An excellent article by Deepa Kumar in the US Marxist journal International Socialist Review analyses the “orientalist” ideological roots and pro-imperialist mythology of Islamophobia. She concludes:
“Confronting Islamophobia and challenging American racism towards the people of the Middle East is an essential precondition for the rebirth of a strong antiwar movement…. And while Bush argues that ‘the calling of our generation’ is to fight ‘Islamofascism’, we need to assert instead that the calling of our generation is to build an anti-racist antiwar movement that can challenge the attacks on Muslims and Arabs domestically and that can stop U.S. imperialism in its tracks and shape the course of the twenty-first century. Our future, quite literally, depends on building such a movement.”
For orientalism, see also Grace Lally’s article in Socialist Worker, 24 February 2007