Islamophobia in America?: September 11 and islamophobic hate crime

Terrorism and Political Violence

Volumn 18, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 1-33

  Kaplan, Jeffrey ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN OSHKOSH   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 32144439547     PISSN: 09546553     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/09546550500383209     Document Type: Article

References (178)

1. I would like to thank David Rapoport, Yehonathan Brodski, and the anonymous readers whose comments were most helpful in the revision stages of this article.
2. For a popular examination of the question, see Fareed Zakaria, "Why Do They Hate Us? The Politics of Rage," (cover story), Newsweek 138, no. 16 (2001). The question in fact became so ubiquitous that then National Security advisor Condoleezza Rice felt obliged to state: Then, as now, the answer to that question depends on what one means by "they." There is a small minority of extremists in the Muslim world who, indeed, hate America and will always hate America. They hate our policies, our values, our freedoms, our very way of life. When that hatred is expressed through terrorist violence, there is only one proper response. And that response is that we must find them and defeat them, defeat those who seek to kill our people and to harm our country.
3. See "Dr. Rice Addresses the War on Terror; Remarks by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice Followed by Question and Answer to the U.S. Institute of Peace," http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/08/ 20040819-5.html. Parenthetically, while teaching the only terrorism class in the state while at the University of Alaska when September 11 occurred, I well recall the question, and at least among students, I recall as well a receptivity to answers that in the atmosphere of 2004 would be considered heretical.
4. This appears to have been the president's first and last explanation for the September 11 attacks. It was, however, understood in 2001 that the theme would not travel well. Thus, when the U.S. State Department released its report, "The Global War on Terror. The First 100 Days" in 2001, there were only three references to evil, and all were rhetorical or metaphorical. The document can be found at: http://www.911investigations.net/ document427.html. By 2004 however, the president's view was public knowledge in the U.S. and abroad, with apparently devastating public relations ramifications among the European allies.
5. See for example "A Year After Iraq War: Mistrust of America in Europe Ever Higher, Muslim Anger Persists," The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, 16 March 2004, http://people-press.org/reports/print. php3?PageID=795.
6. Indeed, such is the globalized state of communication technology that Osama bin Laden himself, in an election eve tape released in November 2004, offered the observation: "Before I begin, I say to you that security is an indispensable pillar of human life and that free men do not forfeit their security contrary to Bush's claim that we hate freedom. If so, then let him explain to us why we didn't strike-for example-Sweden. And we know that freedom haters don't possess defiant spirits like those of the 19. May Allah have mercy upon them." See "Transcript: Translation of Bin Laden's Videotaped Message," Washington Post, 1 November 2004, http://www.washingtonpost.com/ wp-dyn/articles/A16990-2004Nov1.html. That the president's first take on the event remains unchanged,
7. see Barton Gellman and Dafna Linzer, "Afghanistan, Iraq: Two Wars Collide," Washington Post, 22 October 2004, A1. The relevant quote is: "The president and his most influential advisers, many officials said, do not see those factors - or U.S. policy overseas - as primary contributors to the terrorism threat. Bush's explanation, in private and public, is that terrorists hate America for its freedom." The article can be accessed on line at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A526732004Oct21.html.
8. Traditional clothing styles vary widely among Islamic cultures, be it an all-covering burka as worn in Afghanistan or a simple head scarf and long dress. These subtleties however, are lost on most Americans.
9. "Sikh Americans Condemn Hate Crimes & Urge Nation to Unite; Demand Protection from Police & Public Officials," Amerasia Journal 27, no. 3/28, no. 1 (2001/2002). Press release from the Sikh Mediawatch and Resource Taskforce condemning hate crimes against Muslims in the aftermath of September 11.
10. Hate crimes may involve non-violent actions such as racial slurs, insults, or other demeaning acts, as well as acts of vandalism or violence against persons. This article however, will focus primarily on acts of physical violence against persons.
11. This article will suggest a number of examples of the kind of disconnect between official portrayals of events and the unraveling of these portrayals, and will examine some of the reasons for the lack of resonance of tried and true propaganda methods in first linking the War in Iraq to the wider War on Terror, and in rallying public support for the war effort. The data, however, is not specific enough to measure the impact of any single one of these examples on support for the war. However, support has been in rapid decline. For a wide selection of poll data on the topic, see PollingReport.com at http://www.pollingreport.com/iraq.htm.
12. For an interesting, if ideological, comparison of Japanese internment with the post-September 11 treatment of Muslims, see Natsu TaylorSaito, "Symbolism under Siege: Japanese American Redress and the 'Racing' of Arab Americans as Terrorists'", Asian Law Journal 8, no. 1 (2001): 12-29.
13. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Muslims in the West: From Sojourners to Citizens (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002);
14. Emran Qureshi and Michael A. Sells, The New Crusades: Constructing the Muslim Enemy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003);
15. Craig S. Smith, "For Dutch, Anger Battles with Tolerance," International Herald Tribune, 11 November 2004, http://www.iht.com/bin/ print_pub.php?file=/articles/2004/ 11/10/news/dutch.html;
16. and "A Civil War on Terrorism: Islam in the Netherlands: Another Political Murder," The Economist 373 (2004): 56.
17. For the history of the Islamic presence in the contemporary Netherlands, see Jacques Waardenburg, "The Institutionalization of Islam in the Netherlands, 1961-1986," in Tomas Gerholm and Yngve Georg Lithman, eds., The New Islamic Presence in Western Europe (London: Manse, 1988), 8-31.
18. The short speech can be found at the University of Oklahoma Law School site: http://www.law.ou.edu/hist/infamy.html (Accessed 1 June 2004).
19. A number of recent books and articles have begun to re-examine this period of American history following the much-belated apology and restitution made to those affected through the Civil Liberties Act of 1988. On the event, see U.S. House, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians: Hearing Before the Subcommittee on the Judiciary, Home of Representatives, 96th Cong., 2nd Sess., H.R. 5499, June 2, 1980, U.S. G.P.O., 1980.
20. For a brief overview, see Eric J. Sundquist, "The Japanese-American Internment," American Scholar 57, no. 4 (1988);
21. and Robert Shaffer, "Opposition to Internment: Defending Japanese American Rights During World War II," The Historian 61, no. 3 (1999).
22. Ricco Villanueva Siasoco and Shmuel Ross, "Japanese Relocation Centers," http://www.factmonster.com/spot/internmentl.html (Accessed 1 June 2005).
23. For a flavor of how the issue was reported at the time, see "Japanese Relocation," Encarta 2003, which reprints the Collier's Yearbook entries from 1942-1945. Cf. for a passionate if less precise account, 529-47.
24. "1942: Japanese Relocation," Encarta 2003.
25. "1942: Japanese Relocation," Encarta 2003. Ibid.
26. Shaffer, "Opposition to Internment: Defending Japanese American Rights During World War II."
27. This observation reflects the increasing importance of memorialization, survivorship, and victimization in shaping not only American historical memory, but policy formation. See for example, David Chidester and Edward Tabor Linenthal, American Sacred Space, Religion in North America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995);
28. and Edward Tabor Linenthal, Sacred Ground: Americans and Their Battlefields, 2nd ed. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1993).
29. For example Stephen Fugita and Marilyn Fernandez, Altered Lives, Enduring Community: Japanese Americans Remember Their World War II Incarceration (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2004);
30. Barry Denenberg, The Journal of Ben Uchida, Citizen 13559, Mirror Lake Internment Camp, 1st ed., My Name Is America (New York: Scholastic, 1999);
31. Fern Harrington Miles, Captive Community: Life in a Japanese Internment Camp, 1941-1945, 1st ed. (Jefferson City, Tenn.: Mossy Creek Press, 1987);
32. Jerry Stanley, I Am an American: A True Story of Japanese Internment, 1st ed. (New York: Crown, 1994);
33. Gary Y. Okihiro and Joan Myers, Whispered Silences: Japanese Americans and World War II (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1996);
34. and Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America's Concentration Camps (New York: Morrow, 1976).
35. For a more historicist treatment, see Dillon S. Myer, Uprooted Americans: The Japanese Americans and the War Relocation Authority During World War II (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 1971). None of these, however, has quite the impact of the U.S. government's own strained justifications for the unjustifiable.
36. See the 1944 vintage government propaganda films: "A Challenge to Democracy," available at the Prelinger archive, http://www.archive.org/ movies/details-db.php?collection=prelinger&collectionid=19585.
37. Harvard Law Review, "Racial Violence against Asian Americans," in Barbara Perry, ed., Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader (New York: Routledge, 1993), 223-34.
38. The FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which collected national crime statistics from local police departments, began in 1930. Hate Crime statistics were collected by the Agency for the first time in 1995. See http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm.
39. Valerie Jenness and Ryken Grattet, Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movement to Law Enforcement (New York: Russell Sage, 2001). Jenness and Grattet provide a solid synthesis of the literature to argue that the concept of hate crime emerged from the convergence of civil rights groups (including such groups as the NAACP and the ADL), the women's movement and the gay and lesbian movement with the nascent crime victim movement. The synthesis began in the late 1960s and continues to develop today.
40. Carolyn Petrosino, "Connecting the Past to the Future: Hate Crime in America," in Barbara Perry, ed., Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader, 16-17.
41. Which is not to say that there was no violence involved. Clearly, this would be an unlikely claim given the emotions of the time, and some of this suspicion is born out to a degree in the memoir literature. But in a period when mainstream post-WW II representations of the Japanese were, by twenty-first century standards, appallingly racist, the lack of anti-Japanese violence is striking. For a taste of the virulence of the official portrayal of Japan and the Japanese, see the U.S. government propaganda film "My Japan" (1945) http://www.archive.org/movies/details-db.php?collection= prelinger&collectionid=19296.
42. For varying perspectives, see Richard Orr Curry and Thomas M. Brown, Conspiracy; the Fear of Subversion in American History (New York: Holt, 1972);
43. Albert Fried, McCarthyism: The Great American Red Scare: A Documentary History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997);
44. Haynes Bonner Johnson, The Age of Anxiety: McCarthyism to Terrorism (Orlando, FL: Harcourt, 2005);
45. Thomas C. Reeves, McCarthyism (Malabar, Fla.: R.E. Krieger, 1989);
46. Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents (New York: Palgrave, 2002);
47. and Athan G. Theoharis, The FBI and American Democracy: A Brief Critical History (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 2004).
48. On the self-view of the Birch Society, see its manual: John Birch Society, The Blue Book (Belmont, MA: Birch Society, n.d.);
49. or also from the time, Gene Grove, Inside the John Birch Society (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett, 1961).
50. For an overview of the Birch Society in the constellation of far right groups, see John George and Laird M. Wilcox, Nazis, Communists, Klansmen, and Others on the Fringe: Political Extremism in America (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1992). The Birch Society went into steep decline in the 1970s, but has reemerged with a glossy magazine, New American, a new cause, anti-globalization rather than anti-communism, and a new lease on life.
51. See the Birch Society homepage, http://www.jbs.org/,
52. and the New American http://www.thenewamerican.com/artman/publish/ cat_index_63.shtml.
53. http://www.otrcat.com/thisisyourfbi.htm. Another popular radio program of the day, "The FBI In Peace and War," was not authorized by the FBI but nonetheless reinforced the invincible image of the organization.
54. The series was based on a book: Frederick L. Collins and Lester Dember, The FBI in Peace and War, rev. and enl./ed. (New York: Putnam, 1963). For a decidedly different, but thoroughly enjoyable insider's view of Hoover's FBI,
55. see Joseph L. Schott, No Left Turns (New York: Praeger, 1975).
56. Brian Levin, "Cyberhate: A Legal and Historical Analysis of Extremists' Use of Computer Networks in America," American Behavioral Scientist 45, no. 6 (2002): 958-88.
57. Les Back, Michael Keith and John Solomos, "Racism and the Internet: Mapping Neo-Fascist Cultures in Cyberspace," in Jeffrey Kaplan and Tore Bjørgo, Nation and Race: The Developing Euro-American Racist Subculture (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1998). Cf.,
58. Jeffrey Kaplan, "Leaderless Resistance," Terrorism and Political Violence 9, no. 3 (1997): 80-95;
59. Milton John Kleim, "Internet Recruiting," in idem.,
60. Jeffrey Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2000), 141-144;
61. Anti-Defamation League, "Hate on the World Wide Web: A Brief Guide to Cyberspace Bigotry," http://www.come-and-hear.com/editor/adl-hates- censorship/ (written 1998), accessed 3 June 2005;
62. or the Simon Wiesenthal Center, "Digital Terrorism and Hate 2005," CD-ROM available at: http://www.museumoftolerance.com/site/pp. asp?c=arLPK7PILqF&b=476425. Significantly, the title of the Simon Wiesenthal Center CD-ROM has changed from its original "Digital Hate (2000)." Earlier CD-ROM concentrated on images associated with Nazism. The 2005 version, with the new name, features a picture of American hostage Nick Berg, who was beheaded in Iraq. The choice is not only significant in illustrating watchdog groups' need to expand their focus from domestic antiSemitism to global terrorism, but for the fact that the Berg case brought home to observers the fact that in the new world of communications technology, terrorism has become interactive. Angered by widespread doubts that Berg was actually alive during the beheading (executed with extraordinary clumsiness by one of the hostage holders), future beheadings would feature live soundtracks, close-ups, and uninterrupted time stamps. On the doubts,
63. see Ritt Goldstein, "Berg Beheading: No Way, Say Medical Experts," Asia Times, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FE22Ak03. html. A quick search of blogs via the popular RSS reader site Bloglines turned up no less than 326 blogs that discuss the event.
64. See for example, "The Staton Jones Report," http://www.deltos.com/reference/ SJR/archives/000330.html;
65. "Talk Left," http://talkleft.com/new_archives/006610.html;
66. or "Paranoia: The Conspiracy Reader," http://www. paranoiamagazine.com/paranotes2004.html.
67. The Nuremberg Files website comes to mind in this regard, where the radical fringe of the pro-life rescue movement utilized the technology to target particular abortion doctors, resulting in the deaths of several of the men profiled on the site. The ISP eventually refused service to the Web page and no other host has been found, while a civil judgment in the amount of $100 million effectively put the site out of business as a vehicle for targeting individuals. On the case, see http://www-cse.stanford.edu/classes/cs201/ projects/nurembergfiles/background.html#conclusion.
68. For the skeleton of the site, see the surviving top page at http://www.christiangallery.com/atrocity/.
69. For background on the cases, see Jeffrey Kaplan, "Absolute Rescue: Absolutism, Defensive Action and the Resort to Force," Terrorism and Political Violence 7, no. 3 (1995): 128-63.
70. For a fine overview of Islam on the Internet in both its jihadist and mainstream forms, see Gary R. Bunt, Islam in the Digital Age (London: Pluto Press, 2003).
71. On security concerns, see for example, the special issue articles: "Netwar across the Spectrum of Conflict," Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 22, no. 3 (1999).
72. In particular in this issue, John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt, "The Advent of Netwar: Analytic Background," 193-206,
73. Michele Zanini, John Arquilla, and David Ronfeldt, "Netwar Across the Spectrum of Conflict: Middle Eastern Terrorism and Netwar" 247-56.
74. Cf. Robert F. Worth, "Jihadists Take Stand on Web, and Some Say It's Defensive," New York Times, 13 March 2005, 22. The most advanced communications outreach is arguably that of the Lebanese Hizb'Allah, which operates state-of-the-art television and radio studios, sophisticated, interactive websites in Arabic, English and French, as well as Internet broadcasting. The Hizb'Allah URL changes frequently. As of 6 June, 2005 the Arabic site is http://www.moqawama.net/index.php and the English mirror is http://www.moqawama.net/english/index.php.
75. The model of seekers pursuing "secret and suppressed knowledge" was best presented by Colin Campbell in his 1960s vintage study of the cultic milieu. The cultic milieu model has proved durable enough in the age of the Internet, but what Campbell did not foresee was how the dreams, speculations, fears, and not infrequently, insights of denizens of the cultic milieu would be instantly available to other seekers as the expense and difficulty of producing and mailing newsletters or attending physical gatherings has been increasingly replaced by the computer screen. Campbell also could not have foreseen the rapid diffusion of ideas from the cultic milieu to the mainstream culture which the Internet has made possible. For Campbell's original article, "The Cult, the Cultic Milieu and Secularization," as well as a number of essays applying Campell's theory to a variety of global subcultures, see Jeffrey Kaplan and Heléne Lööw, eds., The Cultic Milieu: Oppositional Subcultures in an Age of Globalization (Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press, 2002).
76. Studs Terkel, The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (New York: New Press, 1997).
77. For a contrary view, arguing that polls indicated that a majority of the greatest generation saw WWII as a mistake, see Hazel Erskine, "The Polls: Is War a Mistake?" Public Opinion Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1970): 134-50.
78. The phrase came back into popular vogue to a degree through the book of the same name by NEC news anchor Tom Brokaw. See Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation (New York: Random House, 2004).
79. Cf. Michael D. Gambone, The Greatest Generation Comes Home: The Veteran in American Society (College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2005);
80. Craig Leake et al., The Greatest Generation (United States: New Video Group, 1999);
81. and Tom Mathews, Our Fathers' War: Growing up in the Shadow of the Greatest Generation (New York: Broadway Books, 2005).
82. The phrase is taken up by columnist Suzanne Fields, "The New Great Generation," Washington Times, 26 December 2004, http://www.washtimes. com/op-ed/20041226-095825-3994r.htm,
83. and by Pat Hammond, "Citizen of the Year: Another Great Generation," Manchester Union Leader, 2 January 2005, http://www. theunionleader. com/articles_showa.html?article=49079, to name a few.
84. For a great overview of the 1950s, see David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard Books, 1993).
85. On how not all of the paranoia of the era was fantasy (i.e., that real paranoids had real enemies), see John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
86. For an utterly biased, but rather enjoyable, demonology of the era as seen through the eyes of an unreconstructed leftist, see Joel Kovel, Red Hunting in the Promised Land: Anticommunism and the Making of America (New York: Basic Books, 1994).
87. And for a still unsurpassed contemporaneous view, see Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics, and Other Essays, 1 st Harvard University Press pbk. ed. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1996).
88. For a good historical overview of public opinion and recent wars, see Harry G. Summers, "The Vietnam Syndrome and the American People," Journal of American Culture 17 (1994).
89. For an illuminating historical insight which is relevant to the current conflict in Iraq, see David F. Schmilz, The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
90. On polling at the time, see Sidney Brody Verba, Richard A. Brody Verba, Edwin B. Parker, Norman H. Nie, Nelson W. Polsby, Paul Ekman, and Gordon S. Black, "Public Opinion and the War in Vietnam," American Political Science Review 61, no. 2 (1967);
91. and Seymour Martin Lipset, "Polls and Protests," Foreign Affairs 49, no. 3 (1971).
92. When asked "considering the costs to the United States versus the benefits to the United States, do you think the war with Iraq was worth fighting, or not?" Americans 53%-43% said it was not worth it. "Washington Post-ABC News Poll: Social Security/Iraq," March 15, 2005, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/polls/polltrend_031405.html.
93. Howard Kurtz, "CNN Chief Orders 'Balance' in War News: Reporters Are Told To Remind Viewers Why U.S. Is Bombing," Washington Post, 31 October 2001, C1.
94. For a telling example, see the very widely circulated "meant-to-be-private" E-mail from the Wall Street Journal's Middle East correspondent Farnaz Fassihi, who wrote: "Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest" due to restrictions placed on reporters and the dramatic poisoning of relations between Americans and Iraqis in the wake of the (largely unreported in the U.S.) civilian casualties and widespread destruction of the city of Fellujah by U.S. forces in September 2004. A copy of the E-mail is currently available at: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0930-15.htm.
95. Three good books, two journalistic and the other academic, have been published recently on the al-Jazeera phenomenon. For an academic treatment of Arab news organizations as a whole, see Noha Mellor, The Making of Arab News (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
96. This text, however, will be of limited interest to scholars outside of the communications field. For very accessible, and important, journalism, see Mohammed El-Nawawy and Adel Iskander, Al-Jazeera: How the Free Arab News Network Scooped the World and Changed the Middle East (Cambridge, Mass.: Westview Press, 2002);
97. and Hugh Miles, Al-Jazeera: The Inside Story of the Arab News Channel That Is Challenging the West (New York: Grove Press, 2005).
98. In 2005, al-Jazeera took a considerable step forward with its adoption of its first journalistic code of ethics. See http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/ exeres/ 07256105-B2FC-439A-B255-D830BB238EA1.htm. It is now poised to launch an English language cable service, which should be up and running by 2006.
99. Indeed, attempts to do so have proved so far counter-productive. Frustration with the failure of the U.S. media to document the level of civilian suffering in the invasion of Afghanistan which followed September 11, compounded by the frequency with which U.S. forces seem to " inadvertently" kill al-Jazeera journalists (no less than three journalists and one cameraman so far) led to the creation of its sophisticated English language website. For one example of targeting al-Jazeera journalists, see http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/64BEFBCA-210E-4E39-B8CD-A2EC8E0EB2F1.htm.
100. http://www.state.gov/g/drl/hr/.
101. Stephen Grey and Margot Williams, "C.I.A. Expanding Terror Battle Under Guise of Charter Flights," New York Times, 31 May 2005. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/31/national/31 planes.html?ei=5070&en= ba55cd837e6ccc92&ex=1118203200&pagewanted=all.
102. For an even earlier news report, including a picture of the unmarked plane, see Dana Priest, "Jet Is an Open Secret in Terror War," Washington Post, 27 December 2004, 1.
103. After the Times article, the Washington Post followed up with a reprise: Craig Whitlock, "New Swedish Documents Illuminate CIA Action: Probe Finds 'Rendition' Of Terror Suspects Illegal," Washington Post, 21 May 2005, A1.
104. The news magazine program 60 Minutes then jumped into the act. See the video "Flying Suspects to Torture," http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/ 2005/03/04/60minutes/main678155.shtml.
105. For a taste of the bloggers taking on the Post news stories, see for example the well known MemoryBlog, "More Details About CIA's Torture Jet," http://www.thememoryblog.org/archives/000405.html.
106. And for the in-depth description of the plane, its aliases and its comings and goings, see "Details of 'Torture by Proxy' Flights Emerge," http://www.notinourname.net/restrictions/torture-flights-14nov04. htm.
107. And finally, for a selection of articles from world media on the topic, see http://groups. yahoo.com/group/shobakjiews/message/2349.
108. "Allies Resist CIA Deportation Role," CNN, July 19, 2005, http://www.cnn.com/ 2005/WORLD/europe/06/19/terror.spirited.away.ap/index.html.
109. "Britain Accused Over CIA's Secret Torture Flights: UK Airports Are Believed to be Operational Bases for Two Executive Jets Used by the CIA to Carry Out 'renditions' of Terror Suspects." Independent, 10 February 2005, http://www.globalpolicy.org/empire/ terrorwar/analysis/2005/0210britaccused.htm.
110. This is not to say that American intentions are automatically held to be suspect. However, in the Cold War, realism dictated that American allies, however dire their human rights practices, were preferable to having these same countries in the Soviet camp. The contradiction was justified with the theory (or rationalization to those outside the Realist camp) that such was the redemptive power of democracy that these countries would gradually democratize by virtue of their inclusion in the world system on the side of the Western democracies. In retrospect, this appears to have been a rather too optimistic view.
111. http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/index-eng. The report describes the Guantanamo Bay prison facility as "the gulag of our times," a phrase that was picked up by media outlets throughout the world. In fairness, however, it must be said that the U.S. has been the subject of an impassioned Amnesty International anti-capital punishment campaign for a number of years. There is little love lost between the organization and the U.S. government.
112. Unfortunately, this contention must remain speculative. Available survey data does not ask questions about particular policies or events. The best that can be done at this time is to examine the broad support for the War(s) and hypothesize on the reasons for the notable decline in public support.
113. This is not to deny the genuine heroism of U.S. soldiers, nor to diminish the impact of U.S. casualties on domestic politics. Note in this regard the practice of CBS news in leading into the first commercial break of its evening newscasts in 2005 with "Portraits of the Fallen": pictures of an American casualty and a brief biography stressing that they were "regular people" with whom the viewers could identify.
114. The film of the official story of the rescue, complete with the claim that the rescue mobilized "every asset at the Pentagon" is still available at CBS news, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/03/iraq/ main547492.shtml.
115. On a contemporary reaction wondering why the same mobilization did not take place for less photogenic POWs, see the fate of Keith Maupin on the website "A Collection of Thoughts," http://www.jenmartinez.com/mt/ archives/000817.php.
116. Edward Helmore, "Private Jessica Says President is Misusing Her 'Heroism'," Gaurdian, 9 November 2003, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/ international/story/0,6903,1081186,00. html.
117. For the entire collection of Jessica Lynch articles, pictures (save the pre-fame nudes purchased by Larry Flynt of Hustler magazine which are also easily found on the Internet), and links to video footage, see http://www.unitedjustice.com/jessica-lynch.html.
118. Rick Bragg, I Am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2003),
119. Mohammed Odeh Rehaief and Jeff Coplon, Because Each Life Is Precious: Why an Iraqi Man Risked Everything for Private Jessica Lynch (New York: HarperCollins, 2003).
120. See for example The American Prospect, http://www.prospect.org/weblog/ archives/2003/05/;
121. The Modern World by Tom Tomorrow, http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/ mtarchives/week_2003_05_18.html#000629;
122. or The Blog From Another Dimension, http://www.blogd.com/archives/000090. html, to name a few.
123. Steve Coll, "Army Spun Tale Around Ill-Fated Mission," Washington Post, 6 December 2004, A1.
124. Steve Coll, "Barrage of Bullets Drowned Out Cries of Comrades," Washington Post, 5 December 2004, A1.
125. For the reaction of Tillman's parents, see "Tillman's Parents Rip Army in Separate Interviews," 23 May 2005, http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/ news/story?id = 2066326,
126. and the letter from Pat Tillman's father, "Failures and Blame in Pat Tillman's Death," Washington Post, 28 May 2005, A24.
127. For pictures of the hearings in which the tale was spun, see http://www. geocities.com/CapitolHill/3589/us-iraq-lie.html.
128. David Beresford, "Writes, and Wrongs, of War," Observer, 26 January 2003, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,6903,882109,00. html;
129. To hear the story as it was broadcast, National Radio Project, http://www.radioproject.org/archive/2000/0037.html.
130. And for a blog with historical memory, see http://www.snopes.com/ military/stamp.htm.
131. For these and similar stories, see Jan Harold Brunvand, Encyclopedia of Urban Legends (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2001).
132. See for example the tactics employed against a sixteen-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant girl by the FBI. Nina Bernstein, "Questions, Bitterness and Exile for Queens Girl in Terror Case," New York Times, 17 June 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/17/nyregion/17suicide.html.
133. Cf. Nina Bernstein, Idem., "Girl Called Would-Be Bomber Was Drawn to Islam," New York Times, 8 April 2005, http://www.refuseandresist.org/ detentions/art.php?aid = 1872.
134. For a graphic vision of this stereotypical "stuff of dreams" see the lavishly illustrated book by Holly Edwards and Brian T. Allen, Noble Dreams, Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press in association with the Sterling And Francine Clark Art Institute, 2000).
135. In academic terms, see the classic work by Edward W. Said, Orientalism (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985).
136. More recently, several good texts have appeared, including Douglas Little, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East Since 1945 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2002)
137. and Zachary Lockman, Contending Visions of the Middle East: The History and Politics of Orientalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
138. FBI statistics appear to assume that it is the intent of the perpetrator rather than the identity of the victim that is the decisive factor in calculating their racial, ethnic, or religious bias crime statistics. Sikhs are not included in a separate category and the FBI appears to conflate crimes against Sikhs in retaliation for 9/11 with crimes perpetrated against Muslims (with again no breakdown of the national origins of these Muslims). That this suspicion seems well founded finds some confirmation in the "Federal Bureau of Investigation Strategic Plan 20042009" http://www.fbi.gov/publications/ strategicplan/stategicplantext.htm.
139. The ADC also includes crimes against Sikhs under the category of anti-Muslim hate crime. See Hussein Ibish res., ed., and Anne Stewart's Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash' September 11, 2001-October 11, 2002 (Washington, DC: American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 2003), 47.
140. "Hate crime reports up in wake of terrorist attacks," Cnn.com, 17 September 2001. http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/16/gen.hate.crimes/.
141. The article notes one such attack in Mesa, Arizona, and uses the case to illustrate the wave of violence against Sikhs nationally in the mistaken belief that Sikhs are Muslim. On the history of Sikhs, still unsurpassed is W. H. McLeod, Sikhs and Sikhism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999).
142. On Sikh terrorism in North America, see Maryam Razavy, "Sikh Militant Movements in Canada," Terrorism and Political Violence (forthcoming).
143. Dana Milbank and Emily Wax, "Bush Visits Mosque to Forestall Hate Crimes. President Condemns an Increase in Violence Aimed at Arab Americans," Washington Post, 18 September 2001, 1. The article recounts several high profile anti-Muslim hate crimes, the reporting of which was the background to the Islamic Center visit.
144. "President Commemorates Eid al-Fitr. Remarks by the President on Eid Al-Fitr The Islamic Center of Washington, D.C.," http://www.whitehouse. gov/news/releases/2002/12/20021205-5.html#. This White House site also offers streaming video and audio of the address.
145. "Executive Summary," Report on Hate Crime and Discrimination Against ArabAmericans: The Post-September 11 Backlash, September 11,2001-October 11, 2002 (Washington, D.C.: American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, 2003), 8. All documents from the organization were obtained from its website at http://www.adc.org/.
146. http://www.zogby.com/soundbites/ReadClips.dbm?ID=4103. The author is indebted to Yehonathan Brodski at the University of Jerusalem for pointing out this important data.
147. Another important civil rights organization, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) tracks bias incidents against American Muslims as well. Its numbers, however, are not significantly different from those of the ADC, so in the interest of space, the author has elected to use the ADC's reports in this section. Cf. "We Are Not the Enemy," Human Rights Watch 14, no. 6 (2002), http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/usahate/, for another source of statistics and some local case studies.
148. The 2003 FBI Hate Crime statistics were released as this article was in the revision stage. By 2003, hate crimes against Muslims stood at 149 incidents perpetrated against 171 individuals, a slight drop from 2002's count of 170 crimes against 174 victims. This continues the downward trend noted in the discussion of the 2002 statistics below, and in the interest of space will not be discussed separately. The 2003 report can be accessed at http://www.fbi. gov/ucr/03hc.pdf.
149. Only Alabama does not participate in the gathering of data.
150. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2002. This and all of the FBI's statistical data is available at the FBI website http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm.
151. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2000, 5. Specifically, there were 8,063 incidents, most of which were single incident reports. The discrepancy (1,367 incidents) between the figures is accounted for by the occurrence of multiple offenses in a single incident.
152. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2000, 7.
153. Hate Crime Statistics 2000, Ibid., 10-11.
154. Hate Crime Statistics 2000, Ibid., 11.
155. Hussein Ibish, ed., 1998-2000 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans (Washington, D.C.: ADC, 2001) 10-11. A great deal of hate speech is recounted in the ADC narratives, and a clear pattern of hate speech replaying Arab-Israeli tensions in the Middle East may be found.
156. Hussein Ibish, 1998-2000 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans, Ibid., 10-15.
157. Hussein Ibish, 1998-2000 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans, Ibid., 12.
158. Hussein Ibish, 1998-2000 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans, Ibid., 13.
159. Barbara Perry, "Anti-Muslim Retaliatory Violence Following the 9/11 Attacks," in Barbara Perry, ed., Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader, 183-201.
160. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2001, 5.
161. Ibid. Once again, a note of caution is in order with regard to these statistics. As we have seen with attacks on Sikhs in the mistaken belief that they were Muslim, Americans are not always the most discerning judges of religious or national backgrounds. These statistics therefore must be considered in the of the vastly different local police agencies who submit this data. It would probably not be greatly surprising if the data for ethnic and religiously based crime were not blurred together to a significant degree. For their part, police depend on reports of the utterances of the perpetrator and to a lesser degree the perceptions of the victim in determining the motivations for a crime.
162. Hussein Ibish and Anne Stewart, Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash, September 11, 2001-October 11, 2002, 47.
163. Cf. "Anti-Muslim Crimes Peaked After Sept. 11 Attacks, Study Shows," Chicago Tribune, 14 November 2002, www.hrw.org/reports/2002/ usahate.
164. Barbara Perry, "Anti-Muslim Retaliatory Violence Following the 9/11 Attacks," in Barbara Perry, ed., Hate and Bias Crime: A Reader, 199, no. 1. It should be noted that the use of the term Khalistan in the organization's name suggests a strong political agenda with regard to internal Sikh politics. This would not necessarily impact the veracity of the numberswhich seem quite reasonable in the context-but it needs to be noted nonetheless. Another organization, the Sikh Coalition, has created a web page dedicated to documenting post9/11 hate crime against Sikhs at http://www.sikhcoalition.org/ NewsletterQ0102.asp. The organization listed as of 19 June 2005 370 such incidents, but all were self-reported on the website by alleged victims. There is no way to verify these reports, but again, they are suggestive of the degree of the problem.
165. The small mosque in my area, the Fox Valley Islamic Society, was typical in this regard. The mosque consists of families from a number of national, ethnic, linguistic, and sectarian backgrounds (notably, both Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims worship reasonably amicably together). Several members are American converts and several of these converts are connected with my university. One such, a professor of Political Science who had converted from Judaism to Islam in the 1960s, is today the regional representative of the liberal legal group, the American Civil Liberties Union. Wearing both hats, this member of the mosque has worked hard to create linkages with the FBI and with local authorities, as well as to assure members of the Muslim community that it is safe to come forward to report incidents. This role has become particularly valuable in the wake of the passage of the Patriot Act. For the text of this Act, see http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/hr3162.html.
166. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2001, 9.
167. Hate Crime Statistics 2001, Ibid., 12-13.
168. Hussein Ibish and Anne Stewart, Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash, September 11, 2001-October 11, 2002, 47.
169. Hussein Ibish and Anne Stewart, Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash, September 11, 2001-October 11, 2002, 47. Ibid.
170. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2002, 5.
171. Hate Crime Statistics 2002, Ibid., 9.
172. See for example, "Attorney General John Ashcroft Remarks, Press Briefing with FBI Director Robert Mueller, FBI Headquarters September 17, 2001." http://www.usdoj.gov/ archive/ag/speeches/2001/0917pressbriefingfbi. htm.
173. U.S. Department of Justice, "Fact Sheet: Civil Rights Accomplishments," http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/civilrights/fs072303.htm (accessed 31 May 2005).
174. The report, however, does note, correctly, that 165 incidents represent a "significant increase over most years in the past decade." Hussein Ibish and Anne Stewart, Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans: The Post-September 11 Backlash, September 11, 2001-October 11, 2002, 1.
175. FBI, Hate Crime Statistics 2002, 12-13.
176. This outreach did not go unnoticed by Muslims. See for example "From Conversion to Conversation: Interfaith Dialogue in Post 9-11 America," Muslim World 94, no. 3 (July 2004): 343-55,
177. and Eloise Davis-Chopin, "Muslims Dispel Myths As Post-9/11 Investigation Details Emerge," Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, 21, no. 1 (2002): 64-65.
178. These sources focus specifically on hate crime. For a study of the deeper structure of anti-Muslim bias generally in American culture after September 11, see Kathleen M. More, '"United we stand': American attitudes toward (Muslim) immigration post-September 11th," Muslim World 92, nos. 1/2 (2002): 39-57.