MANUFACTURING THE MUSLIM MENACE IN AMERICA: The Five Ideological Frames
1) The ‘Islam-is-Evil Frame’ or ” Muslims are inherently violents and Islam is a savage religion”
Anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobia pushers, brands Islam as the enemy in the “war on terror.” They define the threat using ideological and theological terms that link Islam inextricably to terrorism. Within this frame, the problem is not simply terrorists who are Muslim but an “evil” Islam itself, describing Islam and all Muslims around the world as inherently violent and savage, recounting an endless litany of violent acts committed by individuals, or fundamentalists minorities, in a manner that implies an irredeemably violent culture.
2) The ‘Fifth-Column Frame’ or “Stealth Jihad is Subverting the U.S. from Within”
Under this frame, anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobia pushers inject an existential threat to the United States, claiming that the domestic rise of political Islam aims to transform the United States into a Muslim country ruled by Sharia law. The argument is supported by a conspiracy theory in which Muslim-American advocacy groups act as front organizations for foreign Islamists, such as the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Another version substitutes the puritanical religious movements Wahhabism or Salafism as the foreign puppetmaster. The argument encourages law enforcement to focus on alleged front organizations, chilling the exercise of constitutional freedoms and potentially diverting attention from illegal, terrorist activity. The theme resurrects McCarthy-era anti-Communist countersubversion doctrine, substituting a current Muslim menace for the former Communist one, and justifying once-discredited witch-hunting practices.
3) The ‘Terror-Ties Frame’ or “Mainstream Muslim Americans Have Terrorist Ties”
Anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobia pushers routinely categorize such civil rights groups as the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as a support network for terrorists. For this charge they lean heavily on guilt by association, citing a few instances of members or former members with troublesome associations as evidence of organizational complicity. In spite of extensive and ongoing scrutiny, none of these organizations HAVE EVER been convicted of terrorism or formally charged with providing material support to terrorists. Anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobia pushers tend to use invented or highly improbable story lines, to characterize the widespread support for Palestinian statehood and opposition to the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands among Muslim-American leaders as evidence of sympathy for terrorism.
4) The ‘Lawfare Frame’ or “Muslim Americans Wage Violent Jihad by Other Means”
The Lawfare Frame holds that Muslim extremists use litigation, free speech, and other legal means to advance a subversive agenda and silence opponents – using democracy to subvert democracy. The Lawfare Frame utilizes a kind of Orwellian double-speak in which “terrorism” is not the use of terror, but the use of legal procedures. Law becomes warfare when used to oppose Islamophobia or assert Muslim-Americans’ civil rights. Accordingly, anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobia pushers, use the ‘lawfare charge’ to recast Muslim Americans claims that their rights are being violated as crafty tactics to keep their subversive agenda hidden from the public.
5) The ‘Sharia Frame’ or “Muslims Seek to Replace the U.S. Constitution with Islamic Law”
Under this frame, anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobia pushers are moving the strings of an elaborate conspiracy theory that raises the menace of a global Islamic dictatorship and promotes the specter of a repressive ‘Islamic Caliphate ruling over America’. They preach under the suggestion that support for Sharia is the “the most dangerous threat” to the American way of life and Constitutional rights.
Islamic Sharia is a set of ideals and jurisprudence interpretations that define a properly constituted Islamic existence. It applies only to Muslims (never to non Muslims) and in many aspects is remarkable similiar to Judaism Halasha or Catholic Canonical Law.
Anti-Muslim bigots and Islamophobia pushers have clinched to this word ‘Sharia’ as a memetic flag, using it to instigate fear, hysteria and repulsion. The Sharia Frame ignores the ongoing domestic transformation and accommodation of Islam to American legal, cultural, social, and economic norms, and is used to stigmatize civil rights advocates who fight religious discrimination by vilifying religious accommodation as capitulation to Islamic rule.
