Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting

Making Islamophobia Mainstream

There are many varieties of Muslim-bashing on display in the media. One strain holds that Islam is inherently evil or violent--a "bloody, brutal type of religion," as televangelist Pat Robertson put it (700 Club, 4/28/06). Robert Spencer, who has authored two New York Times best sellers on Islam, puts a scholarly face on Islamophobia, arguing that (Emory Wheel, 2/21/07) "jihad as warfare against non-believers in order to institute 'Sharia' worldwide...is a constant element of mainstream Islamic theology."

Islamophobes like Sean Hannity dwell on "the silence of moderate Muslims," whom Hannity says (Hannity & Colmes, 7/13/07) are insufficiently "critical against those that would hijack their religion"-- placing a burden on Muslims to take responsibility for extremist fringe elements of their religion that is not likewise applied to Christians. Also exemplifying this form of Islamophobia is CNN Headline News host Glenn Beck, who said to Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress (Glenn Beck, 11/14/06), "Sir, prove to me that you are not working with our enemies," and on his syndicated radio show warned (Glenn Beck Program, 8/10/06):


Another category of Islamophobia finds militant Muslims lurking around every corner and paints them as an existential threat to the U.S. and its allies. The documentary Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West (2006), which has been a mainstay of David Horowitz's "Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week," (see the sidebar Islamofascism), describes "radical Islam" as a menace comparable to Adolf Hitler that, according to the film's website, "is threatening, with all the means at its disposal, to bow Western civilization under the yoke of its values." Meanwhile, Daniel Pipes has warned of an Islamic threat to America posed by Muslim groups ranging from the college campus-based Muslim Student Associations to secular groups like the Arab Anti-Defamation League (see Inter-Press Service, 2/24/05). Pipes suggests (Middle East Quarterly, 3/8/06) a stealth takeover by an ill-defined "Wahhabi lobby" is in the offing, arguing (IPS, 2/24/05) that "in the long term ... the legal activities of Islamists pose as much or even a greater set of challenges than the illegal ones."

The "war on terror" has bolstered a class of Islamophobic self-proclaimed "Islamic terrorism experts," such as NBC's terrorism analyst Steve Emerson, who notoriously proclaimed (CBS News, 4/19/95) that the bloodthirstiness of the Oklahoma City bombing was "a Middle Eastern trait."

Some strains of Muslim-bashing share a good deal in common with the racist pseudo-science of eugenics--most notably Mark Steyn's writings about the "demographic decline" manifest in Europe's growing Muslim population. Pipes struck a similar note with his warnings (National Review, 11/19/90) that "Western societies are unprepared for the massive immigration of brown-skinned peoples cooking strange foods and maintaining different standards of hygiene" and that "Muslim customs are more troublesome than most."

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