Muslims Must Unite Against 'Fascist' Label

“The (Saudi) Kingdom is on its guard against those who throw the accusation of terrorism or fascism at Muslims without considering the glorious history of Islamic civilization that stands against the labels being hurled at Islam today, such as fascism, which itself is, primarily, a Western cultural product.” This is the Kingdom’s reply, which was published by local newspapers last Tuesday in response to portrayal of Islam as fascist by the American administration, after the foiled use of aircraft in a terrorist act.

President Bush used the expression “Islamo-fascism,” and American media has tried to switch around the phrase to read “fascist Islamists.” Since September 11, the American administration has focused on blaming everything on Islam, both as a religion and as an ideology, rather than a particular sect of Muslims … similarly in Britain, which while disingenuously toying with expressions such as “religious tolerance,” “mutual interest,” and “religious co-existence,” and so on, in reality it behaves completely opposite of this, agitating against Islam and coming to America’s defense by openly opposing Islam as a religion and an ideology, rather than simply taking action against Muslims who are terrorists …

From the very beginning, the [Saudi] Kingdom has striven to differentiate between Islam as a religion and the acts perpetrated by the impetuous, revolutionary anti-colonialism of some Muslims. The Kingdom believes it is its duty to correct the erroneous conceptions of Islam held by some Westerners and, in particular, the American administration, which has begun failing to differentiate between Islam and the behavior of certain Muslims. Rather, the American administration has proceeded to link the behavior of radical individuals or groups to the religion and the doctrine of Islam, and is now trying to market this idea to subject Islam and Muslims to global criticism, perpetual sanctions, and the big stick of the United States, the Atlantic alliance and U.N. resolutions.

The West still deals with Arabs and the Islamic world with the mindset of a colonizer with guardianship over Arab land … for if we conclude that America simply looks upon the [Arab or Persian] Gulf and Iraq as oil fields with abundant natural resources, then how to explain Washington’s attention to Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Somalia, and Sudan, for are these producers of petroleum or other strategic economic commodities? Unfortunately, the attitude of the Western colonizer toward the Arab world remains, and this is what drives U.S. behavior; this is what has motivated America and Britain into a headlong rush to the East …

I would not say that this is merely a religious war; in actuality, it is a colonial war and struggle, since it was Britain and France that divided up the Arabs like they were a piece of cheese after the two world wars into triangles and squares, states, pseudo-states and regions. But this division never appealed to America. Not satisfied by the European cheese-cutting of the Arab east and looking down at the Arab world from the gates of Israel and now from the gates of Iraq – and perhaps soon from Sudan and Somalia – America wants to enter the cheese kitchen by herself to redraw borders into new triangles and squares. It seeks a country overlooking the Mediterranean, a second on the Atlantic Ocean, a third on the boundaries of the Red Sea, a fourth state on the waters of the Gulf, and a fifth country, landlocked and desert-like, such that its waters are neither from a sea or river but only shallow salt lakes and winding dry river beds RealVideo [SEE MAP, left]. And to enable it to do its deed and cut up the cheese, the cake, and the pies, it is issuing a mighty attack against the Islamic religion and faith, by characterizing it as fascistic, terrorist and criminal, and the people that practice this religion as killers and criminals.

All Islamic peoples must awaken to action in partnership with the Kingdom to defeat the idea of “fascist Islam,” circulated politically and through the media by America … and when we say that Islamic peoples, governments and institutions must confront these declarations, we mean that these must oppose American attempts to make Islam out as the enemy of non-Muslims and mobilize countries against Islam and its children.