Islamophobia

 Islamophobia - The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims,
[A5] Paperback - 291 pages,
by Stephen Sheehi,
Preface by: Mumia Abu Jamal,
Foreword by: Ward Churchill.




Description :


In this title, Sheehi examines the rise of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab sentiments in the West following the end of the Cold War through GW Bush's War on Terror to the Age of Obama. He investigates the increased mainstreaming of Muslim-bating rhetoric and explicitly racist legislation, police surveillance, witch-trials and discriminatory policies towards Muslims.


The book focuses on the various genres and modalities of Islamophobia from the works of academics to the commentary by mainstream journalists, to campaigns by political hacks and special interest groups. Featured are Bernard Lewis, Fareed Zakaria, Thomas Friedman, David Horowitz, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Irshad Manji, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain, Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.



                 Sheehi contends that their theories and opinions operate on
                 an assumption that Muslims, particularly Arab Muslims, suffer
                 from particular cultural lacuna that prevent their cultures from
                 progress, democracy and human rights.



While the assertion originated in the colonial era, Sheehi demonstrates that it was refurbished as a viable explanation for Muslim resistance to economic and cultural globalisation during the Clinton era. Moreover, the theory was honed into the empirical basis for an interventionist foreign policy and propaganda campaign during the Bush regime and continues to underlie Barack Obama's new internationalism.


If the assertions of media pundits and such academics became the basis for White House foreign policy, Sheehi also demonstrates how they were translated into a sustained domestic policy of racial profiling and Muslim-baiting by US agencies from Homeland Security to the Department of Justice. Furthermore, Sheehi examines the collusion between non-governmental agencies, activist groups and lobbies and US local, state and federal agencies to in suppressing political speech on US campuses critical of racial profiling, US foreign policy in the Middle East and Israel. While much of the direct violence against Muslims on American streets, shops and campuses has subsided, Islamophobia runs throughout the Obama administration. Sheehi, therefore, concludes that Muslim and Arab-hating emanate from all corners of the American political and cultural spectrum, serving poignant ideological functions in the age of economic, cultural and political globalisation.





Table of Contents



---Acknowledgements,

---Preface by Mumia Abu Jamal,
---Foreword by Ward Churchill,


---Introduction,

---Bringing Hate Speech into the American Mainstream,
---Islamophobia as an Ideological Formation of US Empire,
---Clinton-Bush-Obama: Islamophobia Continuity,
---Vagaries of Islamophobia: Europe and the United States,
---Orientalism vs. Islamophobia: Historical Variations.


Chapter [I] : The Elite Foreign Policy Networks,

---How Islamophobia Is Not Just Prejudice,
---Ideology is Not a Conspiracy or Party Platform,
---The Network of a Media-Intellectual,
---Think-Tanks and Policy Institutes,
---The Pragmatist Center,
---Strategy Groups and Brain-Trusts,
---The Institutional Network of Bernard Lewis,
---The Master’s Discourse and the Students’ Vision,
---Open Letter to President Clinton,
---Bush’s War Network,
---Fouad Ajami as [White] House Arab,
---Conclusion.


Chapter [II]: Journalists, Rogue Academics, & Native Informants: The Siege of the Arab Mind,

---Introduction,
---Academic Pretensions of Empire: Bernard Lewis,
---The Arc of Ideological Scholarship,
---Post-Modern Mission Civilisatrice,
---Taxonomy of the Siege: Fareed Zakaria,
---Ignoring History: Neoliberalism as Modernity,
---Systemic Failure to Systematic Reform,
---The Force of a Homegrown Success,
---Conclusion.


Chapter [III] : Native Informants: Women & The Moral Pretext for Western Domination,

---The B-List: Native Islamophobes,
---Enter the A-List Propagandists: The Heroic Victims,
---Pablum as Fact: The Tabloid Legacy of Lewis and Zakaria,
---Failure and the Politics of Reversal,
---Islam’s “Submission” versus the Capitalist Jihad,
---Force Against/For Women: Muslim Irresponsibility and Western Responsibility,
---Co-opting Feminism and Wars of (Women’s) Liberation,
---Conclusion.


Chapter [IV] : Teaching and Activism in the Teeth of Power,

---Controlling Middle Eastern Studies,
---Coordinating an Atmosphere of Fear,
---Manuals of Repression,
---The Mandible of Power,
---Squadristi, Campus Cops and FBI on Campus,
---Conclusion.


Chapter [V] : Living in a State of Fear,

---A National Culture of Repression,
---Hating the Other: Contextualizing Contemporary Hate-Acts,
---The Psychology of Interment,
---Techniques of Mainstreaming Cultural Islamophobia,
---Engendering Fear to Engineer Consent,
---Anesthetizing White America,
---Hyper-Sensitizing White America,
---Flying While Muslim,
---Islamophobia as the Ideological Dimension of US Middle East Foreign Policy,
---Mass Arrests, Deportations, Special Registrations and “Watch Lists”,
---The National Security State Emerges,
---The War on Philanthropy,
---Entrapment,
---Living in the Black Holes of a New “Normal”
---Conclusion.


Chapter [VI] : Islamophobia in the Age of Obama,

---Bush’s “Dictionary of War” and the Lexicon of Punditry,
---The Hope and Change of Obama’s Nation,
---The Lewis-Zakaria Effect,
---The Nobel War Lecture and the Hard Reality of Soft Power,
---Paradigm Shifts within Empire Management,
---The Phoenix Institute’s “Strategic Leadership” Framework,
---Hillary Clinton, the “National Security Team” and the Smartness of Power,
---Obama the Non-Muslim,
---It’s Israel, Stupid,
---Ideology Wags the Dog.


Epilogue : The Parallax of American Power: Keeping the United States Relevant,

---Muslim and Arab Americans Resist,
---Political Islam as an Ideological Formation,
---Ideology Over Lobbies and Oil,
---Islamophobia and Keeping US Empire Relevant,
---Reality Check,
---The End of the Beginning.

---INDEX.
 

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