Anti-Islam Discourse in the United States in the Decade after 9/11: The Role of Social Conservatives and Cultural Politics

Abstract

In September, 2014, Charisma Magazine--which describes itself as trusted source of news, teaching and inspiration to help spread the gospel of Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit and which has been a central identifying institution within Christian conservatism in the United States since 1975--posted on its CharismaNews section an opinion piece titled Why Am Absolutely Islamaphobic [sic], by Gary Cass. (1) urged that all Muslim-Americans either should be deported--using the acronym D.A.M.N. or Deport All Muslims Now--or should be forced to undergo sterilization. Charisma's author exhorted Christians to a modern-day Crusade, to trust in God, then obtain gun(s). After considerable backlash from subscribers and readers, Charisma removed the post on September 7, 2014, but never printed a retraction or apology. This example of anti-Muslim, anti-Islam discourse is recent; it represents a segment of conservative discourse today. Clearly, the first speechact about Muslims and by a leading U.S. religious conservative was of an entirely different character. Within a week of the attacks on September xi, 2001, President George W. Bush--a professed born-again Christian, who flanked himself with Muslim leaders at the Islamic Center of Washington--officially framed a distinction between terrorism and Islam. face of terror is not the true faith of Islam, the president said; Islam is peace. (2) But, that early and official act of moral leadership would meet stiff resistance by a segment of the religious conservative establishment. Bush-family friend, the prominent evangelical leader Franklin Graham, for example, immediately pushed back: I believe it is a very evil and wicked religion, he said. (3) Other evangelical leaders expressed similar opposition to the official White House identity of Islam. Jerry Falwell, for example, in a prominent interview on 60 Minutes, said I think Mohammed was a terrorist, adding, He was a violent man, a man of war. (4) By the mid-point of the post-9/11 decade, this securitization of among U.S. conservatives was in full expansion in social media and the blogosphere and in the organization of grassroots organizations. Conservative Catholic deacon Robert Spencer, for example, was positioned as director of the newly created blog, Jihad Watch--a project of the well-known conservative culture warrior, David Horowitz. Jihad Watch's sole function was to oppose the more progressive correct narrative regarding with a distinctly politically incorrect or counternarrative. Conservative grassroots organizations also emerged expressly to counter the more progressive Islam is peace narrative. One such organization, ACT! for America, would eventually become larger than even the American Israel Political Affairs Committee. The organization's founder, Brigitte Gabriel, was a naturalized U.S. Evangelical with Lebanese Maronite roots, who had been affiliated with Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN). Speaking at the unofficial Intelligence Summit in Washington, DC, on February 19,2006, Gabriel said, America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy, Islam, (5) and elsewhere characterized Every practicing Muslim, as radical Muslim. (6) In the area of religious fiction, popular conservative Christian novelists advanced a blend of the counternarrative and apocalypticism. Joel Richardson found a sustained niche audience that helped him attain bestselling status with books such as Antichrist: Islam's Awaited Messiah (Wine Press Publishing, 2006), The Islamic Antichrist: The Shocking Truth about the Nature of the Beast (WND Books, 2009), and--once more--the Mideast Beast: The Case for an Islamic Antichrist (WND Books, 2012). In about 2009, this popular discourse about the danger of took a much more irrational turn. In what we might call the Green Scare--following this historical-colored convention of the Red Scare and Yellow Peril over perceived threats from the East--a more conspiratorial and paranoid threat narrative emerged. …