Islamophobia on Wheels
By Lawrence Davidson
Part I – Promoting Hatred
April 17, 2015 "ICH"
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On 1 April 2015 an
anti-Muslim advertisement started appearing
on 84 municipal buses in the Philadelphia
regional area. The ad space was purchased
for a four-week period by the American
Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), which
paid $30,000 to run its message: a picture
from the early 1940s of Adolf Hitler
speaking to Amin al-Husseini, the Grand
Mufti (chief Muslim religious authority) of
Jerusalem, with an accompanying text,
“Islamic Jew Hatred: It’s in the Quran” and
a call to “end all aid to Islamic
countries.” Philadelphia is just the latest
city to experience this sort of offensive
Islamophobia. Indeed, running Islamophobic
attack ads on transit systems across the
nation seems to be AFDI’s specialty.
The AFDI is part of an
extremist organization called Stop
Islamization of America (SIOA), which is led
by the a hyperactive Islamophobe and
strident rightwing Zionist Pamela Geller.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, which has
long tracked right-wing extremist
organizations, has labeled the SOIA a “hate
group.”
Philadelphia’s regional
transit authority (SEPTA) tried to refuse
the advertisement because it so blatantly
did what it incorrectly alleged the Quran
does – promote hatred. But the AFDI took
SEPTA to court and won with a freedom of
speech argument.
Part II – Analyzing the AFDI
Advertisement
The ad now appearing in the
Philadelphia area is actually a piece of
propaganda. There is no accurate context
given for the photo it displays, and the
reference to the Quran lacks a citation. So
let’s fill in what is missing with some
analysis.
- The Photograph of the Grand
Mufti Speaking to Hitler
Amin al-Husseini (1895 –
1974) was a member of a leading family in
Jerusalem. Early in the British occupation
of Palestine he was appointed Grand Mufti of
Jerusalem, making him one of the most
influential Muslim leaders in the colony.
The British assumed they could control
Husseini, who was only 26 years old at the
time, and hoped that his appointment would
placate Arab nationalist feelings. However,
they had seriously underestimated him.
Husseini’s goal was to achieve independence
for Arab Palestine, and that made him a
staunch opponent of the Zionist colonial
project.
When a major anti-colonial
Arab revolt broke out in 1936, the British
mistakenly believed that Husseini was one of
its major organizers and sought to arrest
him. If they had managed to do so he
probably would have been deported to one of
Britain’s African colonies. To avoid this
fate, Husseini fled to Iraq, which at this
time was also a British colony in open
revolt. When the British suppressed the
Iraqi rebellion, Husseini fled to Fascist
Italy from where he was eventually moved to
Germany.
The advertisement that now
appears on Philadelphia area buses shows
Husseini speaking with Adolf Hitler. The
implication, which is false, is that
Palestine’s Muslim religious leader was
himself a Nazi. If one does the research,
one can find other pictures and documents
that show Husseini recruiting Muslim
soldiers in the Balkans to fight in the
German army. He also did propaganda
broadcasts in Arabic for the Germans urging
resistance to British imperialism. Thus, it
cannot be denied that he collaborated with
Nazi Germany during the war years. However,
none of this activity was undertaken because
he was a Nazi. It was done because he was
opposed to British imperial rule in
Palestine and other Arab territories. If the
British had been at war with Sweden instead
of Germany, Husseini would have sought
refuge among the Swedes and broadcast
propaganda for them.
The same can be said for
Husseini’s attitude toward a Jewish
Palestine. He was adamantly against it. When
he proclaimed, as part of his pro-German
propaganda, that he wished to see Jews
driven from the Arab lands, the most logical
interpretation of this statement is that it
was Zionist Jews he sought expelled, for in
other statements to German leaders of the
time he said the best solution for Palestine
was for the Jews to go back to their
countries of origin. Thus, Husseini’s
statement seems to have no relevance for
Palestine’s indigenous Sephardic Jews. There
is no convincing evidence that he supported
the Holocaust (though he was aware of it)
despite an on-going Zionist effort to make
it appear that he did.
Whatever one might think of
the Mufti’s activities in wartime Germany,
he was driven to them not by any belief in
Nazi doctrines, but by the ongoing
oppression of his native land by British
policies in support of Zionist ambitions.
Much like the British and American wartime
alliance with Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union
or, for that matter, the U.S. alliance with
Osama Bin Laden and the Mujahedin in
Afghanistan, Husseini’s alliance with
Hitler’s Germany was a function of the enemy
of my enemy is, at least for the moment, my
friend.
- “Jew Hatred” and the Quran
The AFDI bus ad goes on to
declare that “Jew Hatred” can be found in
the Quran. It is hard to take such a charge
seriously, because the Quran, like the Old
and New Testaments, is a book of scripture
in which one can find, and then
misinterpret, almost anything one wants.
Thus, through selective and out-of-context
quoting, or by simple innuendo, one can make
outrageous accusations. Of course, the
present bus ad forgoes quotation or citation
and just makes an unsupported declaration.
One has to keep in mind that
the Quran is approximately 1,500 years old,
and so framing the attitude of all modern
Muslims in terms of a few statements
critical of early 7th-century Jews (while
ignoring statements that are positive) is
like saying that all educated English people
dislike Jews because they revere the same
Shakespeare who, in the late 16th century,
wrote the Merchant of Venice.
Actually, if you compare the
Quran and the Old Testament on the violent
treatment of “the other,” the Old Testament
is much worse. It is a very bloody affair
(for instance, see book 1 of Samuel),
featuring a wrathful deity who arranges
cruel fates for any group that gets in the
way of ancient Hebrews. My personal opinion
is that such a God deserves to be avoided
rather than worshipped. On the other hand,
the Quran’s portrayal of hell is pretty
awful, but then its pains and tortures are
attributed to that same wrathful deity found
in the Old Testament.
Just to be even-handed on
this topic, the New Testament’s Book of
Revalations seems to inspire many Christian
fundamentalists to earnestly yearn for
global annihilation.
- Stop the Aid!
Finally, the ad calls for a
halt to aid going to Islamic countries.
Actually, this might not be a bad idea,
considering that a lot of this aid is made
up of loan gurantees to dictatorships for
the purchase of U.S. weapons. If we could
balance this out by halting the yearly $3
billion-plus in aid to Israel, we would have
a win-win situation. However, on both counts
the U.S. munitions manufactures would scream
bloody murder (pun intended) because they
are the ones profiting from such “aid.”
Part III – Conclusion
When a bigoted extremist like
Pamela Geller places misleading and
hate-promoting propaganda on buses, the
Zionist establishment has nothing critical
to say. They treat it as if it is all very
proper and upheld by “free speech.” However,
when supporters of the Palestinian cause put
up billboards picturing a series of maps
that show the absorption of Arab Palestine
by Zionist settlers between1948 and today,
pious rabbis and Zionist lobbysts protest
and call it anti-Semitic. Hypocrisy is the
name of the game.
This is all about the ongoing
battle to control the message: that is the
history and reporting of the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the early
1970s, when I started supporting the
Palestinian cause, the Zionists had a near
monopoly on that message. There were almost
no venues that would allow someone who was
pro-Palestinian to speak or publish, and on
the rare occasion that one found a platform,
one was subjected to heckling and threats.
The situation has really
changed. At least outside of the Washington
Beltway, those who support Palestinian
rights are on the offensive, and the
Zionists on the defensive. However, the
Zionists certainly have not given up, and
the most egregious of them, such as those at
the AFDI, still lash out with hate-filled
messages. So, the fight goes on.
Lawrence Davidson is a
retired professor of history from West
Chester University in West Chester PA. His
academic research focused on the history of
American foreign relations with the Middle
East. He taught courses in Middle East
history, the history of science and modern
European intellectual history. http://www.tothepointanalyses.com
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