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<h2><strong>Why African Americans Should Stand with Muslims and
Arabs</strong></h2>
<h3><strong>by BAR editor and columnist Ajamu Baraka</strong></h3>
<p>12/16/2015<br>
<b><small><small><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://blackagendareport.com/node/4859">http://blackagendareport.com/node/4859</a></small></small></b><br>
</p>
<p>“<em><strong>The lack of concern for the human rights of Arabs
and Muslims reflects the fact that their lives, like the lives
of black people, don’t really matter.”</strong></em></p>
<p>It’s been a sad and pathetic spectacle: Muslim and Arab
spokespersons summoned to examination by a new Christian
inquisition. This time, however, the grand inquisitors are the
members of the corporate media who force the beleaguered
spokespersons to defend their communities while simultaneously
proclaiming their loyalty to the idea of “America.”</p>
<p>The inquisitors questioned them with authentic incredulousness on
their effort to stem the radicalization of members of their
communities and <u><a
href="http://www.amazon.com/Muslims-Are-Coming-Islamophobia-Extremism-ebook/dp/B00EGMBJZI/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">lecture
them</a></u> on the need for their communities to be even more
obsequious, even as their communities face escalating violence and
police state intimidation. The obvious contradiction between the
supposed American values of tolerance, freedom of religion,
individual rights and non-discrimination and the demand that the
spokespersons surrender those rights in order to prove loyalty is
lost on the inquisitors and the audience who have come to expect
members of minority communities to perform humiliating rituals for
the psychological comfort of the majority.</p>
<p>The consequences of Islamophobia and anti-Arab sentiments have
been dramatic, infecting the whole culture and all sectors of the
population.</p>
<p>Even in the African American communities anti-Muslim sentiments
are increasingly voiced, which is particularly interesting because
until recently African Americans made up the largest and oldest
Muslim population in the country. There are comments about the
“A-rabs” and Muslims exploiting black people and some have even
gone so far as to give support to the social discrimination and
governmental monitoring of Muslims by state authorities.</p>
<p>“<em><strong>The de-valuation of Arab and Muslim lives has been
an operative principle of U.S. policies in the Middle-East
since it became the hegemonic power in the region.”</strong></em></p>
<p>Individuals who hold those views don’t quite understand that
calls for more monitoring, control and curtailment of the rights
of Muslims on the part of the state is no more than the
“niggerization” of these communities. What this means is that, if
accepted and normalized, it only increases the certainty that
repression in black communities will continue to intensify as we
are also increasingly identified as a “radicalized” internal
enemy.</p>
<p>When Muslims and Arabs are de-humanized and reduced to a
distorted figment of the national imagery, Guantanamo gulags,
drone strikes, torture, mass surveillance, social exclusion and
national destruction by the military apparatus and national
security state are the appropriate and even expected responses
demanded by the public to the Muslim “threat.”</p>
<p>That is why the hypocrisy of political leaders in the U.S. is so
galling. The de-valuation of Arab and Muslim lives has been an
operative principle of U.S. policies in the Middle-East since it
became the hegemonic power in the region.<strong> </strong></p>
<p>There is not much space between Hillary Clinton’s joke about the
murder of Muammar Gaddafy – “We came, we saw, he died” – which of
course took place during a murderous NATO assault on Libya that by
conservative estimates killed tens of thousands, and the positions
of various governors on the issue of Syrian refugees and even with
Donald Trump’s latest proposal to temporarily ban Muslim
immigration.</p>
<p>Yet we are supposed to believe that these leaders are now
outraged about Trump’s comments.</p>
<p>What African Americans must remember is that before the post-9/11
criminalization of Arab and Muslim communities, the playbook for
how to police and repress a captured community was written in our
communities.</p>
<p>“<em><strong>Calls for more monitoring, control and curtailment
of the rights of Muslims on the part of the state is no more
than the “niggerization” of these communities.”</strong></em></p>
<p>Before the registration of young Arab and Muslim students after
9/11, local police forces compiled massive biographical databases
of young African Americans as a means of monitoring so-called
gangs and controlling crime. Stop and Frisk, mass incarceration,
police executions, torture, governmental infiltration of our
organizations, raids, house to house searches, were perfected and
normalized in our communities.</p>
<p>The systematic state terrorism being carried out in Muslim
communities in France today under their state of emergency and the
criminalization, social ostracism, violence and official
discrimination directed at Muslims in the U.S. today will be most
certainly directed at black activists and our communities tomorrow
when the state and public opinion turns against the latest
expressions of black opposition popularly characterized as the
black lives matter movement.</p>
<p>That is the terrible reality that we know is coming our way. And
those of us who will maintain an unrelenting critique of this sick
society and the oppressive apparatus will be labeled as the
“radicalizers” of this black opposition.</p>
<p>What was once labeled as racist demagoguery in the short liberal
post-war period has now been rehabilitated and given a new
respectability in relationship to Muslims and Arabs. Since the
attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, individual Muslims have been
assaulted, mosques firebombed and threats sent to Muslim community
and civic organizations with almost no coverage from the corporate
press.</p>
<p>This lack of concern for the human rights of Arabs and Muslims
reflects the fact that their lives, like the lives of black
people, don’t really matter. Is there any other way to explain the
still overwhelming support for Israel and even the dismissal of
Bernie Sanders commitment to continue Obama’s drone terror program
even though it is clear that thousands of non-white innocents have
lost their lives as a result?</p>
<p>We must have no illusions.</p>
<p>“<em><strong>We should reach out to Arabs and Muslims in the U.S.
to share with them our experiences surviving racial
totalitarianism, so that we both can learn and survive
together.”</strong></em></p>
<p>The <u><a
href="http://www.greatissuesforum.org/pdfs/said_orientalism.pdf">“orientalist”</a></u>
construction of the Arab that occupies the consciousness of
Westerners as blood-thirsty, violent, irrational with a strange
sexist religion is just the flip side of the racist colonialist
coin in which global anti-blackness is on the other. Both
constructions make the Arab-Muslim and the black “killable.” And
when you are both black and Muslim, it is a deadly combination
that can end up in a situation that <u><a
href="http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2015/07/26/imam-luqman-abdullah-shooting-lawsuit/30619475/">Iman
Luqman Abdullah</a></u> faced in Detroit when he was murdered
by FBI agents.</p>
<p>Totalitarianism applied to specific peoples can exist side by
side with the current practices of liberal democracy especially
when the majority is unaware, silent or both. Like the
Palestinians who reached out to the resisters in Ferguson to
counsel them on how to deal with the Israeli trained police
forces, we can and should reach out to Arabs and Muslims in the
U.S. to share with them our experiences surviving racial
totalitarianism, so that we both can learn and survive together.</p>
<p>But collective self-interest is not the main motivation for why
African Americans should oppose the growing neo-fascist sentiments
and legislative policies directed at Arabs and Muslims.</p>
<p>Opposing efforts that expand the repressive power of the state
and undermine the fundamental human rights of individuals and
groups is consistent with our history and principles. This stance
represents the foundational principles of the black radical
tradition. Opposition to all forms of individual and collective
oppression is the mandatory call to action for this tradition and
serves as the basis for attempting to establish relations of
solidarity, even if that solidarity is not returned.</p>
<p>So in the face of the growing repression of this community, we
must stand with our Arab and Muslim brothers and sisters. We know
from our painful history that within the dark corners of the
imagination of the racist settler-colonialist, Muslims are today’s
Native “savages” and rebellious niggers that are both feared and
hated as an existential threat.</p>
<h5><em><strong>Ajamu Baraka is a human rights activist, organizer
and geo-political analyst. Baraka is an Associate Fellow at
the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) in Washington, D.C. and
editor and contributing columnist for the Black Agenda Report.
He is a contributor to “Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of
American Violence” (Counterpunch Books, 2014). He can be
reached at </strong></em><u><a
href="http://www.AjamuBaraka.com/"><em><strong><a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.AjamuBaraka.com">www.AjamuBaraka.com</a></strong></em></a></u></h5>
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