The Islam Expedient

C-Span's latest Q&A featured an interview with Frank Gaffney, well-spoken producer of the documentary "Islam vs. Islamists", which was recently scrapped by PBS for obscure reasons. The film is about moderate Muslims speaking out against "Islamic fascism", and Gaffney is protesting PBS' motives for not airing it.

In order to understand why PBS is blocking "Islam vs. Islamists" from hitting the airwaves, one must consider the political atmosphere the film feeds on.

History is full of examples of a government controlling the population - its most feared enemy - through astute psychological warfare based on exploiting racism as a diversion.

The U.S. government's very first political scapegoat was the black man. As if the Africans hadn't already endured enough in the tobacco fields, Mayors, Congressmen, and Governors in the Southern states went on to use them as a diversion, conforting the white man with his 'racial superiority' in the hopes that he wouldn't dwell on his own poverty.

In the post-WWII Soviet Union, Stalin used the same tactic to distract the people from their hardships. The propaganda was that the Jews were a nation within the nation, unassimilable and unworthy of holding any high place in society. The real message was, if you think your life is bad, look at these other people.

The complicit media machine understood from the beginning that if they were going to convince the American masses to support a war in Iraq, they would have to somehow justify it. Whenever a journalist uses the phrase "Islamic Fascism" or "Muslim Extremists", the public receives a subtle, secondary message, disguised as a mere "pointing out the fact": the people who are attacking U.S. soldiers are doing it not because they resent the Bush administration's Middle East policies, but because Islam told them to.

Putting aside the proganda, it's obvious that these terrorists would kill our soldiers even if they were Christians. Instead of quoting the Koran, they would quote one of the many violent passages from the Bible. Religion is completely irrelevant in the so-called war on terror. But it's used as a tool of opportunity by the media to distract people from the real problem: the corruption of the Bush Administration. If the media's thought patterns were correct, one would have to attribute the Manson murders to Christianity. Charles Manson told his followers that he was Jesus Christ. Then he ordered them to commit mass murder. But do we call these killers "Christian Extremists"?

Islam is merely a propaganda tool used by terrorists to recruit suicide bombers. If the predominant religion of the Middle East were Christianity, they would be using the Old Testament as a recruitment tool.

If Washington needs to spread racism to rally the people behind this war, so be it. It is willing and able to do so. And history repeats itself once again.

The "Islam vs. Islamists" documentary is based on the false premise that the Muslim-bashing propaganda is correct. The film shows interviews with moderate Muslims, doctors and stock brokers expressing outrage at the extremists who have sabotaged their religion. Their complaints are justified, of course. So why even have these interviews? The agenda is the continuation of the Bush/media racist message, cementing into the public mind the presupposed notion that "they hate us because we are infidels". One of the tools used in the film is the idea of a nation within a nationn, that the USSR used to brainwash its population against the Jews.

PBS is blocking the perpetuation of racist government propaganda on the public airwaves. This is not censorship. Freedom of speech is not an issue here. Taxpayer money should not be spent to spread Bush's deceptive racist message.

Our government's policy of fueling racism has had an unpredicted side effect. The fear of the Muslim Extremist has recently led to paranoia about our southern border. The Islamic Fascists might come in from Mexico and blow us up. So now the "Mexican Illegal", who up until 2001 was of no concern to anyone, is suddenly a threat. What kind of threat, we don't know.

I think this is the end of 99-cent hamburgers at McDonald's...

-Carmelo Modica