CS: Eyeless in Gaza

It is flashpoints like Palestine and Iraq which provide fodder for the widely held view in the West that equates Islam with terrorism. In this manner the circle goes on: reinforcing stereotypes in the West

Amir Ali Delhi

 The question of the perception of Islam and Muslims in the aftermath of the 9/11 incidents is one that is difficult to come to grips with. This article wants to take up two aspects: how they contribute to worsening the problem. The first is the crude representations of political Islam and terrorism in the western media. The second is the manner in which the US and other western governments approach issues like Palestine and Iraq. It is precisely the manner in which these difficult issues are created and handled that gives rise to the fanatical violence that the West finds so difficult to understand and which it attributes to the bloodthirsty nature of Islam as a religion. There has also been in the West a remarkable resurgence of interest in Islam, more particularly in political Islam and the question of terrorism.

A good indicator of the interest that has been generated in Islam is the way certain words have been incorporated into the English lexicon. Words like fatwa and jehad have freely found their way into the lexicon. Yet, ignorance regarding Islam remains rife. Perhaps an interesting way in which this ignorance can be gauged is by going back to the dictionary.

How many people in the West consulting a standard dictionary for words like fatwa and jehad would be told that the word Islam actually means 'peace' — in addition to submission to the will of God. How many would ever get to know that in 1948, around the time the state of Israel was being established with the efforts of terrorist groups like the Irgun Zvei Leumi, the Oxford English Dictionary, while defining terrorists, would cite as an example the Jews of Palestine.

At a time today when so much importance is given to condemning terrorism, it is interesting how a Zionist poet and playwright Ben Hecht would actually exhort the Jews in America to make a 'holiday in their hearts' whenever the terrorists of Palestine carried out yet another terrorist strike against the British. Those who most vociferously support Israel in its battle against the 'terrorism' of the Palestinians forget the spiral of terrorist violence which preceded the creation of Israel such as the attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem by the Irgun Zvei Leumi in July 1946; the killings of the villagers of Deir Yassein in April 1948; and the assassination of UN's Swedish mediator Count Folke Bernadotte in September 1948. These last examples would be a useful indicator of how far the discourse on terrorism has travelled to the extent that today terrorism is completely equated with the Palestinians who are resisting the military occupation by Israel.