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Edward Said in "The End of The Peace Process: Oslo and After":
"In 1991 the Washington Post leaked news of a continuing study in the US defense and intelligence establishment of the need to find a new common enemy: Islam was the candidate. Many of the authoritative foreign policy journals, seminars, newspapers of record have held symposia, published articles and studies proclaiming the threat of Islam.
The Fundamentalism Project of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has made Islam the preferred candidate for demon status in that study; neither Jewish nor Christian, not to mention Slavic or Hindu, fundamentalism gets much attention. By now the media equates Islam with terror and fundamentalism, so that no matter where a bomb goes off in the world, the first suspects are always Muslims and/or Arabs.
Every article published about Hamas of Islamic fundamentalism or Iran - about which it is now nearly impossible to speak rationally - describes an ahistorical world of pure despotism, pure rage, pure violence, all of it in some way targeting 'us', a group of innocent victims who happen to ride busses or go about some harmless daily business, as unconnected with the decades of suffering imposed on an entire people. There is never an indication at all that for centuires there has been one form or another of Western infringement directed against the land and peoples of Islam."
Take it for what it's worth in this discussion. Perhaps the topic of the demonization of Islam is best left for another thread. However, I couldn't help but remember Said's words when I read this thread.
SLM3
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