March 21 marked the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which officially commemorates the Sharpeville Massacre in South Africa in 1960. On that day, police opened fire on a peaceful protest against apartheid pass laws, killing an estimated 69 people. But while apartheid in South Africa might be dead, it is alive and well in the occupied Palestinian territories, imposed by a Zionist regime every bit as racist as the one in South Africa before Nelson Mandela took charge. This is nothing to say of the genocide being waged against the Palestinians in Gaza. And while it took decades to dislodge the apartheid regime in South Africa, it was a cause that the world eventually rallied behind and pursued to its just conclusion. The same does not appear to be happening vis-a-vis Palestine. And now, after wrecking Iraq, Syria and Libya, the US and Israel have launched an unprovoked war against Iran, with thousands killed.
It is no accident that the countries responsible for much of this violence are currently experiencing a wave of Islamophobia. In its annual report released on Tuesday, the Centre for American Islamic Relations (CAIR), indicated its offices across the country received the highest volume of complaints since it started publishing its civil rights report in 1996. Anti-Muslim and Arab hatred appears to be the very modus operandi of the Israeli state. And while the Europeans have a penchant for staying under the radar, the rise of the far right on that continent has undoubtedly been fuelled by hostility towards Muslims. The dehumanisation of certain groups in a domestic setting only makes it easier for states to then carry out violence against such groups elsewhere. The buy-ins for many of the wars we see today are racist. Once a certain group is deemed to be dangerous, inferior or ‘uncivilised’, violence is sure to follow.
None of this is to minimise threats against non-Muslim groups. In fact, the rise in Islamophobia is nested within a resurgence in xenophobia and racism throughout the West in general. Several Western countries are now cracking down on migrants from the Global South, due in large part to racist propaganda that they are responsible for terrorism, crime and mooching welfare meant for more ‘deserving’ (read white) citizens. The no-holds-barred environment of social media has only amplified such bigoted voices. In the US, even decades-old civil rights and anti-discrimination protections seem under threat, as that country launches new wars in the Global South. All of this takes place in a military-economic context which is not all that unchanged from the one organisations like the UN inherited at the end of WWII and were built to correct. The former white colonisers still hold the vast majority of the world’s wealth, resources, technology and arms, at the expense of everyone else. This perhaps is the main reason racism still endures despite decades of work to eliminate it. And while progress has undoubtedly been made, it will not advance beyond a certain point until this underlying reality is changed.
