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Extreme Islam Propaganda Art
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EXTREME ISLAM
Anti-American Propaganda
of Muslim Fundamentalism
Edited by Adam Parfrey
Published by Feral House
Review by Blag Dahlia
In the aftermath of 9/11 many well-meaning Americans began to ask the question- ‘Why do they hate us?’ Extreme Islam is a sampling of incendiary tracts- interviews, essays, cartoons and poems that attempt to answer that question. By turns terrifying and hilarious, infuriating and illuminating, it is well worth reading, if only to give the optimistic among us a chance to reconsider.
Taking a cue from his classic Apocalypse Culture, Parfrey here gives us bite-sized nuggets of hatred from Islamic extremists in dozens of countries and spanning the generations. Just as you might expect, previously critical attitudes toward the west appear to be deteriorating fast. Vintage boogiemen Moammar Khaddafy and Anwar Sadat’s views seem almost moderate compared to the more recent ‘Restrictions Imposed by the Taliban’ and bin Laden’s ‘God’s Order to Kill Americans Around the World.’
Yasser Arafat’s 1974 address to the United Nations is printed in its entirety, and it seems as potent now as when it was first delivered:
"For many years now, our people have been exposed to the ravages of war, destruction and dispersion. It has paid in the blood of its sons that which can never be compensated. It has borne the burdens of occupation, eviction and terror more uninterruptedly than any other people, and yet all of this has made our people neither vindictive nor vengeful, nor has it caused us to resort to the racism of our enemies."
Now that Arafat has been deemed irrelevant by an increasingly frustrated Israel and pilloried by powerful fundamentalist opposition at home one can only wonder if he is, in fact an impediment to peace in the region or its only hope for moderate leadership. Members of the popular radical group Hamas are on record within these pages as advocating both Arafat’s assassination and the unleashing of anthrax in the American water supply. Palestine however, is only one flashpoint of anti-Western sentiment and Extreme Islam contains many disturbing factoids from all over the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds.
Radical Algerians justify a 1998 massacre of 15 people including women and children. An Italian Islamic organization announces a lethal fatwa against the African-American Nation of Islam for preaching an unorthodox version of the religion. A Norwegian mercenary writes of his adventures on the Chechen front in Russia. Postage stamps from Niger, Iraq and Oman commemorating the intifada are interspersed with propaganda posters from Iran’s Islamic Revolution and apocalyptic poetry from displaced refugees. The United States and its allies, especially Israel, are vilified for cultural degeneracy, religious heresy and rapacious imperialism, not only in the official position papers of clerics and guerilla leaders, but also it seems, in the very fabric of current Islamic culture itself.
Sharing space with the musings of middle-eastern heads of state are also profiles of characters from the fringes of Islamic militancy. Sheik Abdalqadir, a self-hating Scottish Muslim describes white people thus-
"…these bloated, fat, pinkish, suited, frozen, impacted, opaque, dead creatures- the European and the American- there is really something so completely suffocating and stifling in their lack of transparency, so utterly geared to play and infantile projects."
Muslim clerics like Ali al-Husayni and Morteza Motah-Hary weigh in with the Qu’ran’s views on everything from chess and backgammon (it is not permissible to play them) to the right of a woman to expose the upper part of her feet to men outside of her immediate family (this is also not permissible.) Jalal Al-I Ahmad describes a condition called ‘Occidentosis’- a plague from the West. Even Leila Khaled, the chic 1960’s female hijacker from Tel Aviv is interviewed and remains unrepentant, if personally more interested in the destruction of Israel than in the greater glory of Islam.
Would that this rogues gallery of muddled doctrine and militant fervor were confined only to members of the Muslim faith we Americans could sit smugly back and pity our poor misguided enemies. But this is a Feral House publication and easy answers and pat heroes and villains just aren’t on the menu.
One chapter lists the depressingly ambitious efforts of the Israeli military to take over land owned by Palestinians in the disputed West Bank:
"8/1/01: The occupied Jerusalem Municipality confiscates more than 100 dunums of land in Jabel Al-Mukaber neighborhood.
8/2/01: A group of Jewish colonists seize a building located near Tel Al Rumeida neighborhood in Hebron District.
8/3/01: Occupied Jerusalem Municipality delivers demolishing orders to seven families in Shu’fat neighborhood. A group of Jewish colonists seize a plot of land lying in Al Baq’a Area near the #60 bypass Rd. that lead to Qiryat Arba colony.
8/4/01: In Nablus between Zawata and Ijnisinya villages Israeli forces burn more than 200 olive trees, preventing firemen from reaching the area."
And so on in numbing detail. Another chapter describes the horrors visited upon by Muslim Croats by Milosevic’s Serbian military:
"Serb torturers used iron bars to beat Muslims to death. They would not spare any part of the body…I saw Muslims forced to bite each others testicles off, their mouth filled with testicles and blood. Daily Serb torturers forced Muslim prisoners to sodomize each other, forcing those bestialities especially upon family members, between a father and son.
Omerska extermination camp had women prisoners as well. Daily Serb soldiers would take girls and bring prisoners to rape them. They were raped constantly, non-stop every day. They raped older women, Croats 60-65 years of age."
As you might expect, American fundamentalists also lurk on the fringes of this religious miasma. As Dr. John Walvoord of the Southwestern School of Bible in Dallas explains:
"God does not look on all of his children the same way. He sees us divided into categories, the Jews and the Gentiles. God has an earthly plan for the Jews and a second plan, a Heavenly plan for the born-again Christians. Muslims, Buddhists and those of other faiths, as well as those Christians who are not born again, do not concern him. As for destroying planet Earth, we can do nothing… Peace, for us, is not in God’s book."
Reading Extreme Islam is a hard go at times. One finds no magic bridge over the abyss that divides us from our ideological foes, just more difficult questions. ‘Why do they hate us?’ begs the question ‘Why do we hate them?’ Anyone looking for easy answers, or even clear lines between them and us, won’t find much solace in Extreme Islam, but as one of Muhammad’s companions said over a thousand years ago:
"The Prophet ordered us to read the following before going into battle, so we read it and we were safe."
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