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Bill Clinton’s Islamophobia: A Black Muslim Response!

Bill Clinton’s Islamophobia: A Black Muslim Response!

Last updated on: July 31, 2016 at 5:28 pm by Hakeem Muhammad

Bill Clinton’s Islamophobia: A Black Muslim Response! 2016-07-31T17:28:34-05:00 Hakeem Muhammad

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Wikimage Commons

In the Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton declared, “If you’re a Muslim and love freedom and hate terror, stay here…” In light of this, as a black Muslim who loves freedom and hates terror, I am obligated to speak against Clinton himself for his complicity in the terror that continues to be inflicted upon black people through his passing of the notoriously racist 1994 crime bill that escalated the black incarceration rates and devastated entire generations of black families. Yet, instead of condemning such action, Clinton has continued to defend his very policies that inflicted such terror.

Clinton’s anti-black policies are not just a domestic matter, Clinton terrorized innocent black people in Sudan by orchestrating the bombing of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory based upon faulty and inconclusive intelligence that the pharmaceutical factory was producing chemical weapons. As a largely impoverished country (as a result of western neo-colonialism), the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory produced fifty-percent of medical supplies for the people of Sudan.

Al-Shifa(Ten years after) WikiImage Commons

Although, Clinton and his advisors had prior knowledge that the destruction of the Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory would deprive masses of the people of medical necessities, he preceded to do so anyways. Political scientist Noam Chomsky writes that,”the acts can be excused, then, only on the Hegelian assumption that Africans are “mere things,” whose lives have “no value.” In order words, Bill Clinton’s foreign policy decisions were based upon the premise that black lives don’t matter!

After Clinton’s bombing of the Al-Shifa factory, Tom Carnaffin, the technical manager of the factory, raised important questions that Clinton has yet to answer,” Now what will happen to the children who get diarrhoea, or malaria? They will just die–thousands of children will die...” In total, tens of thousands of people died throughout the Sudan due to a lack of medical supplies emanating from the destruction of Al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory. To this day, Clinton has not answered or atoned for his own terror against black people in Sudan while he stands on a high horse to paternalistically lecture Muslims about terrorism.

In fact, when it comes to anti-black terrorism, Clinton has actually allowed it to be celebrated during his tenure as governor of Arkansas. Amanda Girad notes in Black Lives Shattered: How the Clintons built their empire on white supremacy; Clinton signed a bill honoring the confederacy on the Arkansas flag. Considering the purpose of the confederacy was to defend the institution of slavery, as a Black Muslim how else should I interpret Clinton’s passage of this bill other than to conclude that he is an apologist for the anti-black terrorism so ubiquitous in the United States? To this very day, Arkansas celebrates Confederate Flag Day in honor of the forces that worked to maintain slavery in the United States.

In reality, Mr. Clinton, we need to start discussing the radical ideology of global political system of white supremacy that systematically radicalizes white politicians throughout the globe and encourages them to continuously militarily invade, economically exploit, and commit other tyrannical acts of violence against people of color.

As a descendant of European settlers who robbed this continent from the Native-Americans, it is only with the mentality of a slave master, that Clinton can tell Muslims such as me who are the descendants of slaves forcibly brought here that we must “Stay here” to “help us win”, if we love freedom and hate terror.

Clinton needs to address and condemn the despicable manner in which Muslims such as Omar Ibn Said, Bilal Muhammad, Abdurrahman Ibrahim Ibn Sori, and Ayuba Suileiman Diallo were forcibly brought to America against their will and terrorized on U.S soil.

Clinton: my love of freedom and hatred for terrorism propels me to be against your actions in the Sudan, your crime bill that terrorized black families, and your decision to honor the confederacy in Arkansas. My opposition to the fanatical extremist groups that prop up as a direct result of western foreign policy is based upon my black Muslim brother Lupe Fiasco’s belief that we must, “fight the terrorism that’s causing the other forms of terrorism.”

My belief in the Qu’ran as a divinely revealed scripture propels me to take actions against terrorism because it establishes a moral framework by which the taken of one innocent life is the moral equivalent of taking the life of all of humanity. This is unlike radical white American political theorists John Rawls and Michael Walzer, whose Supreme Exemption Emergency theory (which is mainstream in international relations) argues that within a just war there are in fact certain emergency scenarios in which “civilian casualties” are perfectly morally acceptable.

Critics of Supreme Exemption Emergency theory such as Anne Schwenbecher, Philosophy lecturer at Murdoch University have persuasively argued that it provides a justification for state-sanctioned terrorism against innocent civilians.

My belief in Prophet Muhammad, may the peace and blessings of Allah be upon him, a man who taught that it was morally impermissible for a human to burn an entire ant house based upon the action of one ant biting a human-being, propels me to be vehemently opposed the actions of terrorist organizations be they Westphalian nation-states or non-state actors in the “middle-east” (that have emerged from western foreign policy) who believe that indiscriminate violence is an acceptable response to political grievances.

In putting the sole responsibility “moderate Muslims” to weed out extremist interpretations of their faith, Clinton effectively obfuscates the complicity of their own government’s foreign policy in radicalization and prop up islamophobia by insinuating such extremist interpretation developed in isolation among Muslims and that now “freedom loving” and “terror hating” Muslims have the sole responsibility of combating it.

With Clinton’s hands saturated in the blood of innocent black people, he is in no moral position to speak to me about anti-terrorism advocacy. Clinton needs to first address, atone for, and cease the continued terror that both he and his government continued to inflict upon black people across the world.

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