Scapegoats Quotes

“The irony, of course, is that not long ago, it was Trump’s own ancestors—German American immigrants—who were the demons of the day, as the United States fought two world wars against Germany. The only thing that saved Trump’s people from being rounded up and put in camps during World War II, like Japanese American families—as Trump lauded President Franklin Roosevelt for doing—was that their skin color happened to be white. Those who are so eager to stigmatize Muslims today should keep this in mind—next time around it could be them. That’s the way these American nativist, “know-nothing” uprisings work. One day it’s Catholics who are the reviled aliens, then it’s Jewish people, then it’s Muslims. If you don’t belong to one of these groups, just wait your turn—you could be next in line.
We will always be subjected to these us-versus-them hysteria campaigns as long as people in power seek to divide Americans for their own cynical political purposes—whether it’s to whip up war fever, split apart working people, or simply keep the citizenry fearful and easier to manipulate.”
― Arsalan Iftikhar, Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

“Because history always teaches us that there will always be another demonized minority group who will become “the other” tomorrow. Our human race seems tragically doomed to keep finding scapegoat minorities on whom the majority can vent its fears and frustrations. This demonization creates an inevitable cycle of bloodshed and revenge. But as the means of violence and weapons of destruction become increasingly terrifying, we must find our common humanity before we annihilate ourselves into collective oblivion.

Because there is no “Us versus Them” in our increasingly shrinking global village. There is only “Us.” As my friend Leon told me that day in Aspen: “This is not a clash of civilizations … because every civilization contains the clash within itself.”
― Arsalan Iftikhar, Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

“From the Crusades to the Holocaust to the Cold War to the current “clash of civilizations,” the demonization of “the other” has played a central and nefarious role in justifying the most evil human enterprises. Instead of finding common ground with those of different beliefs, backgrounds, and cultures than ourselves, we crow these days about our American “exceptionalism” and seek to impose our values on those who reject them. This is the pathway to permanent war—a path that has led to enormous wealth and power for the few, and deepening misery for the rest of humanity.”
― Arsalan Iftikhar, Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

“We will always be subjected to these us-versus-them hysteria campaigns as long as people in power seek to divide Americans for their own cynical political purposes—whether it’s to whip up war fever, split apart working people, or simply keep the citizenry fearful and easier to manipulate.”
― Arsalan Iftikhar, Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

“Political observers point out that our country has a long, raucous history of witch hunts. “In times of economic distress, people tend to be more susceptible to charlatans and demagogues telling them who to blame and who to fear,” Matthew Duss, former national security editor at the Center for American Progress, once told me for a magazine article that I once wrote on this topic. “America has been through this sort of thing before with various minority groups, but we’ve always come through it stronger in the end…. Hopefully within a few years, the idea that all American Muslims want to turn America into an Islamic state will seem as stupid as the idea that a Catholic president would take orders from the Vatican.”

But in the meantime, America must sweat through a raging fever, a blaze of intolerance that puts many Muslim citizens at risk of losing their rights and, in some cases, their lives. Fear and ignorance, of course, fuel this anti-Muslim hysteria. But so does money. Because there is political capital in scapegoating Muslims.”
― Arsalan Iftikhar, Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

“According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, our country has been experiencing an “explosive growth in extremist-group activism across the United States” in recent years. The law center reported that so-called “patriot groups”—right-wing outfits steeped in anti-government conspiracy theories—grew in number from 149 in 2008 to 512 in 2009—an astonishing 244 percent increase that apparently reflected a backlash against the election of America’s first African American president.”
― Arsalan Iftikhar, Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms

“This is the way a civilized society begins to devour itself. By allowing our political leaders and law enforcement officials to scapegoat one segment of our population—to turn innocent people into targets of suspicion, into the enemy—we demean all that is good and decent about our nation.”
― Arsalan Iftikhar, Scapegoats: How Islamophobia Helps Our Enemies and Threatens Our Freedoms