Fars: 'Bush Administration Responsible for Islamophobic Discourses Becoming Acceptable'.

Fars: 'Bush Administration Responsible for Islamophobic Discourses Becoming Acceptable'. (Fars).

Islamophobia is on the rise in the West, and certain governments have built their foreign policy towards the Islamic nations upon propagating an imaginary fear of Muslims as the perceived culprits behind several problems our world is facing today.

A prominent US-based scholar who has investigated and studied Islamophobia in an extensive book believes that it’s the racist nature of the American society that permits Islamophobia to grow and turn into a point of confrontation between the Muslim community and the government.

“Islamophobia in the US is very different from Islamophobia in Europe, for example. This is because the United States is built on a racial and class hierarchy. It is fundamentally a racist country because it measures all things through race and class,” said Prof. Stephen Sheehi in an exclusive interview with Fars News Agency.

Prof. Sheehi has written an entire book about the concern of Islamophobia and termed it an “ideological campaign against the Muslims.”

He believes that the September 11, 2001 attacks and the US government’s response to it fanned the flames of anti-Muslim discrimination: “9/11 really allowed actors and ideologues within the United States to mainstream Islamophobia not only as a cultural discourse but a political discourse that would require proactive American militarism.”

“In this regard, the Bush administration really is responsible for allowing Islamophobic discourses to become natural and acceptable, the new base line upon which all foreign and domestic policy is made,” he added.

Prof. Stephen Sheehi is the Sultan Qaboos bin Said Associate Professor of Middle East Studies and Associate Professor of Arabic Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Program of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the College of William and Mary. He is the author of two books, namely “Islamophobia: The Ideological Campaign Against Muslims” and “Foundations of Modern Arab Identity.”

His writings have appeared on several anthologies, encyclopedias and scholarly journals including Third Text, International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, The British Journal of Middle East Studies, Discourse, The Journal of Arabic Literature, Critique, Jouvert, The Journal of Comparative South Asian, African, Middle Eastern Studies and Encyclopedia of Islam.

Prof. Sheehi took part in an interview with FNA and talked about his viewpoints on the growth of Islamophobia in the United States and Europe.

Q: Do you think that the US government has structural plans to promote Islamophobia and portray Muslims as the culprits responsible for the growth of terrorism across the world? The sitting US President has a Muslim background. Does his worldview or his approach towards Islam differ from the extremist dogma of his predecessor and the circle of neo-conservatives in his administration, whose ideology was hinged on the assumption that “whether you’re with us or with the terrorists?”

A: I partially answered this in the above question. I think that Obama is smart. I also see a change in the mainstream American public. At this point, a group like ISIS is so hideous that it has galvanized everyone. The hardcore Right will always be racist and always be Islamophobic. I think that there is a change in the mainstream where explicitly racist, Islamophobic speech and hate acts are becoming clearly unacceptable even to Main Street – white - America. So the “with or against us” language is kind of past. A new pragmatism has set in. That is why the Obama administration has fought hard and put a lot of political capital, for example, into a “nuclear” agreement with Iran. The problem is that, even though Obama is more judicious in his language and his use of military force, does this change the United States’ hegemony in the Middle East and globally? ISIS is the biggest threat to the Muslim world. Will the United States be willing to acknowledge the Hezbollah, with Iranian assistance, is the only military group that has effectively stopped ISIS? Will they admit that it is Iran’s backing of the Iraqi military that has led Iraqi forces to finally start to take back territory from ISIS? Will the United States deal with genuine political Islam to counteract the real-fascism of takfiri ISIS? I don’t think they will. So while Obama’s discourse is explicitly less Islamophobic, his policies still refuse to consider the range of solutions that are necessary to make the Middle East and the world a better place.   Hmmmm.....They're so close to Obama that now they even use his favorite excuse...'Blame Bush'.Read the full 'Fairy tale' story here.