dimarts, de setembre 28, 2010

xD

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/llamemos/arte/arte/contemporaneo/elpepicul/20100928elpepicul_1/Tes

ENTREVISTA: MARC FUMAROLI Pensador y ensayista

"No llamemos arte al arte contemporáneo"

J. M. MARTÍ FONT - Barcelona - 28/09/2010

El viejo polemista francés vuelve a la carga. Si hace 20 años fustigó con saña la 'grandeur' cultural de la V República, de Malraux a Jack Lang, su nuevo ensayo se las ve con lo que considera las grandes falacias culturales de nuestro tiempo

La historia no tiene un sentido determinado y el arte contemporáneo no merece ser llamado arte. Marc Fumaroli (Marsella, 1932) ha estado en Barcelona para presentar París-Nueva York- París. Viaje al mundo de las artes y de las imágenes (Acantilado), "un panfleto erudito", en palabras de su editor, en el que vuelve al eterno debate entre los antiguos y los modernos.

Pregunta. ¿Es usted reaccionario?

Respuesta. ¿Reaccionario? Es verdad que me gusta mucho reaccionar y las gentes que reaccionan están muy vivas. Lo tomo en el sentido exacto del término. No creo que la historia tenga un sentido ni que tengamos que inclinarnos ante el sentido de la historia. La gente que me interesa son aquellos que van contracorriente. He conocido la época en la que todo el mundo marchaba en el sentido de la historia, que no era otro que el que se marcaba desde Moscú. Me hace feliz estar contracorriente e incluso ser muy reaccionario. Cierto, ahora hay que reaccionar contra otras cosas distintas a las del momento en el que la URSS era considerada en Francia como la promesa del futuro de la humanidad.

P. Hay quien dice que Francia es un país soviético que ha tenido éxito.

R. O que Francia es el último país del Este, sí, pero no hay que tomárselo en serio. Lo que sí es cierto es que nuestra modernidad es nuestro Estado, lo que desde el punto de vista anglosajón es una cosa extraña, pero ahora lo hemos sustituido por la sumisión servil a una imagen falsa que Europa se hace de Estados Unidos.

P. Es usted especialmente crítico con el arte contemporáneo, con esta concepción del arte espectáculo...

R. No solo del arte espectáculo, sino del arte negocio. Hay una nueva clase social que surge de la acumulación del dinero en una esfera extremadamente estrecha, pero mundial. Estos millonarios ya no quieren tener en casa un tiziano o un delacroix, sino signos exteriores de riqueza. Y eso es lo que les proporcionan las galerías que les ofrecen tiburones dentro de tanques de formol o juguetes sofisticados como los que produce Jeff Koons.

P. ¿No cree que este arte pueda llegar a ser popular?

R. A la gente le gustan otras cosas, el deporte, la música rock... No me parece mal. Lo que me resulta odioso es vender a esta gente, que no lo quiere y que tampoco se lo puede permitir, un arte reservado a la imagen de los famosos. La gente común va mucho más al museo del Louvre, a los museos de arte antiguo... Esos lugares convocan auténticas peregrinaciones.

P. ¿En qué momento el arte toma esta deriva? ¿La culpa la tiene Marcel Duchamp?

R. No, claro que no. ¡Pobre Duchamp! Era un snob francés muy elegante que jamás se hubiera encontrado con Warhol. Lo suyo era el privilegio de pequeños grupos muy exquisitos. Cuando el MOMA hizo la primera retrospectiva de Warhol, Duchamp devolvió la invitación, que no era sino la imagen de La Gioconda con bigotes, que él mismo había realizado. Consideró obsceno que aquel mal artista utilizara una imagen que él había inventado para hacerse su propia publicidad. Hay un mundo entre Duchamp y Warhol. La fórmula de Duchamp era: 'todo lo que se pone en un museo se convierte en obra de arte'. Warhol la utiliza en el sentido de que todo lo que hay en los supermercados puede entrar en museo y convertirse en obra de arte. Nunca Duchamp pensó esto.

P. ¿La línea roja la marcaría el pop americano?

R. Creo que ha influido mucho transportándonos a este universo que no está hecho para los europeos. Hay un punto común en el arte, la exigencia de una obra, y hemos entrado en un mundo en el que el arte no supone una obra, sino solo un concepto, una cosa efímera que durará un tiempo breve y que, momentáneamente excita un poco a los periodistas. Esta es la gran ruptura. No hay derecho a utilizar la palabra arte para lo que se llama el arte contemporáneo, no lo llamemos así; habrá que inventar otra palabra, tal vez entertainment para millonarios.

P. Pero hay artistas que aún hacen arte...

R. Sí, pero no tienen el favor de los medios de comunicación, ni de los museos. En España hay gente interesante, hay pintores notables. Si vuelve la pintura y la escultura, lo que sucederá, España estará en primera fila. Sartre dijo una vez: hay gente retrasada que está por delante.

P. ¿No será usted sartriano?

R. No, pero sucede que Sartre, de vez en cuando, dijo algunas verdades. Sartre es un fenómeno de la posguerra, un profesor que nunca debió ocupar el lugar que tuvo, pero la guerra y el hecho de que una buena parte de la intelligentsia francesa fuera colaboracionista le convirtió en una especie de vedette que nunca debió ser. Y él se volvió loco, a fuerza de creerse vedette. Personalmente -y no soy el único-, nunca consideré que Sartre fuera un maître à penser.

P. Tampoco parece tener usted muchas simpatías por el Mayo del 68.

R. El único aspecto simpático de la gente de Mayo del 68 es que se reían del general De Gaulle y del gaullismo, que en el fondo era un régimen estrecho, mezquino. Por lo demás no hicieron más que abrir la puerta a la mercantilización general del universo. Todos se han convertido en capitalistas y en controladores del sistema mediático. Los sesentayochistas son quienes ahora tienen el poder. Desde el primer momento me di cuenta de que no eran más que hedonistas que se iban a lanzar a la sociedad de consumo.

P. Pero hubo varios 68...

R. Sí, en Estados Unidos era mucho más interesante, porque era un movimiento anticapitalista, un movimiento un poco ingenuo pero antiutilitarista, se trataba de reencontrar la felicidad, la voluptuosidad, la naturaleza... Estaba Bob Dylan, Allen Ginsberg, era un movimiento de salida del universo material, fordista, había algo noble en ello. En Francia era totalmente glacial, la gente que estaba vendida de antemano, gente como Cohn Bendit... insoportable. Ahora se les ve gordos, viejos.

P. ¿Es usted un optimista o un melancólico?

R. Es necesario un optimismo que sea capaz de absorber el pesimismo, no de esconderlo o rechazarlo, sino de devorarlo, de quemarlo. En la medicina antigua había la idea de que los melancólicos podían ser locos o genios. Los unos quemaban su melancolía y se convertían en genios iluminados por el incendio, y los otros se volvían locos porque la melancolía es pesada y aplasta, es como el petróleo. Es profundamente verdadera esta idea. Ahora estamos en la fase del petróleo y estamos ahogados por el petróleo. La literatura, cuando vuelva, será la literatura de lo grotesco, porque hacer reír ya es curar. Hacen falta dos o tres Rabelais.

dimecres, de setembre 22, 2010

Zaz!!!!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/sep/22/commonwealth-games-crisis-48-hours

Commonwealth Games given 48 hours to save itself
Team officials warn they will pull athletes out if concerns about the standard of facilities are not immediately addressed

Jason Burke in Delhi and Owen Gibson
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 September 2010 19.23 BST
Article history

Commonwealth Games organisers in Delhi were tonight given 48 hours to save the crisis-hit event after team officials warned they would pull their athletes out if serious ongoing concerns about the standard of facilities were not immediately addressed.
The sense of impending crisis was exacerbated when a section of the ceiling in the weightlifting arena fell down amid growing fears over rising flood waters near the athlete's village, which had already been condemned by team officials as "filthy" and "unfit for human occupation".
With the Games at risk of descending into farce, thousands of athletes from the major competing nations remained in the dark about whether or not they would be boarding a plane to compete.
The Scottish team delayed the departure of the first batch of their 192 athletes, comprising 41 boxers, rugby players, wrestlers and support staff. The Wales team set a deadline of tonight to receive reassurances from organisers that the athlete's village and venues would be "fit for purpose" and plan to discuss the issue further tomorrow.
The first batch of 22 English athletes, including the lawn bowls team and the men's hockey squad, are due to fly out tomorrow as planned, but the English chef de mission, Craig Hunter, said organisers were not making nearly enough progress on the ground.
A mass walkout remains an option, with the "point of no return" seen as early next week. The main competing countries would be likely to act in concert and are in constant communication with one another.
Michael Cavanagh, chairman of Commonwealth Games Scotland, said any decision would be a joint one and insisted that any knock on effects for the Glasgow Games in 2014 would not be a factor.
"In terms of withdrawal we don't see this as simply a Team Scotland decision," he said. "Any decision to withdraw we would see as being a collective decision amongst the countries who are already there and already concerned."
He added: "We can't allow ourselves to be influenced by thoughts of how it may impact on 2014, not when we have something as important as the safety of our athletes to consider."
Although England had been allocated one of the more habitable of the 34 blocks in the athlete's village, Hunter told the Guardian there had "not been much progress" in ensuring that it was fit for habitation in the week he had been there.
"I'm trying to remain eternally optimistic. But at some point we will reach the point of no return and that is when we will have to decide."
While organisers continued to insist there were only "minor issues", Hunter said that was patently not the case.
Commonwealth Games Federation president, Mike Fennell, will arrive in Delhi tomorrow and is likely to meet with the Indian prime minister for crisis talks aimed at saving the Games. Mike Hooper, CWF chief executive, said he would be seeking to draw a line under the blame game that has already begun and put pressure on the government to avoid more international embarrassment.
"There is a problem, it needs fixing. I'm not into pointing fingers. They have the next couple of days to put things right," said Hooper. He said that while venues were built to a high standard, and he had no concerns over security, the sorry state of the village was a huge worry.
The beleaguered Delhi chief minister, Sheila Dikshit, played down the problems and accused the media of damaging India's image. "Something may be dripping, some tile may collapse, doesn't mean the entire Games are bad," she told reporters.
It is now known that the accident on Tuesday, in which 27 were injured when a bridge connecting the athletes' carpark to the main Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium collapsed, was caused when a metal pin worked loose detaching the main structure from its suspension cables.
Five workers remained in a critical condition, several with serious spinal injuries. Most of the injured were contracted labourers from poor rural areas. Campaigners say dozens of workers have been killed and hundreds injured in a succession of accidents at Games venues.
The world discus champion, Dani Samuels, of Australia pulled out of the Games because of security and health concerns, as did England's world triple jump champion, Phillips Idowu. A host of other big name athletes, including Usain Bolt and Sir Chris Hoy, had already withdrawn for a variety of reasons.
Foreign secretary, William Hague, said: "I hope these problems can be dealt with. We want them sorted out as rapidly as possible. Let's encourage the organisers to put these things right so the athletes can take part as they should be doing."

dimarts, de setembre 21, 2010

Jajajajaja

http://lacomunidad.elpais.com/paco-nadal/posts

20 Sep 2010

paco-nadal - 20 Sep 2010 -

La duquesa de Alba viaja en low cost

La semana pasada volvía de Edimburgo en un vuelo a Madrid operado por una low-cost (cuyo nombre no voy a decir, aunque todo el mundo la imagina, por aquello de no hacer publicidad.... de gratis; aunque si ellos quieren pagar un banner en este humilde blog les espero con los brazos abiertos).

Pero bueno, a lo que iba. Hice mi cola para entrar (no hay asientos asignados en las low-cost: son baratas pero incómodas) y mientras me acomodaba en una plaza (de exiguo tamaño y respaldo rígido, todo hay que decirlo) casi rompo el techo de la aeronave del respingo que di al observar quién era mi compañera de asiento: .

Nada menos que Cayetana. Cayetana Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva. Sí señor, la mismísima.

¡¡¡LA DUQUESA DE ALBA!!!

"¡Coño! Ahora si que me creo que la crisis es mucho más jodida de lo que nos ha contado Zapatero", fue lo primero que se me vino a la mente.

Porque si la XVIII duquesa de Alba, descendiente directa del rey Jacobo II de Inglaterra, el ser humano con más títulos nobiliarios del mundo: cinco veces duquesa, dieciocho veces marquesa, veinte condesa, condesa-duquesa y condestablesa, además de ser veinte veces Grande de España (la relación detallada de títulos no cabría en este blog y además aburriría a las ovejas)... ¡¡¡VIAJA EN LOW-COST!!!.... es que:

1. La nobleza ya no es lo que era
2. El turismo ha conseguido igualarnos más que la revolución bolchevique
3. Ya nada es lo que parece
4. Las tres opciones anteriores juntas

Un señor de Murcia codo a codo con la duquesa de Alba ¡Esto si que es socialismo! Y no lo milonga que nos había contado Fidel.

divendres, de setembre 17, 2010

Avulekile amasango

Touching...

Sun, sea and grit: Israeli and West Bank women risk jail for day at the beach

Illegal day trips challenge laws governing the movement of Palestinians


The day starts early, at a petrol station alongside a roaring Jerusalem road. The mood among the 15 Israeli women is a little tense, but it's hardly surprising – they're about to break the law and with it one of the country's taboos. They plan to drive into the occupied West Bank, pick up Palestinian women and children and take them on a day trip to Tel Aviv.

Today's is the second such trip – another group of women went public with a similar action last month. It is hoped that these will become regular outings, designed to create awareness of the laws that govern movement for Palestinians, and to challenge the fears that Israelis have about travelling into the West Bank.

Riki is a 63-year-old from Tel Aviv who, like the other women did not want to give her surname. She said it took her time to sign up to the trips. "I was resistant to breaking the law. But then I realised that civil action is the only way to go forward, that breaking an illegal law becomes legal."

The women take off in a convoy of cars, through an Israeli checkpoint used by settlers and into several villages around Hebron. There are dozens of Palestinian women waiting for them and each Israeli driver is allocated passengers.

As two young Palestinian women climb into the car, they remove hijabs, scarves and floor-length coats to reveal skinny jeans and long hair – a look that ensures they pass through the Israeli settler-only checkpoint without scrutiny. "I am afraid of the soldiers," said 21-year-old Sara, nervously. But she and 19-year-old Sahar, visibly relax as the car breezes past the checkpoint.

They pull CDs out of bags and are soon listening to loud Arabic dabke music as the car heads along a road that joins the main highway to Tel Aviv. "It's like we are using the tools of the occupation," said Irit, one of the drivers. "It just wouldn't occur to the soldiers at the checkpoints that Israeli women would want to do this."

As Tel Aviv nears, the Palestinian passengers silently survey the tall buildings and outdoor cafes and seem especially taken with the ubiquitous motorcycles and mopeds that speed around the city. "I would like to ride on one, like that," said Sara, pointing to a woman in shorts perched on the back of a bike. But all the Palestinian women have just one request: to go to the sea. For most, it's their first trip to the seaside, even though it is a short drive from home.

The passengers join another carload and head to the promenade in Jaffa, the mixed Arab-Israeli city stuck to the tail-end of Tel Aviv, where the Palestinian women race to greet the waves crashing against the bright rocks. "It is so much more beautiful than I thought," said Nawal, watching her gleeful seven-year-old daughter skipping backwards to avoid being sprayed by the waves. "It is more beautiful than on TV, the colour is amazing."

Fatima, 24, gazes out at the horizon. "I didn't know that the sound of the sea is so relaxing," she said. Sara asks for a sheet of paper, speedily folds it into a paper boat and writes her name on it, intending to set it out to sea. "So that it will remember me," she said.

The group convenes at a Jaffa restaurant – about 45 of them in total, including seven children. They are a cheerful party stretched across two long tables. From afar they seem just like any other restaurant party, as the women chat about children, weight gain and health.

But the excursion is far from ordinary. All Palestinians need permits to enter Israel and the penalties for not doing so can involve imprisonment. It is also against the law for Israelis to "smuggle" Palestinians without a permit across the Green Line.

A few months ago Ilana Hammerman, an Israeli journalist, wrote an account of her day trip to Tel Aviv with West Bank Palestinians in Haaretz newspaper. That prompted a criminal investigation against her, for violating Israel's law of entry. But it also inspired a group of women to take the same trip and then take an advertisement in the newspaper to publicise the fact. Since then, there have been hundreds of signatories to a petition of support and many women, on both sides, ready to defy the law.

That's one of the purposes of the action, said Esti, who has been on both trips. "We want more Israelis to realise that there is nothing to be scared of. We want more people to refuse to accept the ideology that keeps us apart – and to just refuse to be enemies."

Restrictions

Before 1991, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza could move freely and restrictions on travel into Israel were the exception.

Then Israel began a permit regime, whereby Palestinians cannot travel without a permit issued by Israel's civil administration, set up by military decree to operate in the West Bank.

The permit system wasn't seriously imposed until the mid-90s, as response to a wave of terrorist attacks inside Israel. Since then, Israel has introduced increasingly restrictive criteria for obtaining a permit and constructed physical barriers – such as the separation wall – that have made enforcement of the system more effective.

West Bank Palestinians granted permits include a quota of workers, who must be over 35 and married; medical patients; students, although under restrictive circumstances; and older persons for religious reasons, such as to pray or to visit family during religious holidays. Some traders and VIPs are also given permits to travel into Israel.

Gisha, the legal centre for freedom of movement, estimates that around 1% of Palestinians are given permits to enter Israel. Some 24,000 Palestinian workers are permitted to enter Israel from the West Bank.

From Gaza, entry for Palestinians to Israel is exceptional and mostly for medical or humanitarian cases.

diumenge, de setembre 12, 2010

I loooove Die Antwoord

Die Antwoord: 'Are we awful or the best thing in the universe?'

With their filthy lyrics and singular look, South African rap-rave act Die Antwoord are fantastic, if bemusing

When Die Antwoord checked their emails on 2 February this year, among the 5,000 or so messages the group had received overnight was one from Neill Blomkamp, the District 9 director and a fellow South African. The subject line read: "Oh my god." And the message? "I fucking love you guys."

Since then, their fame has travelled further. David Lynch loves their videos so much that he invited them round for coffee. David Fincher wanted to cast singer Yolandi (stage name: Yo-Landi Vi$$er) as Lisbeth Salander in the Hollywood remake of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (she turned him down) and two weeks ago they shared a stage with the Aphex Twin at the LED Festival. So how did this South African "zef" rap-rave outfit, from "a tiny fishing village in Cape Town", come to be championed by hipsters the world over?

The 3 million people who've now watched their first video, "Die Antwoord – Zef Side", will be familiar with Yolandi, a diminutive blonde, and Ninja, a tattooed, lanky guy endowed with a sinuous physicality which he puts to good use as he dances and raps in an arresting Afrikaans/English hybrid. They'll also be familiar with an infamous close-up of his genitalia flapping in exuberant slo-mo beneath a pair of Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon shorts. Die Antwoord's name is Afrikaans for "the Answer" and at the end of the "Zef Side" video the narrator asks: "The answer to what?"

Ninja, joined by the teeny Yolandi and the tubby, mute DJ Hi-Tek, slouches against a wall, squinting. He raises his arm and lets it fall to his side. "Whatever, man... fuck." If Ninja doesn't know the original question, neither does anyone else. After the website Boing Boing seized on the video at the start of February, it was sent zipping round the globe, "taking over the interwebs", in the band's parlance, and increasing their YouTube views from around 800 to 500,000 almost overnight.

Each posting was invariably accompanied by some combination of "wtf?", "are they for real?" and "is this a joke?" Surely no serious rap could begin with: "Uh, yo, for real/ That's what I'm talking about/ Check it out", as the track "Beat Boy" does?

But for the huge crowd rammed into Berlin's Magnet club to see them, Die Antwoord are no joke. Neither, it turns out, is their live show. Their set has the whole crowd thrashing and rapping along, often in Afrikaans, to every word. When they can keep up, that is, because Die Antwoord's outrageous aesthetic makes it easy to overlook just how good Ninja is. Relishing its guttural smacks and hard edges, he makes Afrikaans sound like a language that was made for hip-hop. It's testament to his charisma, too, that he can mutter an incidental "fokken fok" into the microphone and elicit the kind of audience reaction worthy of Martin Luther King.

When not rapping, he shoots bug-eyed glances to his sides from beneath a lowering brow, looking very much like a pre-Country Life John Lydon. Meanwhile, Yolandi, sullenly passive in the videos, is ferocious on stage. At one point, she yells: "Germany! Now you've fokken heard of me!" They've more than heard of her – at least three women in the crowd sport her haircut: an uncompromising combination of undercut and mullet, with a brutally short fringe. "The Yolandi" may yet become 2010's hipster equivalent of "the Rachel".

At one point, the pair lead the crowd in a chant of: "Jou mae se poes in a fispaste jar", which Ninja translates, politely, as "your mother's private parts in a fish paste jar". Their lyrics get much filthier than this. So filthy, as Yolandi will tell me later, that when they first became famous, "all these conservative Afrikaners thought we'd sprung from Satan's dark pit".

My interview was originally postponed due to an ominously vague explanation: "Ninja's being... difficult." The band's publicist tells me the last journalist used the phrase "white trash" and called Ninja by his real name (the incongruously grand Watkin Tudor Jones). She closes her eyes and shakes her head, as though his reaction was too horrific for words. None the less we venture, with some trepidation, up a dark staircase to meet them.

Backstage, in a brightly lit room, Ninja is holding court while eating pitta bread and hummus. He clasps both my hands and does a little bow and a series of ingratiating head tilts, an odd and endearing courtly dance that's repeated when we say goodbye. Gesturing to their rider – tiny dishes of prunes, nuts and sweets: were it not for the Jägermeister bottles, it could be a table set for a children's birthday party – he gabbles: "Have some food, it's all free!"

Complimentary peanuts may soon lose their thrill, but for now, you can't really blame them for getting excited. Die Antwoord are not the first hip-hop group to inject humour into what they do. They are, however, the first rap-rave group from South Africa to become a global phenomenon, delivering a slap in the face to anyone moaning about the homogenisation of culture or the pervasiveness of Anglo-American pop music.

When I meet them the following week in London at their record label – they're newly signed to Polydor – they're hunched inside their own-brand tracksuits looking morose. Then Ninja starts expounding on the meaning of "zef" and he comes alive. "It's like the underbelly of Afrikaans; an embarrassing thing they want to hide away. The zef swearing, for me, is so fucking extreme that it's like cartoon language – this weird, like, freak mode fungus style. Because it's not just a language, it's..."

A whole culture?

"Ja and we just, like, dived into that and made that our thing."

"Zef's kind of like you don't give a fuck and you have your own flavour and you're on your own mission," says Yolandi. "It's associated with people who soup their cars up and rock gold and shit. Zef is, you're poor but you're fancy. You're poor but you're sexy, you've got style."

Ninja – or rather Watkin – has long been involved in hip-hop groups ("I've been fucking around with lots of, like, conceptual stuff for a while"), but the thinking behind Die Antwoord, as the 36-year-old explains, "was kinda throw away the conceptual stuff and just let it be South Africa and South African style. Yolandi sort of pushed me because it was right there and sometimes you can't see what's right in front of your face". Yolandi, whose age remains a secret, "was doing nothing" before Die Antwoord except, as Ninja adds with some pride, "causing trouble, going to rehab and getting expelled".

Ninja's engaged in an anecdote about their beef with one of the producer Diplo's DJs when he lets slip that he has a daughter. A daughter? "Ja, ja" he says, impatiently. With Yolandi? "Ja, we're just friends, but we had this kid by accident. We're a good fucking mum and dad on that level, whatever." I'm reeling at the image of either of these two changing nappies. Ninja, however, is speeding on. "A lot of people wanted to ban the interweb to stop us getting known. And you can't stop it. We've got this fierce fucking following – like the cutest, most freak-mode, wildest kids, and also older people who are super-duper in tune with what we're doing, and that's not going away – it's getting bigger fucking fast. Bigger and bigger.

"It's, like," he continues, "is this [Die Antwoord] fucking terrible, like fucking retardedly the worst thing ever or the most amazing thing in the entire universe?" I'm with David Lynch et al on the answer.

divendres, de setembre 10, 2010

Muslims in America increasingly alienated as hatred grows in Bible belt

Ufff, alarmante....

Muslims in America increasingly alienated as hatred grows in Bible belt

On the anniversary of 9/11, Chris McGreal reports from the Tennessee town where Muslims have lived in harmony with Christians for decades – but where they now feel under threat


Safaa Fathy was as surprised to discover that she is at the heart of a plot against America as she was to hear that her small Tennessee town is a focus of hate in the Muslim world.

The diminutive fifty-something physiotherapist, who has lived in Murfreesboro for most of her adult life, happens to be on the board of her town's Islamic centre. Now she finds herself accused of being a front for Islamic Jihad, of planning to impose sharia law on her neighbours, and of threatening the very existence of Christianity in Tennessee.

"There is something around the whole United States, something is different. I was here since 1982. I have three kids here and I never had any trouble. My kids, they go to the girl scouts, they play basketball, they did all the normal activities. It just started this year. It's strange, because after 9/11 there was no problem," said Fathy, who was born in Egypt. "In the past in America other people were the target. We are the target now. We have trouble in California, we have trouble in New York, we have trouble in Florida. It's a shame because Murfreesboro is a very nice town to live in."

As the US prepares to mark the ninth anniversary of the al-Qaida assault on New York and the Pentagon, the country's Muslims say they are enduring a wave of hostility and suspicion from some of their fellow Americans that they rarely encountered in the years immediately following the 9/11 attacks.

The increasingly bitter dispute over plans to build an Islamic centre and mosque two blocks from Ground Zero in New York is part of it, fuelling a debate about whether Muslims in the US put their faith before their country. Opponents of the mosque plan to mark the anniversary with a rally in New York today led by a leading anti-Islamic activist, Pamela Geller, who has the support of prominent Republican politicians given to increasingly strident anti-Muslim rhetoric. Among those expected to speak is Geert Wilders, the virulently anti-Islamic Dutch political leader.

Even the possibly rescinded threat by a publicity-seeking pastor in Florida to burn hundreds of copies of the Qur'an played into the hands of Islam's foes in America, despite the fact it did not garner much popular support, when it drew threats of bloody retribution from some Muslim groups abroad. All this comes against a backdrop of growing numbers of Americans suspecting that their president is secretly a Muslim – nearly one in five say that he is and many more think it likely – and diminishing support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which are still proving a heavy burden in blood and money. The charged atmosphere in which the terrorist attacks will be remembered this weekend has also penetrated deep into the heartland, where hostility has increasingly shifted inward to focus on America's own Islamic communities. "It really started in May," said Fathay. "I keep asking myself, why this year? Why are they suddenly lying about us now?"

Late last year Musfreesboro's Islamic leaders announced plans to build a new mosque because the 250 Muslim families in town had outgrown the existing one. The construction plans were approved. At first, no one in the town of about 100,000 people south of Nashville said much about it.

In February someone spray-painted over the sign: "Not welcome", with the letter t shaped like a Christian cross. Fathay put that down to one hostile individual. But by May protest meetings were organised, politicians were denouncing the plans and the loyalty of Muslims in the town was openly questioned. Critics did not pull their punches at a public meeting. Among those who spoke against construction of the new Islamic centre was Karen Harrell.

"Everybody knows they are trying to kill us. People are really concerned about this. Somebody has to stand up and take this country back," she said.

Speakers accused Muslims in the town of promoting polygamy and indoctrinating the young with hate, and questioned whether they adhered to the US constitution.

George Erdel, running for a seat in the US Congress as a "Tea Party Democrat", feared that the true intent of the mosque was to impose Islamic rule. "Islam is a system of government. Islam is a system of justice. We've got people here who remember September 11 2001. These people are scared," he said. "I'm afraid we'll have a training facility."

It did not go unnoticed by Islamic leaders that some of the fiercest criticism was whipped up by candidates in this year's elections. At the forefront was Lou Ann Zelenik, a candidate for the Republican nomination for Congress who is a leader of the local Tea Party movement.

"This 'Islamic Centre' is not part of a religious movement; it is a political movement designed to fracture the moral and political foundation of Middle Tennessee," Zelenik said. "Until the American Muslim community find it in their hearts to separate themselves from their evil, radical counterparts, to condemn those who want to destroy our civilisation and will fight against them, we are not obligated to open our society to any of them."

Alongside Zelenik was Laurie Cardoza-Moore, the founder of a group that rallies Christians in support of Israel. Cardoza-Moore describes herself as "a leader who successfully stewards masses toward her intended outcomes".

She told a Christian television station that the plan to build a new mosque in Murfreesboro was part of a plot to take over Middle Tennessee because it is the heart of the Bible belt:

"You have Bible book publishers. You have Christian book publishers. You have Christian music headquartered here. The radical Islamic extremists have stated that they are still fighting the Crusaders, and they see this as the capital of the Crusaders."

Similar warnings can be heard in other parts of Tennessee and in states from California to New England.

The imam of the Murfreesboro mosque, Ossama Bahloul, says others have been here before. A generation ago in Tennessee black activists were burned out of their homes for agitating against segregation and for civil rights, and Catholics and other Christian minorities were targets for the Ku Klux Klan.

"It's a cycle of life. If we are really dangerous, let them close this [existing] centre too. This community did not do a single act of violence," said Bahloul. "Maybe it has a relationship with the election, maybe with the economic problems we have in the country, maybe it was September 11, but I doubt this, because why did we have a fine time last year and the year before and before that when the memory of September 11 was still fresh in everybody's mind?"

Ron Messier, a professor of Islamic studies who lives in Murfreesboro, says the mood is driven by politics. "It's happened because this is an election year and I think there were some political candidates who thought that here in Middle Tennessee a lot of people have very right leanings and they could gain some political leverage by promoting fear about people who have been here for 20 years or more without ever being an issue," he said. Yet the politicians apparently did not have to drill deep to tap into fears of Muslims, who are subject to language that would not be acceptable when talking about almost any other minority. They are helped by parts of the media. Fox News leads the charge, routinely giving a platform to those who question the loyalty of Muslim Americans and to conspiracy theorists.

This week Martin Peretz, editor-in-chief of New Republic, an influential Washington political magazine, wrote that Muslims were unfit for the protections of the US constitution. "Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims. And among those Muslims led by the Imam Rauf [of the proposed New York Islamic centre] there is hardly one who has raised a fuss about the routine and random bloodshed that defines their brotherhood," Peretz wrote. "So, yes, I wonder whether I need honour these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse."

Peretz was swiftly denounced by some prominent American bloggers, among them Glenn Greenwald, who writes for Salon.com. "Bigotry against Muslims and Arabs is one of the last acceptable forms of overt bigotry that is tolerated in American political culture. If you look at the things that he said and replace the word Muslim or Arab with Jew or even Christian, those comments would be completely career ending and reputation destroying," he said.

While Peretz was vigorously criticised on blogs, mainstream newspapers that regularly denounce racism and antisemitism stayed silent.

Two weeks ago someone set fire to construction equipment at the site of Murfreesboro's new mosque. Some in the town were outraged, but not Kimberly Kelly. "I think it was a piece of their own medicine. They bombed our country," she told The Tennessean newspaper. Two days later about 150 people turned out for a candlelight vigil in support of the Muslim community on the steps of the local courthouse.

Many in the town say they have no problem with the new mosque. Among them is a woman called Bonnie who works in a local bookshop and lost a stepbrother in one of the World Trade Centre towers.

"I don't have a problem with them opening a mosque in New York, just not two blocks from where my stepbrother died. But here doesn't bother me because everybody has a right to practise their religion. They've been here, they're quiet. They haven't bothered anybody," she said.

Muslim leaders are careful to say that the hostility has come from a vocal minority and has prompted an outpouring of backing from non-Muslims. The Islamic centre has a "wall of support" with messages from people who say they are Christian and have sons fighting in Afghanistan.

The burning question for many Muslims in Murfreesboro is whether, once the political calendar moves on, they will again be left in peace or whether relations have been poisoned for years to come. Perhaps they can draw comfort from August's primary election for Congress. Zelenick was defeated, along with most of the other politicians who made Islam an election issue in Tennessee.