Keep Speaking Up against the War
in West and Central Asia
The Islamophobia and racism that are targeting people from West and Central Asia (including Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Palestinian Territories, Iraq, Syria) are systematically installed in people’s consciousness to justify a U.S.-led war.
This war began in the late 1970s after the United States was forced to leave East Asia (Vietnam). It has been fought directly by U.S. forces, and indirectly with arms transfers, funding, and intelligence, in many countries in West and Central Asia.
The war is profitable not only for the United States but also for other nations that produce arms (Russia, China, Australia, England, France, Germany, Italy, Sweden). But the United States continues to be by far the largest exporter of arms.
The war has taken trillions of dollars away from meeting the needs of poor, working-class, and middle-class people and given that money to the military-industrial complex owned by a few.
In order to justify this senseless war, this war for profit, Muslims and Central and West Asians are portrayed as inhuman, dangerous, violent, backward, and deserving of isolation and extermination. Massive resources are spent to confuse people into thinking that the war is justified. The killing of fifty precious humans in the mosques in New Zealand is a direct result of U.S. and European militarism and the installation of racism and violence in people’s consciousness.
Last Saturday after the massacre in New Zealand, I had a conference call with other Muslim RCers. We are heartbroken, grief-stricken, and scared, but we struggled to show these feelings on the call because as a community our calls are routinely monitored by police and other government authorities. It is noteworthy that in the days since the shooting in New Zealand, Muslim RCers have not written on any of the RC e-mail discussion lists.
My wish as a Muslim Iranian woman is for our allies to continue to speak up against this war—a war that has destroyed nations and killed millions of Muslims and people of color.
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Reprinted from the e-mail discussion
list for RC Community members