Rolling Islamophobia Thread

So I don't think we have any thread for this stuff, but living in Europe, this stuff is everywhere, and I could really need some place to rant about it, without being accused of being 'soft on islamism' or a 'halal-hippie' or anything. Also this was prompted by this article on islamophobia on American cable: http://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6918485/the-overt-islamophobia-on-american-tv-news-is-out-of-control That CNN interview is quite frankly scary. So the US has it as well, though in different ways.

In European news, we have all that stuff about young people going to fight in Syria, which of course with ISIS being all people now know about Syria, is becoming even more present. There is talk that a mosque in Aarhus will be closed, and while it does seem as if they have quite frankly helped in recruiting and organizing fighting for ISIS, the politicians in the city are talking of just closing it bureaucratically, without having to prove anything, and keeps talking about 'brainwashing'. Which scares me. Denmark has become fanatical about freedom of speech, but when it comes to imams, people are openly calling their preaching 'brainwashing', as if that is in any way a legal term. In Belgium, an imam is on trial for abetting terrorists and it seems as if 'brainwashing' is among the things he is accused of. What does that mean? Where on earth do you draw a line with that?

didnt bill maher say a mean thing recently

is the answer to that question ever "no"?

(re: bill maher)

viral 'debate' w/ Ben Affleck (Nicholas Kristof straining to get a word in)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vln9D81eO60

you guys can tell me abt this Sam Harris if u care to

i have islamophobia

in this climate reza aslan is a pleasingly chill & handsome presence to have around for interviews

Well, you'd think that, but according to CNN he is part of the problem:

Also, his tone was angry. He wound up kind of demonstrating what people are fearful about when they think of the faith in the first place, which is the hostility of it. Look, here's what you guys were exposing yourself to. This is the state of play in journalism today. The Muslim world is responsible for a really big part of religious extremism right now. And they are unusually violent. They're unusually barbaric in the places where it is happening. And it's happening there more there than it is in other places. Do you therefore want to generalize? Of course not. But you do want to call a situation what it is. It's not a coincidence that ISIS begins with an I. I mean, that's what's going on in that part of the world. Doesn't mean other faiths can't be violent and other cultures can't be violent, but you shouldn't be afraid of the question.

That's Chris Cuomo discussing the Aslan-interview with Lemon and Camerota, copy-pasted from the article I linked to in the opening post.

Also, his tone was angry. He wound up kind of demonstrating what people are fearful about when they think of the faith in the first place, which is the hostility of it. Look

Oh fuck this.

The Muslim world is responsible for a really big part of religious extremism right now.

This is an interesting sentence.

Denmark has become fanatical about freedom of speech, but when it comes to imams, people are openly calling their preaching 'brainwashing',

Yup, people get militant about a 'freedom of speech', which sounds like it ought to be universal, but as they mean it, doesn't apply to Imams or anyone beyond the arbitrary pale marked 'extremist'. Likewise people get militant about the freedom to dress however you want but it doesn't apply to women in burqas. Or the right to express one's religious beliefs - it seems you should get this if you want to wear a cross to work, but not if you want to wear a headscarf

This is probably a bit shaky, but the feeling I get is that around Europe, a lot of people consciously hold to some sort of universalist liberal humanist ideology, but one which doesn't have very much substance and which falls apart the minute they're faced with the sight of two Muslim women with their kids in their local supermarket. It washes away, and underneath you find a pretty much untouched seam of Old Hate, as strong as it ever was.

in this climate reza aslan is a pleasingly chill & handsome presence to have around for interviews

― ogmor, Thursday, October 9, 2014 6:49 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm, he is so watchable and engaging

Ben Affleck isn't really an adequate debate opponent for Sam Harris.

well yeah that's been the problem with BM's shows all along (besides him)

I mean Sam Harris has some points, but I think someone a little smarter could challenge him a little better without resorting to simplistic "OMG U R A BIGOT" answers and empty sarcasm.

a little smarter and more well-read on the subject

This is probably a bit shaky, but the feeling I get is that around Europe, a lot of people consciously hold to some sort of universalist liberal humanist ideology, but one which doesn't have very much substance and which falls apart the minute they're faced with the sight of two Muslim women with their kids in their local supermarket. It washes away, and underneath you find a pretty much untouched seam of Old Hate, as strong as it ever was.

― cardamon, 9. oktober 2014 15:29 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, many people see the biggest fight in the world today as being between western liberalism and middle eastern islamism. Like, this book called De Anstændige (The Decent Ones, I think) is all about how we have to be really brave and stand up to islamists with our 'enlightenment', which isn't really developed further. And it's definitely true that islamists has called for censorship and stuff. Danish critics of Islam has been attacked and threatened. It's not a made up problem. But how 'enlightenment' is compatible with jailing people for 'brainwashing' or - the big one - western policy in the middle east is a really big question, that I don't really see the liberals trying to answer.

I think cardamon's point is good but doesn't go deep enough, because there's a very real and difficult problem of how far we take western liberal "tolerance" when it bumps up against groups that actively work against western liberalism. And it's sort of a dodge to point out western liberalism's own failings at living up to its ideals, because it doesn't really answer the question. And also I think it's possible to ask the questions separately about foreign vs domestic policy, like it's one thing to say "we shouldn't be invading people's countries because they hold different views," but it's another thing to ask what to do about a group within your country's borders who would like to overthrow your values. I'm not sure why, for example, a group seeking censorship of (and threatening violence against) a cartoonist for mocking a religion should be treated differently from other extreme right wing groups.

But I think cardamom hits on a problem that a lot of people don't really have strong, well-backed-up convictions about their liberalism but have just sort of received it through the ether. I tend to think this is partly the fault of consumerist capitalism, which I think has sort of hollowed-out liberal values and left us with a cardboard cutout of them.

So the US has it as well, though in different ways.

It seems worse in the US, more open anyway.

... worse than the UK, can't speak for Denmark et al

... this in spite of having a Muslim President

Well, the problem for me is that if you read a book like De Anstændige, the point seems to be that the liberal ideals of 'enlightenment' is what in and of itself will take care of islamism. But then we also shouldn't 'be naive' and let those same ideals stand in the way of doing something efficient about the islamists. Like...

I don't know the book of course, but that's part of my problem with Sam Harris -- sounds like a nice, rational, reasonable argument on the surface but what is the logical conclusion? But otoh dismissing Sam Harris doesn't answer any questions.

but what is the logical conclusion?

Deporting Muslims qua Muslims, closing borders to Muslims qua Muslims, banning the Koran, demolishing mosques, making the practice and promotion of Islam illegal ...

... are perhaps not the logical conclusions of Sam Harris, but that list probably provides a useful definition of what one conclusion would look like. So far as I'm aware his schtick doesn't involve expressly ruling out the things on that list.

Another of my suspicions (take it for what it's worth) is that when dealing with an Other of some kind, we are very quick to reify what they're all about – what they care about, how they would like the world to be, how they behave in the world - into an ideology, program, or project. Such that we stop thinking about the actual (better or worse) human being, and instead see a kind of robotic agent.

This anyway seems to be the attitude held by the majority of supposedly daring Critics Of Islam that I come across, and it strikes me that, apart from this attitude looking like it's going to start killing innocent people fairly soon, it's just kind of unhealthy for the holder too.

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.

this interview isn't totally a good fit for this thread (tho it touches on related issues) but more importantly i thought it was very interesting and worth reading:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/08/shadi_hamid_on_islamic_exceptionalism.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/08/16/mans-unusual-fixation-with-lebanese-neighbors-led-to-murder-tulsa-police-say/#

Real sickener of a story

xp that article is fascinating to me just for the amazing consistency with which hamid outlines positions I completely disagree with; on essentialism,'meaning', heaven, identity, his peculiarly differing treatment of 'liberalism' and 'democracy'. at the end he starts to walk it back and suggests that these islamic societies aren't ready now, that we have to hold faith in democracy to resolve all problems despite its continual failures, and it doesn't seem that he's proposing that anyone does anything at all. but yes probably better elsewhere

The Daily Mail appears to have decided that armed police making women take their clothes off in public is a bit OTT:

https://twitter.com/CarolineFourest/status/768342243954622464

Sarkozy apparently planning to ban Muslim and Jewish children from being offered substitute pork-free meals if / when he gets back into office:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/aug/19/le-comeback-kid-sarkozy-shapes-up-for-presidential-run-on-hardline-platform

The woman wasn't even wearing a burkini, just a top and a headscarf. This is a very frightening development. Inquisition.

cool can't see this uninflammatory photograph causing many problems good job france

so France has gone fascist, really, hasn't it?

ils passeront

Burqini ban overturned by French high court.

No surprise that this would happen in France
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/24/france-burkini-ban-secularist-equality-muslim

WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK IS THIS SHIT
https://twitter.com/SecureAmerica/status/794936987715325952
FUCKING TWITTER TARGETING "PROMOTED TWEETS" AT LAMES LIKE ME JUST TO RILE PEOPLE UP

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/georgia-bill-bans-burqa-public

A Republican state representative in Georgia on Tuesday introduced a bill that would restrict women's ability to wear a burqa or veil in their driver's license photo and in public places, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

is it currently legal to wear a burqa for your driver's license photo? that seems like a mistake? banning it in public places of course abhorrent.

is it currently legal to wear a burqa for your driver's license photo?

Seems unlikely, not to say pointless.

iirc some states allow for driving licences without photos and have done for many years - largely because you have some religious minorities like Mennonites who do not want to be photographed at all. They are not valid for other ID purposes.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/11/us/muslim-florida-store-fire/index.html

"It's unfortunate that Mr. Lloyd made the assumption that the store owners were Arabic when, in fact, they are of Indian descent," Mascara said."

ahh right. cos if they had been Arabic then it woulda been ok.

According to CNN affiliate WPEC, Lloyd told investigators he tried to buy a bottle of Tropicana orange pineapple juice at the store a few days ago but was told they didn't have any.

and people are scared of Muslims???

two dead in Portland after intervening as a guy harassed Muslim women on the MAX train

http://www.wweek.com/uncategorized/2017/05/26/witnesses-man-on-northeast-portland-max-train-cut-the-throats-of-two-men-who-tried-to-stop-anti-muslim-bullying-of-women-passengers/

white supremacist background:

http://www.wweek.com/news/2017/05/27/the-man-accused-of-max-double-murder-is-a-portland-white-supremacist-who-delivered-nazi-salutes-and-racial-slurs-at-a-free-speech-rally-last-month/

totally fucked

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/nov/01/inquiry-rejects-press-claims-about-christian-girl-fostered-by-muslims

Absolutely shameful conduct from the press.

Last paragraph was horrible:

The Daily Mail followed by putting the story on its front page under the headline “MPs’ anger as Christian girl forced into Muslim foster care”. It used a stock picture of a Muslim family to illustrate the story in print and online, but altered the image to cover the woman’s face with a veil.

Is the talk about Chinese camps on other threads?

https://www.politico.eu/article/former-dutch-anti-muslim-politician-converts-to-islam-joram-van-klaveren/

something about that horseshoe

mashallah

Still waiting for ex-ISIS members to join Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement national.

actually that's problematic, what i said - maybe he has recanted his ways and converted to a nice moderate islam. i won't rule it out but

anyway this thread could probably be retitled 'rolling europe'

More than a few of the links posted upthread concern the US. But I take your point.

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