Rolling Islamophobia Thread

What with how most Muslims really don't think all Muslims are on the same page, it's weird how Sam Harris seems to think they are, for example.

The propaganda of Renaissance Europe against the Ottoman Empire has proved remarkably durable.

so ... is one not allowed to criticize islam?

i mean, can we criticize any religion? is that ever okay? or is it just meaningless because it's too broad?

I think the problem is an essentialist one, i.e. how you define "a religion" for criticism purposes.

i'm not getting ready to criticize islam here fwiw

Meanwhile here we're seeing things like women in hijabs getting their heads smashed into train carriage walls by angry white bogans, the govt wanting to segregate anyone wearing a burqua inside our parliament if they attend, behind a glass wall...

(here being Aus for anyone who doesnt know )

those wites are dangerous extremists unconnected to the vast majority of peaceful wites

Legitimate questions about whether bogan culture is compatible with contemporary social norms in the west, though.

x-posts but

...and this is how "Islamaphobia" becomes the acceptable face of European racism. That whole "Islam isn't a race, it's a religion, and it's A-OK to criticise any and all religions because religions are BAD, people!" from, y'know, the kind of people you *never* see calling "the International Christian Community" to account for the actions of Texan lawmakers or abortion clinic bombers.

It's the way that even supposedly left-wing people add that cover of plausible deniability to their fear and gut-instinct xenophobia and racism. But of course, you're the *real* racist if you point out that all the people they're tarring with this brush ~just happen~ to be brown or black or just look like they might have ancestors from South Asia, the Middle East or North Africa. "You brought race into it, I'm just decrying an oppressive religion here!"

And it's gross the way "women's rights" are often to trotted up to defend it, even while enacting their fear and hatred on the bodies of othered women. I can't count the number of conversations I've had with other White Feminists about how "Islam" is bad because: "Burqa" and forcing women to wear hijab is coercive blah blah blah. (Well, I don't know if ALL the women wearing hijab are coerced, but you know what sure *is* definitely coercive? Forcing them *not* to wear it.)

But it starts to feel like a broken record on this. Because "OMG, we can't even criticise religion!" well of course you can, but if you only ever seem to enact your anti-religion quest on the bodies of brown and black people, um, you might want to think about how race informs those issues.

I don't think it's helpful to say things like "but it's WORSE in the US!" like racism is this thing that can be metered out and measured in degrees. It might be helpful to say "racism takes different forms in the US or Europe, because of different cultures and histories, and it's worth interrogating the differences" because that way you can stop handwaving away the huge problems with racism or Islamophobia in the UK by just saying "but the US is worse!" and actually try to do something about the forms they take here. Different is not better or worse, it's just different. It's still bad, and it's still worth interrogating and moving against.

Legitimate questions about whether bogan culture is compatible with contemporary social norms in the west, though.

― Wristy Hurlington (ShariVari)

definitely!

uh definitely legitimate q I mean heh, not "hi 5 it definitely is compatible" l

i don't think it's purely racism though, there are brown critics of islam, too

I have a lot of time for individual Women of Colour who take great time, care and experience criticising the patriarchal aspects of some Islamic religion and culture. I don't have a lot of time for the Western men who pick up those women (and no others) in order to justify their knee jerk Islamophobia without ever interrogating the rest of it.

The problem I had with the Ben Affleck appearance on Bill Maher - and which I think ties in with the broader issue - is his view that there is something outrageous in and of itself in claiming that Islam may be a particularly pernicious influence in the world. If Maher and Harris are wrong about the issue, then it should be because the facts don't support it, not because their claim is inherently repugnant. This is where the argument of "it"s a religion, not a race" does have validity. This is why Reza Aslan was so refreshing - he provided a sober, non-defensive, fact-based counter-argument to Maher, instead of just projecting racist feelings onto him.

Criticizing Islam is sort of pointless. It's so broad with 1.5 billion followers, and so many directions like wahabism, sufism, etc, and there is no organizational structure - as with catholicism, where 'criticizing' catholicism might make sense. So it becomes kinda meaningless. It's like criticizing 'africa' or 'asia', what does it mean?

We also have a problem with words, which I thought about before I stared this thread. Because we don't even have a word for hatred of muslims. Islamophobia does not mean the same as anti-semitism (nobody would ever defend anti-semitism by asking 'does that mean I cannot criticize Judaism?'). But, really, it's not fear of islam, it's fear of muslims.

Well, I actually agree with Harris in that, strictly semantically, the concept of Islamophobia is a nonsense. "Anti-Muslim bigotry" isn't very catchy, but the more more common usage of it or some equivalent term, instead of "Islamophobia", might help the debate to become less muddied.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/09/opinion/bill-maher-isnt-the-only-one-who-misunderstands-religion.html?smid=tw-nytimes

this is a fantastic piece imo

What both the believers and the critics often miss is that religion is often far more a matter of identity than it is a matter of beliefs and practices. The phrase “I am a Muslim,” “I am a Christian,” “I am a Jew” and the like is, often, not so much a description of what a person believes or what rituals he or she follows, as a simple statement of identity, of how the speaker views her or his place in the world.

As a form of identity, religion is inextricable from all the other factors that make up a person’s self-understanding, like culture, ethnicity, nationality, gender and sexual orientation. What a member of a suburban megachurch in Texas calls Christianity may be radically different from what an impoverished coffee picker in the hills of Guatemala calls Christianity. The cultural practices of a Saudi Muslim, when it comes to the role of women in society, are largely irrelevant to a Muslim in a more secular society like Turkey or Indonesia. The differences between Tibetan Buddhists living in exile in India and militant Buddhist monks persecuting the Muslim minority known as the Rohingya, in neighboring Myanmar, has everything to do with the political cultures of those countries and almost nothing to do with Buddhism itself.

No religion exists in a vacuum. On the contrary, every faith is rooted in the soil in which it is planted. It is a fallacy to believe that people of faith derive their values primarily from their Scriptures. The opposite is true. People of faith insert their values into their Scriptures, reading them through the lens of their own cultural, ethnic, nationalistic and even political perspectives.

yes, good article

That's not bad, but I think it's a little flattening in its treatment of all religions as blank slates and all scriptures as though they are equally as much books in which you could find justification for any point of view. Maybe that's as much as one can expect in an op-ed.

I mean I don't think, for example, that Jesus's mention of the sword is really equivalent to an imperative to slay the idolaters wherever you find them. It's fair to say that the vast majority of people in any religion don't practice their religion according to a literal interpretation of scriptures, but that comfortably brushes aside the fundamentalists, and I don't know whether all holy books produce the same kinds of fundamentalists.

the argument would be that scriptures don't produce fundamentalists at all, given that fundamentalism is an essentially modern phenomenon. it'd be more instructive to look in a broader sociopolitical context at the kinds of communities that produce sectarian violence i think, altho without denying that the rhetorical justification for this violence is rooted in religious discourse

It just seems to me like at the moment violent Islamic fundamentalism is significantly more widespread than violent Christian fundamentalism. Maybe the underlying reasons really are geopolitical, having something to do with the power balance between traditionally Christian socities (i.e. Europe/America) and non-Christian societies.

I think the place I take issue with Maher/Harris most is drawing in that third "concentric circle" of people with conservative views on women, gays, etc., because once you get to that circle you're clearly talking about something that would cover a significant portion of Christians and members of other religions as well. Using "gays" in particular as a stick to beat other cultures with seems pretty offensive, given how recently the US has started to change its tune about homosexuality. But at the same time, I don't think the first circle -- violent Islamic fundamentalism -- has an equivalent in Christianity at the moment. Abortion clinic bombers are a pretty tiny and insignificant phenomenon comparatively. ISIS and its supporters/sympathizers are far from mainstream Islam, but they're also not just a handful of outlier wackos with minimal impact.

It just seems to me like at the moment violent Islamic fundamentalism is significantly more widespread than violent Christian fundamentalism. Maybe the underlying reasons really are geopolitical, having something to do with the power balance between traditionally Christian socities (i.e. Europe/America) and non-Christian societies.

this was essentially the writer's argument man

Abortion clinic bombers are a pretty tiny and insignificant phenomenon comparatively.

Bombers, yeah, at this point, but they don't need to bomb them when they have a compliant and sympathetic political class that will use the law to shut down clinics. It might not be violent, but it's capitulation to religious fundamentalism nonetheless.

BTW, this is blatantly false, and intellectually dishonest: The same Bible that commands Jews to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18) also exhorts them to “kill every man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey,” who worship any other God (1 Sam. 15:3).

What he's actually referring to is the story of the massacre of the Amalekites - certainly one of the ugliest parts of the old testament and nothing to be proud of, but there is nothing in the text that can be interpreted as a command to kill everyone who worships any other God. It's a revenge story concerning a specific tribe.

It might not be violent, but it's capitulation to religious fundamentalism nonetheless.

― bippity bup at the hotel california (Phil D.), Monday, October 13, 2014 11:20 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure, and I think this is a good point. Religion is often connected with political movements, some of them extremist. I think it is reasonable to fear a religious-political movement that seeks to curtail your own freedoms or that actively opposes your way of life and looks to change it. So if a group has as its platform that liberal democratic government should be replaced with religious government, I oppose that group.

no one disputes that, dude. the point is that attributing the ugly attitudes/beliefs as inherent to the religion elides the fact that religion and the interpretation of its texts take place within certain social and economic contexts

Yeah, I get that. But leaving it at "all religions ____" elides a lot of things too.

Which religions do you think actively and effectively resist interpretation as a justification for slaughtering the 'other'?

Bahai seems like a good candidate for that

i mean the islamic world certainly has the most problems with that kind of stuff right now. that's pretty indisputable. but it's more likely that its fundamentalism is a product of its poverty and what is basically a feudal society rather than anything intrinsic to islam

capitalism would probably be the best thing that could ever happen to a lot of these societies tbh

Music is prohibited in Islam, right?

Obtuse

I hear you guys don't use heat

the concentric circles model of religion doesn't have a lot to recommend it imo

agreed

what is the concentric circles model?

My family belongs to a chassidic group that has had some controversy about their beliefs. A very vocal minority believes in actively proselytizing the belief that the now deceased Rebbe is the Messiah. Some even fringier elements have promoted ideas that imply the Rebbe is actually god. A larger % of the chassidic group don't proselytize, but say 'yechi,' (which attests to the kingship + eternal life of the Rebbe). An even larger - probably majority of Chabad chassidim - believe that the Rebbe is the messiah but don't believe in talking about it / spreading it. It's a private belief. And then I would say that the number of Chabad chassidim who don't believe he is the messiah at all is very few. I'm bringing this up bc my personal experience in this culture means that I understand what it looks like when more common beliefs give tacit support to more radical beliefs in a group. I don't know exactly what percentage of Muslims believe in actively killing apostates v. believe that it's the right thing to do but they won't do it v. believe in a general sense that Sharia law should be the law of the land v. are only culturally Muslim and for all practical purposes don't believe in religious law at all, etc. But I think the concentric model is useful for visualizing how silence in a faith community can often represent the holding of beliefs that aren't reasonable + mainstream and that the holding of those beliefs (whether it's that the Rebbe is messiah, or that stoning is the appropriate punishment for adultary) can empower the more terrible extremists. That's what I get from that model anyway.

xp like circles of hell but w/ fundamentalism instead of sin

xp it's something Harris used in his Maher appearance -- like "small circle of violent extremists, larger core of political islamists who don't openly espouse violence but believe in establishing Islamic states, larger circle of "conservative islamists" who hold a lot of beliefs we find repugnant but aren't active in a political project" etc.

*larger circle, not core

hm

why are violent extremists at the center?

again, any metaphor or schematic that places "fundamentalism" as central to the tenets or truth of a religion is a dishonest scheme i think - tho i get that really what Harris is talking about are fellow travellers or useful idiots

a sect that arrives late in a religion's history and is followed by a small fraction of that faith's followers might want to claim centrality but surely is not central in any meaningful way. maybe Sam Harris is happy to blithely accept fundamentalists account of their own importance for some reason.

Yeah, I don't like the idea of placing them at the "center." My concern isn't really how "central" the violent fundamentalist group is so much as how large and how powerful it is. While I think Mordy's description may work within a specific group/community of Jews, I don't think it works within Judaism at large, which is very multicentric. Like at this point I don't really see reform Judaism as hassdic Judaism lite, I see it as a very different branch of Judaism with very different ideas about things. I know much less about the branches of Islam but my impression is that it is also very multicentric, and that there are branches of Islam in which, e.g., wahabbist ideas couldn't even find purchase, because the branches of the religion have evolved so differently.

Good point, Hurting. The way Sam Harris and Bill Maher present the concentric circles in the clip upthread is completely opposite of that, pretending that their circles cover the entirety of the muslim world. And it's a bigoted idea. Insane Wahabists who are mainly located in Saudi Arabia becomes the reason to condemn muslim immigrants in the west, because jihadists and islamists are 'arguably 20%' of muslims.

Harris, Maher and others could be profitably read as products of 9-11?

I think he actually has converted 'truthfully'. Have heard the horseshoe remarks about this since yesterday and yes, it is a bit problematic imo, to see both as opposing extremes. xp

the US is europe's dream realised, but bigger

Besides, it's a four-pronged horseshoe once you throw the far left and the far centre into the equation.

lol

Think the horseshoe here actually consists of the ends being a) his orthodox reformed upbringing and b) islam

Reformed Orthodoxy… in the Netherlands? I'm curious.

The photo chosen to accompany the article is kinda LOL.

The Zidane of Dutch politics. Or the Ribéry, more like.

I thought this revive might have been about Baroness Warsi once again saying (to deaf ears and a wall of silence) that an independent enquiry into Conservative Party Islamophobia is long overdue. If only she learned to keep her mouth shut, or be a self-hating racist prick - she could be where Javid is.

Reformed Orthodoxy… in the Netherlands? I'm curious.

― pomenitul, Tuesday, February 5, 2019 10:53 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Netherlands has its own bible belt where the Restored Reformed Church and orthodox protestants reigneth. They're the orthodox/conservative wings that passed on the merger of 2004 of reformists and protestants, which they deemed not hardcore and old-fashioned and anti-gay, anti-abortion enough (my words).

Ah, I see. I was confused by your use of the word 'orthodox', which I systematically take (no doubt due to my roots) to mean Eastern Orthodox.

Yeah that one's on me, as I know you're from those parts :) Only Orthodox in your sense of the word we have here are Russian/Eastern Europe congregations.

Tbf in my experience most English speakers (in North America, at least) use 'orthodox' as shorthand for 'Orthodox Judaism', so I should know better than to continue assuming it's about the Eastern rite. Not to mention the word's more general, desacralized meaning.

In the USA the Orthodox Presbyterian Church is a very conservative Calvinist denomination with important connections to Republican politics through "Reconstructionism". My main knowledge of its practical life though is that they do not permit the singing of hymns, but only psalms.

Dutch newspaper @ADnl published an explainer on what to do if someone spots a Burqa wearer from tomorrow when the ban begins. They suggest asking the person to leave, call the police or, alternative, exercise the right to a citizen's arrest. Wilders, of course, likes that option pic.twitter.com/m7dttADm8g

— Flavia Dzodan (@redlightvoices) July 31, 2019

what is this fuckery

Police already said they aren't going to enforce this. It's a useless, purely symbolic new law and, indeed, utter madness. (studies estimate there are all of 250 women wearing a burqa. O a population of nearly 18 million...)

this was my understanding, but then on what grounds are they advocating for citizens arrests?

racism?

AD, being the rightwing scum newspaper they are, dusted off a never used or quoted article in Dutch law that states that a citizen is allowed to arrest someone committing a criminal offense when the person is caught red handed. Honestly, I've never heard about this before in my life.

xp that's the tl;dr of it, yeah

The amount of far-right fuckheads who get jingoistically excited over burqa bans is one of the cornerstones of my misanthropy. Like LBI said, we're talking about less than 500 people (it's the same in Canada btw).

this is strange:

https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2023/10/19/54359/omid_djalili_gig_axed_over_personal_threats