{"id":8263,"date":"2006-08-22T10:12:42","date_gmt":"2006-08-22T14:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/8263.html"},"modified":"2006-08-22T10:12:42","modified_gmt":"2006-08-22T14:12:42","slug":"how-islamofascism-plays-in-dearborn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/how-islamofascism-plays-in-dearborn\/","title":{"rendered":"How ‘Islamofascism’ plays in Dearborn"},"content":{"rendered":"

TNR’s Spencer [tag]Ackerman[\/tag] spent last week in [tag]Dearborn[\/tag], Michigan, home of the largest and oldest [tag]Muslim[\/tag] community in the United States, and found<\/a> that the [tag]president[\/tag]’s recent use of the word “[tag]Islamofascism[\/tag],” is offending the very people the president should be reaching out to.<\/p>\n

Practically everyone I’ve spoken with in Dearborn, from oncologists to students to clerics, brings up the term unprompted to explain how they feel themselves under collective suspicion from the Justice Department, a tone they feel Bush has set himself by using the phrase. You never hear the terms “Christian [tag]fascism[\/tag],” or “European fascism,” goes the rejoinder, despite fascism’s historical hijacking of Christian (actually atavistic paganism, more often) or ancient European iconography.<\/p>\n

Last week in the Weekly Standard, the apparent inventor of the phrase, Stephen Schwartz, dismissed those who’d be offended by “Islamofascism” as “primitive Muslims.” That should tell you all you need to know about those who use the term…. The people it infuriates aren’t primitive. They’re the moderate, pro-American, well-integrated Muslims who form one of the greatest bulwarks against Al Qaeda that the U.S. possesses, and they see the term as draining their Americanness away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So why would the [tag]Bush[\/tag] White House use the phrase, repeatedly<\/a>? To cynically score a few cheap points with the GOP base. As Ackerman put it, “‘Islamofascism’ merely strokes an erogenous zone of the right wing, which gains pleasure from a juvenile reductio ad Hitlerum<\/i> with the enemies of the U.S.”<\/p>\n

Of course, infuriating the “moderate, pro-American, well-integrated Muslims who form one of the greatest bulwarks against Al Qaeda that the U.S. possesses” seems to be one of the key goals<\/a> of far too many conservatives right now.
\n<\/p>\n

A congressional candidate in Florida has become the third Republican office-seeker to call for heightened screening of Muslim airline passengers since the foiling of an airline bombing plot in Britain. “It is a fact that over the past 34 years, starting with the Munich Olympics, the majority of terrorist attacks have been carried out by Muslims,” said Mark Flanagan, a candidate in the 13th District of Florida, in a statement released this morning.<\/p>\n

Flanagan said he was the only congressional candidate calling for profiling of Muslim passengers. But Paul Nelson, a Republican running in the third district of Wisconsin, endorsed the idea last week on a local radio show. Asked on the show how screeners would spot a Muslim male, Nelson said, “If he comes in wearing a turban and his name is Muhammad, that’s a good start,” according to the Associated Press.<\/p>\n

New York gubernatorial candidate John Faso also has supported profiling, saying, “If a 25-year-old Muslim man who has been traveling frequently to Yemen or Pakistan tries to board a plane, then not only statistical analysis but also common sense tells us that he is more of a potential threat than the grandmother from Queens.”<\/p>\n

David Johnson, Flanagan’s political consultant, said that under the proposal, passengers who appear to be Arab or Muslim would be pulled out of security lines for additional screening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And what constitutes a Muslim “appearance”? And what of black Muslims and Christian [tag]Arabs[\/tag]? The Republicans haven’t quite gotten that far yet. [tag]Racial[\/tag] [tag]profiling[\/tag] is tricky, and they’re still working the bugs out.<\/p>\n

When dimwits on Fox News propose such nonsense, as they often do<\/a>, it’s easier to just dismiss the remarks as just sad rants. But we’re talking about congressional and gubernatorial candidates here.<\/p>\n

The mind reels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TNR’s Spencer [tag]Ackerman[\/tag] spent last week in [tag]Dearborn[\/tag], Michigan, home of the largest and oldest [tag]Muslim[\/tag] community in the United States, and found that the [tag]president[\/tag]’s recent use of the word “[tag]Islamofascism[\/tag],” is offending the very people the president should be reaching out to. Practically everyone I’ve spoken with in Dearborn, from oncologists to students […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}