BI: Is it your impression that Islamophobia is on the rise in the world?

Khateeb: What we see happening is certainly beyond individual acts or statements. I believe that Islamophobia has become a phenomenon in the world and that there is a movement rife that defines Islam as its enemy. The discourse of this movement deals with Muslims in generalizations. Actions that were once attributed to extremist individuals or groups are now often spoken of in terms of fundamentalist or extremist Islam. This is a very negative attitude that ultimately points the finger at every individual Muslim.

BI: Can you give an example of this kind of discourse?

Khateeb: Violent actions carried out by Muslims are often designated as "Islamic terrorism". In contrast, Serbian violence in the former Yugoslavia was never described as "Orthodox Christian violence". In India, Hindu violence against Muslims is not referred to as "Hindu terrorism", nor in Ireland does anyone talk of "Protestant terrorism".

Some believe this attitude came as a reaction to 9/11. I think that the beginning came much earlier, when the US adopted Samuel Huntington's theory of the clash of civilizations. In my opinion, the former president Bush long ago adopted this theory--that there is a conflict between Islamic civilization and the West, a conflict between good and evil where the evil is Islam. This attitude simply gained rapid currency after 9/11.

The current President Bush made a very firm affirmation of this outlook in his speech after 9/11 where he spoke of a crusade. He also talked, and continues to talk, of being on a mission from God, indicating that he sees US policy in religious terms. In other words, US policy regarding Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the unswerving American support of Israeli policies and practices against the Palestinian people, is motivated by religious and cultural considerations.

For example, I think US support of Israel has a religious as well as a political motivation. There is a religious-ideological element behind the policy that holds that supporting Israel is a means to realizing the prophecy of the second coming of Christ.

BI: Do you feel that Muslims in Israel suffer from hostility and racism?

Khateeb: We don't only feel it, we have been living it for years. Look at the violation of our sacred places. Take for example the Red Mosque in Safed, which is today being used as a movie studio. A mosque in Caesaria was turned into a bar, and there's a mosque in the demolished village of Hitteen that is used as a barn.

Can you imagine anything more offensive than writing the name of the Prophet Muhammad on a pig's head and throwing it into the Hasan Bek Mosque in Tel Aviv? This particular mosque has been attacked three times in the last year by Jewish fundamentalists and the Israeli police have done nothing to put an end to these racist actions. Another example is what happened two weeks ago to a Muslim student at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, where guards refused to allow her entrance just because she was wearing Jelbab and Hijab, and refused to take her Hijab off for a security check.

BI: How do you think the Israeli media deals with Islam?

Khateeb: The media works in the service of the government's Zionist policy, which is hostile to Islam. When the Islamic movement in Israel was warning of a possible attack on the Haram al-Sharif, we were accused by the media of incitement. But this threat later turned out to be real, when the Revava group tried to attack the Aqsa Mosque.

When Sheikh Raed Salah, the head of the Northern Islamic Movement in Israel, was arrested, the media portrayed him as a terrorist and our movement as one that supports terrorist acts. He was convicted in public before he was even brought to trial. When all charges against him were subsequently dropped, his acquittal was practically ignored.

BI: Is the Northern Islamic Movement working to address these issues?

Khateeb: We work on two levels, the legal and the popular level. Unfortunately, the legal system in Israel is biased and affected by political agendas. On the popular level, we organize demonstrations and rallies hoping to affect Israeli public opinion by sending the message that prejudice is an obstacle toward achieving peace, internally with Israel's Arab citizens, and externally with the Palestinians. Internally, this conflict is not national; it's a state of hostility against us for being Muslims, not for being Palestinian.

BI: To what extent do you think that the actions of extremists in the Arab and Muslim world have created this Islamophobia?

Khateeb: What is happening in the Islamic world is a reaction to the foreign military aggression against the Arab nation, as well as the bias toward the West of many Arab regimes. This is not to say that we agree with the violence done by Muslim against Muslim in Jordan and Saudi Arabia or the targeting of civilians in Iraq. We must distinguish between legitimate resistance and such indiscriminate violence.

We are against attacking civilians and against exporting conflict to other countries. Islam is not the property of anyone. We refuse to be implicated in such actions just because we are Muslims.- Published 22/12/2005 © bitterlemons-international.org


Sheikh Kamal Khateeb is the deputy head of the Northern Islamic Movement in Israel.

It requires no particular genius to know that Islam has become of special interest to many in the West. From tourists and travelers worried about their safety to senior leaders of government, in religious denominations, among academics and in the press, the issue is a hot-button topic.

What does the West, in this case particularly the United States where I live and work, think about Islam? How can the issues be managed?

The main source of concern relates to terrorism. The major focus, from Bali to Baghdad and from Madrid to Mazar-e-Sharif, has been on the intimate linkage between Islamic fundamentalists and the use of the terror tactic. So much so, that events like Oklahoma City (where American extremists were tried and found guilty) and the fateful assassination of Yitzhak Rabin (involving Jewish extremists) are almost passed over or ignored.

A second dimension in this doleful analysis of course extends beyond Islamic fundamentalists to Islam as a whole. While President Bush seems careful, after having made his "crusade" allusion several years ago, to distinguish between Islam and terrorism, others are not. Some readings of parts of the US press can certainly lead to the malign and in my view badly mistaken conclusion that the war on terrorism has become a war on Islam. That would be an unparalleled tragedy and one probably sought by our enemies, the progenitors of terrorism, coming from groups such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates and supporters around the world. In this struggle, as in any other serious effort in life, we ought to heed the wise counsel of Hippocrates to the medical profession: "First, do no harm".

Elsewhere, others are taking a different and somewhat more sophisticated approach. It remains, however, sequestered for the moment among academics who have studied Islam, diplomats who have sought understanding and cooperation with our friends in the Arab and Muslim world, and groups of religious leaders seeking reconciliation, cooperation where possible, and mutual understanding as a basis for avoiding the calamities of mindless confrontation. Their success so far has been limited and sporadic, but they continue to work at the task.

To some extent, those bent on understanding and reconciliation in the United States face not only their own limitations in influence noted earlier, but those of their colleagues and friends within the circle of Islam. Leadership there seems to have been hijacked by the extremists; the press regularly dotes on their confrontational public declarations to the pleasure, I am sure, of those who seek wider confrontation. Here, those working to build bridges often express the need for "a little help from their friends", but what they receive comes often on a personal basis and in conferences behind closed doors and blinded windows.

Nor, on the western side, is all necessarily well in the religion department. There are, as we all know, some among the Christian right who seek their own form of association with the Middle East and the issues of the religious divide. Often mesmerized by the words "Judeo-Christian heritage", they seek to find common cause with the Jewish presence in the Holy Land and champion it because of their belief that postulates a pre-messianic presence of Israel in the Holy Land.

What happens after that is more problematic. However, the present expressions of these views give rise, on the one hand, to unquestioning support for the settlements in the "territories" and, on the other and in a diametrically opposed fashion, the creation of antagonism and animosity toward Islam. For example, there is a rejection among some in this community of the commonality among the three Abrahamic--or, for the sake of balance, "Ibrahimic"--faiths, of belief in a single, common deity, and a denial that the Allah of Islam is the shared common God of all three faiths.

It is not easy to know how to respond. Many who have analyzed the growing divide insist that the heat and emotion of the present will subside over time. Others, more activist in their course, seek the leaders, the understanding, and the dialogue with Islam that can help to temper the confrontation and relieve the apparently growing divisions. The latter course seems only right under the circumstances. The world as seen from East and West is too interconnected, too interdependent, and now too closely related to be torn apart by eleventh century-style religious controversy. One has only to look at the decades of history when Islam and the West coexisted to understand the value and the necessity of this wiser course.- Published 22/12/2005 © bitterlemons-international.org


Thomas R. Pickering's long career at the US State Department included postings as ambassador at the UN, the Russian Federation, India, Israel and Jordan, and culminated in the position of under secretary of state for political affairs.

In London, shops are burned. In Paris, there are riots. In Sydney there are more riots. But what about America? Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egyptian cleric who is currently serving a life sentence for conspiring to bomb several New York City landmarks, exhorted: "Oh, you Muslims everywhere, sever the ties of their nation, tear them apart, ruin their economy, instigate against their corporations, destroy their embassies, attack their interests, sink their ships, and shoot down their airplanes. Kill them in land, at sea, and in the air, kill them wherever you find them."

Abdel Rahman's ringing call to action (echoed by Osama bin Laden and other lesser luminaries of Islamic extremism) has certainly reverberated throughout the Islamic world. Anti-Americanism has been on the upswing, though the last year has seen some decline in its rabidity. But what about American Muslims? Living here in the heart of darkness, American Muslims could, in theory, be the spearhead of the movement to destroy the United States. In Australia, Great Britain, France and Germany there are growing suspicions that naturalized and native-born Muslims will form the core of terror groups targeting those nations. But such is not the case in the United States.

The socio-economic statistics are impressive: Arab-Americans (not to be confused with Muslim Americans, a much larger group) have a median household income of $52,000, according to the 2000 census. A 2004 survey by Zogby International found that 59 percent of American Muslims have an undergraduate degree, more than double the nation-wide statistic of about 25 percent. The Wall Street Journal cites a study of mosque attendance in Detroit which finds the average mosque-goer is a stalwart of the middle class: married, with children, holding a college degree and earning in the range of $74,000 a year.

Should the rest of America heave a sigh of relief that we, unlike the British, French, and others, will not grow our own terrorists? Absolutely not. The middle class has generated its fair share of killers (think Mohammed Atta), but a tivo, a mortgage, membership in the PTA and a level of integration that does the American hallmark proud should diminish that likelihood significantly. Finsbury Park-style mosques and radical imams are far from the norm.

And it's a two way street. According to the FBI's 2004 statistics, religion accounts for only 16.4 percent of hate crimes in America (versus race, for example, which accounts for 53.9 percent). Of those, the overwhelming mass of the 1480 hate crimes reported were anti-Jewish (67.8 percent), while only 13 percent (or about 192) were anti-Islamic. Compare that to France (with 20 percent of the US population), where 2004 saw 482 anti-Arab/Muslim hate crimes and threats (there are some apple/orange problems with the statistics, but even with vast over-correction, it is clear that the French Muslim problem dwarfs that of the US).

In fact, the numbers confirm what most Americans know already: The United States is a good place to live, the melting pot still works, and Americans are among the most tolerant of the world's people. That is the good news.

The bad news is that the United States government has yet to fathom an approach to radical Islam beyond its borders. Indeed, for some years after 9/11, much of the US government was reluctant to mention the words "radical Islam". There has been an evolution of late, but one barely sufficient to the problem at hand. In a recent speech to the National Endowment for Democracy, President George W. Bush said, "Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism .... Some might be tempted to dismiss these goals as fanatical or extreme. Well, they are fanatical and extreme--and they should not be dismissed. Our enemy is utterly committed."

Yet the commitment of the enemy is hardly matched by the commitment of the United States to counter him. True, the US is engaged in Iraq. Yes, an unprecedented effort has gone into public diplomacy. But how does the West combat Islamic extremism? US officials confronted with the question hem and haw uncomfortably. They mention the "freedom agenda" and the spread of democracy; and while democracy is indeed the long-term solution to the problem of radical Islam and the appeal of Islamic extremist groups, the problem faces us now. A short-term solution is needed to partner with the long term one.

The United States remains oddly reluctant to fight Islamic extremism at one of its most important sources: Saudi Arabia. The Saudis continue to export hatred in Korans and curricula, interfering in education systems and infiltrating mosques wherever possible. In addition, most officials are afraid to challenge "authentic" Islamic political parties such as the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Indeed, there are pressures to open dialogue with terror groups such as Hizballah and Hamas because they are "authentic" outgrowths of the political process.

Instead, US officials should set aside their squeamishness and do their best to promote political maturity in the Middle East. It is possible for genuine, issue-oriented political parties to make strides. But they won't for as long as the United States government continues to believe that the best political party springs from the mosque or the tribe. After all, if Muslims in America are indeed Americans in every sense (and they are), why is it that Muslims everywhere cannot embrace political and economic freedom? The answer is that, if given a chance, they can.- Published 22/12/2005 © bitterlemons-international.org


Danielle Pletka is vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute.