Nick Fredman
The fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks on the US was marked by much of the corporate media in a subdued and reflective fashion. The ongoing bloodshed and chaos in Afghanistan and Iraq, and the brutal, but failed, Israeli blitzkrieg against Lebanon, mean the contradictions and disastrous consequences of an all-encompassing "war on terror" are becoming all too obvious.
But for some media, not least the hardened cultural warriors of Murdoch's Australian, the anniversary of al Qaeda's murderous strikes was an opportunity to stoke a stream of Islamophobia that has been a feature of Western media for many years, but particularly since 9/11.
For Paul Kelly, in the September 13 Australian, the cause of terrorism exemplified by 9/11 is simple: "There's a global Islamist movement bent on the destruction of the West", and the "progressives", who allegedly dominate the media, refuse to believe this or to examine real causes.
In the same issue, Janet Albrechtsen was equally certain that the gist of the issue is that, "Terrorism against Westerners is overwhelmingly a crime committed by Muslims", meaning that namby pamby multiculturalists and progressives were "useful idiots". She approvingly quoted former British police chief John Stevens who stated, after the recent "discovery" of an alleged (and now quickly unravelling) bomb plot, that Muslim communities in the West cannot face the "undeniable, total truth: that Islamic terrorism is their problem".
The latter oft-repeated claim contradicts the way the media Islamophobes generally cross themselves with statements about how it's not all, or even most, Muslims, just a few mad and/or evil ones, and that the war on terror is, as Kelly put it, "not against Islam but against the Islamist terror groups".
But the whole framework of their argument is that a cultural war on the West and Islam itself are the root causes. Therefore all Muslims are under suspicion and are justifiably expected to continually prove their innocence and proclaim their loyalty.
Causes of terrorism
But any objective analysis shows that Islam, or even Islamism, aren't the root causes of terrorism. Conservative academic Robert Pape demonstrated this in detail in his study Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, published last year. He said that terrorists were virtually all motivated by political causes, particularly foreign occupation, and were in their majority secular nationalists or leftists. For example, of 38 Lebanese suicide bombers who struck US, French and Israeli targets between 1982 and 1986, just eight were Islamic fundamentalists, the rest being socialists and Christians.
Kelly may be correct about the confusion of some mainstream liberals on the causes of terror. But the left, and not least in this newspaper, has analysed in great detail how imperialist oppression and aggression, previous funding and promotion of Islamists by the US and its allies, and the failings of the secular left and nationalist movements in the Arab world have all contributed to the fact that some opposition to imperialism is expressed in Islamic terms (in very different ways by, for example, al Qaeda and Hezbollah), and by the inhumane and counterproductive form of terror attacks against civilians.
The media Islamophobes often don't bother explaining why Islam leads to terrorism and other social problems. The Sydney Morning Herald's Paul Sheehan relentlessly pushes, what he called on August 14, "the global clash between Muslims and the rest", claiming that "the open contempt some Muslims have for non-Muslims is a common thread throughout the world where Muslims communities rub against the kafirs, or non-believers".
Sheehan is keen to flog his recent book Girls Like Us, in which he frames a number of recent vicious sexual assaults in Sydney in terms of this culture war. He further claims that multiculturalism and political correctness have meant that police and the courts are restrained in their dealings with people from Muslim and Arabic backgrounds.
Sheehan is certain that the nature of Islam itself is to blame, on July 24 offering as proof a quote from the Koran: "Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other".
This is, of course, as absurd as blaming the modern status and treatment of women on the instructions in the Christian and Jewish Old Testament that women can be taken as plunder, non-virgin brides must be stoned to death, and rape victims must marry their attackers (Deuteronomy) or statements in the Christian New Testament such as, "I permit not a woman to teach, nor to have dominion over a man, but to be in quietness" (Timothy 2:12).
Crime
It is certainly true that sexual violence is a massive social problem, that the court system is extremely difficult for the victims and that such crimes may take particular cultural forms. But there is absolutely no evidence that people from Islamic communities are any worse than the norm in this regard.
In response to a wave of panic about sexual assault perpetrated by young men from Islamic backgrounds in the Bankstown area, the NSW Bureau of Crime and Statistics stated in 2001 that: "The factual evidence on sexual assault in Bankstown provides no support whatsoever either for the claim that sexual violence in that area is more prevalent than anywhere else in the State or for the claim that the incidence of sexual assault is rising in Bankstown". It also stated that the incidence of "sexual assault is nearly twice as high in the Northern Statistical Division and more than twice as high in the North Western Statistical Division" and that sexual assaults involving multiple offenders were significantly higher in the state's west than Bankstown, all being areas where very few Muslims or people of Arabic background live.
The bureau's website provides a breakdown, by local government areas, of crime rates from 2002 to 2005, which confirm that rates of sexual violence and all other crimes in Bankstown is around or below the state average, and that the real problem centres of sexual violence lie in the regional and rural communities.
The alleged backwardness of Islamic communities, as supposedly measured by a recent British survey of Muslims was mentioned by some reports of the recent London "bomb plot", such as an August 13 Daily Telegraph article that warned of the "enemy within". The survey, "Muslim Attitudes to Living In Britain", conducted by Britain's Channel 4, did show minorities supporting the 2005 bombings in London and having conservative views towards women. However a survey of Christians would undoubtedly show a conservative, fundamentalist minority, and a survey of conservative voters would show considerable support for brutal state terror in Iraq.
The report of the results of the survey, available on the Channel 4 website, also downplays the extent of Islamophobia in Britain. It states that "only" 18% of British Muslims reported police harassment, racist assaults or vilification, but this is 300,000 people!
The media Islamophobes will continue to rant. But the main perpetrators of violence, from the imperialist wars abroad to the racism and attacks on civil rights at home, are becoming increasingly clear to many, not least Muslims.