Demonizing Muslims: America's Worldwide Witch Hunt

The U.S. has launched a witch hunt "reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition" to "demonize" Muslims. "While President Obama may uphold freedom of religion, the U.S. inquisitorial social order has institutionalized patterns of discrimination, prejudice and xenophobia directed against Muslims," writes Professor Michel Chossudovsky of the Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal.

"Ethnic profiling applies to travel, the job market, access to education and societal services and more generally to social status and mobility," he writes in his new book, "Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War" (Global Research).

"What is now unfolding is a generalized processs of demonization of an entire population group. Muslims are... considered a potential threat to national security. The threat is said to be 'much closer to home', 'within your neighborhood'. In other words what is unfolding is an all-out witch-hunt reminiscent of the Spanish Inquisition," Chossudovsky writes.

"The arrests, trials and sentences of so-called 'homegrown terrorists' (from within America’s Muslim community) on trumped up charges sustain the legitimacy of the Homeland Security State and its inquisitorial legal and law enforcement apparatus," he asserts. Chossudovsky writes:

"The objective is to sustain the illusion that America is under attack and that Muslims across the land are complicit and supportive of 'Islamic terrorism'. The demonization of Muslims sustains a global military agenda. Under the American Inquisition, Washington has a self-proclaimed holy mandate to extirpate Islam and ‘spread democracy’ throughout the world."

Chossudovsky explains, "The 'Global War on Terror' (GWOT) requires going after the perceived terrorists using advanced weapons systems. It upholds a pre-emptive religious-like crusade against evil, which serves to obscure the real objectives of military action... Its ultimate objective, which is never mentioned in press reports, is territorial conquest and control over strategic resources."

"Supported by the Western media, a generalized atmosphere of racism and xenophobia directed against Muslims has unfolded, particularly in the US and Western Europe, which provides a fake legitimacy to the U.S. war agenda," Chossudovsky contends. "The latter is upheld as a 'Just War'. The 'Just War' theory serves to camouflage the nature of US. war plans, while providing a human face to the invaders."

Next Target: Iran

The objective of GWOT, Chossudovsky writes, "is to instill fear, rouse and harness citizens’ unbending support for the next stage of America’s ‘long war’, which consists in waging ‘humanitarian’ aerial attacks on the Islamic Republic of Iran, portrayed by the media as endorsing the terrorists... All terrorist attacks (planned or realized) are reported by the media as being perpetrated by Muslims."

"Muslims are demonized, casually identified with ‘Islamic terrorists,’ who are also described as constituting a nuclear threat,"Chossudovsky writes. "In turn, the terrorists are (allegedly) supported by Iran, an Islamic Republic which threatens the ‘civilized world’ with deadly nuclear weapons (which it does not possess). In contrast, America’s ‘humanitarian’ nuclear weapons will be ‘accurate, safe and reliable.’"

"Beyond the process of inquisitorial arrests and prosecution, an expedient extrajudicial assassination program sanctioned by the White House has been launched. This program, which outshines the Spanish Inquisition, allows U.S. special forces to kill citizens and suspected homegrown terrorists," he writes.

"Realities are twisted and turned upside down and Iran is being accused of wanting to start World War III. Inherent in U.S. military doctrine, the victims of war are often heralded as the aggressor."

This global killing machine is sustained by "an embedded cult of killing and destruction which pervades Hollywood movies, not to mention the prime-time war and crime TV series on network television. This cult of killing is endorsed by the CIA and the Pentagon which also support (finance) Hollywood productions as an instrument of war propaganda," Chossudovsky adds.

The Pentagon has unleashed a major propaganda and public relations campaign with a view to upholding the use of nuclear weapons for the 'defense of the American homeland'," Chossudovsky believes. He says it is "utterly twisted logic" that nuclear weapons are being presented as a means to building peace and preventing "collateral damage."

"The Pentagon has intimated, in this regard, that the ‘mini-nukes’ (with a yield of less than 5,000 tons) are harmless to civilians because the explosions 'take place under ground,'" he writes. Yet each of these ‘mini-nukes’, nonetheless, constitutes -- in terms of explosion and potential radioactive fallout -- between one-third and six times the force of the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima in 1945."

Calling it "The American Inquisition," he writes: "‘A war of religion’ is unfolding, with a view to justifying a global military crusade. In the inner consciousness of many Americans, the ‘holy crusade’ against Muslims is justified."

Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based publicist and former columnist for wire services.

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