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There's a long history of intertwining Islam and nuclear weapons - luckily, I've written about it in @SHAFRDH
https://academic.oup.com/dh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/dh/dhaa032/5850078 https://twitter.com/asmiff/status/1274712158841065478
https://academic.oup.com/dh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/dh/dhaa032/5850078 https://twitter.com/asmiff/status/1274712158841065478
The disgusting sentiments behind this letter - and the demands that it makes - aside, we see this kind of thing a lot from 1979 onwards. Why '79? 1) Iranian Revolution 2) The A Q Khan Affair appearing in the press.
Khan became the self-proclaimed 'father of the Islamic bomb' (drawing on a trope that emerged from Pakistan, was popularised by Western media, and then re-absorbed by figures like Khan) after stealing enrichment centrifuge designs from the Dutch-UK-FRG Almelo plant in 1975.
Khan's theft emerged in the media in early '79 and collided with prevailing concerns about 'Islamic radicalism' emerging from the Iranian Revolution. Pakistani leaders had used the phrase 'Islamic bomb' prior to '79, but it was simply a rhetorical device.
But it was the media in the US and UK (and France, the FRG, India, Israel, etc) who really latched onto the idea of the 'Islamic bomb' as a cypher for nuclear proliferation between Muslim majority nations.
Of course, this ties into much, much older tropes that identify Islam as a religion as almost uniquely violent. The 'Islamic bomb' trope simply updates the means of violence from swords to nukes.
But, I risk repeating myself. There's more in this thread: https://twitter.com/contestedground/status/1268190413568999424
