Read on Twitter
There& #39;s a long history of intertwining Islam and nuclear weapons - luckily, I& #39;ve written about it in @SHAFRDH
https://academic.oup.com/dh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/dh/dhaa032/5850078">https://academic.oup.com/dh/advanc... https://twitter.com/asmiff/status/1274712158841065478">https://twitter.com/asmiff/st...
https://academic.oup.com/dh/advance-article/doi/10.1093/dh/dhaa032/5850078">https://academic.oup.com/dh/advanc... https://twitter.com/asmiff/status/1274712158841065478">https://twitter.com/asmiff/st...
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 & #39;79? 1) Iranian Revolution 2) The A Q Khan Affair appearing in the press.
Khan became the self-proclaimed & #39;father of the Islamic bomb& #39; (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& #39;s theft emerged in the media in early & #39;79 and collided with prevailing concerns about & #39;Islamic radicalism& #39; emerging from the Iranian Revolution. Pakistani leaders had used the phrase & #39;Islamic bomb& #39; prior to & #39;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 & #39;Islamic bomb& #39; 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 & #39;Islamic bomb& #39; trope simply updates the means of violence from swords to nukes.
But, I risk repeating myself. There& #39;s more in this thread: https://twitter.com/contestedground/status/1268190413568999424">https://twitter.com/contested...
