Hatem Bazian's "History" Leaves Out Key Points

This article first appeared in New English Review.

Hatem Bazian is a Palestinian-born professor at UC Berkeley, whom I would describe as a two-trick pony. His two big issues in life are demonizing Israel and complaining about Islamophobia. His resume includes being co-founder of American Muslims for Palestine, which is a funder of the Students for Justice in Palestine (also founded by Bazian), a nationwide organization of brown shirts who go around disrupting pro-Israel events on campuses and bullying Jewish students,.In addition, Bazian founded  the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Center at UC Berkeley, which sounds impressive, but actually occupies a broom closet in Barrows Hall, but big enough to hold a computer to hold all the “documentation”. In addition to all that, Bazian actually called for an “intifada” in the US while speaking to an audience in 2004. If that’s not enough, he has a long litany of anti-semitic statements to add to his “resume”. In short, he is an embarrassment to UC Berkeley. Unfortunately, UC Berkeley is never concerned with being embarrassed, so people like Bazian will always have a job..

Now Bazian has come out with his own history of the ill will that exists between the US and the Islamic Republic of Iran and the issue of “Islamophobia” in the US. Problem is that Bazian leaves out very important details. Did I say “details”? I should have said major events.

“The othering process directed at Muslims was unleashed by the political elites that wanted to craft a strategy to contest and maintain power in the post-Cold War era, which included a heavy emphasis on the massive military expenditures, which might had been cut after the defeat of the Soviet Union.”

So if I get this right, according to Bazian, the end of the Cold War meant that US leaders had to find a new boogy man, and Islam in general fit the bill. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 had already happened, and it is interesting that Bazian does not devote one word to the taking of American diplomats as hostages in Iran when our embassy in Teheran was stormed. Nor does Bazian mention anything about Iran’s sponsorship of international terrorism. Nor is there any mention of all the times the Iranians have promised to destroy the US and Israel. Do you think those items might have something to do with our problems with the Iranian regime? How about the slaughter of their own people when they dare to protest in the streets of Iranian cities? If we favorted Sunni jihadist Islam during the USSR war in Afghanistan, boy have we learned our lesson.

As for Islamophobia itself, Bazian conveniently leaves out any reference to Islamic terrorism (as well as the Iranian hostage crisis). Likewise, there is no mention of 9-11. This is like writing a history of World War II and not mentioning the invasion of Poland, Pearl Harbor or the Holocaust. And this man is supposed to be a scholar and a professor at a world renowned university?

As for the “clash of civilizations” (which is real), I would argue that the clash was brought about by militant Islam, which also believes in the “clash” and has declared war on the West. Islam seeks to impose itself on the rest of the world, either peacefully or violently and by force. There is most definitely a clash of civilizations between freedom and democracy on the one side and totalitarianism under the guise of religion on the other, all of which is lost on Hatem Bazian.