: Unlikely Allies Join Forces In Anti-Muslim Lovefest

With the way some groups are positioning themselves, you’d think the big post 9/11 question was, “You’re either for Islam or you’re against it.” Take Indian and Israeli interests, for example. For the past half-century since both countries were partitioned out of previous British control, India and Israel remained on opposite sides of the political spectrum. While Israel aligned itself with the US and Europe, India became a leader in the non-aligned movement and sided with the Palestinian cause in world forums. But the two unlikely allies – and their supporters in the US – are joining forces, the glue being mainly a common opposition to their Muslim neighbors. “We have been drawn together,” said US Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA) to a jubilant crowd of Indian and Jewish lobbyists in Washington, DC, “by our joint fight against mindless, vicious, fanatic Islamic terrorism.” Two of the latest successes of their joint lobbying efforts have been the approval of the sale of Israeli radar planes to India (which the US blocked when the recipient was China) and the defeat of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) last year. “When McKinney was bashing both our homelands, we just took our business connections and social connections and made them political,” said Harin J. Contractor, an Indian American student at the University of Georgia. “It was a great model to follow.” While political expediency is a reasonable explanation for this joining of forces, it doesn’t explain the stranger circumstances surrounding European neo-Nazi groups dropping (temporarily, it seems) their anti-Semetic feelings to ally themselves with extremist Jewish groups to form a string of 26 hate websites that target Europe’s growing Muslim population. “This is a new phenomenon,” said Mouloud Aounit, head of a group which published a report on the websites. “This form of racism [is] not only virtual, but has also spread to everyday life.”

Shahed Amanullah is editor-in-chief of altmuslim.com.