Here are my two cents. Americans generally know nothing to speak of about Islam. I mean, almost zero. But a majority of them know that they do not like the Islamic religion, at least in the post-Cold War period. Actually Islam and Muslims in general were quite popular with Americans in the 1950s and 1960s, when they were mainly fighting godless Communism and appreciated having allies. In all the Muslim world, only little South Yemen went Communist, whereas a lot of Christian-majority countries did. The Eisenhower administration hoped to build a Muslim bloc to oppose the Soviet Union and Ike funded better railway links with Mecca because he wanted to encourage Muslims to go on pilgrimage and be pious and reject dialectical materialism. That’s right, the US used to promote sharia law.

Nowadays a lot of Americans say that “Islam” is incompatible with American values. Personally, I think they say this because they like the idea of being the sole superpower and don’t approve of any group that is hard to dominate. There has been a lot of opposition to American dominance in Latin America, Africa, and Asia — even Europe — but somehow that flies under the radar. Muslims overthrowing the Shah in Iran, a close US ally, somehow really ticked them off. And of course the main guerrilla groups opposing the US in Iraq and Afghanistan were religiously-driven or at least -identified, though secular groups were more important in Iraq than was generally recognized.

This perception of Muslims as generally oppositional, however, doesn’t comport with reality. Muslim-majority countries account for one NATO ally pledged to defend the US (Turkey) and for 8 of the 18 formally designated major non-NATO allies of the US — Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Pakistan, Qatar, and Tunisia. Even without the designation, the US has close security ties to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Indonesia. Of the non-NATO allies only one, Argentina, is in Latin America. The Muslims are more tightly allied to the US than is the Western Hemisphere!

Americans like Muslims slightly better than they like Islam. Go figure.

In 2015, at the height of ISIL, the so-called ‘Islamic State’ group, which had taken over northern Iraq and eastern Syria and blew up Paris, only 48% of Americans said they were favorable toward Muslims. Actually that wasn’t bad given the circumstances, of nearly a decade and a half of the Bush “War on Terror” and invasions of lots of Muslim countries, the citizens of some of which fought back.

Possibly because Donald J. Trump was so mean to them, Muslims rose in the opinions of Americans after 2017. In 2021 and 2022 they reached a 78% favorability rating. That’s actually fantastic. It means most Americans really thought well of Muslims by then.

“Muslim Americans,” Digital, Dream / Dreamland v3 / Clip2Comic, 2024.

But by February of this year, Muslims had lost 11 points and were down to 67% favorability. Although 80% of Muslims in the world are not Arabs, and the majority of Arabs are not religious fundamentalists, Hamas seems to have managed to cast a large shadow on the community. As for Islam, it had gone up to 57% favorability in 2021, but plummeted back down to 48% this year (i.e. back down to what it was in 2015 at the height of ISIL). Although, remember, most Americans couldn’t tell you for the life of them what Islam is.

Telhami notes that Muslims especially lost favorability with Democrats this year, and implies that President Joe Biden’s rhetoric is likely to blame. Biden has shown not the least sympathy for the plight of millions of Palestinian civilians and has often repeated false propaganda against them, to the point that the State Department’s dissent channel slammed him roundly as a major source of disinformation on the Gaza situation.

But it isn’t only Muslims. Many Americans at least perceived that there was “a lot” more prejudice this year against Jewish Americans (29%). Presumably this is because Jewish Americans are seen to be unfairly tarred with the brush of the far right, extremist Israeli government and its total war on Gaza civilians.

Some 22% thought there was “a lot” more prejudice against Muslim Americans in 2024. The perception of a substantial increase in prejudice toward other minorities, including Blacks and Hispanics, was much lower, in the range of 13%- 16%.

Paradoxically, although Americans had a high opinion of Muslims in 2022, they didn’t think Muslim Americans were of much account. Only a little over a fourth of Americans thought Muslims strengthen the fabric of US society. That’s terrible. And very unfair, since Muslim Americans produce physicians, engineers, entrepreneurs, inventors and others who demonstrably strengthen US society. When Trump needed a czar to head up the joint US government-Moderna moonshot to produce a COVID vaccine, he turned to Moncef Slaoui, a Moroccan-born Muslim, one of the world’s top immunologists.

On the other hand, I wonder if Americans didn’t object to the tenor of the question, since only 41% thought white people strengthen the fabric of US society. I suspect a lot of the 58% didn’t so much disrespect white contributions to the country as they just didn’t think an ethnic approach to the problem of the American fabric was very useful. Still, the 28% figure for Muslim Americans is substantially lower.

Most Americans in 2022 were all right with a Protestant, Catholic or Jewish president, with only about 11% or 12% opposed. On the other hand, many had qualms about a Mormon, Buddhist, Hindu or Agnostic one, with over 20% opposed in each case. But about a third really did not want an atheist or Muslim president (32% opposed, rising to over 50% among Republicans).

Ironically, they may well get a Hindu-ish president, since Kamala Harris seems to practice a syncretic mix of her mother’s Hinduism and her father’s Jamaican Christianity.

(The Conversation) – As someone who has researched Islamophobia in Britain for a quarter of a century, it is clear to me that the current violence on the streets of Britain is an example of it.

This was true from the first outbreak of violence, after a peaceful vigil for the three young girls who were fatally stabbed in an attack in Southport. A group of several hundred people began throwing bottles and bricks at police. They then directed their anger on the local mosque and those inside, with some even attempting to set fire to it.

The targeting of Muslims was initially put down to misinformation on social media claiming the perpetrator was a Muslim who had arrived in a small boat the year beforehand. Both of these claims have been refuted, yet Muslims and mosques continue to be targeted in the violence across the country, along with hotels known to be housing migrants.

Politicians have shied away from calling it Islamophobia, instead describing the violence as “far-right thuggery” and “anti-immigration protests”. Islamophobia and anti-immigration sentiment have been par for the course for the British far right since the turn of the century.

Beginning with the British National Party – a far-right political party that had unprecedented electoral success in local council elections in the early 2000s – a similar ideological trajectory can be traced through a number of far-right street movements that emerged between 2009 and 2018. These included the English Defence League (EDL) in around 2010, Britain First, Football Lads Alliance and Democratic Football Lads Alliance among others.

These groups have couched racist ideology in the notion of “defence”. Initially in providing a defence against a perceived threat from Muslim “extremists”, at times this has been used as code for all and every Muslim. More recently, far-right groups have mobilised to defend free speech and “our” women and girls from “grooming gangs”. Underlying all of this is a desire to defend “our” country, way of life and culture from threatening enemy others.

This is evident in the activities of the far-right group, Britain First. Claiming to provide “the frontline resistance to the Islamification of Britain” they conflate the threat they claim is posed by Muslims with the threat posed by “illegal immigration”. The group has taken to patrolling beaches near the English Channel with the intention of stopping “illegal” Muslims from entering the country.

Today, Muslims and immigrants, particularly asylum seekers from the Middle East, are two sides of the same problem for the British far right. But this conflation of the two groups has not occurred in a vacuum.

Much of the far-right rhetoric about Muslims and migrants has been replicated by at least some mainstream politicians. Just look at the similarities between the language used in the ongoing riots and the rhetoric used by politicians. Some are chanting “stop the boats” – Rishi Sunak’s own policy on irregular migration.

The vilification of Muslims and their communities has become normalised by both Labour and Conservative parties, as well as Ukip and Reform UK. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi spoke of Islamophobia having passed the “dinner table test”, where ordinary people would say things about Muslims in company with others that they would never say about other minority communities.

This is partly the legacy of the Brexit Leave campaign’s toxic rhetoric on popular views about immigration that continued right up to the recent general election.

Over the years, large sections of the public have become receptive to and accepting of Islamophobia (including far-right messages), and of the demonisation of migrants. Politicians of all stripes have enabled this by avoiding explicitly discussing Islamophobia.

The I-word

In his response to the unrest, Keir Starmer told Muslims: “I will take every step possible to keep you safe.” He continued: “Whatever the apparent motivation … we will not tolerate attacks on mosques or our Muslim communities.”

Surely, the “apparent motivation” is Islamophobia?

This has been pointed out by both MP Zarah Sultana and general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, Zara Mohammed. For them, the motivation was clear and unequivocal, and both wanted the prime minister to name it for what it is.

Starmer choosing not to use the “I-word” is far from surprising. As my research has repeatedly shown, few politicians are willing to do so. Acknowledging that Islamophobia exists would mean having to do something about it. And as we know, this has never happened.

Few politicians can be seen to truly care about Islamophobia. As a result, it is rendered unimportant by most politicians and the parties they represent. Despite some paying lip service to the matter, it always quickly disappears from the political agenda. Maybe this is what Starmer is hoping for.

Furthermore, mainstream political actors have been able to deploy Islamophobia for personal and political gain without fear of recourse or censure. There is no better illustration than Boris Johnson referring to Muslim women who wear the niqab looking like “letterboxes” or “bank robbers”. Not only did Johnson refuse to apologise but shortly after, he became prime minister. Another example is Lee Anderson, whose comments accusing London mayor Sadiq Khan of being controlled by Islamists were never called Islamophobic by the party.

The consequences of refusing to address (or even acknowledge) Islamophobia are now playing out in towns and cities across the country. The longer politicians pretend that Islamophobia doesn’t exist, the worse the problem will get, and the more permission the far right will feel they have to get away with violence.

Chris Allen, Associate Professor, School of Criminology, University of Leicester

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus Video added by Informed Comment:

Zeteo Video: “The UK’s “far right, racist, islamophobic riots,” Mehdi Talks To British Muslim MP Zarah Sultanah”

The frightening scenes of far-right extremists clashing with police and even rioting in British towns and cities in recent days have many wondering how to stop the spread of the propaganda that encourages racism, violence and misogyny.

The tough truth is that in seeking to fact check misinformation and force social media companies to remove hateful content, we are doing it wrong. Another message will simply pop up in place of each that is removed. The people who plant propaganda are far more advanced in their methods than the people trying to stop them. They are not thinking about messages but about audience. Hate is clickbait. And social media algorithms put it on steroids.

The unrest started in Southport where a group who claimed to be “protesting” over the deaths of three young girls during a knife attack in the area attacked a mosque. They seemed to believe that the attack was perpetrated by a migrant (which was untrue). More than 50 police officers were injured when they responded to the emergency.

Misleading messages about the Southport attack were posted online and Reform MP Nigel Farage “questioned” whether we were being lied to about the Southport attacker’s identity (although he told the BBC that he had “merely expressed a sense of sadness and concern that is being felt by absolutely everybody I know”).

Our working definitions of propaganda are hopelessly outdated because they all focus on message. And message is unimportant because propagandists will say anything to generate clicks, income or power. They will post calls to “build a wall” and “stop the boats”. They will claim “those kids were murdered in the name of Islam”. Factual accuracy is not important, what matters is that those who wield online influence identify and target a powerbase.

If what they say is taken down, they will simply find a different way to say it to the people they are trying to reach. In the meantime, then they can claim to be censored victims of the establishment. They appeal to emotion rather than rationality, and while their messaging is equal parts ludicrous and disturbing to the rest of us, it wins an audience. Therefore, that audience – rather than the messaging – should be our focus.

‘Imagined communities’

The modern propagandist creates what political scientist Benedict Anderson described as “imagined communities”. He argued that states and nations (and mass media) are founded by successfully creating a community with its own foundation myths, symbols and history. This chimes with the work of propagandist theorist Jacques Ellul, who argued that myths were central and necessary to successful propaganda.

Some symbols are well known and largely shared among us all – spitfires, the British bobby, royalty. But others, like the “cockroach” immigrant, the loss of national agency, and the language of conspiracy theories, are foundational to a community that speaks only to itself. Worse still, those who don’t share their beliefs are naive and need to “do their own research”. Marianna Spring, the BBC disinformation and social media correspondent, found in her book Among the Trolls, algorithmic rabbit holes with their own imagined communities.

Such myths are also fundamental in the process of generating “agitation” propaganda. Traditionally, agitation propaganda is the casus belli summoned by states to send people to war. In the same way, the hatred of today’s racist bigot and the misogyny of the incel are both founded in “agitation” propaganda. Influencer Andrew Tate, for example, has made his name summoning an army of men to fight for his cause.

As Ellul would have it, “hate is generally its most profitable resource … Hatred is probably the most spontaneous and common sentiment, it consists of attributing ones misfortunes and sins to ‘another’… Propaganda of agitation succeeds each time it designates someone as the source of all misery, provided that he is not too powerful.”

Add to this mix social media bots and it brews a poison for our democratic public sphere.

Finding the lost

Fact checking is not useless, but it doesn’t resolve the central problem. Better to identify the silos, and work with their members. We could water down the messaging being sent out to the people causing unrest on the streets with other, better sources. We might even even block some of the networks that deliver the content.

This is better than playing fake news whack-a-mole. Once we have identified the silos of information, we can target the algorithms that create them, and those being targeted or isolated. We can then mediate and ameliorate the problem by reaching out to these groups, spending our energies introducing alternative views, new symbols and foundational myths, negating the effects of algorithm that led them to their silo.

Spring writes of people whose lives have been ruined, of charlatans who create clickbait, but most of all the pathos of those dragged down. Factchecking simply convinces the converted that those who don’t share those views have taken the blue pill of blissful ignorance, rather than the red pill of painful knowledge.

Malicious actors are more than prepared to “flood the zone with shit”, as Trump adviser Steve Bannon puts it. This makes clearing the misinformation impossible, but, by thinking about audience first, we can, maybe, find the lost, and lead them through the storm.

Richard Fern, Lecturer, media, Swansea University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Channel 4 News: “Rioters attack hotel housing asylum seekers amid far-right violence”

( Commondreams.org ) – A spike in “relentless” Islamophobia across the United States that began in October with Israel’s U.S.-backed attack on the Gaza Strip continued through the first half of this year, the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy group said Tuesday.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released data showing the sustained surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian hate from January to June 2024, with 4,951 documented complaints, a 69% increase over the same period in 2023.

That came after CAIR received 3,578 complaints from last October through December, a 178% increase from a similar three-month period the previous year, as Common Dreamsreported when the data was published in January.

The largest share of 2024 complaints related to immigration and asylum cases (19%), which is in line with 2023. That was followed by employment discrimination (14%), education discrimination (10%), and hate crimes and incidents (8%).

So far this year, May has had the largest number of education discrimination complaints—which CAIR tied to “university administrations cracking down on anti-genocide student protestors,” beginning with Columbia University in April.

“Too many places of higher education, which have historically permitted Islamophobic speakers to poison their campus in the name of academic freedom, apparently find anti-genocide speech intolerable,” said CAIR research and advocacy director Corey Saylor in a statement. “Since last fall university administrators have been a primary perpetrator of anti-Muslim racism.”

“Our data shows that as student protests dominated media coverage of the movement opposing the Gaza genocide, employers also continued punishing their employees for their viewpoints,” Saylor added. “We are also seeing federal agencies like Customs and Border Protection and the FBI interpreting being Muslim or anti-genocide as suspicious activity.”

CAIR’s data release followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to the United States last week to address Congress—which was boycotted by dozens of lawmakers—and meet privately with President Joe Biden; Vice President Kamala Harris, the presumptive Democratic nominee for the November election; and former President Donald Trump, the Republican candidate.

Enabled by weapons and diplomatic support from Biden and Congress, Netanyahu launched Israel’s ongoing assault of Gaza in retaliation for the deadly Hamas-led October 7 attack. As of Tuesday, Israeli forces have killed at least 39,400 Palestinians and wounded another 90,996, according to local officials—though experts anticipate the final death toll will be far higher.

South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, which ruled on July 19 that the decadeslong Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank is illegal and must end. United Nations human rights experts said Tuesday that Israel must comply with the ruling, though Netanyahu’s government has shown no signs that it plans to do so.

CAIR has labeled the recent rise in hate across the United States “the Biden-backed Gaza genocide Islamophobia wave.”

“Islamophobia in the U.S. comes in cycles, with the last two large waves generated by Donald Trump’s 2015 announcement and 2017 implementation of his Muslim ban,” the group explained Tuesday. “As we have noted previously, this wave exceeds the combined totals of incoming incidents received during those two cycles.”

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

(The Conversation) – In political communication, a big lie — what is known as the “illusory truth effect” — is when the constant repetition of misinformation makes people more likely to accept it as truth.

Repetition is how lies gain traction. The more exposure to specific ideas and tropes that may be false claims, the more likely it is that this misinformation becomes understood as real.

A plethora of fake news circulates on the internet and social media. Unlike misinformation, which refers to false or inaccurate information, disinformation campaigns deliberately spread propaganda to create fear and suspicion.

Disinformation industries, and the brokers who exchange in this false currency, have an immense capability to circulate propaganda and conspiracy theories to a greater public, outside of their own echo chambers.

Producing social fictions

Through media outlets and co-ordinated networks, Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian tropes and conspiracies are circulated. Eventually, they become regarded as social facts, especially in times of war, conflict and heightened political tensions.

During these fraught times, the ability to authorize wholesale violence relies on circulating dehumanizing tropes and “scare stories.” This targeted propaganda frames entire populations as deviant “folk devils,” responsible for crimes and social problems. This then creates moral panics, used to justify acts of oppression.

A violent threat

In my book, Under Siege: Islamophobia and the 9/11 Generation, I document how since 9/11, two billion Muslims globally have faced collective punishment. Constructed as folk devils who imperil western societies, Muslims have been framed as inextricably linked with the support and promotion of violence.

Image by StockSnap from Pixabay

More recently, this trope was evident in public statements made by Canadian politicians, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Toronto Mayor Olivia Chow described recent Palestinian solidarity rallies and movements as “glorifying” violence and characterized anyone attending these events as “Hamas supporters.”

The ubiquity of Islamophobia has led to generalized stereotypes of Muslims and Palestinians (including those who are not Muslim) as being prone to violence and terrorism. When these racist narratives are espoused by politicians, they falsely equate the support of Palestinian people with support for terrorism and instil fear and moral panic about the Muslim presence in this country and elsewhere.

Anti-Muslim policies

Public belief in the vilifying narratives of violent Muslims can become second nature to people who watch biased news reports on mainstream media and a variety of social media platforms that circulate anti-Muslim narratives.

For instance, negative Canadian attitudes about Muslims were evident in a 2017 Radio Canada poll. Fifty-one per cent of respondents in Canada — and 57 per cent in Québec — felt the presence of Muslims in this country made them “somewhat” or “very worried” about security. Nearly one out of four Canadians — 23 per cent — would favour a ban on Muslim immigration to this country, a level of support that rose to 32 per cent in Québec.

Widespread Islamophobic sentiments translate into anti-Muslim policies and practices. Recently, Markham Public Library in Ontario temporarily removed Islamic Heritage Month displays from its branches after an email was sent to staff saying that, “given the current situation in the Middle East, it is best for us not to be actively promoting the Islamic Heritage Month … .”

Islamophobia also has more deadly consequences. In 2021, four members of a Canadian-Pakistani Muslim family were mowed down and killed by a truck in the Ontario city of London. Evidence introduced at the trial of the man accused of the murders has shown that after his arrest, he repeatedly referred to fabricated scare stories about Muslim “grooming gangs” when being interrogated by police.

Online rumours and disinformation

The unsubstantiated claims of Hamas decapitating and burning 40 Israeli babies were repeated by international heads of state, celebrities and media outlets, despite the fact that there was no official confirmation by Israeli authorities of this alleged horrific act.

TRT World: “Anti-Muslim hate crimes spike in Canada ‘by 1,000%’”

Nonetheless, the repetition of this false story led to the dehumanizing characterization of Palestinians as “bloodthirsty monsters” and “human animals,” fomenting widespread anti-Palestinian racism.

These campaigns of disinformation and demonization also tragically resulted in the murder of Wadea Al-Fayoume, a six-year-old Palestinian-American Muslim boy, in Plainfield, Ill. He was stabbed 26 times, allegedly by his family’s white landlord, who is also accused of repeatedly stabbing Al-Fayoume’s mother, proclaiming, “You Muslims must die!”

Casualties of war

These violent trajectories bring to mind the military maxim attributed to the Ancient Greek playwright Aeschylus, which warns that “In war, truth is the first casualty.” In times of war and conflict, disinformation is the first weapon to be deployed.

Uncritically consuming political or media narratives is no longer an option. In these dystopian times, the public needs to be able to separate fact from fiction as fabrications masquerade as truth. The consequences are dire.

This article has been updated to include a reference to the ongoing trial in the London, Ont. case.

Jasmin Zine, Professor of Sociology, Wilfrid Laurier University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Hate acts targeting minorities are not actually free speech, of course.*

The great exponent of mystical Islam, Sayyed Hossein Nasr, argued that if we want to understand the position of the Qur’an in Muslim societies, we should think of it as the way Christians venerate Christ. It is the very “Word of God,” which of course is what Christians call Jesus (John 1:1).

Nasr wrote, “What corresponds to Christ as the word of God in Christianity is not the Prophet Muhammad but the Koran in Islam.”

So burning the Qur’an is sort of like throwing a big wooden crucifix with the corpus of Christ on a bonfire.

Iraqis in several cities, led by Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, held demonstrations for the past two days against the desecration of scripture. On Thursday they had tried to storm the Swedish embassy in Baghdad.

Ironically, the man who burned the Qur’an in Sweden is himself Iraqi, and he had served alongside the Shiite militias in a Chaldean Christian Popular Mobilization Force, fighting ISIL, which targeted Iraqi Christians. A lot of Iraqi Christians are angry about how Muslim fundamentalists in Iraq treated them after the American invasion. Since they are Christian they seem to have been unfairly tagged as somehow related to the American occupiers, but this allegation was untrue. Many Kurds and Shiite Muslims were close to the Americans, though.

It is interesting to me that there are indications in the Qur’an itself of how believers should respond to ridicule and harassment. In the time of the Prophet Muhammad himself, the Qur’an says, pagans in the city of Mecca subjected the early believers to a great deal of humiliation.

I wrote about these peace verses in my edited book,

Peace Movements in Islam, edited by Juan Cole. London: IB Tauris, 2021. Click here. .

Enwrapped 73:10-12 speak of how the believers were to respond to hostile comments: “Be patient with what they say and take your leave of them graciously. Leave to me the affluent who impugn your integrity, giving them a short reprieve, for we possess shackles and a searing abyss . . .”

The notion of leaving vengeance to God can be compared to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 12:19, “Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.’”

The Prophet was so far away from harboring any ill-will toward his opponents that in Ornaments 43:33-35, Muhammad appears to speak in his own voice with these sentiments: “If it would not have caused all people to observe a single communal path (an yakun ummatan wahida) we would have bestowed roofs of silver and staircases for their houses on those who reject the All-Merciful, and would have furnished their homes with fine doors and couches on which to recline, and gilded ornaments. But all that is merely for the enjoyment of the life of this world, whereas the hereafter is for the God-fearing.”

The Criterion 25:63 says, “The servants of the All-Merciful are those who walk humbly upon the earth — and when the unruly address them, they reply, “Peace!”

The word for “unruly” here literally means “ignorant,” but it was used in that era to refer to people who lacked self-control. They clearly were low-lifes, taunting the believers, who kept their dignity and replied by praying for peace and security for their tormentors.

The Table 5:45 in the Medina period paraphrases Deuteronomy 19:21. Arberry translates it this way: “And therein We prescribed for them: ‘A life for a life, an eye for an eye, a nose for a nose, an ear for an ear, a tooth for a tooth, and for wounds retaliation’; but whosoever forgoes it as a freewill offering (tasaddaqa bi), that shall be for him an expiation (kaffara). Whoso judges not according to what God has sent down – they are the evildoers.”

So, as in the Gospels it is urged that the faithful go beyond the principle of an eye for an eye to exercise forgivenes, so in the Qur’an believers are urged to forgo demanding this satisfaction for a wrong against them, and it is implied that exercising restraint in this regard will bring the blessings of divine forgiveness on the believer.

Distinguished 41:33-35 observes, “Whose discourse is more beautiful than one who calls others to God and performs good works and proclaims, ‘I am a monotheist? The good deed and the evil deed are not equal. Repel the latter with what is best and behold, it will be as though the one, with whom you have a mutual enmity, is a devoted patron. Yet to none is this granted save the patient (alladhina sabaru), and to none is it granted save the supremely fortunate.” This remarkable verse goes beyond counseling gracious withdrawal from and forgiveness of foes to urging doing good toward them and returning their evil deeds with good ones, which over time has the prospect of winning them over and making them patrons rather than enemies.

So that’s it. That’s how the Qur’an advises dealing with unruly and hostile harassers. Return good for evil. Win them over. Wish peace on them. If the harassment becomes too much, withdraw graciously.

It might be objected that there are verses in the Qur’an authorizing violence. There are, but they are clearly about permission for self-defense when being violently attacked by marauding enemy warriors. They aren’t talking about how you would behave in peacetime and in civil society. Christian thinkers also made a distinction between war-time ethics and peace-time ones.

The Christian monk Athanasios of Alexandria (d. 373) wrote, “For even in the case of the other actions in life we will find that there are differences based upon the circumstances in which they are done. For example, it is not permitted to commit murder, but in wars it is both lawful and praiseworthy to destroy one’s enemies, so much so that those who displayed valor in war are deemed worthy of the highest honors, and monuments to them are erected to proclaim their achievements. And so, the same action is not permitted in certain circumstance and at certain times, but is allowed and excused in different circumstances and at the right time.”

I also discussed the historical context for these verses in my biography of the Prophet Muhammad:

Juan Cole, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires (NY: Bold Type Books, 2018). Click here.

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*An earlier version of this posting linked to an article alleging that Sweden had banned the burning of the Hebrew Bible. Apparently the person threatening to do so actually withdrew the threat before the police could decide on the issue.

            Republican power tripping didn’t sink to its nadir under Donald Trump. It continues to sink lower as various districts have elected right-wing hate mongers such as Marjorie Taylor Green, R-GA and Lauren Boebert, R-CO to Congress. The 5^th District of Minnesota chose Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) to represent them, and they’re entitled to the same level of representation “without prejudice” that Green and Boebert’s constituents enjoy.

            House Republicans voted to remove Omar because she’s a dark-skinned Muslim, and a naturalized citizen who survived civil war and refugee camps in Somalia as a child. On the House Floor, she eloquently argued that House Republicans are now trying to dictate, “Who gets to be an American,” and whose ideas are sufficiently “American” to be protected and promoted.

            Britannica tells us that in German folklore, Doctor Faustus signs over his soul to Mephistopheles, an envoy of Satan, in return for secret knowledge or powers of sorcery for a set term on earth. The editors add, “Faustian bargains are by their nature tragic or self-defeating for the person who makes them, because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact.” The Republican Party has traded its innermost essence for the adulation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis, for whom Ilhan Omar is the ultimate threat.Once a party loses integrity, it ratchets further and further toward evil, having lost all sense of decency.

            House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) initiated the move claiming that Omar made, “repeated anti-Semitic and anti-American remarks” throughout her tenure as a House member. Yes she did . . . once; and she apologized for them with sensitivity and eloquence, acknowledging her failure to make the distinction between the political ideology of Zionism and the religion of Judaism. Whoopi Goldberg made a similar mistake and endured an onslaught of brutal, unfair critiques. The common thread is that Jews are not a monolith, while Republicans are. Condemning Israel’s slide into Fascism is not an act of anti-Semitism. Zionism no more defines Judaism, than the Republican Party defines the United States. It’s important to remember that, when so many ignorant and ill-mannered people through the political spectrum, have made anti-Semitic comments based on how Israel is behaving.

           Sadly, Democracy is dead in Israel with the political rehabilitation of PM Benjamin Netanyahu nearly complete. While the guardrails of democracy kept Donald Trump from destroying our democratic republic, Israel is not so fortunate. Now Bibi is trying to remove those guardrails in Israel, as McCarthy is now doing in the House. Both Jews and gentiles object to Netanyahu’s plans; former ADL Director Abraham Foxman who said, “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it.”

            Taking issue with Israeli policy cannot be considered anti-Semitic, considering that many American and European Jews are also aghast at Israel’s current leadership under the criminal cloud of Netanyahu. This is a disingenuous move by McCarthy to reframe terms of engagement and move the goalpost farther back, in order to placate a racist and xenophobic element, empowered by Trump and now McCarthy. The Speaker forfeited his spine and manhood to Trump, just weeks after condemning him for January 6. It was a Faustian bargain that elevated him to Speaker, which also empowered the far-far right fringe of the Republican Party. Though their stated effort is to “own the libs,” they’re trying to own the US Government, and dictate who can participate, in violation of the Constitution.

            Omar said in a Floor speech, “It’s motivated by the fact that many of these members don’t believe a Muslim, a refugee, an African should even be in Congress, let alone have the opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee.” This is political retaliation for Democrats removing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA., and Rep. Paul Gosar, R-AZ from their committee assignments after they made violent comments threatening to incite violence against other House members. Those comments were never retracted, while Rep. Omar apologized for her comments about “the Benjamins.”

            Steve Cohen, D-TN said in a 2019 phone interview of Reps. Omar and Rashida Tlaib, D-MI, “They don’t hate the Jews. They were personally thankful to me when I’ve supported them. . . I recognize that Palestinians, such as Rep. Tlaib, also feel they have right of return. Trump is trying to paint them as the face of the Democratic Party and they are not; Trump wants to Make America White Again. These women don’t hate the Jews.” Cohen is the only Jewish MC, representing a majority black district in Memphis, and one of the more progressive House members.

            This is not the first time Republicans have used xenophobic grandstanding to defame Rep. Omar.  In 2019, they tried to tie her to the 9/11 bombings, and made persistent efforts to play on Islamophobia since she took office. That occurred at a Republican event at the West Virginia statehouse, and led to at least one resignation and a fist fight on the Floor. Such primitive grandstanding and reckless rhetoric endangers the lives of Muslims in public office, and contributes to the madness that fueled January 6.

            Reps. Ken Buck, R- CO and Mike Simpson, R-ID characterized Omar’s banishment as “stupid” and “vengeful,” but then begged reporters not to publish comments they made in a House elevator. Buck cautioned that Omar’s committee expulsion would make her into a martyr. McCarthy accomplished banishing Omar only after some political horse-trading with Reps. Nancy Mace, R-SC and Victoria Spartz, R-IN to get them to change their votes. This was after Spartz had criticized McCarthy the day before for his, “taking unprecedented actions  . . . to deny some committee assignments to the Minority without proper due process again.” She added, “Speaker McCarthy needs to stop ‘bread and circuses’ in Congress, and start governing for a change.” Now she’s as craven to McCarthy as he was to Trump. So Faustian bargains now characterize Republican political dynamics, along with grandstanding and unconstitutional political persecution.

McCarthy’s planned course of action is ugly and recalls a previous Congressional decision, in 1869. As the site A History of Racial Injustice points out, John Willis Menard was the first Black man to be elected to Congress, from New Orleans. A poet and newspaper publisher as well as politician, Menard handily defeated his white opponent, Caleb S. Hunt. Hunt, like a lot of Republicans today, refused to acknowledge that he had been defeated fair and square in an aboveboard election. His claims were taken up in the halls of Congress, but he did not show, and in any case Hunt’s case was without merit. Menard was permitted to address the House on his own behalf, becoming the first Black man to speak to Congress.

Despite Hunt’s collapse, the House voted by a margin of 130 to 57 to refuse to seat Menard on the grounds that he was . . . Black. James Garfield, then a representative, spoke in favor of refusing to seat the elected representative, saying that it would save the $5,000 salary. Garfield later became president.

A substantial number of voters in Louisiana thus had their political will thwarted by arbitrary and bigoted white men.

Although Omar is a first generation immigrant from Somalia, Muslim Africans have been present in North America for 500 years. Even before the Emancipation Proclamation, African Muslim Americans like Omar had played a significant role in US history. The Smithsonian notes,

“African Muslims also fought alongside colonists during the Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Multiple men with Muslim names appear on the military muster rolls, including Bampett Muhamed, Yusuf ben Ali (also known as Joseph Benhaley), and Joseph Saba. Other men listed on muster rolls have names that are likely connected to Islamic practice, such as Salem Poor and Peter Salem, whose names may reflect a form of the Arabic salaam, meaning peace. These men often distinguished themselves on the battlefield.”

Along with singling out an African-born Muslim woman for marginalization, McCarthy is playing revenge politics. Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi had removed Republican Representatives Paul Gosar and Marjorie Taylor Greene from their committees. Gosar put out a snuff video about his colleague Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Greene is a 9/11 denier and a school shooting denier who harassed a survivor of a school shooting in the street, and compared vaccine and mask mandates during the pandemic to the Nazi Holocaust against Jews. She also compared Joe Biden to Hitler. She has retracted some of her conspiracy theories but always seems to find more.

Greene and The Lying Man, George Santos, have both been given choice committee assignments by McCarthy, so that his attempt to sideline Omar, along with Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swallwell, is especially egregious and makes a farce of his speakership. Buckle in, folks, we’re in for a Clown Roller-coaster on the Hill.

McCarthy accuses Rep. Omar of antisemitism. As Dean Obaidallah points out, however, some significant number of Omar’s Jewish constituents in Minneapolis disagree, publishing a statement against McCarthy’s move. Undoubtedly, Omar did put her foot in her mouth in some comments on the Israel lobbies, but she swiftly apologized, as Ubaidallah says. The mistakes she made came from an unfamiliarity with how anti-Jewish bigotry has operated in the United States, and she has become more sure-footed as she has settled into her role as a legislator.

It should also be pointed out that some of the charges of Antisemitism against Omar are simply a way of twisting her stance for Palestinian human rights into something sinister, and are in bad faith on the part of vociferous ‘Israel-can-do-no-wrong’ fanatics.

Kevin McCarthy himself tweeted out that Jewish billionaires such as George Soros and Michael Bloomberg were trying to “buy” an election. The notion that Jews are somehow especially powerful and control elections behind the scenes is a key trope in antisemitic discourse. McCarthy later deleted the tweets. So he is denying himself committee assignments, right? Nope.

Apparently some principled Republicans are putting their feet down against McCarthy’s petty prejudices. Unlike Garfield in 1869, they may take the path of the American Way, and common decency.

Granada, in southern Spain’s Andalusia region, was the final remnant of Islamic Iberia known as al-Andalus – a territory that once stretched across most of Spain and Portugal. In 1492, the city fell to the Catholic conquest.

In the aftermath, native Andalusians, who were Muslims, were permitted to continue practising their religion. But after a decade of increasingly hostile religious policing from the new Catholic regime, practising Islamic traditions and rituals was outlawed. Recent archaeological excavations in Granada, however, have uncovered evidence of Muslim food practices continuing in secret for decades after the conquest.

The term “Morisco”, which means “little moor”, was used to refer to native Muslims who were forced to convert to Catholicism in 1502, following an edict issued by the Crown of Castile. Similar decrees were issued in the kingdoms of Navarre and Aragon in the following decades, which provoked armed uprisings.

As a result, between 1609 and 1614, the Moriscos were expelled from the various kingdoms of Spain. Muslims had already been expelled from Portugal by the end of the 15th century. So this brought to an end more than eight centuries of Islamic culture in Iberia.

For many, the conquest of Granada is symbolised by the Alhambra. This hilltop fortress, once the palatial residence of the Islamic Nasrid rulers, became a royal court under the new Catholic regime. Today it is the most visited historical monument in Spain and the best-preserved example of medieval Islamic architecture in the world. Now, archaeology provides us with new opportunities to glimpse the conquest’s impact on local Andalusi communities, far beyond the Alhambra’s walls.

Uncovering historical remains in Cartuja

Excavations ahead of development on the University of Granada’s campus in Cartuja, a hill on the outskirts of the modern city, uncovered traces of human activity dating back as far as the Neolithic period (3400-3000 BC).

Between the 13th to 15th centuries AD, the heyday of Islamic Granada, numerous cármenes (small houses with gardens and orchards) and almunias (small palaces belonging to the Nasrid elite) were built on this hill. Then, in the decades following the Catholic conquest, a Carthusian monastery was built here and the surroundings were completely transformed, with many earlier buildings demolished.

Archaeologists uncovered a well attached to a house and agricultural plot. The well was used as a rubbish dump for the disposal of unwanted construction materials. Other waste was also found, including a unique collection of animal bones dating to the second quarter of the 16th century.

Archaeological traces of culinary practices

Discarded waste from food preparation and consumption in archaeological deposits – mostly animal bone fragments as well as plant remains and ceramic tableware – provide an invaluable record of the culinary practices of past households. Animal bones, in particular, can sometimes be connected with specific diets adhered to by different religious communities.

The majority of bones in the well in Cartuja derived from sheep, with a small number from cattle. The older age of the animals, mostly castrated males, and the presence of meat-rich parts indicates they were cuts prepared by professional butchers and procured from a market, rather than reared locally by the household.

The ceramics found alongside the bones reflected Andalusi dining practices, which involved a group of people sharing food from large bowls called ataifores. The presence of these bowls rapidly decreased in Granada in the early 16th century. Smaller vessels, reflecting the more individualistic approach to dining preferred by Catholic households, replaced the ataifores. So the combination of large bowls, sheep bones paired and the absence of pig (pork would have been avoided by Muslims) points to a Morisco household.

Politicising and policing dining

The Catholic regime disapproved of these communal dining practices, which were associated with Andalusi Muslim identity, and eventually banned them. The consumption of pork became the most famous expression of policing dining habits by the Holy Office, more popularly known as the Inquisition. Echoes of this dining revolution can be seen today in the role of pork in Spanish cuisine, including in globally exported cured meats such as chorizo and jamón.

Previously focusing on those suspected of clinging to Jewish practices (forbidden in 1492), in the second half of the 16th century, the Inquisition increasingly turned its attention to Moriscos suspected of practising Islam in secret, which included avoiding pork. In the eyes of the law, these Muslims were officially Catholic so were seen as heretics if they continued to adhere to their earlier faith. Moreover, since religious and political allegiance became equated, they were also regarded as enemies of the state.

The discarded waste from Cartuja, the first such archaeological example from a Morisco household, demonstrates how some Andalusi families clung to their traditional dining culture as their world was transformed, at least for a few decades.

Aleks Pluskowski, Associate Professor in Medieval Archaeology, University of Reading; Guillermo García-Contreras Ruiz, Profesor de Arqueología Medieval y Posmedieval, Universidad de Granada, and Marcos García García, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, University of York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.