Loading ...How Trump gets away with his 9/11 lies: The disturbing truth about Islamophobia in America
Anyone who has paid notice to the GOP primary over the past several weeks has no doubt heard Donald Trump make the following dubious claim: that, on September 11, 2001, he viewed television news footage of thousands of New Jersey Arabs cheering the attacks of the World Trade Center.
“There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations,” Trump told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos during an interview on Nov. 22. “They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down — as those buildings came down.”
To be clear, the claim has been thoroughly debunked. Even Ben Carson, who initially backed Trump’s false version of events, later said he may have actually been referring to an event somewhere else—perhaps, it seems, this footage of celebrations in East Jerusalem.
As Carson told Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on Nov. 23:
“Well, what we were talking about is the reaction of Muslims after the 9/11 attack and if they were in a celebratory mood. I was really focusing on that it was an inappropriate thing to do, no matter where they were. They asked me did I see the film. I did see the film. I don’t know where they were. But I did see a film of Muslims celebrating.”
“It’s important,” Kelly pointed out to Carson, “whether these are American Muslims in New Jersey versus folks over in Iran or the Middle East.” But, in reality, that’s the very distinction that doesn’t matter to Trump and Carson. The conflation of Arabs in East Jerusalem and New Jersey is an easy trick to pull off, because Americans often view Arabs and Muslims as an undifferentiated mass.
So it doesn’t really matter to Trump and his followers which Muslims were celebrating and where, just as the distinction between ISIS militants and the Muslims fleeing them is lost on anti-refugee agitators. Indeed, even the distinction between Arabs (an ethnic category) and Muslims (a religious one) is often not comprehended — except for when people like Jeb Bush suggest that Arab Christian refugees should be given priority over their Muslim neighbors.
As Louise Cainkar, a sociologist at Marquette University, explained in an email to Salon:
“Arabs and Muslims, often conflated, are usually portrayed by the mainstream U.S. media in collectivities, such as mobs, or groups of men praying. Rarely are they portrayed in the mainstream media as individuals, except when they are reviled individuals. This type of representation feeds and confirms the notion that all are alike, that all think alike, and that any one of them can be suspect.”
Take, for example, the harrowing scene below, in which two CNN anchors hector Yasser Louati, a spokesperson for the Collective Against Islamophobia in France, and demand that the country’s entire Muslim community take responsibility for the Paris attacks.
Source: www.salon.com