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The Arab menace
The Progressive, August 1995

From U.S. History in Context
For years, I heard my relatives complain about the suspicious questions and endless searches they
must endure when they travel. In the summer of 1991, I experienced the humiliation firsthand. While
returning from a trip to Paris, I was stopped even before I reached the check-in counter. After asking
some routine questions, an airline security guard examined my Lebanese passport and green card. He
noticed a visa stamp from Alia International Airport in Jordan.
"What were you doing in Jordan in 1985?" he asked.
I told him that I was, as the visa indicated, in transit-changing planes to get from Beirut to New York. I
should also have pointed out that I was only nine years old at the time. He then asked me to wait,
while he "cleared" my travel papers. That was when I noticed how quickly everyone else was getting
through security. They were simply asked the routine questions. No one was skimming through their
passports, nor was it necessary to "clear" their papers. After my travel documents were approved, my
luggage was checked by X-ray. Then. unlike everyone else's. it was thoroughly examined again, by
hand.
This scenario is all too common. And lately, things have grown worse.
Two years ago, the day after Mohammed Salameh was arrested for the World Trade Center bombing,
I was assigned to interview people at the mosque he attended in Jersey City, New Jersey. It was a
troubling scene. Outside the mosque, people leaving the Friday prayer sessions were besieged by
reporters and television cameras.
Out of anger and frustration, many refused to speak. The few that did talked of being victimized and
stereotyped. But the media people didn't pay much attention. Neither did the men who passed by the
mosque that afternoon in trucks, shouting: "They should kill them all," and, "Why don't you go back
where you came from?"
A few days later, the New York Daily News ran a front-page photo of Salameh - a bearded Palestinian-
under a headline that screamed FACE OF HATE. In the following weeks, the mosque was repeatedly
vandalized. During the bombing trial, newspaper and television stories often described the defendants
as Muslim "fundamentalists." extremists," and "militants."
Few in the media described Paul Hill, the anti-abortion activist convicted last year of killing a doctor in
Florida, as a militant Christian fundamentalist." And the press did not besiege Hill's church, even
though it could be argued that, like the Trade Center bombers, he was motivated by radical religious
beliefs.
The same double standard, and the old Arab stereotypes, reemerged in the wake of the Oklahoma
City blast.
Two days after the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, the New York Post published an
editorial cartoon showing the Statue of Liberty under siege. In the statue's shadow stood three
turbaned, bearded men-smiling and waving, as one held a bomb and the others burned an American
flag.
The cartoonist modified Emma Lazarus's famous poem to read: "Give us your tired, your poor, your
huddled masses, your terrorists, your slime, your evil cowards, your religious fanatics . . . "
A Post editorial made this sweeping accusation: "Knowing that the car bomb indicates Middle Eastern
terrorists at work, it's safe to assume that their goal is to promote fear.... In due course, we'll learn
which particular faction the terrorists identified with - Hamas? Hezbollah? The Islamic Jihad? - and
whether or not the perpetrators leveled specific demands."
Car bombings, of course, are not the exclusive domain of Middle East terrorist groups. The Irish
Republican Army has used car bombs extensively in Northern Ireland and England; so have Basque
separatists in Spain.
Why do some in the media want to promote a singular and dehumanizing view of Islam? I think the
answer lies in the same Post editorial, which went on to say that the bombing "underscores a new
reality: international terrorism has replaced the Soviet Union as the central threat to American
security." The only terrorists mentioned are Muslim groups. So in other words, Islam is the new Red
Menace.
Unfortunately, the Post was not the only media outlet that tried to promote anti-muslim hysteria. Within
hours of the bombing, members of the "terrorism industry" - the experts and organizations that shape
our view of terror-hit the airwaves and op-ed pages to pitch a Middle East link.
Steven Emerson, one of these "experts," even suggested that there may be some inherent cultural
trait behind the bombing. "This was done with the intent to inflict as many casualties as possible. That
is a Middle Eastern trait," he said on the CBS Evening News.
Daniel Pipes, editor of the Middle East Quarterly, told USA Today, "People have to understand that
this is just the beginning. The fundamentalists are on the upsurge, and they make it very clear that
they are targeting us."
Arab Americans can tell you about the dangerous consequences of this type of fearmongering. During
the Persian Gulf War, the American-arab Anti-Discrimination Committee reported a drastic increase in
hate crimes against Arab Americans nationwide. According to the ADC, while only five bias incidents
were reported for the first seven months of 1990, thirty-four such crimes were logged for the four
months immediately following the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in August. Fifty-eight hate crimes were
reported in January 1991 alone, most of them after the war broke out. An Arab restaurant was burned
down in Detroit and a bomb was found in a mosque in San Diego.
The stereotypes perpetuated by the media also have more subtle effects than outright violence. They
shape a social climate in which all Arabs and Muslims are treated as potential terrorists. The
suspicions and harassment will persist as long as the media respond to tragedies like Oklahoma City
by drawing caricatures of bomb-throwing Arabs.
Mohammad Bazzi is a student at the City University of New York and a staff writer for New Youth
Connections, a magazine written by teenagers.
Abstract
Arabs have been victims of discrimination and targets of mistrust by Westerners, particularly those in
the US. The media is quick to blame Arabs for terrorist attacks before the facts surface, such as in the
Oklahoma City bombing.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1995 The Progressive, Inc.
Source Citation
Bazzi, Mohamad. "The Arab menace." The Progressive, Aug. 1995, p. 40. U.S.
History in Context, link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A17367820/UHIC?u=sain62671&
xid=44ae5f27. Accessed 25 May 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A17367820

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The Arab menace

The Progressive, August 1995

"What were you doing in Jordan in 1985?" he asked.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 1995 The Progressive, Inc.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A17367820

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