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Center for American Progress | Progressive Ideas for a Strong, Just, and Free America Center for American Progress Center for American Progress
Issues › Media & Progressive Values › Religion & Values

Fear, Inc.

The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America

Anti-Muslim graffiti defaces a Shi’ite mosque at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan.
SOURCE: Getty Images/Bill Pugliano
By Wajahat Ali, Eli Clifton, Matthew Duss, Lee Fang , Scott Keyes, Faiz Shakir | August 26, 2011
Download this report (pdf)
Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)
Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):
Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia
On July 22, a man planted a bomb in an Oslo government building that killed eight people. A few hours after the explosion, he shot and killed 68 people, mostly teenagers, at a Labor Party youth camp on Norway’s Utoya Island.
By midday, pundits were speculating as to who had perpetrated the greatest massacre in Norwegian history since World War II. Numerous mainstream media outlets, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic, speculated about an Al Qaeda connection and a “jihadist” motivation behind the attacks. But by the next morning it was clear that the attacker was a 32-year-old, white, blond-haired and blue-eyed Norwegian named Anders Breivik. He was not a Muslim, but rather a self-described Christian conservative.
According to his attorney, Breivik claimed responsibility for his self-described “gruesome but necessary” actions. On July 26, Breivik told the court that violence was “necessary” to save Europe from Marxism and “Muslimization.” In his 1,500-page manifesto, which meticulously details his attack methods and aims to inspire others to extremist violence, Breivik vows “brutal and breathtaking operations which will result in casualties” to fight the alleged “ongoing Islamic Colonization of Europe.”
Breivik’s manifesto contains numerous footnotes and in-text citations to American bloggers and pundits, quoting them as experts on Islam’s “war against the West.” This small group of anti-Muslim organizations and individuals in our nation is obscure to most Americans but wields great influence in shaping the national and international political debate. Their names are heralded within communities that are actively organizing against Islam and targeting Muslims in the United States.
Breivik, for example, cited Robert Spencer, one of the anti-Muslim misinformation scholars we profile in this report, and his blog, Jihad Watch, 162 times in his manifesto. Spencer’s website, which “tracks the attempts of radical Islam to subvert Western culture,” boasts another member of this Islamophobia network in America, David Horowitz, on his Freedom Center website. Pamela Geller, Spencer’s frequent collaborator, and her blog, Atlas Shrugs, was mentioned 12 times.
Geller and Spencer co-founded the organization Stop Islamization of America, a group whose actions and rhetoric the Anti-Defamation League concluded “promotes a conspiratorial anti-Muslim agenda under the guise of fighting radical Islam. The group seeks to rouse public fears by consistently vilifying the Islamic faith and asserting the existence of an Islamic conspiracy to destroy “American values.” Based on Breivik’s sheer number of citations and references to the writings of these individuals, it is clear that he read and relied on the hateful, anti-Muslim ideology of a number of men and women detailed in this report&a select handful of scholars and activists who work together to create and promote misinformation about Muslims.
While these bloggers and pundits were not responsible for Breivik’s deadly attacks, their writings on Islam and multiculturalism appear to have helped create a world view, held by this lone Norwegian gunman, that sees Islam as at war with the West and the West needing to be defended. According to former CIA officer and terrorism consultant Marc Sageman, just as religious extremism “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged,” the writings of these anti-Muslim misinformation experts are “the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.” Sageman adds that their rhetoric “is not cost-free.”
These pundits and bloggers, however, are not the only members of the Islamophobia infrastructure. Breivik’s manifesto also cites think tanks, such as the Center for Security Policy, the Middle East Forum, and the Investigative Project on Terrorism—three other organizations we profile in this report. Together, this core group of deeply intertwined individuals and organizations manufacture and exaggerate threats of “creeping Sharia,” Islamic domination of the West, and purported obligatory calls to violence against all non-Muslims by the Quran.
This network of hate is not a new presence in the United States. Indeed, its ability to organize, coordinate, and disseminate its ideology through grassroots organizations increased dramatically over the past 10 years. Furthermore, its ability to influence politicians’ talking points and wedge issues for the upcoming 2012 elections has mainstreamed what was once considered fringe, extremist rhetoric.
And it all starts with the money flowing from a select group of foundations. A small group of foundations and wealthy donors are the lifeblood of the Islamophobia network in America, providing critical funding to a clutch of right-wing think tanks that peddle hate and fear of Muslims and Islam—in the form of books, reports, websites, blogs, and carefully crafted talking points that anti-Islam grassroots organizations and some right-wing religious groups use as propaganda for their constituency.
Some of these foundations and wealthy donors also provide direct funding to anti-Islam grassroots groups. According to our extensive analysis, here are the top seven contributors to promoting Islamophobia in our country:
  • Donors Capital Fund
  • Richard Mellon Scaife foundations
  • Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
  • Newton D. & Rochelle F. Becker foundations and charitable trust
  • Russell Berrie Foundation
  • Anchorage Charitable Fund and William Rosenwald Family Fund
  • Fairbrook Foundation
Altogether, these seven charitable groups provided $42.6 million to Islamophobia think tanks between 2001 and 2009—funding that supports the scholars and experts that are the subject of our next chapter as well as some of the grassroots groups that are the subject of Chapter 3 of our report.
And what does this money fund? Well, here’s one of many cases in point: Last July, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich warned a conservative audience at the American Enterprise Institute that the Islamic practice of Sharia was “a mortal threat to the survival of freedom in the United States and in the world as we know it.” Gingrich went on to claim that “Sharia in its natural form has principles and punishments totally abhorrent to the Western world.”
Sharia, or Muslim religious code, includes practices such as charitable giving, prayer, and honoring one’s parents—precepts virtually identical to those of Christianity and Judaism. But Gingrich and other conservatives promote alarmist notions about a nearly 1,500-year-old religion for a variety of sinister political, financial, and ideological motives. In his remarks that day, Gingrich mimicked the language of conservative analyst Andrew McCarthy, who co-wrote a report calling Sharia “the preeminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Such similarities in language are no accident. Look no further than the organization that released McCarthy’s anti-Sharia report: the aforementioned Center for Security Policy, which is a central hub of the anti-Muslim network and an active promoter of anti- Sharia messaging and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
In fact, CSP is a key source for right-wing politicians, pundits, and grassroots organizations, providing them with a steady stream of reports mischaracterizing Islam and warnings about the dangers of Islam and American Muslims. Operating under the leadership of Frank Gaffney, the organization is funded by a small number of foundations and donors with a deep understanding of how to influence U.S. politics by promoting highly alarming threats to our national security. CSP is joined by other anti-Muslim organizations in this lucrative business, such as Stop Islamization of America and the Society of Americans for National Existence. Many of the leaders of these organizations are well-schooled in the art of getting attention in the press, particularly Fox News, The Wall Street Journal editorial pages, The Washington Times, and a variety of right-wing websites and radio outlets.
Misinformation experts such as Gaffney consult and work with such right-wing grassroots organizations as ACT! for America and the Eagle Forum, as well as religious right groups such as the Faith and Freedom Coalition and American Family Association, to spread their message. Speaking at their conferences, writing on their websites, and appearing on their radio shows, these experts rail against Islam and cast suspicion on American Muslims. Much of their propaganda gets churned into fundraising appeals by grassroots and religious right groups. The money they raise then enters the political process and helps fund ads supporting politicians who echo alarmist warnings and sponsor anti-Muslim attacks.
These efforts recall some of the darkest episodes in American history, in which religious, ethnic, and racial minorities were discriminated against and persecuted. From Catholics, Mormons, Japanese Americans, European immigrants, Jews, and African Americans, the story of America is one of struggle to achieve in practice our founding ideals. Unfortunately, American Muslims and Islam are the latest chapter in a long American struggle against scapegoating based on religion, race, or creed.
Due in part to the relentless efforts of this small group of individuals and organizations, Islam is now the most negatively viewed religion in America. Only 37 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Islam: the lowest favorability rating since 2001, according to a 2010 ABC News/Washington Post poll. According to a 2010 Time magazine poll, 28 percent of voters do not believe Muslims should be eligible to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court, and nearly one-third of the country thinks followers of Islam should be barred from running for president.
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 alone did not drive Americans’ perceptions of Muslims and Islam. President George W. Bush reflected the general opinion of the American public at the time when he went to great lengths to make clear that Islam and Muslims are not the enemy. Speaking to a roundtable of Arab and Muslim American leaders at the Afghanistan embassy in 2002, for example, President Bush said, “All Americans must recognize that the face of terror is not the true faith—face of Islam. Islam is a faith that brings comfort to a billion people around the world. It’s a faith that has made brothers and sisters of every race. It’s a faith based upon love, not hate.”
Unfortunately, President Bush’s words were soon eclipsed by an organized escalation of hateful statements about Muslims and Islam from the members of the Islamophobia network profiled in this report. This is as sad as it is dangerous. It is enormously important to understand that alienating the Muslim American community not only threatens our fundamental promise of religious freedom, it also hurts our efforts to combat terrorism. Since 9/11, the Muslim American community has helped security and law enforcement officials prevent more than 40 percent of Al Qaeda terrorist plots threatening America. The largest single source of initial information to authorities about the few Muslim American plots has come from the Muslim American community.
Around the world, there are people killing people in the name of Islam, with which most Muslims disagree. Indeed, in most cases of radicalized neighbors, family members, or friends, the Muslim American community is as baffled, disturbed, and surprised by their appearance as the general public. Treating Muslim American citizens and neighbors as part of the problem, rather than part of the solution, is not only offensive to America’s core values, it is utterly ineffective in combating terrorism and violent extremism.
The White House recently released the national strategy for combating violent extremism, “Empowering Local Partners to Prevent Violent Extremism in the United States.” One of the top focal points of the effort is to “counter al-Qa’ida’s propaganda that the United States is somehow at war with Islam.” Yet orchestrated efforts by the individuals and organizations detailed in this report make it easy for al-Qa’ida to assert that America hates Muslims and that Muslims around the world are persecuted for the simple crime of being Muslims and practicing their religion.
Sadly, the current isolation of American Muslims echoes past witch hunts in our history—from the divisive McCarthyite purges of the 1950s to the sometimes violent anti-immigrant campaigns in the 19th and 20th centuries. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has compared the fear-mongering of Muslims with anti-Catholic sentiment of the past. In response to the fabricated “Ground Zero mosque” controversy in New York last summer, Mayor Bloomberg said:
In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter’s on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center. … We would betray our values and play into our enemies’ hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else.
This report shines a light on the Islamophobia network of so-called experts, academics, institutions, grassroots organizations, media outlets, and donors who manufacture, produce, distribute, and mainstream an irrational fear of Islam and Muslims. Let us learn the proper lesson from the past, and rise above fear-mongering to public awareness, acceptance, and respect for our fellow Americans. In doing so, let us prevent hatred from infecting and endangering our country again.
In the pages that follow, we profile the small number of funders, organizations, and individuals who have contributed to the discourse on Islamophobia in this country. We begin with the money trail in Chapter 1—our analysis of the funding streams that support anti-Muslim activities. Chapter 2 identifies the intellectual nexus of the Islamophobia network. Chapter 3 highlights the key grassroots players and organizations that help spread the messages of hate. Chapter 4 aggregates the key media amplifiers of Islamophobia. And Chapter 5 brings attention to the elected officials who frequently support the causes of anti- Muslim organizing.
Before we begin, a word about the term “Islamophobia.” We don’t use this term lightly. We define it as an exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslims that is perpetuated by negative stereotypes resulting in bias, discrimination, and the marginalization and exclusion of Muslims from America’s social, political, and civic life.
It is our view that in order to safeguard our national security and uphold America’s core values, we must return to a fact-based civil discourse regarding the challenges we face as a nation and world. This discourse must be frank and honest, but also consistent with American values of religious liberty, equal justice under the law, and respect for pluralism. A first step toward the goal of honest, civil discourse is to expose—and marginalize—the influence of the individuals and groups who make up the Islamophobia network in America by actively working to divide Americans against one another through misinformation.
Wajahat Ali is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a researcher for the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Eli Clifton is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and a national security reporter for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Matthew Duss is a Policy Analyst at the Center for American Progress and Director of the Center’s Middle East Progress. Lee Fang is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher/blogger for the Center for American Progress Action Fund and ThinkProgress.org. Scott Keyes is a researcher at the Center for American Progress and an investigative researcher for ThinkProgress.org at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. Faiz Shakir is a Vice President at the Center for American Progress and serves as Editor-in-Chief of ThinkProgress.org.
Download this report (pdf)
Read the report in your web browser (Scribd)
Download individual chapters of the report (pdf):
Video: Ask the Expert: Faiz Shakir on the Group Behind Islamophobia
To speak with our experts on this topic, please contact:
Print: Katie Peters (economy, education, and health care)
202.741.6285 or kpeters@americanprogress.org
Print: Christina DiPasquale (foreign policy and security, energy)
202.481.8181 or cdipasquale@americanprogress.org
Print: Laura Pereyra (ethnic media, immigration)
202.741.6258 or lpereyra@americanprogress.org
Radio: Anne Shoup
202.481.7146 or ashoup@americanprogress.org
TV: Lindsay Hamilton
202.483.2675 or lhamilton@americanprogress.org
Web: Andrea Peterson
202.481.8119 or apeterson@americanprogress.org

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Butterball Jihad: Why Islamophobia Is Still On the March in the GOP

By Amy Sullivan | @sullivanamy | December 2, 2011 | 305
It’s been a while since the GOP presidential candidates have engaged in a good old-fashioned round of Who’s the Biggest Islamophobe. Those party-poopers Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney usually sit out the game. But in the wake of the Muslim Brotherhood’s strong showing in early voting for Egyptian parliamentary elections, their opponents will be tempted to take a swing at “the Muslim menace.” The endorsements and votes of Iowa’s social conservatives are still up for grabs. And perhaps the most coveted–Bob Vander Plaats of the Family Leader–is concerned enough about Islam to include a plank in his candidates’ pledge requiring “rejection of anti-women Sharia Islam.”
If it’s not clear what the difference is between “Sharia Islam” and Islam, that’s probably the point. It’s hard to imagine presidential contenders putting their names on a vow to reject an entire world religion, but so far Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum have signed on to the Family Leader’s pledge. Newt Gingrich has extra incentive to whip out his fear-mongering talking points, as his recent surge in national and Iowa polls depends on social conservatives overlooking awkward facts about his personal life and political conversions.
(MORE: See Swampland’s coverage of the 2012 election)
As it happens, Gingrich is well-prepared for this role, having led the charge in 2010 when the establishment of an Islamic center in lower Manhattan (the so-called “Ground Zero mosque”) was proposed. Gingrich reserves special contempt for the Obama administration, secularists and elites–he would probably say that list is redundant–who in his view “don’t have a clue” about the overt and stealth threats posed by Muslim enemies of the United States. Throughout this year, Gingrich has referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as “a mortal enemy of our civilization,” and in May he went so far as to warn an audience that “if they can kill us, they will.”
That sort of dire language is hailed as visionary wisdom by anti-Muslim activists on the right who have spent the fall on high alert. You may have missed the great Butterball Controversy of 2011, but they did most assuredly did not. Leading Islamophobes Pamela Geller and Bryan Fischer sounded the alarm about Butterball turkeys that have been certified halal. “Yet again,” wrote Geller, “we are being forced into consuming meat slaughtered by means of a torturous method: Islamic slaughter.” I had already purchased an organic, certified humane, heritage breed turkey because it is delicious and comes pre-brined, but I was doubly pleased to learn that by doing so I was “fight[ing] for [my] freedom!”
Activists have also been in an uproar over the new TLC reality show ”All-American Muslim” about Muslim families living in Dearborn, Michigan. The Florida Family Association, which is trying to organize a boycott of the network, alleges that the program is “propaganda clearly designed to counter legitimate and present-day concerns about many Muslims who are advancing Islamic fundamentalism and Sharia law.” In an alert to members, the organization complained that “the show profiles only Muslims that appear to be ordinary folks.” Robert Spencer, the director of Jihad Watch, has urged the network to produce a program about Muslim-Americans who “ended up participating in jihad activity.”
(VIDEO: Muslims Online Encourage Debate, Not Hate)
It would be easy to write off these activists as extremists whose fears of a religious “other” have spiraled out of control. But Herman Cain’s similarly radical and bigoted statements about Muslims did not stop him from becoming a presidential favorite earlier this fall. We chuckle when Pamela Geller sees a stealth jihad on her Thanksgiving plate. But we should do more than raise an eyebrow when a presidential candidate says he would single out Muslim appointees to take a special loyalty oath.
Most recently, Cain repeated a story he’s told before about a surgeon who helped remove his stage IV colon cancer. While Cain was undergoing chemotherapy following surgery, he told the audience, he learned that one of the surgeons had the last name Abdallah. “I said, ‘That sounds foreign.’ Not that I had anything against foreign doctors, but it sounded too foreign.” Upon learning that the doctor was from Lebanon, Cain said, “My mind immediately started thinking, wait a minute, maybe his religious persuasion is different than mine!” A medical worker reassured Cain, telling him, “Don’t worry, Mr. Cain, he’s a Christian from Lebanon.” Cain’s response? “Hallelujah! Thank God!”
I cannot think of a more bigoted statement by a major party candidate in recent history. Cain’s comment has not gone unnoticed, but it should have been grounds for being immediately forced out of the race. If Newt Gingrich said the same thing about a physician whose name “sounded black,” the country would be outraged. Wouldn’t we? Please? So why is it possible for Cain to repeatedly smear an entire religious tradition without facing condemnation within his party or without facing questions about it every time he appears in public?
(PHOTOS: Herman Cain Through the Years)
Herman Cain’s candidacy may be a joke and Pamela Geller may be a nut. But we must have a no-tolerance approach to anti-Muslim bigotry, especially in political campaigns. Otherwise, we need to explain to the high school football player in Dearborn and the Muslim pre-med student at Berkeley why it’s okay for their fellow citizens to blithely smear them as dangerous and un-American.
Amy Sullivan is a contributing writer at TIME, and author of the book The Party Faithful: How and Why Democrats are Closing the God Gap (Scribner, 2008). Articles of Faith, her column on the intersection of religion and politics, appears on TIME.com every Friday.
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Showing 1-40 of 305 comments

  • IonOtter
    Let’s see…proponents of Sharia Law want to restrict women, restrict their rights, impose religious instruction in the schools, prevent any mention of evolution in those schools, make the Q’uran the Law of the Land, and expel-or execute-anyone who doesn’t either convert to Islam, or pay the tithe that allows non-believers to remain in the country. Meanwhile, Republican Christians want to restrict women, restrict their rights to what they can do with their own bodies, impose religious instruction in the schools, prevent any mention of evolution in those schools, make the bible or Ten Commandments part of the Law of the Land, and expel-or execute-anyone who doesn’t convert to Christianity.  And no, you can’t buy an indulgence to stay.
    *scratches his head*
    I’m curious…should I be more worried about religious freakazoids on the other side of the globe?  Or the ones RIGHT HERE?

  • Fazalk
    I understand what you are trying to say, but those descriptions you use to describe “Sharia Islam”, have nothing to do with Sharia, but simply are the ignorant practices of some people. The range of Muslims also has its own segment of uneducated people. It also has its own segment of “conservative” people who are both educated and not. For example, if you ask a Muslim who follows Shariah, why he forces people to become Muslim (or die), his answer will be that he doesn’t because there is no compulsion in religion. The decision has to be made by the individual (he must believe in his mind).

  • Yes, that’s a good point. The conversion of a savage to christianity is the conversion of christianity to savagery.

  • IonOtter
    “The conversion of a savage to a religion is the conversion of that religion to savagery.” Fixed that for you.

  • IonOtter
    And yet the comparison still holds. Those ignorant practices are those of the *political leaders*.  Of ALL faiths.
    What the average Joe/Abdul on the street believes, or more importantly to the massees, DOES, is irrelevant.

  • TexanBBQ
    ionotter
    you are an idiot

  • IonOtter
    Yeah, that’s what folks like you usually say to those who tell the truth.

  • IonOtter , You are either insane or a dishonest political hack.  Comparing Republican Christians to the proponents of Sharia Law (such as the Muslim Brotherhood) is like comparing Atheist Democrats to the Khmer Rouge.

  • IonOtter
    Hmmmm, let’s see. The majority of the current crop of Republican Christians believe in war because we’re stronger, being wealthy because the rich deserve it, refusing to pay taxes because they’re better, believe in the death penalty, believe in mandatory minimum sentences, engage in extensive nepotism, cronyism, favoritism, elitism, sexism and racism.
    Mmmmmmeeeeehhhh…I dunno…does any of that sound like something Christ tolerated?  Let alone believed in?  No, I’m pretty sure that the last time Christ encountered a group of folks with those sorts of values, he tore them all a new orifice with a cat-o-nine tails.
    They sure did get even with HIM though, didn’t they?  That long-haired, low-born, peasant-loving, stinky peacenik commie hippie sure got what he deserved!

  • I read your comment farther down about what Christ would think of all this and get your drift. I might add that one act of kindness has far more power in the eyes of God than all of this vile Republican chest thumping in the name of Jesus combined…

  • Jrogerw1
    Don’t know where you learned about Christianity, but you’re almost completely wrong, and almost only because I must include the most extreme Christian cults under the broad umbrella of Christianity.  For your information, Western law was originally based on the 10 Commandments, and I’ve never once heard of an American Christian who wanted to expel or execute anyone for not converting.

  • my roomate’s mom made $232532 so far just working on the laptop for a few hours. Read more on this web site… http://ho.io/p9q5

  • Joe McPlumber
    I disagree

  • This is why the republican party is really just a bunch of intolerant and hateful clowns.  The people who are so hateful of arabs and muslims have probably never even met one in their entire lives.  I am half middle eastern in Chicago which has a large arab population.  There is no sharia law.  The kids are American kids playing sports going to school and hanging out.  They love baseball, derrick rose and hamburgers.  This attitude of republicans is so insulting and ignorant it is really hard to swallow.

  • Proud Kafir
    Poor Benny does not get it. Republicans see what reality is with moslems and speak out on it. You want to be politically correct to the degree that you are ignoring true Islamic intent for the WORLD let alone America….www.shariah4America.com Look outside the US Borders at how moslems treat christians, jews, buddhists etc..that is true ISLAM. What you see in AMERICA are a minority just now trying to change us to accept ISLAM. When they get their numbers up you will see how churches are burned, jews are run out of town..it is happening in Malmo Sweden now with JEWS..look past the FAKE FRONT put on by moslems..that is how they have to act because we are an armed nation they can not treat us like they do sweden, the UK etc…we are lucky to be armed or we would see the evil that is Islam more than we do now….
    you need to grow up and face reality. Islam is NOT IN AMERICA to do anything but dominate. i see and hear moslem saying this all over the globe in NEWS that is not controlled by our govt…….maybe you could wake up enough to see that borders do NOT cahnge how moslems think of non moslems…I am a proud KAFir..look up the word kafir and what the QURAN says to do to the KAFIR…www.politicalislam.com

  • Marky Mark
    Couldn’t the exact same be said about Christians? Perhaps it has been a while but are you familiar with a little thing called the Crusades? That was when a lot of Christians invaded the Middle East trying to to reclaim the Holy Land. Lots of muslims and other innocents were slaughtered in the process so that the “one true faith” could reclaim it’s right ful spot. Islam is about 600 years younger than Christianity and if you take Christianity back 600 years the two are not that different. The only difference is that “Christian” nations have been actively involved in keeping the citizenry in Islamic countries tamped down so that we may extract “our” oil from thier lands.
    Both religions are hell bent on being the official voice of god for the planet. Both religions have zealots that could not behave in a way more contrary to their core teachings.
    I am not a muslim and in case you couldn’t tell I am not christian either. Which means from where I am sitting both look about the same. The only difference is one is a little (and I do mean little) more mature than the other.

  • Satariel
    I didn’t realize the crusades were taking place right now. Islam, on the other hand, and their drive to force shariah law on all the earth, is a growing problem.

  • jgsr
    Let’s use your reasoning to apply to a current news issue.
    You are saying that since Christianity in the past killed so many people….then it’s perfectly acceptable for the muslims to do that now?
    Why not drop the charges against Jerry Sandusky, there’s evidence that this same type of behavior has gone on in the past and all sexual predators weren’t punished….so why punish Sandusky?
    Please don’t produce offspring Marky Mark

  • Cole Stevens
    You stated “…The only difference is that “Christian” nations have been actively involved in keeping the citizenry in Islamic countries tamped down so that we may extract “our” oil from thier lands…”   That would be a true statement if all those oil companies were not paying for the removal and sale of that oil at a very high profit to all those “…tamped down…” countries.  The only people that are keeping those people down are their own people who run their respective countries, not the “Christian” nations.  By the way without all those “Christian” nations discovering, exploring, refining, and purchasing the oil most of those “…tamped down…” countries would still be nomadic in nature and living in tents.  Just stick to singing with the “Funky Bunch” Ok Markey!

  • rollingeyes
    Learn how to spell Muslim.

  • Cole Stevens
    Moslem is an accepted variant of Muslim according to Merriam Webster’s

  • Actually you need to follow your own advice and learn more about Muslims countries instead of just believing anti-Muslims blogs and books. There have been millions of Christians living continously in Muslim majority countries for a thousand years.  For example, there are millions of Christians in Egypt and thousands of churches. When one church gets burned its international headlines. But those are isolated instances. Mosques have been burned in the US and Muslims have great difficulty building mosques here. Would you say that there’s horrible persecution of Muslims in the US?
    Historically, Muslims have been more tolerant of Christians than vice versa. For example, Muslims were in Spain for 700 years and Christians and Jews practiced their religion freely. Then when the Christians took over they killed, converted, or expelled every single Jew and Muslim.

  • Cole Stevens
    No religion is peaceful.  However, the world would be a much more peaceful one if there was NO religion to murder, kill and die for.  All Hail Christopher Hitchens

  • Ummabdulla
    And when the Christians were killing Jews and Muslims if they refused to convert, the Jews took refuge in Muslim countries.

  • And what about Muslim countries today?  Why dont you try taking a trip to Mecca?  Try purchasing a bible in Iran.  Try converting from Islam to Christianity in a Middle Eastern country. I wish it was ignorance that spawns comments like azf’s, but its not. It is political bias that blinds.

  • Satariel
    For instance, all of the muslims bombing and killing the coptic christians in egypt? Is that what you mean? Or how about in sudan where muslims are slaughtering christians daily? How stupid are muslims that they think we will believe them when they say islam is a peaceful religion!?

  • Stephen
    I’m republican but I cannot stand this. Its because of people like you  that our great party is called racist. Most republicans are not racist, but with the media you would not believe that. I am an evangelical christian but I hang out with Jews, muslims, hindus, and many atheists. Most muslims are regular people. They are not all terrorists attempting to take over the world (although there are plenty who do and that is why I support our troops). I hate being politically correct but it is incorrect to claim that all muslims are evil. It’s like saying all christians are evil because of what christian militias do.

  • Moishe Pippick
    Yeah… um, how many Holocausts have Muslims carried out on Jews.  I don’t mean scattered massacres over the centuries, I mean the mecahnical, computer tabulated destruction of of six million Jews in five years.  How many times have Muslims done that?  Because Christians have done that and it’s not ancient history either –  there’s still plenty of people alive who where there when it happened.

  • Moishe, Do you know who recruited Muslims in the former Yugoslavia for the Nazis?  The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.  He did so in exchange for Hitlers pledge to wipe out the Jews in Palestine. Your ignorance of history is sad…  It shows in your ignorance of the current world situation.

  • Gary Rumain, The anti-arselifter.
    WOW! I didn’t know those Bosnjak death squads the mullah of Jerusalem arranged for Hitler were all Christians. WOW! Someone will have to rewrite the history books and change all the films and photos.

  • Baloch
    Proud Kafir , IGNORANT IDIOT !

  • Gary Rumain, The anti-arselifter.
    Yes, we heard your admission the first time. No need to keep reminding us.

  • Baloch
    Ignorant IDIOT

  • Gary Rumain, The anti-arselifter.
    Admission noted.

  • Orcanexttime
    Maybe it’s all those documentaries of the young boys going to school with the one thought to martyrdom.

  • Kassij
    Why don’t you study islam and study its rich history. You will be enlightened and not be scared of islam

  • Proud Kafir
    LOL the rich history of ISLAM where they sporead ISALM by the sword..lol..That is the problem ISLAM has never evolved they are still Jiahding the globe trying hard to Dominate the world. Yes we study the History of ISLAM and can see 1400 years of Jihad is enough. We are sick of it.

  • Cole Stevens
    You mean the islamic faith that was founded by Mohammad who raped, murdered and killed all who stood in his way? The same man who was a rampant  pedophile?  ALL religion is myth and fairy tales.  Everyone who believes in an invisible man upstairs should have a lobotomy

  • Gary Rumain, The anti-arselifter.
    No thanks. I’ve had enough of pislamic terrorism.

  • Guest
    Gary will try to insult you off the blog, try to ignore him.

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Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2011/12/02/butterball-jihad-why-islamophobia-is-still-on-the-march-in-the-gop/#ixzz1nAzZINbK

Afghanistan/USA-Islamophobia: thousands of Afghans protest over reported Quran desecration at an American Air Base


KABUL (Afghanistan) 29 Rabi al-Awwal/21 Feb.(IINA)-More than 2,000 angry Afghans, some firing guns in the air, protested on Tuesday against the improper disposal and burning of copies of the Holy Quran and other Islamic religious materials at an American air base north of Kabul.
Gen. John Allen, the U.S. commander of international troops in Afghanistan, has ordered an investigation into the incident.
The demonstrators shouting “Die, die, foreigners!”, started gathering in the morning after learning of the incident at the sprawling Bagram Air Field in Parwan province. As the crowd grew, so did the outrage.
Ahmad Zaki Zahed, chief of the provincial council, said U.S. military officials gave him about 30 copies of the Holy Quran and other religious books that were recovered before they were destroyed.
“Some are burned. Some are not burned,” Zahed said, adding that the books were used by detainees once incarcerated at the base.
The materials were in trash that two soldiers with the U.S.-led coalition transported in a truck late Monday night to a pit where garbage is burned on the base, according to Zahed, who spoke with five Afghans working at the pit. He said that when the workers noticed the religious books in the trash, they stopped the disposal process.
Allen said he received a report overnight that “a large number of Islamic religious materials, which included Qurans,” had been improperly disposed of at the base.
“We are thoroughly investigating the incident and are taking steps to ensure this does not ever happen again,” Allen said in a statement. “I assure you, I promise you, this was not intentional in any way.”
He offered his apologies to the president and people of Afghanistan and thanked the local Afghans “who helped us identify the error, and who worked with us to immediately take corrective action.”
Zia Ul Rahman, deputy provincial police chief, said between 2,000 and 2,500 protesters were demonstrating at the base.
“The people are very angry. The mood is very negative,” Rahman said. “Some are firing hunting guns in the air, but there have been no casualties.”
Police said a similar protest on Tuesday just east of Kabul ended peacefully.
In April 2011, Afghans protesting the burning of a Quran by a Florida pastor turned deadly when gunmen in the crowd stormed a U.N. compound in the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif and killed three staffers and four Nepalese guards.
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Dr. Leon Moosavi

Sociologist of race and religion, specialising on Muslim communities in Britain
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The Fight Against Islamophobia Steps up a Gear

Posted: 23/02/2012 00:00
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A new service has been launched this week enabling Muslims to report anti-Muslim discrimination. The initiative by Faith Matters must be applauded and can be a milestone in challenging Islamophobia.
Over the past four years, my own research about Islamophobia has highlighted the need to recognise and challenge Islamophobia. This is evidenced in the growth of the far right across Europe over the last 10 years and more disturbingly, the increasing tendency for their Islamophobic rhetoric to be replicated in the mainstream. For example, a recent poll showed that 45% of Britons are not ashamed to admit that they think there are ‘too many’ Muslims in Britain. Numerous other studies also suggest similar widespread suspicion and dislike of Muslims.
And these attitudes are not just privately held grudges. They can materialise aggressively, such as in the instances in recent years when Muslim victims have been left paralysed, blinded and brain damaged, have been beaten to death and have seen their mosques subjected to arson attacks. These disturbing and often ignored attacks are also found in other European countries such as in France where Muslim war graves were recently desecrated and in Switzerland where dead pigs were recently left on a mosque site.
Remarkably, some people are still in denial about the prevalence of Islamophobia, even going as far as suggesting that Islamophobia is a myth. The new service will help quash any misconceptions about Islamophobia not existing by producing statistical data on the nature of Islamophobia in Britain. Victims will be able to classify their experiences as one of six types: extreme violence, assault, damage of property, threats, abusive behaviour, and propagation of anti-Muslim literature. Details will also emerge of where in the country Islamophobia is most prominent so authorities can concentrate their campaigns most effectively.
I expect the service to confirm what Muslims are already well aware of; that Islamophobia exists and has serious implications. Muslims know this because of everyday experiences which involve being mocked, abused or harassed to different degrees, solely on account of their faith.
Although minorities tend not to report hate crime due to a belief that reporting such incidents will be fruitless, Muslims should be encouraged to utilise this new service so that the presence of Islamophobia can be made starkly clear.
This quantifying is a vital step forward in combating Islamophobia, which is an urgent cause since allowing Islamophobia to flourish can have harmful consequences. For instance, widespread Islamophobia not only means that a large section of society is unfairly demonised and marginalised, but its presence can also alienate Muslims and discourage them from feeling they can contribute to wider society. When such a hostile climate is left unchallenged, extremist and intolerant ideas have more chance of alluring some disaffected Muslims.
This new initiative can be a turning point that marks a shift from Islamophobia only ever being recorded as racism. It can be a moment when the on-going efforts of community leaders and activists to have Islamophobia recognised as a distinct form of prejudice can be achieved. It may assist in recognising Islamophobia as a unique form of prejudice just as anti-semitism is recognised. To this end, the new service parallels the efforts of the Community Security Trust in monitoring anti-semitism and regularly releasing revealing data. If Faith Matters can produce data that is as insightful, they will be doing a great service to society.
While the reporting and monitoring of Islamophobic incidents is long overdue and can be a major leap forward, it must also be coupled with proactive efforts by people of all faiths to engage in dialogue to overcome the ignorance that unnecessarily pushes people apart. Muslims therefore not only have an obligation to speak up and report Islamophobia, but also to be courageous in explaining what Islam actually means to them so that Islamophobic misconceptions cannot continue to circulate.
Islamophobic incidents can be reported to the new service via the following means:
Freephone: 0800 456 1226
SMS: 0115 707 00 07
E-mail: info@tellmamauk.org
Website: www.tellmamauk.org
Twitter: @tellmamauk
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2 hours ago ( 2:19 AM)
Sorry, the victims of Islam in the UK far outnumber the victims of so-called Islamophobia.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/july7
3 hours ago ( 1:51 AM)
May Islamophobia stems from a legitimate fear.
Islam is easy to join and so hard to leave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youcef_Nadarkhani
3 hours ago ( 1:46 AM)
” ‘DEATH TO AMERICA’ : Fury Flares Over Koran Burning.. 4 Killed, Dozens Wounded In Massive Protests”.
The headline from the HufPo’s ‘World’ page.
Can you see this happening in this country if a bible was to be burned? No.
I’m afraid that your religion comes with a great deal of baggage.
I wouldn’t for a moment condone any violence against a member of your faith (unlike the threats made to Salman Rushdie), but you shouldn’t expect to find your beliefs accepted as valid in this society with its Judeo-Christian roots.
Christianity has adapted though the ages, until it now exists in the benign form that we have it today.
Islam must also adapt to society’s values if it wants to be accepted by the majority of this country’s population.
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Michaelxx
3 hours ago ( 1:38 AM)
of course it exits in the UK because the people are scared. The government bows down Islam and followers while walking on ours
Islamophobia I should say their is.. I for one ,when I read what this religion wants from its people, am scared.
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5 hours ago (11:15 PM)
Does Islamophobia exist in the UK? I suppose it does, but not to the extent that so many political agitators say there is. How do I know? I have an Islamic name, I live a very normal life and I have experienced no abuse what so ever. Yes I’ve received dirty looks, but you know what, look around everybody gets them. It doesn’t matter if you are black,white,Pink or Yellow.
The problem that Muslims have, is due to the idiots within their ranks , they are (and have been ) getting a bad press. But to me the solution is simple. The next time something ugly happens instead of complaining about how somebody looked funny at you at the airport,bus or train station. Complain about the idiots who are giving you a bad name. Tell you what that is the sign that non-Muslims in the west are looking for. Instead they are too fearful to say anything (other than look) in case somebody dare calls them a racist.
Islamophobia
Wednesday, February 22, 2012

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 Debate between Robert Spencer and Moustafa Zayed
     

  Posted by Administrator on August 14, 2011
  News Story has 874 Reads
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 Did Anti-Muslim Extremists in the US Influence Anders Breivik?
      
Terror Linked Anders Behring Breivik Atlas Shrug Pamella Geller Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian charged with carrying out a mass killing last week in his home country, told his lawyer he was saving Norway from Muslim domination. Breivik is an anti-Muslim extremist, and it has become clear that he was heavily influenced by American bloggers, who share his fears about the threat of Muslim immigrants on Western culture.
Pam Geller is one of those bloggers. On her blog, “Atlas Shrugs,” Geller speaks about the threat of Islam in America. She spoke with our producers last night. Wajahat Ali joins us this morning. Ali is a journalist who is currently researching Islamophobia in America for the Center for American Progress. The report is due out in August.
He was ideologically inspired, I think we can safely say that, by the what I would call the hateful anti-Muslim writings and opinions of several notorious American Islamaphobes whom he cites many, many times over again in the memo who have a history of working together to profit off of the creation and promotion of misinformation, fear and bigotry against Muslims.
  Posted by Administrator on July 27, 2011
  News Story has 742 Reads
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 Colbert Report: Norwegian Muslish Gunman’s Islam-Esque Atrocity
      
The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Norwegian Muslish Gunman’s Islam-Esque Atrocity
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  Posted by Administrator on July 26, 2011
  News Story has 444 Reads
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 Anti-Islam advocates respond to Norway shooter’s manifesto
      
Robert SpencerThe New York Times noted today that accused Norway murderer Anders Behring Breivik cited the work of anti-Jihad activist Robert Spencer 64 times in his 1,500 page manifesto, which also included a large portion of the Unabomber’s writing. Now, Spencerand several other people who crusade against extreme forms of Islam are pushing back, and arguing the media is unfairly focusing on Breivik’s citations.”If I was indeed an inspiration for his work, I feel the way the Beatles must have felt when they learned that Charles Manson had committed murder after being inspired by messages he thought he heard in their song lyrics,” Spencer wrote on his blog, referring to the so-called White Album by the Fab Four, which featured the song “Helter Skelter.” “There were no such messages. Nor is there, for any sane person, any inspiration for harming anyone in my work, which has been consistently dedicated to defending human rights for all people.”
  Posted by Administrator on July 26, 2011
  News Story has 420 Reads
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 Killings in Norway Spotlight Anti-Muslim Thought in U.S.
      
Emilio Morenatti/Associated Press
The suspect behind the attacks in Norway said he believed multiculturalism to be a threat. Here, mourners at Oslo Cathedral. More Photos »
The man accused of the killing spree in Norway was deeply influenced by a small group of American bloggers and writers who have warned for years about the threat from Islam, lacing his 1,500-page manifesto with quotations from them, as well as copying multiple passages from the tract of the Unabomber.
In the document he posted online, Anders Behring Breivik, who is accused of bombing government buildings and killing scores of young people at a Labor Party camp, showed that he had closely followed the acrimonious American debate over Islam.
His manifesto, which denounced Norwegian politicians as failing to defend the country from Islamic influence, quoted Robert Spencer, who operates the Jihad Watch Web site, 64 times, and cited other Western writers who shared his view that Muslim immigrants pose a grave danger to Western culture.
  Posted by Administrator on July 25, 2011
  News Story has 507 Reads
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 Walid Shoebat Exposed Part 1 – Anderson Cooper 360
     
Part 2
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Walid Shoebat advises police to investigate Islamic groups and mosques
He says he’s a former Palestinian terrorist who once bombed an Israeli bank
A CNN investigation found no evidence to support his biography
A Senate committee has raised concerns about “self-appointed counterterrorism experts”
Rapid City, South Dakota (CNN) — Walid Shoebat had a blunt message for the roughly 300 South Dakota police officers and sheriff’s deputies who gathered to hear him warn about the dangers of Islamic radicalism.
Terrorism and Islam are inseparable, he tells them. All U.S. mosques should be under scrutiny.
“All Islamic organizations in America should be the No. 1 enemy. All of them,” he says.
It’s a message Shoebat is selling based on his own background as a Palestinian-American convert to conservative Christianity. Born in the West Bank, the son of an American mother, he says he was a Palestinian Liberation Organization terrorist in his youth who helped firebomb an Israeli bank in Bethlehem and spent time in an Israeli jail.
That billing helps him land speaking engagements like a May event in Rapid City — a forum put on by the state Office of Homeland Security, which paid Shoebat $5,000 for the appearance. He’s a darling on the church and university lecture circuit, with his speeches, books and video sales bringing in $500,000-plus in 2009, according to tax records.
“Being an ex-terrorist myself is to understand the mindset of a terrorist,” Shoebat told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360.”
But CNN reporters in the United States, Israel and the Palestinian territories found no evidence that would support that biography. Neither Shoebat nor his business partner provided any proof of Shoebat’s involvement in terrorism, despite repeated requests.
Back in his hometown of Beit Sahour, outside Bethlehem, relatives say they can’t understand how Shoebat could turn so roundly on his family and his faith.
“I have never heard anything about Walid being a mujahedeen or a terrorist,” said Daood Shoebat, who says he is Walid Shoebat’s fourth cousin. “He claims this for his own personal reasons.”
CNN’s Jerusalem bureau went to great lengths trying to verify Shoebat’s story. The Tel Aviv headquarters of Bank Leumi had no record of a firebombing at its now-demolished Bethlehem branch. Israeli police had no record of the bombing, and the prison where Shoebat says he was held “for a few weeks” for inciting anti-Israel demonstrations says it has no record of him being incarcerated there either.
Shoebat says he was never charged because he was a U.S. citizen.
“I was born by an American mother,” he said. “The other conspirators in the act ended up in jail. I ended up released.”
He said his own family has vouched for his prison time. But relatives CNN spoke to described him as a “regular kid” who left home at 18, eventually becoming a computer programmer in the United States.
Shoebat, now in his 50s, says he converted to Christianity in 1993 and began spreading the word about the dangers of Islam. He has been interviewed as a terrorism expert on several television programs, including a handful of appearances on CNN and its sister network, HLN, in 2006 and 2007.
Since al Qaeda’s 2001 attacks on New York and Washington, expertise on terrorism has been in high demand. The federal Department of Homeland Security has spent nearly $40 million on counterterrorism training since 2006. The department doesn’t keep track of how much goes to speakers, nor does it advise officials on the speakers hired by states and municipalities.
Shoebat spoke at a 2010 conference in South Dakota and was so well-received that he was invited back for the May event in Rapid City, according to state officials. He warned the police and first responders gathered in the hotel conference rooms that the Lebanese Shiite Muslim militia Hezbollah had operatives working in Mexico and that drug cartels were raising money with Islamic groups. He also asserted that federal agents could have prevented the 9/11 attacks by looking for a chafed spot, called “zabibah,” that sometimes forms on the foreheads of devout Muslims.
“You need ex-terrorists who can tell you what life is like and what thinking is like of potential terrorists,” Shoebat said. “But had we looked at the zabibah only, we would have deflected a suicide action of killing 3,000 Americans.”
But Shoebat also told the group there were 17 hijackers when there were 19. And perhaps more surprising from a man who bills himself as a terror expert, Shoebat said the Transportation Security Administration could have stopped them. The TSA wasn’t created until after the 9-11 attacks.
Jim Carpenter, South Dakota’s homeland security director, said Shoebat brought “a point of view that certainly is not mainstream.”
“He brings in commentary about living and being raised as a Muslim and converting over to Christianity — gives them a different aspect of breaking the mold, so to speak,” Carpenter said. But he said Shoebat’s appearance was “a small portion” of the two-and-a-half-day conference.
“It’s not like we’re talking about setting up training and a discipline we would follow, that this is the only way and that’s the particular point of view of a Muslim or somebody of the Islamic faith. That’s not the case,” Carpenter said. “That’s his point of view.”
Carpenter said there is “no fear of threat” from Islamic terrorism in South Dakota, where the last census reports showed the state’s Muslim community made up less than one-half of 1 percent of the population. According to Rapid City’s local newspaper, about two dozen Muslims live in the city.
During Shoebat’s presentation, he criticized Muslim organizations and told audience members to be leery of Muslim doctors, engineers, students and mosques.
“Now, we aren’t saying every single mosque is potential terrorist headquarters. But if you look at certain reports by the Hudson report, 80 percent of mosques they found pamphlets and education on jihad. So they’re in the mosque, the mosque in accordance to the Muslim brotherhood is the command post and center.”
The conservative Hudson Institute said it never issued such a report and has no idea why its name was invoked.
Shoebat warned that making special accommodations for Muslim beliefs was a step toward establishing Islamic religious law. And he recounted how he wore a T-shirt that read “Profile me” on a trip to the airport and approached the screeners at the security checkpoint.
“I got tapped down, I got checked, I got all these different things,” he said. “I say it’s wonderful.”
Shoebat and business partner Keith Davies run several foundations and three websites that are all linked. Shoebat said the major group, the Forum for Middle East Understanding, includes his own Walid Shoebat Foundation.
In tax records filed by Davies, the Forum for Middle East Understanding reported 2009 earnings from speaking engagements, videos and book sales of more than $560,000. The documents are thin on specifics, and so is Shoebat.
“Basically, we are in information, and we do speaking and we do also helping Christians that are being persecuted in countries like Pakistan, and we help Christians that are suffering all throughout the Middle East,” he said. Asked how they do that, he said, “None of your business” — adding that disclosing details could endanger people he was trying to help in Islamic countries that have laws against blasphemy.
Shoebat’s name doesn’t appear on any of the paperwork. As for his own salary, he said he makes “probably what a gas station makes or a garage makes.”
“Everybody thinks I’m just raking in the dough, which is absolutely incorrect,” he said. He referred details to Davies, who offered to provide a copy of the group’s tax returns — but didn’t. When asked who served on the foundation’s board of advisers, Davies gave “Anderson Cooper 360″ the name of a former pilot, who didn’t return phone calls. But he could not name the high-ranking military officers he said were on the board.
Federal officials say they don’t know exactly how much money has gone to speakers like Shoebat. But in April, the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee raised concerns about “vitriolic diatribes” being delivered by “self-appointed counterterrorism experts” at similar seminars.
Sen. Susan Collins, the committee’s Republican chairwoman, and Connecticut Independent Sen. Joe Lieberman asked the department to account for how much federal grant money went to state and local counterterrorism programs and what standards guided those grants. The request followed reports by the liberal Political Research Associates and the Washington Monthly that raised similar questions.
The Homeland Security Department told CNN that it has standards — and if training programs don’t meet them, “corrective action will be taken.”
“We have not and will not tolerate training programs — or any DHS-supported program — that rely on racial or ethnic profiling,” the agency said in a written statement.
Kevin Flower and Enas I. Al-Muthaffar in Jerusalem and Amy Roberts and Max Newfield in Atlanta contributed to this report.
Source: http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/11/terrorism.expert/index.html
  Posted by Administrator on July 14, 2011
  News Story has 405 Reads
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 Thom Hartmann: The 10 DAY manhunt for a known terrorist ignored by MSM
     

  Posted by Administrator on June 25, 2011
  News Story has 853 Reads
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 David Horowitz
      

  Posted by Administrator on March 31, 2011
  News Story has 1116 Reads
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 America at Not-War
     
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  Posted by Administrator on March 23, 2011
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 Dear Rep. Peter King: What about Radical Christianity?
      
Dear Honorable New York Senator Peter King,As a concerned citizen, I am writing you about the recent Homeland Security Committee hearings that you organized to get to the bottom of “The Extent of Radicalization in the Muslim Community and That Community’s Response.” At a time when a high percentage of Americans are still out of work, when cities and states throughout the country are on the verge of bankruptcy, and as passage of the federal budget remains in limbo, you sir, in your own short-sightedness, have chosen to forge ahead in spending valuable time and money on an issue, which, quite frankly, most Americans could give a damn about. I have been following these events closely and paying sharp attention to all the criticism you have received from both the socialist-loving democrats and the left-leaning media, who accused you of using these hearings to stigmatize an entire religion based upon the acts of only a few extremists. Rep. King, you are a man of great strength and vision; you have proved that you are willing to call-out those who threaten our country’s freedom – even if it means usurping one’s individual first amendment right of religion. It is that sort of dedication to reckless, unsubstantiated accusations and demagoguing that is bound to land you in the history books right next to the McCarthy trials of 40s and 50s.
Rep. King, I am in total agreement with your brilliant opening statement in front of the committee, in which you suggested that the failure to follow through on the hearings would be “a craven surrender to political correctness” and an abdication of the committee’s responsibility to protect the United States. Well played sir. But on the contrary, what America needs right now is the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That’s why I implore you Rep. King to consider hosting more truth-telling hearings; but this time, let the focus of these hearings be on the other single greatest threat to freedom in America – even greater than those pesky Muslims – and that is the radicalization of Christianity.
  Posted by Administrator on March 14, 2011
  News Story has 630 Reads
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 Terrorists Among Every Religious Group
     

  Posted by Administrator on March 14, 2011
  News Story has 1113 Reads
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In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful
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Issues >> Islamophobia >> Islamophobia
Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism Book Excerpts
Islamophobia
Islamophobia refers to unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam. Such fear and hostility leads to discriminations against Muslims, exclusion of Muslims from mainstream political or social process, stereotyping, the presumption of guilt by association, and finally hate crimes. In twenty-first century America, all of these evils are present and in some quarters tolerated. While America has made major progress in racial harmony, there is still a long road ahead of us to reach our destination when all people are judged on the content of their character and neither on the color of their skin or their faith.
Islamophobia as a term and as a phenomena gained currency in part due to the popular thesis developed by Francis Fukuyama and Samuel Huntington that argued about an impending clash of civilization between Islam and the West. When 9-11 happened, the people already predisposed to viewing Islam with suspicion jumped on this bandwagon and through a multitude of primarily right wing outlets have been successful in creating a climate of extreme prejudice, suspicion and fear against Muslims. This sentiment has also been aided by many pro-Israeli commentators such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Judith Miller, and Bernard Lewis among many others.
Islamophobia has resulted in the general and unquestioned acceptance of the following:
  • Islam is monolithic and cannot adapt to new realities.
  • Islam does not share common values with other major faiths.
  • Islam as a religion is inferior to the West. It is archaic, barbaric and irrational.
  • Islam is a religion of violence and supports terrorism.
  • Islam is a violent political ideology.[i]
As such any criticism by Muslims of American policy towards the Muslim world is dismissed as being “reactionary,” “anti-Semitic” and “irrational.” Mainstream American Muslim organizations are viewed with suspicion and a variety of excuses are put forward for not engaging the American Muslim community.
Such biased attitudes are present despite the fact that Muslim contributions played a significant part in developing a civilization in Europe and history books record the first Muslim arrival in America in 1312 when Mansa Abu Bakr traveled from Mali to South America. Of the estimated 10 million African slaves that came to America a significant percentage was Muslim.[ii] Yet Islam and Muslims remain in Europe and America embedded in stereotypical assumptions and misguided pronouncements regarding beliefs, attitudes and customs.
In 2006 the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) conducted a survey of American Muslim voters. Results show that American Muslim voters are young, highly educated, (62 percent have obtained a bachelor degree or higher. This is double the comparable national figure for registered voters), more than half the community is made up of professionals, 43 percent have a household income of $50,000 or higher, seventy eight are married and the community is religiously diverse (31 percent attend a mosque on a weekly basis; 16 percent attend once or twice a month; 27 percent said they seldom or never attend). The largest segment of the respondents said they consider themselves “just Muslims,” avoiding distinctions like Sunni or Shia. Another 36 percent said they are Sunni and 12 percent said they are Shia. Less than half of 1 percent said they are Salafi, while 2 percent said they are Sufi.[iii]
The survey results also show that American Muslims are integrated in American society—89 percent said they vote regularly; 86 percent said they celebrate the Fourth of July; 64 percent said they fly the U.S. flag; 42 percent said they volunteer for institutions serving the public (compared to 29 percent nationwide in 2005). On social and political issues the views of American Muslims are as follows: 84 percent said Muslims should strongly emphasize shared values with Christians and Jews, 82 percent said terrorist attacks harm American Muslims; 77 percent said Muslims worship the same God as Christians and Jews do; 69 percent believe a just resolution to the Palestinian cause would improve America’s standing in the Muslim world; 66 percent support working toward normalization of relations with Iran; 55 percent are afraid that the War on Terror has become a war on Islam; only 12 percent believe the war in Iraq was a worthwhile effort; and just 10 percent support the use of the military to spread democracy in other countries. [iv]
Despite such integrative attitudes, the rise of anti-Muslim sentiment in the U.S. creates tensions and hinders quicker integration of Muslims. Here are some of the recent results of American public attitude towards Islam and Muslims.
  • The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life Poll in 2004:
    • Almost 4 in 10 Americans have an unfavorable view of Islam, about the same number that have a favorable view.
    • A plurality of Americans (46 percent) believes that Islam is more likely than other religions to encourage violence among its believers.[v]
  • ABC News March, 2005 Poll:
    • Four months after 9/11, 14 percent believed mainstream Islam encourages violence; today it’s 34 percent.
    • Today 43 percent think Islam does not teach respect for the beliefs of non-Muslims — up sharply from 22 percent.
    • People who feel they do understand Islam are much more likely to view it positively. Among Americans who feel they do understand the religion, 59 percent call it peaceful and 46 percent think it teaches respect for the beliefs of others.[vi]
  • CAIR 2005 Poll on American Attitudes Towards Islam and Muslims:
    • The level of knowledge of Islam is virtually unchanged from 2004. Only two percent of survey respondents indicated that they are “very knowledgeable” about the religion.
    • Almost 60 percent said they “are not very knowledgeable” or “not at all knowledgeable” about Islam.
    • Nearly 10 percent said Muslims believe in a moon god.
    • Just a little over one-third of survey respondents reported awareness of Muslim leaders condemning terrorism.
    • A vast majority of Americans said they would change their views about Muslims if Muslims condemn terrorism more strongly, show more concern for Americans or work to improve the status of Muslim women or American image in the Muslim world.[vii]
  • Cornell University Study:
    • In all, about 44 percent said they believe that some curtailment of civil liberties is necessary for Muslim Americans.
    • Twenty-six percent said they think that mosques should be closely monitored by U.S. law enforcement agencies.
    • Twenty-nine percent agreed that undercover law enforcement agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations, in order to keep tabs on their activities and fund raising.[viii]
Such public attitude translates into discrimination, exclusion and violence. In 2005, CAIR processed a total of 1,972 civil rights complaints, compared to 1,522 cases reported to CAIR in 2004.[ix] This constitutes a 29.6 percent increase in the total number of complaints of anti-Muslim harassment, violence and discriminatory treatment from 2004. For the second straight year, the 1,972 reports also marks the highest number of Muslim civil rights complaints ever reported to CAIR in its twelve-year history. In addition, CAIR received 153 reports of anti-Muslim hate crime complaints, an 8.6 percent increase from the 141 complaints received in 2004.
The impact of Islamophobia is not only seen in these large increases in complaints of discrimination by Muslims but it can have other consequences that will be very detrimental to the overall society. Muslim youth in the West have grown up being preached ideas of plurality, equality and freedom. When such ideas are not applied towards their own empowerment it can lead to disillusionment, social disorder and in the worst cases irrational violence.
Islamophobia also negates one of the greatest strength of America as a multicultural society. The presence of an educated, professional and patriotic class of American Muslims ought to be viewed as a resource and strength as they can greatly aid in improving America’s image in the Muslim world. American Muslims have deep appreciation and love for America just as they have empathy and understanding of the Muslim world. Thus American Muslims can serve as the perfect bridge between America and the Muslim world. To enable this aspiration, American policy makers need to constructively engage American Muslims. American Muslim representation within most policy making circles (congressional or executive) is almost non-existent. Islamophobia prevents meaningful engagement with Muslims as politicians using the calculus of votes and money play it safe by caving into the tyranny of the majority.
The way forward is to develop a sense of urgency that Islamophobia ought to be made unacceptable just as racism and anti-Semitism are in  America. Islamophobia is already beginning to erode America’s image and culture. Opinion leaders should view Islam, a faith with diversity, internal differences, having much in common with Christianity and Judaism, as distinctly different but not deficient, and as a partner in America’s future.
Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism:
To appreciate the grave dangers of Islamophobia and anti-Americansim, one must be clear about their essence—what they are and what they are not. A critical study of Islam or Muslims is not Islamophobic. Likewise, a disapproving analysis of American history and government is not anti-American. Contributors to this volume decry the hate directed at a faith community or a people because they happen to be Muslim or American. One can disagree with Islam or with what some Muslims do without having to be hateful. Similarly, one can oppose American policies without hating America as a nation.
These demarcations may sound clear and simple, and yet both Islamophobia and anti-Americanism are on the rise. Anti-Muslim feelings in the United States have increased, especially after the terrorists attacks of September 11, 2001 (hereafter referred to as 9/11). Between one-fourth and one-third of Americans hold negative views of Islam and Muslims.[x] Opinion leaders, especially on Internet blogs, talk radio, and cable television are increasingly using harsh language to refer to the Islamic faith. Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, religious leaders often courted by elected officials and politicians, have called Islam “a wicked religion”, the Prophet Muhammad “a terrorist,” and Muslims “worse than Nazis.”
A global survey of world public opinion about the United States in November 2005 revealed that uneasy feelings were mutual. In five major Muslim-majority countries, from 51 percent to 79 percent of the respondents expressed unfavorable view of the United States. The survey found that sources of dislike were rooted in opposition to American policies in the Muslim world, particularly the war in Iraq and support for Israel.[xi]
While such views do not necessarily meet our definition of anti-Americanism, evidence shows that Muslims do hold strong negative stereotypes of westerners in general and Americans in particular. A June 2006 Pew Research Center poll found “pluralities in all of the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed associate Westerners with being greedy, arrogant, immoral, selfish and violent. And solid majorities in Jordan, Turkey and Egypt—as well as a plurality of Muslims in Nigeria—view Westerners as being fanatical.[xii]
Beyond agreeing with negative statements about Americans, there is agitation that invokes anti-American feelings. For example, Muslim radicals blame America for most of the Muslim world’s problems, even in areas where America is not even a player. For example, Bin Laden repeatedly held American imperialism responsible for the persecution of Muslims in the Indian state of Assam.
Bin Laden’s faulty rationale goes like this: the exercise of American power has left Muslims unable to support vulnerable Muslim minorities, such as those in India. But there is no link between the rise of American power and the persecution of Muslims in Assam. In fact the general weakness of Muslim-majority countries predated the rise of American power in global affairs.
The reflective papers contained in Islamophobia and Anti-Americanism: Causes and Remedies shed light on the causes and remedies to Islamophobia and anti-Americanism. Among the questions they attempt to answer are the following: What factors have led to this unfortunate state of affairs? What remedies should be sought to ameliorate prejudice? What is the role of faith leaders in promoting dialogue and tolerance? Can American Muslims bridge the gap of misunderstanding? Most of the following articles suggest that Islamophobia and anti-Americanism are related to one another as well as to politics, policy, the media, and global relations. The contributions draw on American history, religious knowledge, and keen observations of political and historical dynamics.
As suggested clearly throughout this volume, charges of Islamophobia and anti-Americanism are often used as tools in what Louay Safi calls the “war of ideas.” John Voll reminds readers that American history is replete with this “old politics”—the practice of dismissing opponents as unpatriotic elements acting outside the national consensus. Voll shows how this resort to politics by intimidation took place since the early days of the American republic. The term McCarthyism was coined to describe the anti-communist hysteria in the 1940s and 1950s. According to a renowned legal scholar, David Cole, targeting of Muslims after 9/11 is a repeat of that history, which included similar draconian executive orders, problematic administrative procedures, constitutionally questionable prosecutions, inquisitive congressional hearings, and fear-driven public discourse—much of which is based on guilt by association.[xiii]
Islamophobia and anti-Americanism have been fueled by real grievances. Unjust American policies cause anti-American feelings, while terrorism stirs up Islamophobia. Asma Afsaruddin points out that the American projection of power (whether direct or by proxy, as in the case of Israel) has harmed Muslims in several countries, including Iraq and Afghanistan. Louis Cantori reports on attending a public meeting in 2004, at which returning members of the American occupation administration in Iraq expressed exhilaration regarding what they saw as successful American imperialism.
The United States is looking out for its own interests. But many of the world’s Muslims perceive its policies as increasingly, a leading factor in stifling their progress and denying them genuine political reform. There is no doubt that the American invasion of Iraq has reinforced this perception. The false pretext of weapons of mass destruction used to justify this military endeavor added to the already existing fury in many parts of the Muslim world, where people saw the resulting intervention as a campaign having the broad aim of weakening Muslims.
Chip Pitts expounds on another element of American policies that alienate Muslims, arguing that human rights violations fuel anti-American emotions. Chief among the incidents that inflamed the passions of people around the world were the despicable acts of torture at Iraq’s Abu Gharib detention center and other American holding facilities, the legal limbo faced by many Muslims detained by America around the world (including such clearly innocent people as the Canadian citizen Maher Arrar) and who were turned over to other governments to be tortured, and the detention and special registration procedures imposed on thousands of innocent Arab and Muslim immigrants living in America.
Every act of terrorism carried out by extremist Muslims pushes Islmophobes to new extremes. None of the contributors to this volume challenges the truthfulness of this statement. Of course, some may point out that one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter. But there is no moral justification whatsoever for attacking civilians. Unfortunately, many Muslims feel helpless when it comes to arresting the scourge of terrorism posed by the likes of al-Qaidah because of the political chaos in the Muslim world, which American foreign policy has helped propel for so long.
The U.S. has inherited and maintained the status quo of a Muslim world divided by colonial European powers. The U.S. maintains complex sets of bilateral and multilateral relations with Muslim-majority states, which are ruled for the most part by rulers who have marginalized civil society. Yet supporters of this untenable relationship are the most vocal in demanding that Muslims, who are rendered powerless, turn inward and band together in order to uproot terrorists.
To state this clearly, it seems contradictory for America to deprive Muslims from governing themselves and then to hold them responsible for mischief that results from them losing control (or genuine sovereignty) over their own lives. Yet Islamic activists across the globe condemned 9/11 in no ambiguous manner. American Muslim leaders and major Islamic centers signed on an anti-terror fatwa (religious opinion) issued by major Muslim jurists.[xiv] And Muslim public affairs agencies have maintained regular contacts with law enforcement agencies.
There is a circular cause and effect relationship between Islamophobia and anti-Americanism. Terrorist attacks against Americans are followed by anti-Muslim rhetoric and policy. This in turn reinforced anti-American sentiment and provokes a new round of terrorist attacks. For those like Shanta Premawardhana, who seeks to promote reconciliation, it is pointless to ask which of the two phenomena began first. Suffice it to say that there is a positive relationship between the two, namely, as Islamophobia increases, anti-Americanism is strengthened and vice versa.
Bin Laden’s stretching the line of logic beyond reason and fact in blaming America is clearly anti-American, just as the justification of the War in Iraq on grounds of 9/11 is Islamophobic. In both cases the rationalization of the attacks is made via ideology-based views on history and world affairs assigning responsibility for events not on the basis of linking actors with actions but on grounds that selectively mix geopolitical analyses and visions with ethnic, religious and/or national affiliations.
Dialogue and Reform
In practical terms, legitimate grievances must be addressed to dry up the sources of anger. This is not a call for the United States to relinquish its advantageous military and economic positions to appease others. Nor does it mean that governments in Muslim-majority countries should censor speech in order to prove to the American government that they are cracking down on extremism. As Cantori puts it, it means that the American government should work to resolve or, at the very least, refrain from opposing national liberation movements, because this hostility feeds legitimate resentment against it. He cautions, however, that this may not happen so long as the U.S. government  is in the grip of those who believe in an imperial America.[xv]
Obstacles and Catalysts for Change
Serious obstacles limit the chances of a meaningful conversation.  Denial is major complicating factor. Claude Selhani shares his experience with a group of Saudi intellectuals who denied that al-Qaidah had a role in 9/11. He reports that they insisted the CIA hatched the attacks to justify the subsequent wars. Such an attitude widens the gap of understanding. Similarly, some Americans deny that Islamophobia exists or that anti-Americanism is related to America’s unjustified militarism and support of oppression. Instead, they claim that Muslims hate America for its freedom and democracy. Public opinion polls in the Muslim world conducted by Western pollsters debunk this Islamophobic myth. The most recent of such surveys was conducted by the Program on International Policy Attitudes shows that majorities in Morocco, Egypt, Pakistan, and Indonesia, four the heavily populated Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, North African, South Asia, and Southeast Asia, oppose attacks on civilians, support the application of Islamic law in their countries, favor democratic governance, and see value in openness to global exchange.[xvi]
Another impediment is condescending attitudes toward others, which eliminate the prospects of building what Alexander calls the “relationships of trust” necessary for a fruitful engagement. Muslims who speak of America as a sick culture contribute to the reinforcement of mistrust. Members of Congress, like Virgil Goode (R-VA), who objected to the preference of Keith Ellison (D-MN), a fellow legislator, to take his oath on the Qur’an reinforce Muslim fear of exclusionary politics.
The media, often the venue transmitting tolerant and intolerant speech, are often accused of promoting stereotypes that feed prejudice. However, media outlets and professionals vary in performance — some are more culturally competent than others. The political and ideological interests feeding them are too diverse; they cannot be lumped together. Hafiz al-Mirazi contends that charges of anti-Americanism against Al-Jazeera are politically motivated and loaded with double standards. He offers the example of its coverage of angry reactions to news about American soldiers flushing the Qur’an down a toilet at the American detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. American officials accused the satellite television station of hyping anti-American sentiment. This charge, however, was not leveled against Newsweek, the original source of the news. Nor were American television stations criticized for carrying reports of demonstrations against the offensive act.
The media should not be censored on account of having some bad players. However, media personnel should be educated so that all false, unsubstantiated, and taken-out-of-context coverage is replaced by treatment based on sourced facts. Besides the media, academia can benefit from such reform. Scholars are entrusted with educating the public about complex issues. When they choose, instead, to justify the acts of their preferred political and religious leaders, they betray the very function of knowledge production with which society has entrusted them.
Yet, conservative weblogs along with the often labeled “liberal” entertainment industry tend to reinforce very negative stereotypes about Muslim religious and political groups. Such portrayals may sometimes result from the producers’ own ignorance. Jones, however, contends that the negative labeling of others is usually intended to stigmatize and downgrade them for the purpose of social and political control.
Some columnists and “scholars” make use of such labels for the purpose of influencing public opinion and public policy. Neoconservative pundit Frank Gaffney speaks of “moderate Muslims” as “courageous, heroic and often alone.”[xvii] He wants to have it both ways: to be seen as someone who is only against “Islamists” not “Islam”[xviii] and to persuade Americans that there are only a few isolated moderate Muslims who could be liked. So in the mind of this Islamophobe, the moderate label is only a convenient cover for his vilification of Muslims.
Opinion leaders share some blame. Samer Shehata demonstrates how talk-show hosts and divisive religious leaders may have a vested interest in harsh rhetoric. Extremist speech can be effective in rallying support, and extremists have no incentive to change unless their ways are repudiated. When they are challenged by mainstream leaders, they tend to tone down their rhetoric. Talk-show hosts have even apologized in public when their divisive speech began to threaten their financial support base. In general, such repudiation is rare, and thus divisive opinion leaders shoulder some responsibility for provoking mutually reinforcing cycles of Islamophobia and anti-Americanism.
Exploring reconciliation takes the conversation to the group with the highest stakes in this endeavor: American Muslims. Cherrif Bassiouni believes that American Muslims have a great potential of becoming the catalyst for meaningful dialogue, because they are both Muslim and American. While resisting marginalization, they should fight extremism by engaging others constructively and striving to build on the great values of Islam and America. Asma Afsaruddin offers testimony showing that American Muslims are attempting to meet this challenge through their work and personal lives.

[i] See full Islamophobia report by Runnymede Trust, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All. (London, UK, 1997).

[ii] See an extensive account of Muslim slaves in Sylviane A. Diouf Servants of Allah: African Muslims Enslaved in the Americas (New York: NY, New York University Press, 1998).

[iii] CAIR, American Muslim Voters: A Demographic Profile (Washington, DC, October 24, 2006).

[iv] Ibid.

[v] http://pewforum.org/publications/surveys/islam.pdf.

[vi] http://abcnews.go.com/sections/us/World/sept11_islampoll_030911.html.

[vii] http://www.cair-net.org/downloads/pollresults.ppt.

[viii] http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Dec04/Muslim.Poll.bpf.html.

[ix] CAIR, The Status of Muslim Civil Rights in the United States, 2006.

[x] Such findings are supported by public opinion polls commissioned by CAIR in 2004 and 2005. See CAIR, American Public Opinion about Islam and Muslims (Washington, DC, 2005).

[xi] http://pewresearch.org/pubs/6/arab-and-muslim-perceptions-of-the-united-states.

[xii] http://pewglobal.org/reports/display.php?PageID=831.

[xiii] David Cole, “The New McCarthyism: Repeating History in the War on Terrorism,” in Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review Vol. 38, No. 1, 2003, p.1-30.

[xiv]http://www.cair-net.org/includes/Anti-TerrorList.pdf.

[xv]Michael Scheuer, former CIA Head of Bin Laden Unit, concurs with this assessment. He used the pseudonym Anonymous in his book Imperial Hubris (Washington, DC: Brassey’s Inc., 2004).

[xvi] PIPA, Muslim Public Opinion on US Policy, Attacks on Civilians and al Qaeda, (Washington, DC, 2007). The poll was conducted in April. See at: http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/pdf/apr07/START_Apr07_rpt.pdf.

[xvii] Jennifer Harper, “Curtain raised on documentary PBS shelved,” Washington Times, April 25, 2007.

[xviii] Frank Gaffney, “A Film PBS Want Unaired,” Washington Times, April 13, 2007.
February 22, 2012


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Twelve EDL supporters in court over attack on Leeds anti-racism concert

DateWednesday, February 22, 2012
Five men including a serving soldier and seven juveniles will appear in court tomorrow charged in connection with a disturbance at an anti-racism concert.
The 12 will appear at Leeds Magistrates Court charged with affray in relation to fighting which interrupted the “Rage Against Racism” event at The Well bar in Chorley Lane, Leeds, on June 18.
During the concert attended by around 150, a group of people allegedly chanting support for the English Defence League attempted to enter. It was reported rocks and bottles were thrown and one person suffered a serious facial injury and others minor injuries. Damage included broken windows.
Police launched a major investigation – Operation Damask – to identify those involved. Appeals involving the release of CCTV images were made through the media. It was discovered plans to disturb the concert had been posted on line.
Those at court are an 18-year-old soldier from Huddersfield, a 19-year-old, 18-year-old and 17-year-old from Leeds, a 30-year-old man and 20-year-old man from Huddersfield, two 17-year-olds and three 16-year-olds Huddersfield.
Yorkshire Evening Post, 22 February 2012

Brigitte Bardot appeals for nominations for Le Pen

DateWednesday, February 22, 2012

Screen legend Brigitte Bardot backed French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen in a handwritten note published Wednesday in regional daily Nice-Matin.
The actress made an appeal to local elected officials to endorse the National Front leader so that she could gather the 500 signatures she will need to run in the two-round 2012 election two months away.
“I am scandalized that French mayors are so cold they don’t have the honesty to back Marine Le Pen, who is a top candidate, defends animals and has the courage to lead our country, France, to its rightful spot in the world,” it read.
The appeal from Bardot, a longtime animal rights activist, came days after Le Pen spoke out about animal suffering over the weekend, claiming all meat in the Paris region is prepared using Islamic halal traditions.
AFP, 22 February 2012
Although her husband is a former Front National adviser, and she herself is a racist who has been repeatedly convicted of inciting hatred against Muslims, Bardot has not previously expressed public support for the FN.

NYPD built secret files on NJ, Long Island mosques

DateWednesday, February 22, 2012
Americans living and working in New Jersey’s largest city were subjected to surveillance as part of the New York Police Department’s effort to build databases of where Muslims work, shop and pray. The operation in Newark was so secretive even the city’s mayor says he was kept in the dark.
For months in mid-2007, plainclothes officers from the NYPD’s Demographics Units fanned out across Newark, taking pictures and eavesdropping on conversations inside businesses owned or frequented by Muslims.
The result was a 60-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, containing brief summaries of businesses and their clientele. Police also photographed and mapped 16 mosques, listing them as “Islamic Religious Institutions.” The report cited no evidence of terrorism or criminal behavior. It was a guide to Newark’s Muslims.
According to the report, the operation was carried out in collaboration with the Newark Police Department, which at the time was run by a former high-ranking NYPD official. But Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker, said he never authorized the spying and was never told about it.
“Wow,” he said as the AP laid out the details of the report. “This raises a number of concerns. It’s just very, very sobering.”
Associated Press, 22 February 2012

World football players’ union backs hijab rule change

DateTuesday, February 21, 2012

FIFPro supports a proposal to allow a safe headscarf to be worn by women football players. Currently FIFA bans women who wear the Islamic headscarf (hijab) from playing in regional or international matches. They are only allowed to wear a cap that covers the players heads to the headline but does not extend below the ears to cover the neck.
His Royal Highness Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein, FIFA vice president representing Asia, has recommended the executive committee of FIFA a revision of the laws of the game, to allow a “Velcro-opening” headscarf to be worn by women. He will be presenting the case to the international Football Association Board (IFAB) on March 3rd.
Prince Ali Bin Al Hussein has asked Brendan Schwab, the president of FIFPro Division Asia and Board member of FIFPro, to support his proposal. “The primary objective is to ensure that all women are able to play football at all levels without any barriers or discrimination.”
On behalf of FIFPro, Schwab gave his support to the proposal. “FIFPro has always been a strong supporter of the rights of all women to play football and for Islamic women to play football wearing headscarves”, Schwab explains. “We believe, as His Royal Highness does, that the participation of women is extremely beneficial, not just for the individual involved but for our game generally.”
Click to read more …

Suburbs are becoming ‘land of Islam’, says French historian

DateTuesday, February 21, 2012
The French suburbs are in the process of becoming “lands of Islam” and many French Muslims aspire to this, according to historian Alexandre Adler, who is worried about “Muslim self-government against the state” in susceptible neighbourhoods.
According to Alexandre Adler, violence in the suburbs can not be explained only by social problems, but because in his opinion there exists “a conception of the land that belongs to Islam”: “There is within the most traditional interpretation of Muslim doctrine the idea that there exists a land of Islam. Wherever Islam has spread, the people there have accepted that this land henceforth Islamic”, he explained in an interview with France Info.
According to him, the situation in the French suburbs is comparable to that in the Muslim regions of India which ended up seceding and becoming Pakistan and Bangladesh. “That is just what happens when neigbourhoods basically try to develop self-government against the power of the state. It is a land of Islam and at some point the Republic will effectively no longer be able to enter there.”
24heuresactu, 17 February 2012
Via Islam in Europe
See also Oumma.com, 19 February 2012

Pickles ‘signals an end to multiculturalism’

DateTuesday, February 21, 2012
The English language and Christian faith will be restored to the centre of public life, ministers are to pledge today. Eric Pickles will praise the traditions and heritage of “the majority” and describe multiculturalism as the politics of division.
Public bodies should no longer “bend over backwards” to translate documents into dozens of languages and migrants must be asked to learn English and understand the British way of life, the Communities Secretary will say.
Children should be educated in a “common culture”, promoting a British identity that crosses class, colour and creed. Events such as the Diamond Jubilee and the Olympics should be used to celebrate traditional culture and “fly the flags of Britain” with pride.
Mr Pickles was speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail ahead of today’s announcement of a new strategy on community cohesion and integration.
Daily Mail, 21 February 2012

Anti-’Islamisation’ float on German carnival parade

DateMonday, February 20, 2012
REUTERS/Ina FassbenderA papier-mache frog with the text “Islamisation” on its tongue and a butterfly with “Arab Spring” – a float on the traditional Rose Monday carnival parade in the western German city of Düsseldorf on 20 February.
Evidently there is something of a tradition of Islamophobic carnival floats in Germany.

Pig’s mask hung on gate of Belgian mosque with slogan ‘go back home’

DateMonday, February 20, 2012
CHARLEROI — Someone hung a carnival mask representing a pig on the gate of the mosque at Marchienne-au-Pont on Saturday night, provoking the indignation of the local Muslim community, Le Soir reported on Monday. The act was carried out between 8pm and 11.45pm.
The mask was of a pig on which the words “go back home” were written in black marker. Alerted during Saturday-Sunday night by the president of the ASCL Turkish committee of Marchienne-au-Pont, the local police from Charleroi went to investigate. When the officers arrived some twenty worshippers, outraged by this provocative act, were at the scene. Film from a surveillance camera was taken. Officials of the mosque have filed a complaint with Charleroi police.
This is the second incident in less than a year at this place of worship. On July 25, individuals broke into the building and desecrated it. The act also recalls a similar event in April 2011, at the site of a future mosque in Lodelinsart. A real pig’s head had been left there and swastikas drawn. The investigation has never identified the perpetrators.
RTL.be, 20 February 2012
See also “Belgian Muslim body condemns desecration of mosque”, Kuwait News Agency, 20 February 2012

Greater Manchester Police may seek EDL march ban

DateMonday, February 20, 2012
Greater Manchester Police’s chief constable says he may seek to ban a march by the English Defence League (EDL) over fears it could spark unrest.
Peter Fahy is to meet Tameside councillors to discuss whether to apply for a Home Office ban for Saturday’s proposed march in Hyde.
The protest follows an attack on Daniel Stringer-Prince who suffered a broken eye socket and fractured skull. The EDL said the march was a national protest against extremism.
Mr Fahy said: “We are concerned that there could be a threat to peace and order. The attack was an awful crime but I’m not sure we need outsiders coming in and clearly the fear is that they are just exploiting the situation.”
Mr Fahy said police would be talking to the council about whether to apply to ban the march although he added the EDL were legally entitled to stage a static protest. “It is a very serious issue and the Home Secretary only uses this power to ban marches on very limited occasions,” said Mr Fahy. He added that the Home Secretary had to decide if the march could cause a risk to disorder or major disruption to life in the community.
A statement on the EDL website said: “Our reason for demonstrating in Hyde is not to further divide communities or win support for racial politics. That is why we wish to make it abundantly clear that the British National Party, or any other group with a history of racial politics or racist ideas, will not be welcome at our demonstration.
“Our reason for demonstrating in Hyde is to protest about the government, the media and the Muslim community’s continued inaction in the face of violent extremism and intolerance.”
BBC News, 20 February 2012
See also “Family of Hyde ‘race attack’ victim Daniel Stringer-Prince urge English Defence League to call off protest”, Manchester Evening News, 20 February 2012

Fact-checking: Terry Jones’ worst enemy

DateMonday, February 20, 2012
Samer Hijazi demolishes claims about the supposed rise of Sharia law in Dearborn, Michigan, made in a recent press release by Qur’an-burning Florida pastor Terry Jones.
Arab American News, 19 February 2012

Nineteen Eighty-Four

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article is about the Orwell novel. For other uses, see 1984 (disambiguation).
Nineteen Eighty-Four
1984first.jpg
British first edition cover
Author(s) George Orwell
Cover artist Michael Kennard
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Genre(s) Dystopian, political fiction, social science fiction
Publisher Secker and Warburg (London)
Publication date 8 June 1949
Media type Print (hardback & paperback) & e-book, audio-CD
Pages 326 pp (Paperback edition)
ISBN 978-0452284234
OCLC Number 52187275
Dewey Decimal 823/.912 22
LC Classification PR6029.R8 N647 2003
Nineteen Eighty-Four (first published in 1949) by George Orwell is a dystopian novel about Oceania, a society ruled by the oligarchical dictatorship of the Party.[1] Life in the Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, pervasive government surveillance, and incessant public mind control, accomplished with a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc), which is administrated by a privileged Inner Party elite.[2] Yet they too are subordinated to the totalitarian cult of personality of Big Brother, the deified Party leader who rules with a philosophy that decries individuality and reason as thoughtcrimes; thus the people of Oceania are subordinated to a supposed collective greater good.[1] The protagonist, Winston Smith, is a member of the Outer Party who works for the Ministry of Truth (Minitrue), which is responsible for propaganda and historical revisionism. His job is to re-write past newspaper articles so that the historical record is congruent with the current party ideology.[3] Because of the childhood trauma of the destruction of his family — the disappearances of his parents and sister — Winston Smith secretly hates the Party, and dreams of rebellion against Big Brother.
As literary political fiction and as dystopian science-fiction, Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic novel in content, plot, and style. Many of its terms and concepts, such as Big Brother, doublethink, thoughtcrime, Newspeak, and memory hole, have become contemporary vernacular since its publication in 1949. Moreover, Nineteen Eighty-Four popularised the adjective Orwellian, which refers to official deception, secret surveillance, and manipulation of the past in service to a totalitarian or manipulative political agenda.[3]

Contents

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[edit] History and title

A 1947 draft MS of the first page of Nineteen Eighty-Four, showing the editorial development.
George Orwell “encapsulate[d] the thesis at the heart of his unforgiving novel” in 1944, and three years later wrote most of it on the Scottish island of Jura, during the 1947–48 period, despite being critically tubercular.[4] On December 4, 1948, he sent the final manuscript to the Secker and Warburg editorial house who published Nineteen Eighty-Four on June 8, 1949.[5][6] By 1989, it had been translated in to some 65 languages, the greatest number for any English-language novel at the time.[7] The title of the novel, its terms, its Newspeak language, and the author’s surname are contemporary bywords for privacy lost to the State; while the adjective Orwellian connotes a totalitarian dystopia characterised by government control and subjugation of the people. As a language, Newspeak applies different meanings to things and actions by referring only to the end to be achieved, not the means of achieving it; hence, the Ministry of Peace (Minipax) deals with war, and the Ministry of Love (Miniluv) deals with brainwashing and torture. The Ministries do achieve their goals; peace through war, and love of Big Brother through mind control.
The Last Man in Europe was one of the original titles for the novel, but in a letter dated 22 October 1948 to his publisher Fredric Warburg, eight months before publication, Orwell wrote about hesitating between The Last Man in Europe and Nineteen Eighty-Four.[8] Warburg suggested changing the Man title to one more commercial.[9] Speculation about the choice of title includes perhaps an allusion to the title of the poem “End of the Century, 1984″ (1934) by Orwell’s first and then wife Eileen O’Shaughnessy (1905–1945),[10][11] to G. K. Chesterton‘s novel also set in a future London of 1984, The Napoleon of Notting Hill (1904),[12] and to the Jack London novel The Iron Heel (1908).[13]
In the novel 1985 (1978), Anthony Burgess proposes that Orwell, disillusioned by the onset of the Cold War (1945–91), intended to title the book 1948. The introduction to the Penguin Books Modern Classics edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four reports that Orwell originally set 1980 as the story’s time, but the extended writing led to renaming the novel, first to 1982, then to 1984. Alternatively, the name was chosen because it is an inversion of the 1948 composition year.[14] Throughout its publication history, Nineteen Eighty-Four has been either banned or legally challenged as intellectually dangerous to the public, just like Aldous Huxley‘s Brave New World (1932);[15] We (1924), by Yevgeny Zamyatin; Kallocain (1940), by Karin Boye; and Fahrenheit 451 (1951), by Ray Bradbury.[16] In 2005, Time magazine included Nineteen Eighty-Four in its list of 100 best English-language novels since 1923.[17] Among literary scholars, the Russian dystopian novel We, by Zamyatin, is considered to have inspired Nineteen Eighty-Four.[18][19]

[edit] Copyright status

The novel will be in the public domain in the United Kingdom and the European Union in 2020, and in the United States in 2044[20] although it is already in the public domain in Canada,[21] Russia,[22] South Africa,[23] and Australia.[24]
On 17 July 2009, after learning the publisher MobileReference had no US rights to their edition of the book,[citation needed] Amazon.com withdrew the MobileReference edition of Nineteen Eighty-Four from sale (several other editions were unaffected).[25] Amazon also electronically deleted it from the synchronised e-book reader devices, which also made inaccessible the annotations made by users in their devices.[26] The deletion prompted customer complaints, and Orwellian comparison to Nineteen Eighty-Four. Amazon formally stated that they were “[c]hanging our systems so that in the future we will not remove books from customers’ devices in these circumstances.”[27]

[edit] Background

The banner of the Party in the 1984 film adaption of the book.
Nineteen Eighty-Four occurs in Oceania, one of three intercontinental super-states who divided the world among themselves after a global war. Most of the action takes place in London, the “chief city of Airstrip One“,[28] the Oceanic province that “had once been called England or Britain”.[29] Posters of the Party leader, Big Brother, bearing the caption “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU” adorn the landscape, while the ubiquitous telescreen (transceiving television set) monitors the private and public lives of the populace. The social class system of Oceania is threefold:
  • (I) the upper-class Inner Party, the elite ruling minority
  • (II) the middle-class Outer Party, and
  • (III) the lower-class Proles (from proletariat), who make up 85% of the population and represent the uneducated working class.
As the government, the Party controls the population with four ministries:
In this last one, the protagonist Winston Smith (a member of the Outer Party) works as an editor revising historical records to concord the past to the contemporary party line orthodoxy — that changes daily — and deletes the official existence of unpersons, people who have been “vaporized”; who have not only been killed by the state, but effectively erased from existence.
The story of Winston Smith begins on 4 April 1984: “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen”;[30] yet he is uncertain of the true date, given the régime’s continual historical revisionism. His memories and his reading of the proscribed book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, reveal that after the Second World War, the United Kingdom fell to civil war and then was integrated to Oceania. Simultaneously, the USSR annexed continental Europe and established the second superstate of Eurasia. The third superstate, Eastasia comprises the regions of East Asia and Southeast Asia. The three superstates fight a perpetual war for the remaining unconquered lands of the world, in pursuit of which they form and break alliances as convenient. From his childhood (1949–53), Winston remembers the Atomic Wars fought in Europe, western Russia, and North America. It is unclear to him what occurred first — either the Party’s civil war ascendance, or the US’s annexation of the British Empire, or the war wherein Colchester was bombed — however, the increasing clarity of his memory and the story of his family’s dissolution suggest that the atomic bombings occurred first (the Smiths took refuge in a tube station) followed by civil war featuring “confused street fighting in London itself”, and the societal postwar reorganisation, which the Party retrospectively call “the Revolution”.

[edit] Plot

Oceanian society: Big Brother atop, The Party in middle, the Proles at bottom, in 1984.
The story of Winston Smith presents the world in the year 1984, after a global atomic war, via his perception of life in Airstrip One (England or Britain), a province of Oceania, one of the world’s three superstates; his intellectual rebellion against the Party and illicit romance with Julia; and his consequent imprisonment, interrogation, torture, and re-education by the Thinkpol in the Miniluv.

[edit] Winston Smith

Winston Smith is an intellectual, a member of the Outer Party, who lives in the ruins of London, and who grew up in some long post-World War II England, during the revolution and the civil war after which the Party assumed power. At some point his parents and sister disappeared, and the Ingsoc movement placed him in an orphanage for training and subsequent employment as an Outer Party civil servant. Yet his squalid existence consists of living in a one-room flat on a subsistence diet of black bread and synthetic meals washed down with Victory-brand gin. He keeps a journal of negative thoughts and opinions about the Party and Big Brother, which, if uncovered by the Thought Police, would warrant death. The flat has an alcove, beside the telescreen, where he apparently cannot be seen, and thus believes he has some privacy, while writing in his journal: “Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death”. The telescreens (in every public area, and the quarters of the Party’s members), hidden microphones, and informers permit the Thought Police to spy upon everyone and so identify anyone who might endanger the Party’s régime; children, most of all, are indoctrinated to spy and inform on suspected thought-criminals — especially their parents.
At the Minitrue, Winston is an editor responsible for historical revisionism, concording the past to the Party’s contemporary official version of the past; thus making the government of Oceania seem omniscient. As such, he perpetually rewrites records and alters photographs, rendering the deleted people as “unpersons”; the original documents are incinerated in a “memory hole“. Despite enjoying the intellectual challenges of historical revisionism, he becomes increasingly fascinated by the true past and tries to learn more about it.

[edit] Julia

One day, at the Minitrue, as Winston assisted a woman who had fallen, she surreptitiously handed him a folded paper note; later, at his desk he covertly reads the message: I LOVE YOU. The name of the woman is “Julia”, a young dark haired mechanic who repairs the Minitrue novel-writing machines. Before that occasion, Winston had loathed the sight of her, presuming she was a member of the fanatical Junior Anti-Sex League, because she wore the red sash of the League, and because she was the type of woman he believed he could not attract: young and puritanical; nonetheless, his hostility towards her vanishes upon reading the message. Cautiously, Winston and Julia begin a love affair, at first meeting in the country, at a clearing in the woods, then at the belfry of a ruined church, and afterwards in a rented room atop an antiques shop in a proletarian neighbourhood of London. There, they think themselves safe and unobserved, because the rented bedroom has no telescreen, but, unknown to Winston and Julia, the Thought Police were aware of their love affair.
Later, when the Inner Party member O’Brien approaches him, Winston believes he is an agent of the Brotherhood, a secret, counter-revolutionary organisation meant to destroy The Party. The approach opened a secret communication between them; and, on pretext of giving him a copy of the latest edition of the Dictionary of Newspeak, O’Brien gives Winston The Book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, by Emmanuel Goldstein, the infamous and publicly reviled leader of the Brotherhood. The Book explains the concept of perpetual war, the true meanings of the slogans WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH, and how the régime of The Party can be overthrown by means of the political awareness of the Proles.

[edit] Capture

The Thought Police capture Winston and Julia in their bedroom, to be delivered to the Ministry of Love for interrogation. Charrington, the shop keeper who rented the room to them, reveals himself as an officer of the Thought Police. After a prolonged regimen of systematic beatings and psychologically draining interrogation, O’Brien, who is revealed to be a Thought Police leader and becomes Smith’s inquisitor, tortures Winston with electroshock, showing him how, through controlled manipulation of perception (e.g.: seeing whatever number of fingers held up that the Party demands one should see, whatever the “apparent” reality, i.e. 2+2=5), Winston can “cure” himself of his “insanity” — his manifest hatred for the Party. In long, complex conversations, he explains the Inner Party’s motivation: complete and absolute power, mocking Winston’s assumption that it was somehow altruistic and “for the greater good”. Asked if the Brotherhood exists, O’Brien replies that this is something Winston will never know; it will remain an unsolvable quandary in his mind. During a torture session, his imprisonment in the Ministry of Love is explained: “There are three stages in your reintegration . . . There is learning, there is understanding, and there is acceptance”, i.e. of the Party’s assertion of reality.

[edit] Confession and betrayal

In the first stage of political re-education, Winston Smith admits to and confesses to crimes he did and did not commit, implicating anyone and everyone, including Julia. In the second stage of re-education for reintegration to the society of Oceania, O’Brien makes Winston understand that he is rotting away. Winston counters that: “I have not betrayed Julia”; O’Brien agrees, Winston had not betrayed Julia because he “had not stopped loving her; his feelings toward her had remained the same”. One night, in his cell, Winston awakens, screaming: “Julia! Julia! Julia, my love! Julia!” O’Brien rushes in to the cell, but not to interrogate Winston, but to send him to Room 101, the most feared room in the Ministry of Love, where resides each prisoner’s worst fear, which is forced upon him or her. In Room 101 is Acceptance, the final stage of the political re-education of Winston Smith, whose primal fear of rats is invoked when a wire cage holding hungry rats is fitted onto his face. As the rats are about to reach Winston’s face, he shouts: “Do it to Julia!”, thus betraying her, and relinquishing his love for her. Julia, also, betrayed Winston, in what O’Brien described as “a text book case” of betrayal. At torture’s end, upon accepting the doctrine of The Party, Winston Smith is reintegrated to the society of Oceania, because he loved Big Brother.

[edit] Re-encountering Julia

After reintegration to Oceanian society, Winston encounters Julia in a park; each admits having betrayed the other:
“I betrayed you”, she said baldly.
“I betrayed you”, he said.
She gave him another quick look of dislike.
“Sometimes”, she said, “they threaten you with something — something you can’t stand up to, can’t even think about. And then you say, ‘Don’t do it to me, do it to somebody else, do it to so-and-so.’ And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.”
“All you care about is yourself”, he echoed.
“And after that, you don’t feel the same toward the other person any longer.”
“No”, he said, “you don’t feel the same.”
Throughout, a song recurs in Winston’s mind:
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me—
The lyrics are an adaptation of ‘Go no more a-rushing’, a popular English campfire song from the 1920s, that was a popular success for Glenn Miller in 1939.[31][32][33]

[edit] Conversion

Smith has accepted the Party’s depiction of life, and sincerely celebrates a news bulletin reporting Oceania’s decisive victory over Eurasia for control of Africa. He then realises that “he had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother”.

[edit] Characters

[edit] Principal characters

  • Julia  — Winston’s lover, is a covert “rebel from the waist downwards” who publicly espouses Party doctrine as a member of the fanatical Junior Anti-Sex League.
  • Big Brother  — the dark-eyed, mustachioed embodiment of The Party who rule Oceania.
  • O’Brien  — a member of the Inner Party who poses as a member of The Brotherhood, the counter-revolutionary resistance, in order to deceive, trap, and capture Winston and Julia.

[edit] Secondary characters

  • Aaronson, Jones, and Rutherford  — Former members of the Inner Party whom Winston vaguely remembers as among the original leaders of the Revolution, long before he had heard of Big Brother. They confessed to treasonable conspiracies with foreign powers and were then executed in the political purges of the 1960s. In between their confessions and executions, Winston saw them drinking in the Chestnut Tree Café – with broken noses, suggesting that their confessions had been obtained by torture. Later, in the course of his editorial work, Winston sees newspaper evidence contradicting their confessions. He keeps the evidence covered on his desk for maybe ten minutes, but then drops it into the memory hole. Eleven years later, he is confronted with the same photograph during an interrogation.
  • Ampleforth  — Winston’s one-time Records Department colleague who was imprisoned for leaving the word “God” in a Kipling poem; Winston encounters him at the Miniluv. Ampleforth is a dreamer and an intellectual who takes pleasure in his work, and respects poetry and language, which traits and qualities cause him disfavour with the Party.
  • Charrington  — An officer of the Thought Police posing as a sympathetic antiques-shop keeper.
  • Katharine  — The emotionally indifferent wife whom Winston “can’t get rid of”. Despite disliking sexual intercourse, Katharine continued with Winston because it was their “duty to the Party”. Although she was a “goodthinkful” ideologue, they separated because she could not bear children.
  • Parsons  — Winston’s naïve neighbour, and an ideal member of the Outer Party: an uneducated, suggestible man who is utterly loyal to the Party, and fully believes in its perfect image. He is socially active and participates in the Party activities for his social class. Although friendly towards Smith, and despite his political conformity, he punishes his bully-boy son for firing a catapult at Winston. Later, as a prisoner, Winston sees Parsons is in the Ministry of Love, because his daughter had reported him to the Thought Police after overhearing him speak against the Party whilst he slept.
  • Mrs. Parsons  — Parsons’s wife is a wan and hapless woman who is intimidated by her children, who represent the new generation of Oceanian citizens, without memory of life before Big Brother, without family ties; the model society moulded by the Inner Party.
  • Syme  — Winston’s colleague at the Ministry of Truth, whom the Party “vaporised” because he remained a lucidly-thinking intellectual. He was a lexicographer who developed the language and the dictionary of Newspeak, in the course of which he enjoyed destroying words, and wholeheartedly believed that Newspeak would replace Oldspeak (Standard English) by the year AD 2050. Although Syme’s politically orthodox opinions aligned with Party doctrine, Winston noted that “He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly”. After noting that Syme’s name was deleted from the members list of the Chess Club, Winston infers he became an unperson who never had existed.

[edit] The world in 1984

[edit] Ingsoc (English Socialism)

Main article: Ingsoc
In the year 1984, Ingsoc (English Socialism), is the regnant ideology and pseudo-philosophy of Oceania, and Newspeak is its official language, of official documents.

[edit] Ministries of Oceania

In London, the Airstrip One capital city, Oceania’s four government ministries are in pyramids (300 metres high), the façades of which display the Party’s three slogans. The ministries’ names are antonymous doublethink to their true functions: “The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation”. (Part II, Chapter IX — The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism)
Ministry of Peace (Newspeak: Minipax)
Minipax supports Oceania’s perpetual war.
The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of doublethink, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work.
Ministry of Plenty (Newspeak: Miniplenty)
The Ministry of Plenty rations and controls food, goods, and domestic production; every fiscal quarter, the Miniplenty publishes false claims of having raised the standard of living, when it has, in fact, reduced rations, availability, and production. The Minitrue substantiates the Miniplenty claims by revising historical records to report numbers supporting the current, “increased rations”.
Ministry of Truth (Newspeak: Minitrue)
The Ministry of Truth controls information: news, entertainment, education, and the arts. Winston Smith works in the Minitrue RecDep (Records Department), “rectifying” historical records to concord with Big Brother’s current pronouncements, thus everything the Party says is true.
Ministry of Love (Newspeak: Miniluv)
The Ministry of Love identifies, monitors, arrests, and converts real and imagined dissidents. In Winston’s experience, the dissident is beaten and tortured, then, when near-broken, is sent to Room 101 to face “the worst thing in the world” — until love for Big Brother and the Party replaces dissension.

[edit] Doublethink

Main article: Doublethink
The keyword here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts. Applied to a Party member, it means a loyal willingness to say that black is white when Party discipline demands this. But it means also the ability to believe that black is white, and more, to know that black is white, and to forget that one has ever believed the contrary. This demands a continuous alteration of the past, made possible by the system of thought which really embraces all the rest, and which is known in Newspeak as doublethink. Doublethink is basically the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.
— Part II, Chapter IX — The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism

[edit] Political geography

Perpetual War: The news report Oceania has captured Africa, 1984.
Three perpetually warring totalitarian super-states control the world:[34]
The perpetual war is fought for control of the “disputed area” lying “between the frontiers of the super-states”, it forms “a rough parallelogram with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin and Hong Kong“,[34] thus northern Africa, the Middle East, southern India and south-east Asia are where the super-states capture slaves. The remainder of the world, i.e. much of Africa, southern India, South-east Asia, the South Pacific, and Antarctica, is evidently of little or no importance.
Goldstein’s book, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, explains that the super-states’ ideologies are alike and that the public’s ignorance of this fact is imperative so that they might continue believing in the detestability of the opposing ideologies. The only references to the exterior world for the Oceanian citizenry (the Outer Party and the Proles), are Minitrue maps and propaganda ensuring their belief in “the war”.

[edit] The Revolution

Winston Smith’s memory and Emmanuel Goldstein’s book communicate some of the history that precipitated the Revolution; Eurasia was established after World War II (1939–45), when US and Imperial soldiers withdrew from continental Europe, thus the USSR conquered Europe against slight opposition. Eurasia does not include the British Empire because the US annexed it, Latin America, southern Africa, Australasia, and Canada, thus establishing Oceania and gaining control over a quarter of the planet. The annexation of Britain was part of the Atomic Wars that provoked civil war; per the Party, it was not a revolution but a coup d’état that installed a ruling élite derived from the native intelligentsia. Eastasia, the last superstate established, comprises the Asian lands conquered by China and Japan. Although Eurasia prevented Eastasia from matching it in size, its larger populace compensate for that handicap; despite an unclear chronology most of that global reorganisation occurred between 1945 and the 1960s.[citation needed]

[edit] The War

See also: Perpetual war
In 1984, there is a perpetual war among Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia, the super-states which emerged from the atomic global war. “The book”, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein, explains that each state is so strong it cannot be defeated, even with the combined forces of two super-states—despite changing alliances. To hide such contradictions, history is re-written to explain that the (new) alliance always was so; the populaces accustomed to doublethink accept it. The war is not fought in Oceanian, Eurasian or Eastasian territory but in the arctic wastes and a disputed zone comprising the sea and land from Tangiers (northern Africa) to Darwin (Australia). At the start, Oceania and Eastasia are allies combatting Eurasia in northern Africa.
That alliance ends and Oceania allied with Eurasia fights Eastasia, a change which occurred during the Hate Week dedicated to creating patriotic fervour for the Party’s perpetual war. The public are blind to the change; in mid-sentence an orator changes the name of the enemy from “Eurasia” to “Eastasia” without pause. When the public are enraged at noticing that the wrong flags and posters are displayed they tear them down—thus the origin of the idiom “We’ve always been at war with Eastasia”; later the Party claims to have captured Africa.
“The book” explains that the purpose of the unwinnable, perpetual war is to consume human labour and commodities, hence the economy of a super-state cannot support economic equality (a high standard of life) for every citizen. Goldstein also details an Oceanian strategy of attacking enemy cities with atomic rockets before invasion, yet dismisses it as unfeasible and contrary to the war’s purpose; despite the atomic bombing of cities in the 1950s the super-states stopped such warfare lest it imbalance the powers. The military technology in 1984 differs little from that of World War II, yet strategic bomber aeroplanes were replaced with Rocket Bombs, helicopters were heavily used as weapons of war (while they didn’t figure in WW2 in any form but prototypes) and surface combat units have been all but replaced by immense and unsinkable Floating Fortresses, island-like contraptions concentrating the firepower of a whole naval task force in a single, semi-mobile platform (in the novel one is said to have been anchored between Iceland and the Faroe Islands, suggesting a preference for sea lane interdiction and denial).

[edit] Living standards

In 1984, the society of Airstrip One lives in poverty; hunger, disease and filth are the norms and ruined cities and towns the consequence of the civil war, the atomic wars and purported enemy (but quite possibly self-serving Oceanian) rockets. Social decay and wrecked buildings surround Winston; aside from the ministerial pyramids, little of London was rebuilt. The standard of living of the populace is low; almost everything, especially consumer goods, is scarce and available goods are of low quality; half of the Oceanian populace go barefoot — despite the Party reporting increased boot production. The Party claims that this poverty is a necessary sacrifice for the war effort; “the book” reports that this is partially correct, because the purpose of perpetual war is consuming surplus industrial production. The Outer Party has no access to anything that could be used to commit suicide—there are no tall buildings, no sharp objects, even razors for personal grooming, etc.
The Inner Party upper class of Oceanian society enjoy the highest standard of living. O’Brien resides in a clean and comfortable apartment, with a pantry well-stocked with quality foodstuffs (wine, coffee, sugar, etc.), denied to the general populace, the Outer Party and the Proles, who consume synthetic foodstuffs; liquor, Victory Gin, and cigarettes are of low quality.[35] The brand “Victory” (as in the cigarettes and gin) is taken from the low-quality “Victory Brand Cigarettes” (also known as Vs) that were often the only ones that could be obtained in Britain on minimal ration coupons during World War II by the average member of the public and often issued to soldiers, as this brand was made in India and could be shipped to Britain more easily than American cigarettes, which had to cross the U-boat-infested waters of the North Atlantic. These were of low quality and often derided by the people who used them. In Spike Milligan‘s War Memoirs, he jokingly claimed Vs Cigarettes were made in India from dung left over by the sacred cows.[citation needed]
Winston is astonished that the lifts in O’Brien’s building function and that the telescreens can be switched off. The Inner Party are attended to by slaves captured in the disputed zone. O’Brien has an Asian manservant, Martin. The proles live in poverty and are kept sedated with alcohol, pornography and a national lottery, yet the proles are freer and less intimidated than the middle class Outer Party, and jeer at the telescreens. “The Book” reports that the state of things derives from the observation that it is the middle class, not the lower class, which traditionally started revolutions, therefore tight control of the middle class penetrates their minds in determining their quotidian lives, and potential rebels are politically neutralised via promotion to the Inner Party or “reintegration” by Miniluv; nonetheless Winston believed that “the future belonged to the proles”.[citation needed]

[edit] Themes

[edit] Nationalism

Nineteen Eighty-Four expands upon the subjects summarised in the essay Notes on Nationalism (1945)[36] about the lack of vocabulary needed to explain the unrecognised phenomena behind certain political forces. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Party’s artificial, minimalist language ‘Newspeak’ addresses the matter.
  • Positive nationalism: Oceanians’ perpetual love for Big Brother; Neo-Toryism, Celtic nationalism and British Israelism are (as Orwell argues) defined by love.
  • Negative nationalism: Oceanians’ perpetual hatred for Emmanuel Goldstein; Stalinism, Anglophobia and antisemitism are (as Orwell argues) defined by hatred.
  • Transferred nationalism: In mid-sentence an orator changes the enemy of Oceania; the crowd instantly transfers their hatred to the new enemy. Transferred nationalism swiftly redirects emotions from one power unit to another (e.g., Communism, Pacifism, Colour Feeling and Class Feeling).
O’Brien conclusively describes: “The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”

[edit] Sexual repression

With the Junior Anti-Sex-League, the Party encourages its members to eliminate the personal sexual attachments that diminish political loyalty. In Part III, O’Brien tells Winston that neurologists are working to extinguish the orgasm; the mental energy required for prolonged worship requires authoritarian suppression of the libido, a vital instinct.

[edit] Futurology

In the book, Inner Party member O’Brien describes the Party’s vision of the future:
There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always—do not forget this, Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.
—Part III, Chapter III, Nineteen Eighty-Four
This contrasts the essay “England Your England” (1941) with the essay “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” (1941):
The intellectuals who hope to see it Russianised or Germanised will be disappointed. The gentleness, the hypocrisy, the thoughtlessness, the reverence for law and the hatred of uniforms will remain, along with the suet puddings and the misty skies. It needs some very great disaster, such as prolonged subjugation by a foreign enemy, to destroy a national culture. The Stock Exchange will be pulled down, the horse plough will give way to the tractor, the country houses will be turned into children’s holiday camps, the Eton and Harrow match will be forgotten, but England will still be England, an everlasting animal stretching into the future and the past, and, like all living things, having the power to change out of recognition and yet remain the same.
The geopolitical climate of Nineteen Eighty-Four resembles the précis of James Burnham‘s ideas in the essay “James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution”[37] (1946):
These people will eliminate the old capitalist class, crush the working class, and so organize society that all power and economic privilege remain in their own hands. Private property rights will be abolished, but common ownership will not be established. The new ‘managerial’ societies will not consist of a patchwork of small, independent states, but of great super-states grouped round the main industrial centres in Europe, Asia, and America. These super-states will fight among themselves for possession of the remaining uncaptured portions of the earth, but will probably be unable to conquer one another completely. Internally, each society will be hierarchical, with an aristocracy of talent at the top and a mass of semi-slaves at the bottom.

[edit] Censorship

A major theme of Nineteen Eighty-Four is censorship, especially in the Ministry of Truth, where photographs are doctored and public archives rewritten to rid them of “unpersons” (i.e. persons who have been arrested, whom the Party has decided to erase from history). On the telescreens figures for all types of production are grossly exaggerated (or simply invented) to indicate an ever-growing economy, when the reality is the opposite. One small example of the endless censorship is when Winston is charged with the task of eliminating reference to an unperson in a newspaper article. He proceeds to write an article about Comrade Ogilvy, a fictional party member, who displayed great heroism by leaping into the sea from a helicopter so that the dispatches he was carrying would not fall into enemy hands.

[edit] Surveillance

The inhabitants of Oceania, particularly the party members, have no real privacy. Many of them live in apartments equipped with two-way telescreens, so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones. Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some even denounce their own parents.
This surveillance allows for effective control of the citizenry. The smallest sign of rebellion, even something so small as a facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Thus, citizens (and particularly party members) are compelled to absolute obedience at all times.

[edit] The Newspeak appendix

Main article: Newspeak
“The Principles of Newspeak” is an academic essay appended to the novel. It describes the development of Newspeak, the Party’s minimalist artificial language meant to ideologically align thought and action with the principles of Ingsoc by making “all other modes of thought impossible”. (For linguistic background about how language is a creation of culture, see the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis.)[38] Note also the possible influence of the German book LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii, published in 1947, which details how the Nazis controlled society by controlling the language.
Whether or not the Newspeak appendix implies a hopeful end to Nineteen Eighty-Four remains a critical debate, as it is in Standard English and refers to Newspeak, Ingsoc, the Party, et cetera, in the past tense (i.e., “Relative to our own, the Newspeak vocabulary was tiny, and new ways of reducing it were constantly being devised”, p. 422); in this vein, some critics (Atwood,[39] Benstead,[40] Pynchon[41]) claim that, for the essay’s author, Newspeak and the totalitarian government are past. The countervailing view is that since the novel has no frame story, Orwell wrote the essay in the same past tense as the novel, with “our” denoting his and the reader’s contemporaneous reality.

[edit] Some sources for literary motifs

Nineteen Eighty-Four uses themes from life in the Soviet Union and wartime life in Great Britain as sources for many of its motifs.
The statement “2+2=5“, used to torment Winston Smith during his interrogation, was a Communist party slogan from the second five-year plan, which encouraged fulfillment of the five-year plan in four years. The slogan was seen in electric lights on Moscow house-fronts, billboards, etc.[42]
The switch of Oceania’s allegiance from Eastasia to Eurasia is evocative of the Soviet Union’s changing relations with Nazi Germany, who were ideological adversaries until the signing of the Treaty of Non-Aggression, which made them temporary allies. Thereafter, and continuing until the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, no criticism of Germany was allowed in the Soviet press, and all references to prior party lines stopped.
The description of Emmanuel Goldstein, with a goatee beard, evokes the image of Leon Trotsky. The film of Goldstein during the two-minutes hate is described as showing him being transformed into a bleating goat. This image was used in a propaganda film during the Kino-eye period of Soviet film, which showed Trotsky transforming into a goat.[43]
The omnipresent images of Big Brother, described as having a mustache, evokes the cult of personality built up around Joseph Stalin.
The news in Oceania emphasized production figures, just as it did in the Soviet Union, where record-setting in factories (by “Heroes of Socialist Labor“) was especially glorified. The best known of these was Alexey Stakhanov, who set a record for Coal mining in 1935.
The tortures of the Ministry of Love evoke the procedures used by the NKVD in their interrogations,[44] including the use of rubber truncheons, being forbidden to put your hands in your pockets, remaining in brightly-lit rooms for days, and the victim being shown a mirror after their physical collapse (also depicted in the 1985 film GULAG[45]).
Orwell’s “Spies”, a youth organization taught to look for enemies of the state, appears to be based on the Young pioneers, who looked for “Enemies of the People”, and denounced them to the NKVD. These activities were part of the Great Purge from 1936 to 1938.
A Komsomol Poster showing their trademark Red Kerchiefs.
The “Junior Anti-Sex league” was based on the Young Communists; the komsomol. While not explicitly celibate, the komsomol discouraged sexual and romantic involvement for its members, because these prevented dedication to the Party, which was seen as a way to build character. Members of the Junior Anti-Sex League wore red sashes around their waists, while komsomols wore red kerchiefs around their necks.
The random bombing of Airstrip One is based on the Buzz bombs, which struck England at random in 1944-1945.
The Thought Police is based on the NKVD, which arrested people for random “anti-soviet” remarks.[46] The Thought Crime motif is drawn from Kempeitai, the Japanese wartime secret police, who arrested people for “unpatriotic” thoughts.
The confessions of the “Thought Criminals” Rutherford, Aaronson and Jones are based on the show trials of the 1930s, which included fabricated confessions by prominent Bolsheviks Nikolai Bukharin, Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev to the effect that they were being paid by the Nazi government to undermine the Soviet regime under Leon Trotsky‘s direction.
The song “Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree” (“Under the spreading chestnut tree, I sold you, and you sold me”) was based on Glenn Miller’s 1939 song of the same name (“Under the spreading chestnut tree, Where I knelt upon my knee, We were as happy as could be, ‘Neath the spreading chestnut tree.”) The song has its origins in the 1920s, when it was a camp song, sung with corresponding movements (like touching your chest when you sing “chest”, and touching your head when you sing “nut”). The original title was ‘Go no more a-rushing’. Under these lyrics, the song was published as early as 1891.[47]
The “Hates” (two-minutes hate and hate week) were inspired by the constant rallies sponsored by party organs throughout the Stalinist period. These were often short pep-talks given to workers before their shifts began (two minutes hate), but could also last for days, as in the annual celebrations of the anniversary of the October revolution (hate week).
The contractions of words, in which “Ministry of Truth” was shortened to “Minitrue” and “English Socialism” to “Ingsoc” was inspired by the Soviet habit of combining words. Smert Shpionam (“death to spies”, a sub-division of the NKVD) was shortened to “Smersh“. Dialectical Materialism was similarly shortened to “DiaMat”, and The Communist International was referred to as the Comintern.
“Vaporizing” criminals (a metaphor for execution) is based on the Soviet word “liquidation” a vague term that usually meant execution or “Internal Exile” to the gulag labour camps.
Nikolai Yezhov, walking with Stalin in the top photo from the 1930s. Following his execution, Yezhov was edited out of the photo by Soviet censors.[48] Yezhov became an “unperson”.
Doublethink, a system of thought that allowed people to believe two contradictory things simultaneously (the chocolate ration is cut to 20 grams and the chocolate ration is raised to 20 grams), is a literary re-working of Marxist-Leninist Dialectics, whose “laws” of the “unity of opposites” and “negation of the negation” allow a person to hold two different opinions in two different contexts. Marxist dialectics encourages its adherants to see the merits of theses and antitheses standing behind behind historical and political processes, allowing agreement with contradictory statements (The appearance of capitalism was a good thing, because it meant the end of feudalism. The end of capitalism is a good thing, because it ushers in the era of socialism).
Winston Smith’s job, “revising history” (and the “unperson” motif) are based on the Stalinist habit of airbrushing images of ‘fallen’ people from group photographs and removing references to them in books and newspapers.[49] In one well-known example, the Soviet encyclopedia had an article about Lavrentiy Beria. When he fell in 1953, and was subsequently executed, institutes that had the encyclopedia were sent an article about the Bering Strait, with instructions to paste it over the article about Beria.[50]
Big Brother’s “Orders of the Day” were inspired by Stalin’s regular wartime orders, called by the same name. A small collection of the more political of these have been published (together with his wartime speeches) in English as “On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union” By Joseph Stalin.[51][52] Like Big Brother’s Orders of the day, Stalin’s frequently lauded heroic individuals,[53] like Comrade Ogilvy, the fictitious hero Winston Smith invented to ‘rectify’ (fabricate) a Big Brother Order of the day.
The Ingsoc slogan “Our new, happy life”, repeated from telescreens, evokes Stalin’s 1935 statement, which became a CPSU slogan, “Life has become better, Comrades; life has become more cheerful.[46]”

[edit] Influences

During World War II (1939–1945) Orwell believed that British democracy as it existed before 1939 would not survive the war, the question being “Would it end via Fascist coup d’état (from above) or via Socialist revolution (from below)?”
Later he admitted that events proved him wrong: “What really matters is that I fell into the trap of assuming that ‘the war and the revolution are inseparable’”.[54] Thematically Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Animal Farm (1945) share the betrayed revolution; the person’s subordination to the collective; rigorously enforced class distinctions (Inner Party, Outer Party, Proles); the cult of personality; concentration camps; Thought Police; compulsory regimented daily exercise and youth leagues. Oceania resulted from the U.S. annexation of the British Empire to counter the Asian peril to Australia and New Zealand. It is a naval power whose militarism venerates the sailors of the floating fortresses, from which battle is given to recapturing India, the “Jewel in the Crown” of the British Empire. Much of Oceanic society is based upon the U.S.S.R. under Joseph Stalin—Big Brother; the televised Two Minutes Hate is ritual demonisation of the enemies of the State, especially Emmanuel Goldstein (viz Leon Trotsky); altered photographs and newspaper articles create unpersons deleted from the national historical record, including even founding members of the regime (Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford) in the 1960s purges (viz the Soviet Purges of the 1930s, in which leaders of the Bolshevik Revolution were similarly treated).
In his 1946 essay Why I Write, Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were “written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism“.[55] Nineteen Eighty-Four is a cautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Animal Farm (1945), while Coming Up for Air (1939) celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). Biographer Michael Shelden notes Orwell’s Edwardian childhood at Henley-on-Thames as the golden country; being bullied at St Cyprian’s School as his empathy with victims; his life in the Indian Burma Police — the techniques of violence and censorship in the BBC — capricious authority.[56] Other influences include Darkness at Noon (1940) and The Yogi and the Commissar (1945) by Arthur Koestler; The Iron Heel (1908) by Jack London; 1920: Dips into the Near Future[57] by John A. Hobson; Brave New World (1932) by Aldous Huxley; We (1921) by Yevgeny Zamyatin which he reviewed in 1946;[58] and The Managerial Revolution (1940) by James Burnham predicting perpetual war among three totalitarian superstates. Orwell told Jacintha Buddicom that he would write a novel stylistically like A Modern Utopia (1905) by H. G. Wells.[citation needed]
Extrapolating from World War II, the novel’s pastiche parallels the politics and rhetoric at war’s end—the changed alliances at the “Cold War‘s” (1945–91) beginning; the Ministry of Truth derives from the BBC’s overseas service, controlled by the Ministry of Information; Room 101 derives from a conference room at BBC Broadcasting House;[59] the Senate House of the University of London, containing the Ministry of Information is the architectural inspiration for the Minitrue; the post-war decrepitude derives from the socio-political life of the UK and the USA, i.e. the impoverished Britain of 1948 losing its Empire despite newspaper-reported imperial triumph; and war ally but peace-time foe, Soviet Russia became Eurasia.
The term “English Socialism” has precedents in his wartime writings; in the essay “The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius” (1941), he said that “the war and the revolution are inseparable… the fact that we are at war has turned Socialism from a textbook word into a realisable policy” — because Britain’s superannuated social class system hindered the war effort and only a socialist economy would defeat Adolf Hitler. Given the middle class’s grasping this, they too would abide socialist revolution and that only reactionary Britons would oppose it, thus limiting the force revolutionaries would need to take power. An English Socialism would come about which “… will never lose touch with the tradition of compromise and the belief in a law that is above the State. It will shoot traitors, but it will give them a solemn trial beforehand and occasionally it will acquit them. It will crush any open revolt promptly and cruelly, but it will interfere very little with the spoken and written word”.[60]
In the world of Nineteen Eighty-Four, “English Socialism” — contracted to “Ingsoc” in Newspeak — is a totalitarian ideology unlike the English revolution he foresaw. Comparison of the wartime essay The Lion and the Unicorn with Nineteen Eighty-Four shows that he perceived a Big Brother régime as a perversion of his cherished socialist ideals and English Socialism. Thus Oceania is a corruption of the British Empire he believed would evolve into a “federation of Socialist states… like a looser and freer version of the Union of Soviet Republics”.[cite this quote]

[edit] Cultural impact

“Happy 1984″ stencil graffiti, denoting mind control via video games, on a standing piece of the Berlin Wall, 2005.
Wall of an industrial building in Donetsk, Ukraine
The effect of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the English language is extensive; the concepts of Big Brother, Room 101, the Thought Police, thoughtcrime, unperson, memory hole (oblivion), doublethink (simultaneously holding and believing contradictory beliefs) and Newspeak (ideological language) have become common phrases for denoting totalitarian authority. Doublespeak and groupthink are both deliberate elaborations of doublethink, while the adjective “Orwellian” denotes “characteristic and reminiscent of George Orwell’s writings” especially Nineteen Eighty-Four. The practice of ending words with “-speak” (e.g. mediaspeak) is drawn from the novel.[61] Orwell is perpetually associated with the year 1984; in July 1984 an asteroid discovered by Antonín Mrkos was named after Orwell.
References to the themes, concepts and plot of Nineteen Eighty-Four have appeared frequently in other works, especially in popular music and video entertainment. An example of this is the world-wide hit reality television show Big Brother, in which a group of people live together in a large house, isolated from the outside world but continuously watched by television cameras.
In November 2011 the United States government argued before the U.S. Supreme Court that it wants to continue utilizing GPS tracking of individuals without first seeking a warrant. In response, Justice Stephen Breyer questioned what this means for a democratic society by referencing Nineteen Eighty-Four. Justice Breyer asked, “If you win this case, then there is nothing to prevent the police or the government from monitoring 24 hours a day the public movement of every citizen of the United States. So if you win, you suddenly produce what sounds like 1984….”[62]

[edit] Adaptations and derived works

 This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2011)


Film, television, and stage direct adaptations
Literature
Cinema
Comics
Radio
Television
  • 1984, a famous Apple Computer advertisement
  • Big Brother, a reality TV show based on the premise that the audience acts as Big Brother by watching the participants at all times
  • Room 101, a BBC television series
Video Games
Art
Bands
Music albums
Songs

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ a b Benet’s Reader’s Encyclopedia, Fourth Edition (1996). HarperCollins:New York. p. 734.
  2. ^ The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, Columbia University Press: 1993, p. 2030.
  3. ^ a b The Oxford Companion to English Literature, Sixth Edition. University of Oxford Press: 2000. p. 726.
  4. ^ Bowker, Chapter 18. “thesis”: pp. 368-9
  5. ^ Bowker, pp. 383, 399
  6. ^ “Charles’ George Orwell Links”. Netcharles.com. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
  7. ^ John Rodden. The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of “St. George” Orwell
  8. ^ CEJL, iv, no. 125.
  9. ^ Crick, Bernard. Introduction to Nineteen Eighty-Four(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984)
  10. ^ technatica. “Reader 1984 Poem Eileen”. Orwelltoday.com. Retrieved 2012-01-02.
  11. ^ Eileen O’Shaughnessy#Influence on Orwell’s writing
  12. ^ By Jack of Kent (28 February 2009). “Why did George Orwell call his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four? by David A. Green”. Jackofkent.blogspot.com. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
  13. ^ The Iron Heel#Influences and effects
  14. ^ Nineteen Eighty-four, ISBN 978-0-141-18776-1; p. xxvii (Penguin)
  15. ^ Brave New World#Comparisons with George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
  16. ^ Marcus, Laura; Peter Nicholls (2005). The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century English Literature. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-82077-4. p. 226: “Brave New World [is] traditionally bracketed with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four as a dystopia…”
  17. ^ “Full List — All Time 100 Novels”. Time Inc.. Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
  18. ^ “Freedom and Happiness” (a review of We by Yevgeny Zamyatin) by Orwell, Tribune, 4 January 1946.
  19. ^ “1984 thoughtcrime? Does it matter that George Orwell pinched the plot?”, Paul Owen, The Guardian, 8 June 2009.
  20. ^ Hirtle, Peter B.. “Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States”. Retrieved 25 March 2010. As a work published 1923–63 with renewed notice and copyright, it remains protected for 95 years from its publication date
  21. ^ Canadian protection comprises the author’s life and 50 years from the end of the calendar year of his or her death.
  22. ^ Russian law stipulates likewise
  23. ^ South African copyright law protects literary works for the author’s life plus fifty years; see the Copyright Act, No. 98 of 1978, as amended.
  24. ^ Australian law stipulates life plus 70 years, since 2005. The law is not retroactive, and excludes works published in the lifetime of the an author who died in 1956 or earlier
  25. ^ Pogue, David (17 July 2009). “Some E-Books Are More Equal Than Others”. The New York Times. Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
  26. ^ Stone, Brad (18 July 2009). “Amazon Erases Orwell Books From Kindle”. The New York Times: p. B1.
  27. ^ Fried, Ina (17 July 2009). “Amazon says it won’t repeat Kindle book recall”. CNET.com (CBS Interactive). Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
  28. ^ Part I, Ch. 1.
  29. ^ Part I, Ch. 3.
  30. ^ “striking thirteen” (1:00 pm). In Nineteen Eighty-Four, the 24-hour clock is modern, the 12-hour clock is old-fashioned, Part I, Ch. 8.
  31. ^ “Under the spreading chestnut tree”. .online-literature.com. Retrieved 8 June 2011.
  32. ^ Anne Gilchrist said itis “a version of an old English tune called ‘Go no more a-rushing’, which was arranged for virginals by William Byrd and Giles Farnaby — by the latter under the title of ‘Tell mee, Daphne’ … So ‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree’ is really an Old English — perhaps originally a dance — tune, preserved traditionally and lately modernized.”
  33. ^ Anne G. Gilchrist, “‘Under the Spreading Chestnut Tree’: The Adventures of a Tune.” The Musical Times, Vol. 81 (Mar. 1940), pp. 112-113.
  34. ^ a b Part II, Ch. 9
  35. ^ Reed, Kit (1985). “Barron’s Booknotes-1984 by George Orwell”. Barron’s Educational Series. Retrieved 2 July 2009.
  36. ^ “George Orwell: “Notes on Nationalism”". Resort.com. May 1945. Archived from the original on 25 March 2010. Retrieved 25 March 2010.
  37. ^ “George Orwell – James Burnham and the Managerial Revolution – Essay”. George-orwell.org. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
  38. ^ “Ethnolinguistics”. Mnsu.edu. Retrieved 22 February 2010.[dead link]
  39. ^ Margaret Atwood: “Orwell and me”. The Guardian 16 June 2003
  40. ^ Benstead, James (26 June 2005). “Hope Begins in the Dark: Re-reading Nineteen Eighty-Four“.
  41. ^ Thomas Pynchon: Foreword to the Centennial Edition to Nineteen eighty-four, pp. vii–xxvi. New York: Plume, 2003. In shortened form published also as The Road to 1984 in The Guardian (Analysis)
  42. ^ Tzouliadis, Tim (2008). The Forsaken. New York: Penguin Press. pp. 48–49. ISBN 978-I-59420-168-4.
  43. ^ Vertov, Dziga (1985). Kino-Eye: The Writings of Dziga Vertov. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0520056305.
  44. ^ Senyonovna, Eugenia (1967). Journey into the Whirlwind. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc.
  45. ^ http://www.imdb.com/title=GULAG/tt0089240/
  46. ^ a b Fitzpatrick, Sheila (1999). Everyday Stalinsm. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-505001-0.
  47. ^ “Go No More a-Rushing (Riddle Song)”. Sniff.numachi.com. Retrieved 2012-01-02.
  48. ^ “Newseum: The Commissar Vanishes”. Retrieved 19 July 2008.
  49. ^ King, David (1997). The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art in Stalin’s Russia. Metropolitan / Holt. ISBN 0805052941.
  50. ^ Schacter, Daniel L. & Scarry, Elaine (editors) (2001). Memory, Brain, and Belief (Mind/Brain/Behavior Initiative). Cambridge, Massachusets: Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0674007192.
  51. ^ Stalin, Joseph (1944). On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. Moscow: Foreign Languages Press.
  52. ^ “Order of the Day, No. 130, May 1st, 1942″. Retrieved December 14, 2011.
  53. ^ Stalin, Joseph (1970). On the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union. FOREIGN LANGUAGE PRESS – PEKING.
  54. ^ “London Letter to Partisan Review, December 1944, quoted from vol. 3 of the Penguin edition of the Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters.
  55. ^ “George Orwell: Why I Write”. Resort.com. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
  56. ^ Shelden, Michael (1991). Orwell — The Authorized Biography. New York: HarperCollins. ISBN 0060921617.; pp 430–434
  57. ^ John A. Hobson, 1920: Dips into the Near Future
  58. ^ George Orwell, “Review”, Tribune, 4 January 1946.
    paraphrasing Rayner Heppenstall, he reportedly said “that he was taking it as the model for his next novel”. Bowker, p. 340.
  59. ^ “The real room 101″. BBC. Retrieved 9 December 2006.
    Meyers (2000), p. 214.
  60. ^ Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds). The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell, Volume 2: “My Country Right or Left” (1940-43; Penguin)
  61. ^ Ralph Keyes (2009). I Love It When You Talk Retro. St Martins. p. 222.
  62. ^ “Justice Breyer warns of Orwellian government”. The Hill. 8 November 2011. Retrieved 9 November 2011.
  63. ^ Recovered from Library of Congress in 2010 PDF
  64. ^ “Literatura Prospectiva. Mundo Espejo. ”Fahrenheit 56K”. Fernando de Querol Alcaraz”. Literaturaprospectiva.com. 21 October 2009. Retrieved 4 July 2011.
  65. ^ Knodel, Lisa (27 February 2004). “[Compact Disks]“. Dayton Daily News.
  66. ^ Clive James, essay ‘The All Of Orwell’ in Even as We Speak.

[edit] References

  • Aubrey, Crispin & Chilton, Paul (Eds). (1983). Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1984: Autonomy, Control & Communication. London: Comedia. ISBN 0-906890-42-X.
  • Bowker, Gordon (2003). Inside George Orwell: A Biography. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 031223841X.
  • Hillegas, Mark R. (1967). The Future As Nightmare: H.G. Wells and the Anti-Utopians. Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-0676-X
  • Howe, Irving (Ed.). (1983). 1984 Revisited: Totalitarianism In Our Century. New York: Harper Row. ISBN 0-06-080660-5.
  • Meyers, Jeffery. Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation. W.W.Norton. 2000. ISBN 0-393-32263-7
  • Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel. London: Secker & Warburg.
  • Orwell, George (1984). Davison, Peter. ed (Hardcover). Nineteen Eighty-Four: The Facsimile Manuscript. London, United Kingdom: Secker and Warburg. ISBN 0-436-35022-X.
  • Orwell, George (1949). Nineteen Eighty-Four. A novel. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co.
  • Orwell, George (1977 (reissue)). 1984. Erich Fromm (Foreword). Signet Classics. ISBN 0451524934.
  • Orwell, George (2003 (Centennial edition)). Nineteen Eighty-Four. Thomas Pynchon (Foreword); Erich Fromm (Afterword). Plume. ISBN 0452284236.
Afterword by Erich Fromm (1961)., pp. 324–337.
Orwell’s text has a “Selected Bibliography”, pp. 338–9; the foreword and the afterword each contain further references.
The Plume edition is an authorised reprint of a hardcover edition published by Harcourt, Inc.
The Plume edition is also published in a Signet edition. The copyright page says this, but the Signet ed. does not have the Pynchon forward.
Copyright is explicitly extended to digital and any other means.

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N.Y. / Region

Bloomberg Defends Police’s Monitoring of Muslim Students on Web

By and KATE TAYLOR
Published: February 21, 2012
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg on Tuesday defended the New York Police Department’s monitoring of the Web sites of Muslim student groups at more than a dozen universities across the Northeast, framing the effort as one way to guard against the threat of terrorism.
David Duprey/Associated Press
An internal New York Police Department report highlighted events involving Muslim students at the University at Buffalo.
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“The Police Department goes where there are allegations, and they look to see whether those allegations are true,” Mr. Bloomberg said at an appearance at the Brooklyn Public Library. “That’s what you would expect them to do. That’s what you would want them to.”
The mayor’s support of the department’s intelligence-gathering came as officials at several universities expressed deep concern over what they called a manner of police activity that they had been in the dark about for years.
Yale University’s president, Richard C. Levin, said in an e-mail on Sunday to students and faculty and staff members, “I am writing to state, in the strongest possible terms, that police surveillance based on religion, nationality or peacefully expressed political opinion is antithetical to the values of Yale, the academic community and the United States.”
Dr. Levin added: “The Yale Muslim Students Association has been an important source of support for Yale students during a period when Muslims and Islam itself have too often been the target of thoughtless stereotyping, misplaced fear and bigotry.”
According to an internal Police Department report from Nov. 22, 2006, an officer from the Cyber Intelligence Unit had the “daily routine” of monitoring the Web sites, blogs and forums of Muslim student groups at 16 universities, including several in New York City and across the state, as well as Ivy League colleges. The report was first disclosed in an article by The Associated Press on Saturday that described various police efforts to monitor Muslim students.
The report, labeled “Weekly MSA Report,” catalogs six events in 2006 at three universities and includes the names of lecturers and, in one case, of a University at Buffalo student who posted a message about one event. It highlights, for instance, that Muslim students at Buffalo that week publicized an event featuring Muslim scholars from abroad. It details how Muslim students at New York University offered religious instruction for new converts, and it says that at Rutgers a prayer day was announced online.
Thirteen other Muslim student associations — including the one at Yale and another at the University of Pennsylvania — did not post any plans online that caught the attention of the Police Department during that week in 2006. But the report is notable for what it does not say: It remains unclear if anyone from the department attended the events or if the information led to further inquiries by the police. The report, stamped “N.Y.P.D. Secret,” indicates it was specifically prepared for Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly.
Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman, has pointed out that the information in the report came from “open sources” on the Internet. On Tuesday, the mayor echoed that notion in responding to criticism from Yale.
“If going on Web sites and looking for information is not what Yale stands for,” Mr. Bloomberg said, “I don’t know.”
The mayor also repeated assertions by the police that several convicted terrorists had been involved in Muslim student associations.
“Of course, we’re going to look at anything that’s publicly available, in the public domain,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We have an obligation to do so, and it is to protect the very things that let Yale survive.”
Mr. Browne said the Police Department “assembled reports,” in 2006 and 2007, on Muslim student associations’ activity from whatever information it could glean in the public domain.
“Some of the most dangerous Western Al Qaeda-linked/inspired terrorists since 9/11 were radicalized and/or recruited at universities in MSAs,” Mr. Browne said via e-mail. “We were focused on radicalization and/or recruitment, specifically by groups like Al Muhajiroun, Islamic Thinkers Society, Revolution Muslim and others.”
But Mr. Browne and a spokesman for the mayor did not answer repeated questions about whether such efforts were continuing. The A.P., in its article Saturday, reported that in April 2008 an undercover officer accompanied Muslim students from the City College of New York on a white-water rafting trip in upstate New York and listed the attendees’ names in a report. Mr. Bloomberg said he had “no idea” about such a trip.
A spokesman for the City College of New York said that he could not verify that the rafting trip had occurred, but that the college did not “accept or condone any investigation of any student organization based on the political or religious content of its ideas, just as we would not accept or condone any student organization that does not abide by the law.
“Absent specific evidence linking a member of the City College community to criminal activity, we do not condone this kind of investigation.”
Last week, Robert Hornsby, a spokesman for Columbia University, said he was unaware of any police monitoring of students, but added, “We would obviously be concerned about anything that could chill our essential values of academic freedom or intrude on student privacy.”
John Beckman, a spokesman for New York University, said, “N.Y.U. stands in fellowship with its Muslim students in expressing our community’s concerns over these activities.”
And John DellaContrada, a spokesman for Buffalo, said that the university “would not voluntarily cooperate” if asked by the police to aid in surveillance.
William K. Rashbaum contributed reporting.
A version of this article appeared in print on February 22, 2012, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Mayor Defends Monitoring Of Muslim Students on Web.
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