Pam Gellers view of civilizational clash with Islam finds a home in the GOP by Alex Kane on September 27, 2012 15 28Facebook 14Twitter 1StumbleUpon 0Reddit 0Google Israel Jihad
Pamela Gellers racist, right-wing Zionist ads have been denounced across the board, including by the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Council on American Islamic Relations and Jewish Voice for Peace. But one place where Gellers message of civilizational clash and conflict with Islam has a home in is the base of the Republican Party.
A new poll shows that the views Geller and the rest of the Islamophobia network in the U.S. push have currency among 64% of Republicans. The Guardian gets a sneak peek at a YouGov poll showing that an overwhelming majority of Republican voters in the United States regard the west and Islam as being embroiled in a fundamental conflict which only one side can win.
Gellers ads are of this nature, promoting a view that the West (with Israel as the front line) and Islam are thoroughly incompatible and at war with one another. Its a common trope on the Islamophobic right, as well as a common trope on the radical Islamist side of the equation. Its not true of course; Muslims make vital contributions to and are part and parcel of many Western societies. But the truth does not matter to these folks.
Gellers ads seek to cast the Israel/Palestine conflict in these civilizational terms, instead of acknowledging that fundamental political problems--the dispossession of Palestinians being the core one--are at the heart of why Israelis and Palestinians arent living in peace.
This message that is now widespread among Republican voters is a recipe for never-ending conflict.
More from The Guardian:
American opinion is beset by a sharp partisan divide. By a near three-to-one margin, of 64% to 23%, Republicans perceive a fundamental conflict [between the West and Islam]. The overall picture of American tolerance emerges only because Democratic identifiers incline even more emphatically towards the hope of peaceful co-existence, by a 68%-18% margin. The partisan gap in support for the "conflict" view is therefore 46 percentage points. Among independents, the split is right down the middle with 45% believing peace should be possible, and 44% ruling it out.
No wonder that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, desperate to get their base to turn out in November, have had no qualms about courting the anti-Muslim vote. Ryan, for instance, recently appeared at the Values Voter Summit in Washington, D.C., a main event for the evangelical Christian right. Romney made an appearance by video.
But as Zaid Jilani reported for AlterNet, anti-Muslim sentiment coursed through the conference. One speaker was Jerry Boykin, an inflammatory former general who has said that there should be no mosques in America and that Islam should not be protected under the First Amendment. Boykin called for a military strike on Iran at the conference. And Romney met with Boykin in August.
Another speaker at the conference that Ryan appeared at was Nonie Darwish, an "ex-Muslim" and Islamophobic activist. Jilani reported that Darwish told the summit that "Islam's number one enemy is the truth, that's the truth! America's number one virtue is the truth..."Islam is rotten to the core." About Alex Kane Alex Kane is a staff reporter for Mondoweiss. Follow him on Twitter @alexbkane. View all posts by Alex Kane → Posted in Israel/Palestine, Middle East, US Politics, War on Terror