It also names some of the stars of national talk shows, like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, and some others. These channels participate in rapidly spreading Islamophobic lies, and disturbingly without fact-checking sources or the veracity of these sources' information.
Sixth: The unfortunate role of politicians who have adopted the Islamophobic discourse, disseminating it and supporting it politically and legislatively. The biggest culprits are congressmen Peter King, Sue Myrick, Allen West, Renee Elmers and Paul Broun.
The report argues that these politicians support the Islamophobia network to a greater extent, by "push[ing] these [Islamophobic] myths as "facts" and then craft[ing] political fundraising campaigns and get-out-the-vote strategies based on debunked information about Muslims and Islam."[7]
The report speaks of the Congressional Hearings organized by Peter King in May 2011, entitled "Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response", in which he made false claims about Muslims garnered from the Islamophobia networks experts, such as the claim that "80 to 85% of mosques in America are controlled by radical Islamic fundamentalists".
Conclusion and Commentary
In conclusion, I focus on the four following points:
First: Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and it has become more widespread in this past decade than at any other time previously; it has also increased dramatically since 2008.
Second: Islamophobia has its own structure and organization, and enjoys a network of collaborating and coexisting groups that share a hefty budget, experts, and supporters.
Third: The study that I have summarized is extremely useful and contains many facts and examples and a careful study of the backgrounds of the major players in the Islamophobia network.
Fourth: The study's importance mandates its translation into Arabic; Arab and Muslim organizations will benefit from its practical strategy to combat the dangers of increasing Islamophobia.
[1] Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir, Fear, Inc.: The network of Islamophobia in America, Washington DC, USA: Center for American Progress, August 2011, p.9
A Discussion of the "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" Report Published by the Center for American Progress in August 2011
The report summarized in the following article has been long-awaited, and arrived in a timely manner, a decade after the events of September 11, 2001. It presents a unique examination of the Islamophobia network in the United States, identifying the main proponents and supporters on various levels, and dividing them into such categories as the intellectuals, the funders, the media, and the political demagogues.
This is an important report, which lays out the various aspects of the Islamophobia network in America. Unlike other reports, it avoids becoming caught up in theoretical details such as attempts to define the phenomenon of Islamophobia, or its political and social contexts. This makes it an important contribution which deserves careful reading and also deserves to be translated into Arabic, so that the interested Arab reader will be able to benefit from its content.
The report was published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning American think-tank. It exposes how extensive the Islamophobia network in America has become over the past decade, the rapid exponential rise of this phenomenon which has noticeably increased since 2001, and the disturbing rise in Islamophobia over the past two years.
Defining Islamophobia, and its dangers
The study defines Islamophobia as the "exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America's social, political, and civic life."[1]
" Islamophobia is "an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization." "
This means that Islamophobia is not overt bias against Islam and Muslims due to lack of knowledge or ignorance, a simple suspicion that could be corrected and dissipate at the nearest opportunity, but rather that Islamophobia is an excessive fear and animosity that is not confined to emotions or thoughts, but has transcended them into action aiming to incite against, or participate in the marginalization of, Muslims and Islam as a group and a religion from all aspects of American public life, as well as to distort their image. The study cites many examples of authors, politicians, writers, policies, protests and populist movements that have behaved in this manner.
The study describes Islamophobia as an extension of American hate groups, numerous groups as old as America itself, which at various historical junctures have targeted different sectors of American society such as African-Americans, immigrants, and certain Christian religious sects for various reasons. The study states that:
Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.[2]
Adding, This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians' talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric. [3]
This means that the Islamophobia network in America was not born after the events of September 11, but had existed for years before that. The report gestures to the writings and public positions of some of the pioneers of Islamophobia, inc., such as Steven Emerson, founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which dates back to the early 1990s. The huge Islamophobic leap in the United States occurred in two phases. The first phase immediately followed the September 11 attacks, when the phenomenon of Islamophobia grew widespread among experts, the media and the American right wing movements, and led to a deterioration of the image of Islam and Muslims. American opinion polls indicate that Islam is the most negatively regarded religion in the United States at the moment. Only 37% of Americans regard Islam in a positive light, the lowest rating in a decade, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in 2010. This viewpoint has been translated into mainstream American society's social rejection of American Muslims. A Time Magazine survey conducted in 2010 indicated that 28% of American voters do not believe that Muslims should have the right to serve on the US Supreme Court, and approximately a third of Americans believe that Muslims should be banned from running for the presidency. The second phase of Islamophobia began after 2008, and continues unto the present. The report argues that the ousting of Republicans from power and the ascendency of current president Barack Obama led to greater extremism in American rightwing movements, which have now been given free rein to attack Islam and Muslims; some even present Barack Obama and American Muslims as a common enemy. These individuals have deliberately portrayed Obama as a Muslim, or a secret Muslim hiding his faith, or a Muslim sympathizer, and they have poured their resentment and anger onto Obama and onto Muslims, describing them as being part of a joint conspiracy against America.
The report highlights a number of dangerous reports against Obama and Muslims. Frank Gaffney, which the report identifies as one of the stars of the American Islamophobia network, founder and director of the Center for Security Policy, authored an article entitled, "America's First Muslim President?" in which he declared, "there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."[4]
The Islamophobia Network
The report states that Islamophobia, as defined above, did not spread spontaneously across the United States, or as a result of the friction in relations between the United States and some Muslim countries, nor due to old tensions, nor the misreporting of the American media coverage of Islam and Muslims.
Instead, the study argues that Islamophobia in America is deliberate, instigated and fueled by a group of extreme right-wing organizations, which the study calls the Islamophobia network.
This means that there are a number of organizations collaborating closely to spread Islamophobia on various fronts. This also means that these different organizations work in different fields: some are producing ideas, others are funding, a third group is disseminating these ideas in the media, and a fourth is publishing them in policy papers and in the popular press. Yet another group translates these ideas into policies, laws and government decisions.
Clearly, attacking this network is not an easy operation, and the authors of the Center for American Progress study consider their work to be a "first step towards [exposing]
the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America."[5] The report identifies six main links in the chain, each of which consists of a number of specialized organizations.
The first link is the category of funding. This includes a number of charitable organizations that fund research and science. These organizations pump millions of dollars to the second link of the Islamophobia network, which includes a group of experts who study terrorism, Islam, and American Muslims, as well as America's relations with the Muslim world. These false experts wear the mask of science and the guise of experts and intellectuals, and they use some scientific tools to produce research, articles and books which are generally unscientific and full of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. This material is the intellectual foundation upon which the rest of the Islamophobia network builds its material, which is defamatory of Islam and Muslims.
The third link is the American religious right wing, in which several leaders play a dangerous role in disseminating anti-Islam and anti-Muslim thought in the extremist Christian ranks, with the collaboration of the fourth link, the populist organizations, or the organizations which work on the political and populist levels, agitating on the popular level to spread fear of Islam and Muslims across America. These organizations specialize in organizing at the grass-roots level as well as at the political level, using experts with special skills in American politics who use the most recent technology (electronic and traditional) in order to mobilize people, unify them, and bring them together in workgroups, conferences and protests decrying Islam and Muslims in America.
" Islamophobia in the United States is deliberate, propagated and disseminated by a number of extreme right-wing organizations. "
The rise and spread of these groups in this new form dates back to 2008; such organizations are dangerous because they transform a hatred of Islam and Muslims into organized populist action which on one hand, allows it to spread, and on the other, allows anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiment to become an organized political campaign, as if Islam and American Muslims were an extreme danger that necessitated such an organized political and grass-roots counter-movement. I consider the emergence of these organizations in the manner described by the study to be a beacon of danger, and a cause for concern.
The fifth link of the chain of the Islamophobia network in America includes the extremist rightwing American press, which hosts experts, populist activists, and politicians from the Islamophobia network, as well as clergymen who support its agenda, thereby transforming them into opinion-makers whose thoughts and news are widely broadcast and disseminated. They then become an indispensable part of the media coverage of events and news, which further spreads the message of Islamophobia and turns activists into celebrated authorities and experts.
The sixth and final link, sadly, are rightwing American politicians who have adopted the calls of Islamophobia and have spoken about it and sometimes have transformed them into laws, and congressional hearings, which has only given the Islamophobia network more authority and legitimacy, which some have attempted to translate into laws and policies, and have transformed it into a political issue that divides American politicians into opponents and supporters.
The Leadership of the Islamophobia Network
The study cites many examples of the major exponents in the Islamophobia network, some of whom have a higher public profile than others. The list also features many new names, whose impact is difficult to discern and recognize save by experts following the issue from inside America, a sign of the growing development of the Islamophobia network.
Of course, it is difficult to list all these names and organizations, but in the following section, I have listed some of the major players.
First: The donors. The list states that there are seven charitable organizations which gave 42.6 million dollars to research foundations that spread Islamophobia between 2001 and 2009. This considerable sum is an indication of the funding that these research institutes which instigate Islamophobia receive. Some of these organizations are known for their support of rightwing US and Israeli issues, but others are less well-known.
These donor organizations support rightwing research groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which is known for being a bastion of neo-conservatism in Washington.
The report also states that these donors "provide critical funding to a clutch f right-wing think-tanks and misinformation experts who peddle hate and fear of uslims and Islam"[6]
Second: The Islamophobia experts. The report focuses on Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Steven Emerson and Robert Spenser. Each one of these individuals has a long history with Islam and Muslims, as well as a clutch of defamatory books.
These people adopt ideas focused on attacking Islamic sharia law as a "totalitarian ideology" or a "politico-legal-militaristic principle". They contend that sharia is a problem, and that mosques are the "Trojan horses" introducing sharia into America, that America is vulnerable to jihad, and that a "secret jihad" aims to spread sharia in America.
These individuals focus their attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, and argue that it controls America's Muslim organizations. They also believe that Obama is a "hidden Muslim", that he is part of a Muslim conspiracy to spread sharia in America, and that he is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, which funds 80% of all America's mosques.
These individuals believe that the solution lies in banning American Muslims from "infiltrating" American state institutions, by combating them and the American groups that support them, and for this reason they have mounted concerted attacks on some American Muslim activists and some Muslim youth who work in Washington DC, in addition to attacking some American politicians who support them.
Unfortunately, these ideas have also found their way - via the Islamophobia network - into American society and politics, and their words are being repeated, sometimes literally, and at other times paraphrased, in the media, grassroots and religious media apparatuses of the Islamophobia network.
Third: The grassroots organizations mentioned by the report include a number of recently-established groups, at the top of which is Stop the Islamization of America, headed by Pamela Geller and Act! For America headed by Brigitte Gabriel. The report also exposes these organizations' cooperation with the rising American Tea Party movement.
These groups transform the misinformation produced by the Islamophobia experts into grass-roots campaigns using the latest tools of popular mobilization and political action, both electronic and traditional. Act! For America claims to have 573 branches across the United States, and to have 170 thousand members. The organization's budget for 2009 was approximately one million dollars, funds that are adding to the budget and resources of the Islamophobia network, its members and its activities.
" Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and is more widespread now than at any time in the previous decade; it has dramatically increased since 2008. "
Fourth: The previous links all benefit from the support of the rightwing Christian fundamentalist leadership in the United States. The study examines the roles of several evangelical leaders who have played a growing role in the spread of Islamophobia across America, at the head of which are Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Ralph Reed, and Franklin Graham. These individuals are all well-known American religious and political leaders, and even conservative estimates put the numbers of their supporters in the tens of thousands. These figures adopt the discourse of the Islamophobia experts and activists, and imbue it with the authority that they have for their audiences.
Fifth: The role of the rightwing American media. The study identifies several major media players, at the head of which is Fox News, the Washington Times, TheNational Review, and CBN, which is owned by Pat Robertson. It also names some of the stars of national talk shows, like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, and some others. These channels participate in rapidly spreading Islamophobic lies, and disturbingly without fact-checking sources or the veracity of these sources' information.
Sixth: The unfortunate role of politicians who have adopted the Islamophobic discourse, disseminating it and supporting it politically and legislatively. The biggest culprits are congressmen Peter King, Sue Myrick, Allen West, Renee Elmers and Paul Broun.
The report argues that these politicians support the Islamophobia network to a greater extent, by "push[ing] these [Islamophobic] myths as "facts" and then craft[ing] political fundraising campaigns and get-out-the-vote strategies based on debunked information about Muslims and Islam."[7]
The report speaks of the Congressional Hearings organized by Peter King in May 2011, entitled "Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response", in which he made false claims about Muslims garnered from the Islamophobia networks experts, such as the claim that "80 to 85% of mosques in America are controlled by radical Islamic fundamentalists".
Conclusion and Commentary
In conclusion, I focus on the four following points:
First: Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and it has become more widespread in this past decade than at any other time previously; it has also increased dramatically since 2008.
Second: Islamophobia has its own structure and organization, and enjoys a network of collaborating and coexisting groups that share a hefty budget, experts, and supporters.
Third: The study that I have summarized is extremely useful and contains many facts and examples and a careful study of the backgrounds of the major players in the Islamophobia network.
Fourth: The study's importance mandates its translation into Arabic; Arab and Muslim organizations will benefit from its practical strategy to combat the dangers of increasing Islamophobia.
[1] Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir, Fear, Inc.: The network of Islamophobia in America, Washington DC, USA: Center for American Progress, August 2011, p.9
Bayyoumi is a writer and researcher concerned with American affairs, and holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy and Peace Studies from Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, PA in the US. He has published two books on US foreign policy toward the Middle East, and has had many articles published in periodicals, newspapers, and Arabic sites.
A Discussion of the "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" Report Published by the Center for American Progress in August 2011
The report summarized in the following article has been long-awaited, and arrived in a timely manner, a decade after the events of September 11, 2001. It presents a unique examination of the Islamophobia network in the United States, identifying the main proponents and supporters on various levels, and dividing them into such categories as the intellectuals, the funders, the media, and the political demagogues.
This is an important report, which lays out the various aspects of the Islamophobia network in America. Unlike other reports, it avoids becoming caught up in theoretical details such as attempts to define the phenomenon of Islamophobia, or its political and social contexts. This makes it an important contribution which deserves careful reading and also deserves to be translated into Arabic, so that the interested Arab reader will be able to benefit from its content.
The report was published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning American think-tank. It exposes how extensive the Islamophobia network in America has become over the past decade, the rapid exponential rise of this phenomenon which has noticeably increased since 2001, and the disturbing rise in Islamophobia over the past two years.
Defining Islamophobia, and its dangers
The study defines Islamophobia as the "exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America's social, political, and civic life."[1]
" Islamophobia is "an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization." "
This means that Islamophobia is not overt bias against Islam and Muslims due to lack of knowledge or ignorance, a simple suspicion that could be corrected and dissipate at the nearest opportunity, but rather that Islamophobia is an excessive fear and animosity that is not confined to emotions or thoughts, but has transcended them into action aiming to incite against, or participate in the marginalization of, Muslims and Islam as a group and a religion from all aspects of American public life, as well as to distort their image. The study cites many examples of authors, politicians, writers, policies, protests and populist movements that have behaved in this manner.
The study describes Islamophobia as an extension of American hate groups, numerous groups as old as America itself, which at various historical junctures have targeted different sectors of American society such as African-Americans, immigrants, and certain Christian religious sects for various reasons. The study states that:
Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.[2]
Adding, This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians' talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric. [3]
This means that the Islamophobia network in America was not born after the events of September 11, but had existed for years before that. The report gestures to the writings and public positions of some of the pioneers of Islamophobia, inc., such as Steven Emerson, founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which dates back to the early 1990s. The huge Islamophobic leap in the United States occurred in two phases. The first phase immediately followed the September 11 attacks, when the phenomenon of Islamophobia grew widespread among experts, the media and the American right wing movements, and led to a deterioration of the image of Islam and Muslims. American opinion polls indicate that Islam is the most negatively regarded religion in the United States at the moment. Only 37% of Americans regard Islam in a positive light, the lowest rating in a decade, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in 2010. This viewpoint has been translated into mainstream American society's social rejection of American Muslims. A Time Magazine survey conducted in 2010 indicated that 28% of American voters do not believe that Muslims should have the right to serve on the US Supreme Court, and approximately a third of Americans believe that Muslims should be banned from running for the presidency. The second phase of Islamophobia began after 2008, and continues unto the present. The report argues that the ousting of Republicans from power and the ascendency of current president Barack Obama led to greater extremism in American rightwing movements, which have now been given free rein to attack Islam and Muslims; some even present Barack Obama and American Muslims as a common enemy. These individuals have deliberately portrayed Obama as a Muslim, or a secret Muslim hiding his faith, or a Muslim sympathizer, and they have poured their resentment and anger onto Obama and onto Muslims, describing them as being part of a joint conspiracy against America.
The report highlights a number of dangerous reports against Obama and Muslims. Frank Gaffney, which the report identifies as one of the stars of the American Islamophobia network, founder and director of the Center for Security Policy, authored an article entitled, "America's First Muslim President?" in which he declared, "there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."[4]
The Islamophobia Network
The report states that Islamophobia, as defined above, did not spread spontaneously across the United States, or as a result of the friction in relations between the United States and some Muslim countries, nor due to old tensions, nor the misreporting of the American media coverage of Islam and Muslims.
Instead, the study argues that Islamophobia in America is deliberate, instigated and fueled by a group of extreme right-wing organizations, which the study calls the Islamophobia network.
This means that there are a number of organizations collaborating closely to spread Islamophobia on various fronts. This also means that these different organizations work in different fields: some are producing ideas, others are funding, a third group is disseminating these ideas in the media, and a fourth is publishing them in policy papers and in the popular press. Yet another group translates these ideas into policies, laws and government decisions.
Clearly, attacking this network is not an easy operation, and the authors of the Center for American Progress study consider their work to be a "first step towards [exposing]
the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America."[5] The report identifies six main links in the chain, each of which consists of a number of specialized organizations.
The first link is the category of funding. This includes a number of charitable organizations that fund research and science. These organizations pump millions of dollars to the second link of the Islamophobia network, which includes a group of experts who study terrorism, Islam, and American Muslims, as well as America's relations with the Muslim world. These false experts wear the mask of science and the guise of experts and intellectuals, and they use some scientific tools to produce research, articles and books which are generally unscientific and full of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. This material is the intellectual foundation upon which the rest of the Islamophobia network builds its material, which is defamatory of Islam and Muslims.
The third link is the American religious right wing, in which several leaders play a dangerous role in disseminating anti-Islam and anti-Muslim thought in the extremist Christian ranks, with the collaboration of the fourth link, the populist organizations, or the organizations which work on the political and populist levels, agitating on the popular level to spread fear of Islam and Muslims across America. These organizations specialize in organizing at the grass-roots level as well as at the political level, using experts with special skills in American politics who use the most recent technology (electronic and traditional) in order to mobilize people, unify them, and bring them together in workgroups, conferences and protests decrying Islam and Muslims in America.
" Islamophobia in the United States is deliberate, propagated and disseminated by a number of extreme right-wing organizations. "
The rise and spread of these groups in this new form dates back to 2008; such organizations are dangerous because they transform a hatred of Islam and Muslims into organized populist action which on one hand, allows it to spread, and on the other, allows anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiment to become an organized political campaign, as if Islam and American Muslims were an extreme danger that necessitated such an organized political and grass-roots counter-movement. I consider the emergence of these organizations in the manner described by the study to be a beacon of danger, and a cause for concern.
The fifth link of the chain of the Islamophobia network in America includes the extremist rightwing American press, which hosts experts, populist activists, and politicians from the Islamophobia network, as well as clergymen who support its agenda, thereby transforming them into opinion-makers whose thoughts and news are widely broadcast and disseminated. They then become an indispensable part of the media coverage of events and news, which further spreads the message of Islamophobia and turns activists into celebrated authorities and experts.
The sixth and final link, sadly, are rightwing American politicians who have adopted the calls of Islamophobia and have spoken about it and sometimes have transformed them into laws, and congressional hearings, which has only given the Islamophobia network more authority and legitimacy, which some have attempted to translate into laws and policies, and have transformed it into a political issue that divides American politicians into opponents and supporters.
The Leadership of the Islamophobia Network
The study cites many examples of the major exponents in the Islamophobia network, some of whom have a higher public profile than others. The list also features many new names, whose impact is difficult to discern and recognize save by experts following the issue from inside America, a sign of the growing development of the Islamophobia network.
Of course, it is difficult to list all these names and organizations, but in the following section, I have listed some of the major players.
First: The donors. The list states that there are seven charitable organizations which gave 42.6 million dollars to research foundations that spread Islamophobia between 2001 and 2009. This considerable sum is an indication of the funding that these research institutes which instigate Islamophobia receive. Some of these organizations are known for their support of rightwing US and Israeli issues, but others are less well-known.
These donor organizations support rightwing research groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which is known for being a bastion of neo-conservatism in Washington.
The report also states that these donors "provide critical funding to a clutch f right-wing think-tanks and misinformation experts who peddle hate and fear of uslims and Islam"[6]
Second: The Islamophobia experts. The report focuses on Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Steven Emerson and Robert Spenser. Each one of these individuals has a long history with Islam and Muslims, as well as a clutch of defamatory books.
These people adopt ideas focused on attacking Islamic sharia law as a "totalitarian ideology" or a "politico-legal-militaristic principle". They contend that sharia is a problem, and that mosques are the "Trojan horses" introducing sharia into America, that America is vulnerable to jihad, and that a "secret jihad" aims to spread sharia in America.
These individuals focus their attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, and argue that it controls America's Muslim organizations. They also believe that Obama is a "hidden Muslim", that he is part of a Muslim conspiracy to spread sharia in America, and that he is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, which funds 80% of all America's mosques.
These individuals believe that the solution lies in banning American Muslims from "infiltrating" American state institutions, by combating them and the American groups that support them, and for this reason they have mounted concerted attacks on some American Muslim activists and some Muslim youth who work in Washington DC, in addition to attacking some American politicians who support them.
Unfortunately, these ideas have also found their way - via the Islamophobia network - into American society and politics, and their words are being repeated, sometimes literally, and at other times paraphrased, in the media, grassroots and religious media apparatuses of the Islamophobia network.
Third: The grassroots organizations mentioned by the report include a number of recently-established groups, at the top of which is Stop the Islamization of America, headed by Pamela Geller and Act! For America headed by Brigitte Gabriel. The report also exposes these organizations' cooperation with the rising American Tea Party movement.
These groups transform the misinformation produced by the Islamophobia experts into grass-roots campaigns using the latest tools of popular mobilization and political action, both electronic and traditional. Act! For America claims to have 573 branches across the United States, and to have 170 thousand members. The organization's budget for 2009 was approximately one million dollars, funds that are adding to the budget and resources of the Islamophobia network, its members and its activities.
" Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and is more widespread now than at any time in the previous decade; it has dramatically increased since 2008. "
Fourth: The previous links all benefit from the support of the rightwing Christian fundamentalist leadership in the United States. The study examines the roles of several evangelical leaders who have played a growing role in the spread of Islamophobia across America, at the head of which are Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Ralph Reed, and Franklin Graham. These individuals are all well-known American religious and political leaders, and even conservative estimates put the numbers of their supporters in the tens of thousands. These figures adopt the discourse of the Islamophobia experts and activists, and imbue it with the authority that they have for their audiences.
Fifth: The role of the rightwing American media. The study identifies several major media players, at the head of which is Fox News, the Washington Times, TheNational Review, and CBN, which is owned by Pat Robertson. It also names some of the stars of national talk shows, like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, and some others. These channels participate in rapidly spreading Islamophobic lies, and disturbingly without fact-checking sources or the veracity of these sources' information.
Sixth: The unfortunate role of politicians who have adopted the Islamophobic discourse, disseminating it and supporting it politically and legislatively. The biggest culprits are congressmen Peter King, Sue Myrick, Allen West, Renee Elmers and Paul Broun.
The report argues that these politicians support the Islamophobia network to a greater extent, by "push[ing] these [Islamophobic] myths as "facts" and then craft[ing] political fundraising campaigns and get-out-the-vote strategies based on debunked information about Muslims and Islam."[7]
The report speaks of the Congressional Hearings organized by Peter King in May 2011, entitled "Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response", in which he made false claims about Muslims garnered from the Islamophobia networks experts, such as the claim that "80 to 85% of mosques in America are controlled by radical Islamic fundamentalists".
Conclusion and Commentary
In conclusion, I focus on the four following points:
First: Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and it has become more widespread in this past decade than at any other time previously; it has also increased dramatically since 2008.
Second: Islamophobia has its own structure and organization, and enjoys a network of collaborating and coexisting groups that share a hefty budget, experts, and supporters.
Third: The study that I have summarized is extremely useful and contains many facts and examples and a careful study of the backgrounds of the major players in the Islamophobia network.
Fourth: The study's importance mandates its translation into Arabic; Arab and Muslim organizations will benefit from its practical strategy to combat the dangers of increasing Islamophobia.
[1] Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir, Fear, Inc.: The network of Islamophobia in America, Washington DC, USA: Center for American Progress, August 2011, p.9
A Discussion of the "Fear, Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America" Report Published by the Center for American Progress in August 2011
The report summarized in the following article has been long-awaited, and arrived in a timely manner, a decade after the events of September 11, 2001. It presents a unique examination of the Islamophobia network in the United States, identifying the main proponents and supporters on various levels, and dividing them into such categories as the intellectuals, the funders, the media, and the political demagogues.
This is an important report, which lays out the various aspects of the Islamophobia network in America. Unlike other reports, it avoids becoming caught up in theoretical details such as attempts to define the phenomenon of Islamophobia, or its political and social contexts. This makes it an important contribution which deserves careful reading and also deserves to be translated into Arabic, so that the interested Arab reader will be able to benefit from its content.
The report was published by the Center for American Progress, a liberal-leaning American think-tank. It exposes how extensive the Islamophobia network in America has become over the past decade, the rapid exponential rise of this phenomenon which has noticeably increased since 2001, and the disturbing rise in Islamophobia over the past two years.
Defining Islamophobia, and its dangers
The study defines Islamophobia as the "exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America's social, political, and civic life."[1]
" Islamophobia is "an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization." "
This means that Islamophobia is not overt bias against Islam and Muslims due to lack of knowledge or ignorance, a simple suspicion that could be corrected and dissipate at the nearest opportunity, but rather that Islamophobia is an excessive fear and animosity that is not confined to emotions or thoughts, but has transcended them into action aiming to incite against, or participate in the marginalization of, Muslims and Islam as a group and a religion from all aspects of American public life, as well as to distort their image. The study cites many examples of authors, politicians, writers, policies, protests and populist movements that have behaved in this manner.
The study describes Islamophobia as an extension of American hate groups, numerous groups as old as America itself, which at various historical junctures have targeted different sectors of American society such as African-Americans, immigrants, and certain Christian religious sects for various reasons. The study states that:
Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.[2]
Adding, This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations has increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians' talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric. [3]
This means that the Islamophobia network in America was not born after the events of September 11, but had existed for years before that. The report gestures to the writings and public positions of some of the pioneers of Islamophobia, inc., such as Steven Emerson, founder and executive director of the Investigative Project on Terrorism, which dates back to the early 1990s. The huge Islamophobic leap in the United States occurred in two phases. The first phase immediately followed the September 11 attacks, when the phenomenon of Islamophobia grew widespread among experts, the media and the American right wing movements, and led to a deterioration of the image of Islam and Muslims. American opinion polls indicate that Islam is the most negatively regarded religion in the United States at the moment. Only 37% of Americans regard Islam in a positive light, the lowest rating in a decade, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll conducted in 2010. This viewpoint has been translated into mainstream American society's social rejection of American Muslims. A Time Magazine survey conducted in 2010 indicated that 28% of American voters do not believe that Muslims should have the right to serve on the US Supreme Court, and approximately a third of Americans believe that Muslims should be banned from running for the presidency. The second phase of Islamophobia began after 2008, and continues unto the present. The report argues that the ousting of Republicans from power and the ascendency of current president Barack Obama led to greater extremism in American rightwing movements, which have now been given free rein to attack Islam and Muslims; some even present Barack Obama and American Muslims as a common enemy. These individuals have deliberately portrayed Obama as a Muslim, or a secret Muslim hiding his faith, or a Muslim sympathizer, and they have poured their resentment and anger onto Obama and onto Muslims, describing them as being part of a joint conspiracy against America.
The report highlights a number of dangerous reports against Obama and Muslims. Frank Gaffney, which the report identifies as one of the stars of the American Islamophobia network, founder and director of the Center for Security Policy, authored an article entitled, "America's First Muslim President?" in which he declared, "there is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one himself."[4]
The Islamophobia Network
The report states that Islamophobia, as defined above, did not spread spontaneously across the United States, or as a result of the friction in relations between the United States and some Muslim countries, nor due to old tensions, nor the misreporting of the American media coverage of Islam and Muslims.
Instead, the study argues that Islamophobia in America is deliberate, instigated and fueled by a group of extreme right-wing organizations, which the study calls the Islamophobia network.
This means that there are a number of organizations collaborating closely to spread Islamophobia on various fronts. This also means that these different organizations work in different fields: some are producing ideas, others are funding, a third group is disseminating these ideas in the media, and a fourth is publishing them in policy papers and in the popular press. Yet another group translates these ideas into policies, laws and government decisions.
Clearly, attacking this network is not an easy operation, and the authors of the Center for American Progress study consider their work to be a "first step towards [exposing]
the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America."[5] The report identifies six main links in the chain, each of which consists of a number of specialized organizations.
The first link is the category of funding. This includes a number of charitable organizations that fund research and science. These organizations pump millions of dollars to the second link of the Islamophobia network, which includes a group of experts who study terrorism, Islam, and American Muslims, as well as America's relations with the Muslim world. These false experts wear the mask of science and the guise of experts and intellectuals, and they use some scientific tools to produce research, articles and books which are generally unscientific and full of misinformation about Islam and Muslims. This material is the intellectual foundation upon which the rest of the Islamophobia network builds its material, which is defamatory of Islam and Muslims.
The third link is the American religious right wing, in which several leaders play a dangerous role in disseminating anti-Islam and anti-Muslim thought in the extremist Christian ranks, with the collaboration of the fourth link, the populist organizations, or the organizations which work on the political and populist levels, agitating on the popular level to spread fear of Islam and Muslims across America. These organizations specialize in organizing at the grass-roots level as well as at the political level, using experts with special skills in American politics who use the most recent technology (electronic and traditional) in order to mobilize people, unify them, and bring them together in workgroups, conferences and protests decrying Islam and Muslims in America.
" Islamophobia in the United States is deliberate, propagated and disseminated by a number of extreme right-wing organizations. "
The rise and spread of these groups in this new form dates back to 2008; such organizations are dangerous because they transform a hatred of Islam and Muslims into organized populist action which on one hand, allows it to spread, and on the other, allows anti-Islam and anti-Muslim sentiment to become an organized political campaign, as if Islam and American Muslims were an extreme danger that necessitated such an organized political and grass-roots counter-movement. I consider the emergence of these organizations in the manner described by the study to be a beacon of danger, and a cause for concern.
The fifth link of the chain of the Islamophobia network in America includes the extremist rightwing American press, which hosts experts, populist activists, and politicians from the Islamophobia network, as well as clergymen who support its agenda, thereby transforming them into opinion-makers whose thoughts and news are widely broadcast and disseminated. They then become an indispensable part of the media coverage of events and news, which further spreads the message of Islamophobia and turns activists into celebrated authorities and experts.
The sixth and final link, sadly, are rightwing American politicians who have adopted the calls of Islamophobia and have spoken about it and sometimes have transformed them into laws, and congressional hearings, which has only given the Islamophobia network more authority and legitimacy, which some have attempted to translate into laws and policies, and have transformed it into a political issue that divides American politicians into opponents and supporters.
The Leadership of the Islamophobia Network
The study cites many examples of the major exponents in the Islamophobia network, some of whom have a higher public profile than others. The list also features many new names, whose impact is difficult to discern and recognize save by experts following the issue from inside America, a sign of the growing development of the Islamophobia network.
Of course, it is difficult to list all these names and organizations, but in the following section, I have listed some of the major players.
First: The donors. The list states that there are seven charitable organizations which gave 42.6 million dollars to research foundations that spread Islamophobia between 2001 and 2009. This considerable sum is an indication of the funding that these research institutes which instigate Islamophobia receive. Some of these organizations are known for their support of rightwing US and Israeli issues, but others are less well-known.
These donor organizations support rightwing research groups like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, which is known for being a bastion of neo-conservatism in Washington.
The report also states that these donors "provide critical funding to a clutch f right-wing think-tanks and misinformation experts who peddle hate and fear of uslims and Islam"[6]
Second: The Islamophobia experts. The report focuses on Daniel Pipes, Frank Gaffney, Steven Emerson and Robert Spenser. Each one of these individuals has a long history with Islam and Muslims, as well as a clutch of defamatory books.
These people adopt ideas focused on attacking Islamic sharia law as a "totalitarian ideology" or a "politico-legal-militaristic principle". They contend that sharia is a problem, and that mosques are the "Trojan horses" introducing sharia into America, that America is vulnerable to jihad, and that a "secret jihad" aims to spread sharia in America.
These individuals focus their attacks on the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, and argue that it controls America's Muslim organizations. They also believe that Obama is a "hidden Muslim", that he is part of a Muslim conspiracy to spread sharia in America, and that he is supported by the Muslim Brotherhood, which funds 80% of all America's mosques.
These individuals believe that the solution lies in banning American Muslims from "infiltrating" American state institutions, by combating them and the American groups that support them, and for this reason they have mounted concerted attacks on some American Muslim activists and some Muslim youth who work in Washington DC, in addition to attacking some American politicians who support them.
Unfortunately, these ideas have also found their way - via the Islamophobia network - into American society and politics, and their words are being repeated, sometimes literally, and at other times paraphrased, in the media, grassroots and religious media apparatuses of the Islamophobia network.
Third: The grassroots organizations mentioned by the report include a number of recently-established groups, at the top of which is Stop the Islamization of America, headed by Pamela Geller and Act! For America headed by Brigitte Gabriel. The report also exposes these organizations' cooperation with the rising American Tea Party movement.
These groups transform the misinformation produced by the Islamophobia experts into grass-roots campaigns using the latest tools of popular mobilization and political action, both electronic and traditional. Act! For America claims to have 573 branches across the United States, and to have 170 thousand members. The organization's budget for 2009 was approximately one million dollars, funds that are adding to the budget and resources of the Islamophobia network, its members and its activities.
" Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and is more widespread now than at any time in the previous decade; it has dramatically increased since 2008. "
Fourth: The previous links all benefit from the support of the rightwing Christian fundamentalist leadership in the United States. The study examines the roles of several evangelical leaders who have played a growing role in the spread of Islamophobia across America, at the head of which are Pat Robertson, John Hagee, Ralph Reed, and Franklin Graham. These individuals are all well-known American religious and political leaders, and even conservative estimates put the numbers of their supporters in the tens of thousands. These figures adopt the discourse of the Islamophobia experts and activists, and imbue it with the authority that they have for their audiences.
Fifth: The role of the rightwing American media. The study identifies several major media players, at the head of which is Fox News, the Washington Times, TheNational Review, and CBN, which is owned by Pat Robertson. It also names some of the stars of national talk shows, like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, and some others. These channels participate in rapidly spreading Islamophobic lies, and disturbingly without fact-checking sources or the veracity of these sources' information.
Sixth: The unfortunate role of politicians who have adopted the Islamophobic discourse, disseminating it and supporting it politically and legislatively. The biggest culprits are congressmen Peter King, Sue Myrick, Allen West, Renee Elmers and Paul Broun.
The report argues that these politicians support the Islamophobia network to a greater extent, by "push[ing] these [Islamophobic] myths as "facts" and then craft[ing] political fundraising campaigns and get-out-the-vote strategies based on debunked information about Muslims and Islam."[7]
The report speaks of the Congressional Hearings organized by Peter King in May 2011, entitled "Extent of Radicalization in the American Muslim Community and that Community's Response", in which he made false claims about Muslims garnered from the Islamophobia networks experts, such as the claim that "80 to 85% of mosques in America are controlled by radical Islamic fundamentalists".
Conclusion and Commentary
In conclusion, I focus on the four following points:
First: Islamophobia is on the rise in the United States, and it has become more widespread in this past decade than at any other time previously; it has also increased dramatically since 2008.
Second: Islamophobia has its own structure and organization, and enjoys a network of collaborating and coexisting groups that share a hefty budget, experts, and supporters.
Third: The study that I have summarized is extremely useful and contains many facts and examples and a careful study of the backgrounds of the major players in the Islamophobia network.
Fourth: The study's importance mandates its translation into Arabic; Arab and Muslim organizations will benefit from its practical strategy to combat the dangers of increasing Islamophobia.
[1] Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang, Scott Keyes, and Faiz Shakir, Fear, Inc.: The network of Islamophobia in America, Washington DC, USA: Center for American Progress, August 2011, p.9
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