relations on behalf of "good Muslims," like the Kuwaiti royals, who hired one of the biggest US public relations firms to manage their wartime propaganda. [34] Most juxtapose two images there is a "terrorist fringe" among US Muslims (the "bad Muslims"), but most other Muslims are peace-loving and eager to be assimilated to the American way of life (the "good Muslims") The American corporate news pundits continually remind consumers that Islam is the fastest growing religion in the US; at the same time, they tell Americans that "Islamic terror cells" are on the rise in the US Muslims in such stories are usually defined by their politics and class While the media assure Americans that most Muslims are dutiful middle-class citizens, the "terrorist fringe" is always laying at the wait, a threat to the very core of American interests and values Such images have been utilized by politicians and corporate leaders to frighten American citizen-consumers into accepting all sorts of barbarous immigration and security laws. Closer scrutiny reveals that, in most cases, the Muslims profiled on corporate TV programmes are Palestinians One insidious implication is that Palestinians are somehow inherently irrational, though this is not always made explicit The misogynist character of dominant media imagery of Muslims in the US is underlined, for example, when the corporate news shows images of Palestinian or other Muslim men crying, perhaps after another Israeli raid on their homes Since "real men" don't cry, it becomes hard for Americans to imagine other people's grief expressed in that way, and it is seen instead as an expression of rage or insanity The point is that some images are heightened by the inability of television to portray anything but the most extreme expressions of emotion, causing some to label TV as best suited to portray death. [35] This technical inadequacy is something that even good PR can't fix It also heightens the effectiveness of television as a medium to utilize deep-seated American visions of sex and violence in Islam
US corporate news features often use Islamic religious symbols to frame stories about violent political events For example, a 1994 story about the end of the disastrous American intervention in Somalia begins with the reporter intoning ominously "night falls ul Mogadishu" over the Islamic call to prayer and a backdrop of a mosque silhouetted by a dark, cloudy sky The report segues to picture bites of destroyed American helicopters and corpses of US marines. The call to prayer in this case, as in many others, forebodes death and terror. Furthermore, this is the only Somali voice in the piece.
Some media portrayals of Muslims are reminiscent of the contrived sense of inevitability that Native American scholar Ward Churchill brings out in his comments about the Orientalist extravaganza epic film, Lawrence of Arabia:
Its major impact was to put a 'tragic' but far more humane face upon the nature of Britain's imperial pretensions in the region, making colonization of the Arabs seem more acceptable-or at least more inevitable-than might have otherwise been the case. [36]
The US media often rely on pre-existing images of Muslim barbarity in order to explain the need for intervention or to help the US military save face when things don't come out as planned When the US Marines were escorting members of the UN out of Somalia in February 1995, ABC News televised a report of a multiple amputation, featuring a man who presumably had just been convicted of theft in an Islamic law court The piece was pure emotion and imagery, seeming to say, with Churchill's tragic self- righteousness, "look how easily the natives revert to their barbarity once we leave "
Despite its pervasiveness in the media, imagery that I have described above is far removed from the daily experiences of most American citizen- consumers But lately, some media producers have tried to bring these images closer to home
TV Holy War
In the Fall of 1994, PBS aired a documentary by journalist Steve Emerson Titled "Jihad in America," it followed on the heels of other recent works that put forth the thesis of an elaborate, secret, and centralized network of "Islamic terrorists," who take orders from Iran, and who are mounting a violent war against their hated enemy, the mighty Great Satan. [37]
Evidence within the programme suggests that Emerson has access to official government intelligence Most of the programme either consists of interviews staged by Emerson, or clips from Muslim conferences (which are available publicly from the organizations that sponsor conferences) However, some clips appear to be from other sources, such as home videos confiscated from Muslims in FBI sweeps during the Oil War and in the wake of the World Trade Center incident, or surreptitiously taped surveillance videos Using "former" FBI and State Department officials as informants is only a smoke screen to cover the access Emerson has to official intelligence Concurrent with the debut of his program, Emerson was invited to appear on news and talk shows as an "expert on terrorism " A year or so of this kind of programming set the climate for what became a rush to judge Muslims for crimes they did not commit
Within hours after a truck bomb blew up the Alfred P Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City on Wednesday 19 April 1995, word was out that "Islamic extremists" were responsible Talking heads on all the major corporate news outlets made immediate parallels to the World Trade Center bombing, or to the car bombing of the American Marine barracks in Beirut Programmes sporting logos like "Terror in the Heartland" popped up on all the major networks. Speculations ran wild: an international cartel of terrorists were retaliating for the abduction from Pakistan of their leader, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef; fanatical followers of Shaykh Omar Abdel Rahman were protesting his trial in New York; Muslim extremists intended to show that even America's heartland was not safe from Mideast terror; religious and political "zealots" from the Middle East were lashing out at the US.
That night, Steve Emerson, along with CBS Mideast expert Fuad Ajami, asserted on a CBS news programme that the bombing had "all the earmarks of Islamic radical extremists," and that Muslim terrorists were now "wreaking havoc in the land they loathe." Former FBI agent and Pan Am flight 203 bombing investigator Oliver "Buck" Revell, who rose to public prominence after appearing in Emerson's anti-Muslim tirade "Jihad in America," was once again wheeled out of obscurity, spewing theories about how vulnerable the US was to attacks by Islamic militants.
It was not only the corporate news media that jumped to such conclusions about Muslims. The same accusations and speculations could be heard from other corners of US officialdom. For example, the director of the House Republican Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, Yossef Bodansky, well known for his conspiracy theories about a centrally controlled Islamic "holy war" against the West, assured viewers that "we have a host of enemies that have vowed to strike at the heart of the Great Satan" and called upon law enforcement agencies to take preventative measures that amount to severe curtailments of civil liberties. [38] The tirades by assorted "terrorism experts" continued into Thursday 20 April, when World Trade Center investigator Michael Cherkasky told CNN that "we've got to know what's going on in these fanatical terrorist groups," and called for beefed up intelligence against immigrants.
Politicians worked quickly to capitalize on the tragedy, quickly realizing its utility for pushing new anti-immigration laws and wiretap legislation. Then Republican Senate Majority Leader, and later Presidential candidate, Bob Dole reminded the President that the Senate was ready to pass a new "counter-terrorism" bill, the Omnibus Counter-terrorism Act of 1995, which had provisions for enabling the use of "secret evidence" to deport immigrants, allowed for the banning of fundraising by "suspected terrorist" organizations, and lessened or eliminated restrictions for conducting phone taps. Similarly, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde emphasized that the US had to identify "potentially dangerous foreigners" and that "we should keep them from getting into the country in the first place," while Florida congresswoman Ileana Ros Lehtinen cried that "the radical Islamic movement has penetrated America and presents a real threat to our national security and serenity." Summing up the general tone of most reporting up to this point, James Wooten, an expert on terrorism at the Congressional Research Service, asserted that "it's no longer to be looked at from afar, it's come home to roost."
As if a vast contingency plan were set in motion, other Federal agencies quickly joined the fray, and there was even talk of possible "retaliation" against. a Middle Eastern state. The Pentagon detailed several Arabic language interpreters to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for possible use in interrogating suspects, and the FBI began to question Arab and Muslim groups in the Oklahoma City area. A Jordanian-American was detained in London and returned to the US for questioning because his luggage contained "possible bombmaking equipment," but which later turned out to be a telephone and other innocuous items. When the man's identity was announced publicly, his property in Oklahoma was vandalized and his wife spat upon. [39]
Though the mainstream media ignored repercussions, the independent Muslim press reported hate crimes related to these incidents. [40] A Muslim woman in Oklahoma city miscarried her late term child when an angry mob besieged her home with bricks and stones. Muslims and Arabs were harassed and many organizations received death and bomb threats and phone calls demanding that they get out of the US. All of this abuse was further exacerbated by continuing reports, such as one that the Immigration and Naturalization Service was on the lookout for men of "Middle Eastern appearance" and that they had detained several suspicious men of "Middle Eastern origin." [41]
All of this occurred within less than 48 hours after the blast. However, when the composite sketches of "two white males" were released in the late afternoon of 20 April, people began to ask if this reduced the possibility that the bombing was carried out by "Middle Eastern terrorists." News services started mentioning a possible "lone kook" or a "disgruntled employee.' When a suspect with ties to American ultra-nationalists was arrested, attention shifted to the "militia" phenomenon. Although resurgent white supremacy had been seething for years, and despite the warnings of watchdog groups, the mainstream media acted as if the militias had come out of nowhere.
The lesson here is that, while a white American Christian acts alone Muslims always work together. In such a discourse, Muslims are guilty merely by association with the vast menagerie of imagery that government and corporate outlets use to sell products and ideas to Americans. The cruel ironies of American domestic problems began to pile up for Muslims: once it was announced that a man with possible ties to the militias was arrested for the Oklahoma City bombing and emphasis shifted away from "Islamic terror", some branches of the corporate news media insisted on clinging to the hope that there might still be an "Islamic connection," since "our boys" don't do such things; once a white Christian American "good old boy" stood accused of the crime, programmes entitled "Terror in the Heartland" were replaced by those with titles like "Tragedy in Oklahoma;" once it was clear that there were no "Islamic extremists" to blame, the tone of public discourse softened remarkably, with less talk of "retaliation" and more about "forgiveness " Despite the obvious haste with which American officialdom was set to blame Muslims, there were no public apologies to Muslims once it was clear that they could not bc blamed.
The Utility of "Muslim Terror" in Israeli-American Relations:
In the 1970s, Arab American academics like Edmund Ghareeb, Jack Shaheen, and Michael Suleiman made strong connections between stereotypes of Arabs in corporate culture and the issue of Palestine. [42] They concluded that in order for the dispossession of Palestinians to bc supported by ordinary Americans, Arabs had to bc written off as either backward barbarians (who don't understand that colonization is in their best interests) or violent terrorists (who deserve to be eliminated). This was a time when no one used the term "Muslim fundamentalist." Even the Islamic revolution in Iran was seen as some kind of wild and crazy Persian phenomenon.
At the same time, with the gradual acquiescence of Arab regimes to either American or Israeli demands throughout the 1980s and 1990s, there was a shift from "Arab terror" to "Muslim terror." The infrastructure of imagery, already in place from decades of anti-Arab propaganda, simply had to be transferred to Muslims, the new "enemies of peace." In fact, many of the same political problems still persist, but the "terrorists" are now conceptualized as Muslims, since Arab regimes were now obedient allies. Although the Persian Gulf Oil War was a successful test case for enframing the Muslim world into "good" and "bad" parties, Zionist colonization of Palestine still remains one of the core issues contributing to conflict in West Asia.
American scholar Edward S. Herman believes that anti-Muslim racism in US corporate culture is closely related to the issue of Palestine. He sees an "enormous pro-Israel (and anti-Arab) bias of the mainstream media and intelligentsia," and gives four sources of this bias: Israel's strategic value to the US. the influence of the pro-Israel lobby, AIPAC. Western feelings of guilt toward Jews. anti-Arab racism. Herman clarifies what he means by anti-Arab racism: This racism is mainly an effect and reflection of interest and policy rather than a casual factor. . . Arabs who cooperate with the West. . . are not subject to racist epithets and stereotypes. This suggests that if other Arabs were more tractable and responsive to Western demands they would cease to be negatively stereotyped. Scapegoating is a function of power and interest. [43]While his remarks on anti-Arab racism illustrate my point about the utility of imagery, I want to take another one of Herman's observations-the pervasiveness of the Israeli lobby in framing American policy-and look at the utility of Muslim terror in that context.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) held a conference on the "Middle East Peace Process" in Washington DC on 7 May 1995, which was aired live on CSPAN. The guests of honour included US president Bill Clinton and Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin. In his speech, Rabin warned that "extremist radical Islamic fundamentalists" are the "enemies of peace" and that "Khomeinism without Khomeini is the greatest danger to stability, tranquillity and peace in the Middle East and the world." The "scourge of Khomeinism" has replaced the "scourge of communism," and even as the Israelis "consolidate peace with Jordan," the forces of "terror" are seeking to "destroy peace between peoples of our area." He called for the "free world," which successfully mobilized itself against communism, to mobilized itself against "Khomeinism." Rabin concluded by stressing that "only a strong Israel can guarantee stability in the Mideast" and that, therefore, US foreign aid "must remain a key pillar of the peace process." But the aid Rabin demands is about more than "peace" and "stability."
Israel cannot survive without continuous transfusions of American dollars, both from US government aid ($4-5 billion in American tax dollars annually), and private contributions, making Israel one of the few states in the world whose economic viability relies almost entirely on foreign donations and charity. (Despite this, it has never been economically viable, with even the World Bank considering Israel to be a weak financial risk.) This is meaningful because recently the US Congress has been threatening to cut foreign aid. While the Cold War provided the impetus for supporting aid for Israel as the ''first line of defense" against the "communist threat," it seems that the "Islamic threat" is now being utilized for the same purpose by Israeli politicians and their proxies in the US Congress.
After Rabin concluded his speech, AIPAC president Steve Grossman introduced US president Bill Clinton by emphasizing that Clinton has raised the "strategic partnership between the US and Israel to new levels." Clinton began his speech by emphasizing that the US role in the "peace process" was to "minimize the risks taken for peace." He then noted that Russia's cooperation with Iran was a "prime concern" of the US because Iran is "bent on building nuclear weapons." Clinton ignored another "prime concern" of people living in the region, the long standing Israeli nuclear weapons programme and its cooperation with South Africa in detonating a several nuclear weapons, or its kidnapping and imprisonment of Mordecai Vanunu, an Israeli technician who revealed the existence of the long-denied Israeli nuclear weapons programme to the outside world.
Clintons rationale for preventing Iranian-Russian cooperation was that since Iran has "ample oil reserves" it cannot possibly need nuclear technology for peaceful energy purposes. He warned that while Iran haunts the Mideast," the US will seek to "contain Iran as the principle sponsor of terrorism in the world," reminding his audience that Iran undermines the West and its values." He also thanked the Israelis for "drawing our attention to Iran's history of supporting terrorism." But the utility of this imagery became clearer when Clinton next asked for AIPAC to help out with the floundering American embargo against Iran. American attempts at convincing the Europeans and Japanese to sever their economic ties with Iran have been met with little international support, and he seemed to think the Israelis would have some sway over European politicians.
Clinton stated that US support for Israel was "absolute" and that all forms of current assistance will be continued.-He chastised the US Congress as a bunch of "budget cutting back door isolationists" for daring to suggest that the US discontinue its bloated but politically selective foreign aid programs, emphasizing that the US "did not win the Cold War to blow the peace" on budgetary issues. But the kind of peace that Clinton and his cohorts support is clear from the ensuing promises he made to the AIPAC congregation.
Clinton revealed that the once closed American space launcher vehicle market would now be open to the Israeli arms industry, along with other previously unavailable high-tech US weaponry. He also noted that the US would escalate its pre-positioning of weaponry in Israel, and that it would buy $3 billion worth of Israeli made military products. Since the US already has the largest military-industrial complex in the world, buying weapons from Israel is another thinly disguised form of economic aid.
As with other aid, US taxpayers are slated to foot the bill in the name of "national security." Clinton explained the need for all of this wheeling and dealing about war and weapons of mass destruction as necessary because "Israel is on the front line of the battle for freedom and peace." Again seeming to assume that they held some sway over public opinion, this time domestically, Clinton suggested that AIPAC help to "lobby" the American people about budgetary matters.