The comment threads on this blog are ablaze with flaming hot conversation (not to be confused with those uber-yummy flaming hot cheetos, please).
Everyone has an opinion regarding last week’s devastating attack on London, especially when it comes to the issue of how to react to terror. A few of you have exhorted moderate, if not all Muslims to speak up and out about their horror over what a few fundamentalists wrought.
Someone famous seems to be reading your minds; Olympic-Silver Medal-Boxer Amir Khan is the son of Pakistani immigrants, he is considered by some to be “Britain’s highest profile Asian-Muslim sportsman”. As a British Muslim, he feels especially called to react to the bombings. He made the following statements today, the day before his debut as a professional boxer:
“The worst thing about last week was that some people will tar all Muslims with the same brush,” the 18-year-old told the Daily Mirror newspaper.
“The Asian community has been appalled with what has happened. I hope that by stepping into the ring I can show all young kids in Britain that there are better things to do than getting into trouble and mixing with bad people.
“The world Islam means peace.”
Indeed. Rather than misdirecting hostility towards innocents, puree a punching bag. Hell, IMO any extra-curricular activity is preferable to growing glassy-eyed and hypnotized by a charismatic terrorist mastermind.
What a great kid. I hope he wins a lot of fights.
*Did I mention that I’ve seen Kevin McBride (the guy who just fought Tyson) work out at the gym? He’s gia-normous….
**Shouldn’t the last line read ‘the word Islam’ means peace?
Yeah ANNA for this nice post.
Thanks for this, ANNA. Nice to see a piece like this, and a smart articulate young man.
“What a great kid. I hope he wins a lot of fights.”
Ditto. Heck, I even wish that I were a chick so that I could sleep with him 😉
The word Islam means Submission. It does not mean peace.
Nope, Amir’s right. “Islam” means peace. “Muslim” means one who submits
“The worst thing about last week was that some people will tar all Muslims with the same brush,” the 18-year-old told the Daily Mirror newspaper.
err… what about the 40 people who died? Not bad enough for Imran?
it means both (or some combination thereof) apparently.
Terror can only be defeated by communitites. People of the community itself have to listen, reason and at times ask a few to ‘shut up!’.
The best example for this is what KPS Gill did in Punjab and the Catholic Bishops Conference of India (CBCI) did after a few incidents of violence against Christians by the Bajrang Dal in Orissa, MP and Gujarat.
I remember by parish preist reading out a letter from our bishop which said, “…wherever Christians have been harmed on this planet, we have flourished there. Never under estimate the power of love. Today as we hear hear reports of violence against us, we should not point fingers. We need to set an example as a model community of this nation. We cannot be good Christains if we are not good citizens….”
What a cutie. Too bad he’s only 17 😉
I have heard many Muslim community leaders make statements to the same effect, that most Muslims are moderate and not violent, so please stop assuming we’re all criminals, and rightfully so.
This guy’s not a religious leader of the community, so he’s off the hook, but is it enough to say “Islam means peace” and that’s that. Should the Muslim community take an even greater step to differentiate themselves from the extremist faction? I’m afraid the the average white folk won’t be able to see the difference between this hottie and Tanveer, one of the culprits behind the London bombing. I mean, people see that there’s a difference between moderates and extremists, but what the public is afraid of is that secretly, the Muslim community shares the jihad ideals of the violent ones, but are “moderate” in action and not necessarily in thought. Much the same way that some Indian-Americans are resistant to being lumped together with the entire sub-continent as “south asians,” the moderate Muslims should attempt to dissociate themselves further from the violent ones. I mean, how about a statement spelling things out like, “Bombing buses is NOT ISLAM, it is political violence, and those criminals ARE NOT PART of our religious community.” On the one hand I understand that being grouped by a geographical area is very different from being grouped by religious philosophy, but on the other hand, the layman’s definition of religious philosophy boils down to “the way you live your life,” and if they see a common religious philosophy, they’re going to assume a similar way of life, unless they vehemently shown that there is a difference, and not just with lukewarm statements of “islam means peace.” I mean, hell, the “backlash” dudes can’t even tell sikhs apart from muslims, they’ll have an even harder time differentiating moderates from extremists. (I’m not agreeing with any backlash action, I’m just making a point.)
Until then, the world sees Islam and Islamic terrorists as one and the same. Y’know, if there are any practicing Muslims who read this blog, I am very interested in how the Muslims discuss these actions in their own community. There’s probably a huge “religious solidarity” versus “what about the crazies” debate.
(if this gets posted twice, sorry!! it’s the crappy internet connection here at work)
Rupa and Manuvaram – you make very salient points. Especially Manuvaram – the worst thing is that forty innocent people died in the bombings – the backlash is a sad attachment to that initial, horrifying event, but you’d think that was the most important thing reading the comments section around here. I’ve been frustrated as well at the way in which the active indoctrination of these young men, and the misguided sympathy certain communities give to the indocrinators (and they absolutely do), is less of an issue than the backlash. You can see it right here in the comments sections where more comments and discussion happened in the posts to do with the backlash than the original bombings. It’s as if, in attempt to combat the racism they feel (and which is real and exists), some people almost dehumanize the majority culture. I don’t accept it. I simply don’t accept that kind of thinking.
Anyway, what I liked about ANNA’s post is that just as we have to discredit the radical jihadi ideology in no uncertain terms, with no soft-hearted “they must be so desperate they were pushed into it” excuses, we must also highlight the very real positive and good things about the Muslim minority culture in the West. It is possible to do both.
Anyway, what I liked about ANNA’s post is that just as we have to discredit the radical jihadi ideology in no uncertain terms, with no soft-hearted “they must be so desperate they were pushed into it” excuses, we must also highlight the very real positive and good things about the Muslim minority culture in the West. It is possible to do both.
I agree, MD. Well said.
I’ve been frustrated as well at the way in which the active indoctrination of these young men, and the misguided sympathy certain communities give to the indocrinators (and they absolutely do), is less of an issue than the backlash.
we have to discredit the radical jihadi ideology in no uncertain terms, with no soft-hearted “they must be so desperate they were pushed into it” excuses
Oh wow, you’re patronizing. I guess suicide bombers haven’t been the #1 topic of discussion for regular Muslims for the last 5 years. Do you know any Muslims in real life, or do you just watch them on National Geographic?
While it is nice to have positive statements from people in the public eye it does nothing to thwart future attacks or go after the scourge of radical Islam. The fact is that there are two countries that serve as the “Qaeda” for this virulent strain – Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – one funds it the other provides the base. It is no accident that virtually every Islamic terrorist had some link to the latter country. the west (US and UK) can start by delinking the absurdly named war on terror with the dictator who rules Pakistan. While oil makes it more difficult to do the same with SA, the long view requires that as well
seems khan won convincingly, awesome
I agree with Lionel, Pakistan needs to dismantle its terror infrastructure and reform its madrasas.
I am not the least bit patronizing, not muslim, and at my last job the department was filled with Syrians and Pakistanis. To listen to them speak, they had no responsibility for the acts in their coutries: if you challenged them about the Kurds killed by Saddam or the fact that women can’t vote in Saudi Arabia, they came up with some pretty lame excuses. My frustration comes from my personal life interactions. Even if it has been a point of discussion, well, it hasn’t been enough. Tough if that seems harsh.
I’ll take Bush-backed dictatorships for $100, Alex 🙂
And yes, yes, I know Syrians and Pakistanis dont’ come from Saudi Arabia or Iraq, but the people I knew (as friends and co-workers) always had an excuse for negative things in the Muslim world. Always. And the excuses were always related to the West or post-colonialism or Israel or America. In fact, one man, very well educated and living in the West for many years, believed the Jewish Blood Libel. They really felt they were under siege, and yet, as educated and well-to-do leaders in their community, they just couldn’t see that they could do more and better for their people. And avoiding criticism because you are afraid of sounding patronizing is one of the reasons we have problems. And I’m not letting the Indian community off the hook either, you should have seen the way some people were defending Modi on this board earlier. Upset because the US denied him a Visa. Lots of hypocrisy abounds.
Anyway, lots of people live in poverty and fear. They don’t all go off the deep end. Don’t make excuses.
Tell me, not Muslim, when you hear people saying things such as I have described, what do you say? Do you excuse them or do you challenge them. I started laughing at the Jewish Blood Libel my friend believed in when he told me it; I said, “how could you believe something so stupid?” He got very angry with me. What else was I supposed to say? Was that patronizing?
So Manish, even if the US supported them, do they have no responsibility for anything? None whatsoever? Besides, it was a US,Russia, German, English, Chinese, Indian supported dictatorship. Please tell me who doesn’t play ball with these guys?
Besides, it was a US,Russia, German, English, Chinese, Indian supported dictatorship. Please tell me who doesn’t play ball with these guys?
Hmm do the Chinese or Russians beat the drums of freedom or invade nations to spread their values ? You would think with all the big talk and even bigger action, the US should be held to a slightly higher standard than China.
I beg to differ, Al Mujahid. Everyone should be held to the same standard and judged how far they fall from it…..
Do you realize that by focusing only on US culpability you effectively provide moral cover to those regimes who would persecute their own? So that fools that run places like Saudi Arabia say they can’t institute reforms until the Palestinian-Israel situation is sorted out? And then you have people that buy into that nonsense. But only US crimes matter; nothing else. Fine. You can ignore the crimes by the rest of the world all you want. That’s your business.
So that fools that run places like Saudi Arabia say they can’t institute reforms until the Palestinian-Israel situation is sorted out? And then you have people that buy into that nonsense
No, we need to condemn these regimes and try to put an end to them. We need to do everything we can so that the corrupt regimes in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are either reformed or toppled.
However it seems to me that you dont want to help us in forcing the US to stop supporting Pakistan and Saudi Arabia because you believe that China and Russia play with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as well so why should we pick on the US. See the difference ?
Pakistan has become an epicenter of global terrorism.
Nawaz Sharif (the democratically elected leader who Mushrraf toppled in a coup) did not want to do the Kargil mis-adventure. Musharraf did the Kargil abomination behind Nawaz Sharif’s back and ever since Mushrraf is in power, jihadi elements in Pakistan have a free pass.
So arming Iraq was realpolitik, but invading it is suddenly idealism?
To your other question: of course they’re responsible. People get the government they settle for, whether in Iraq, Arabia, Pakistan or the U.S. But this ‘invasion for humanitarian reasons’ spin is malarkey.
Everyone should be held to the same standard and judged how far they fall from it…..
well, i agree with most of the things you say MD, but i don’t think this is defensible. there are various levels of, to use an old and out of date word, “civilization,” out there. the reason i was outraged about the gujarat massacres (on all sides) is that it happened in the “world’s biggest democracy”. i am less outraged by the regular assaults and persecutions in pakistan (which, evaluated over a longer period probably yield a similar body count) because it’s a soft-dictatorship and has little liberal civil society. and of course there are places in the world where 2,000 dead in a day isn’t that much to break a sweat over. but india has been a democracy for 50 years (except for the 1970s emergency period) and is supposed to be the next great civilized power (in contrast to china, which will be the paramount amoral power of the 21st century*).
similarly, the USA does hold itself up as a moral exemplar. so yeah, we’re going to get shat on (and there is a lot of shit we’ve done, see the treatment of the filipinos by the american occupational administration in the early 20th century, not as bad as the german slaughter of the hereros in southwest africa, but do we really want to compare ourselves to the kaisereich?). frankly, a lot of liberals seem to have accepted implicity that not everyone is ready for liberal demoracy implicitly by their realist carping about iraq. so let’s get real, after all, this idealistic “everyone should be held to the same standards” results in the same rhetorical wordplay which says “we are all equally beholdened to fight muslim extremism,” as if the vast majority of non-militant muslims do not have any special duty by association and practical skills that can be brought to bear.
all that being said:
1) i think there is a big disconnect between moderate western muslims and the rest of non-muslim society in how they view the world. i just read european muslim tariq ramadan’s western muslims and the future of islam and some of the stuff he said disturbed me (ramadan is not necessarily a liberal, but his rhetoric generally has the same feel as conservative christians, who have reconciled themselves to the pluralistic and democratic society-and he is an aggressive ‘acculturist’).
2) i haven’t encountered much talk about suicide bombers among muslims over the past 5 years. my own family is pretty detached from the whole conflict in iraq and such political issues. of course, they aren’t extremely activist muslims, and the situation in the USA isn’t that dire. i don’t think that broad pan-western generalizations really apply, though muslim convert michael wolf did say after 9/11 that until then he viewed radicals as abberations and didn’t feel like he had to address or deal with them in any way because they had nothing to do with his faith.
also, to frame any follow up comments i make here: my overriding concern with any issue of foreign policy is related to one question: how does it affect the united states??? humanitarian concerns are a very distant second. a particular concern for overseas brown mother countries are minimal, aside from possible freaks outs because of the destruction of historically precious monuments like the baniyman buddhas. i just figured i’d put my cards on the table so that people know where i’m coming from.
Since the London attacks, the american media and political society is abuzz with two words (i) Home-grown, and (ii) Pakistan.
I think in the next few months we will start seeing subtle policy shifts (formal and informal) that affects those two words put together in one or more ways – and I do not think Pakistani-Americans will be spared either…
..its just the sad state of reality…
MD, I generally agree with this, but I’d make a distinction between what you call making excuses, and what I would call demonizing “terrorists”–because, without taking moral or other responsibility away from the actions of people who blow up train stations–it’s counterproductive to engage in the democnizaion and opens up a whole series of other problems (like what an uncritical acceptance of this logic enables the Ashcrofts of the world to do) and what you call “making excuses.”
btw, razib has a good post on his blog on this topic that covers a book that attempts to provide some rigor to understanding who “goes off the deep end” and “who doesn’t” (again reiterating that they’re mostly not poor). It seems a good starting point for a discusison into waht’s actually going on.
razib, I think there’s distinction between outrage at the acts (which should, imo, ideally be devoid of other concerns) and your outrage at the national governements that are running the show (or failing to do so for a variety of reasons). I agree that you need to understand different situations in context (for example, a peace activist was killed in Somalia this week and it would make little sense to focus on Somalia’s non-existent (or decrepit, if it does exist) government except for not existing.
My standard is to reduce to the level of the indidivuals or others directly affected in understanding atrocities and then build up from there to understand how it all happened and who is responsible and who can do something about it. I use “power analysis” as jargon for it (apparently inaccurately, according to that link 🙂
I’m not saying that I also don’t show different degrees of outrage at particular targets with more power vs. those with less too because it would be kind of inhuman not to–but it’s probably not a good idea 🙂 Your point about how it’s important to be care since this what you say or call for might play into preexisting trends (i.e. miscreants blaming muslims indiscrimninately) is well taken as well.
This is because of a total lack of creativity. I think it’s brought about by a political climate which sees military intervention by foreign states and leaving things the way they are as the only two solutions worth discussion in popular debate. It is to be grieved that George Bush has coopted the language of international idealism and some people (including me) are often responding poorly to it.
There are almost always other solutions to attempt (particularly if you don’t wait until the human rights abuses are said to be imminent to adopt them). I haven’t given this a lot of thought, but jsut to concretize this a little bit, some sgugestions might include–agressive aid for women’s education and public education more generally; more equitable trade policy (if you’re a neoliuberal, that means calling for reductions in u.s. and european agricultrual trade subsidies; if you’re not, that means calling for a more substantive overhaul in the trade regime); eliminating the “arm both sides” approach to places like South Asia (which Condoleeza Rice affirmed on the day of the bombings; reevalutate the ways in which you determine what U.S. strategic interests are and how to go about getting to them (i.e. perhaps privilege ending potential global pandemics or global warming over short term financial gain or economic security); etc.
Obviously, I can’t relate to your decision to, on an intellectual level, arbitrarily privilege American individuals over others, but everyone approaches these issues with different ends. Given what I imagine our socioeconomic positions are (from the fact that we can blog all day), we probably won’t end up on opposite sides of a battlefield anytime soon, so I guess we’ll have to agree to disagree (while I continue to attempt to make sense of your patriotism–or whatever it is).
One last note: I can’t remember who said it, but the line goes something like: “Our foreign policy is someone else’s day to day life.”
Oh dear me.
Some serious bullshit being talked about the London bombings.
I am going to stay out of these discussions because I want to stay everybody’s hero and I dont even want to offend the silly people who are making excuses and stuff for what is basically fascism.
In the meantime, here is a picture of Bipasha Basu and Amisha Patel with their breasts squashed together:
Bipasha-Patel Breast Squash Photo
I think the Sepia Muitiny should do a post on this photo.
What do you all think of the Bipasha-Amisha Breast Squashing Controversy?
is the new form of wet sari?
Razib
It is my favourite picture at the moment
razib – I suppose you are right about my ‘everyone being held to the same standard’ comment. It’s not practical, really. It’s just that I can’t help feeling that the flip side to expecting more from a democracy is expecting less from non-democracies which leads to some bad stuff. I feel like some countries actually get a pass on things when they should be pushed more because of that kind of attitude. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations….
And as for encouraging moderate Muslims to do this, or that, well, I suppose most speak out of frustration. Yes, it doesn’t have anything more to do with an atheist raised as a Muslim, like you, as it does to me, an agnostic (raised Hindu). I suppose I’m all about the practical – doctors aren’t scientists, we live in a world of doing the best we can with what little we’ve got. And I just think it would be easier and more practical for change to come from within a community.
Saurav – thank you. I did read razib’s post on Gene Expression. Like everything there it is thoughtful and thought-provoking. I was especially haunted by his comment to the post and the idea that there is something unique and peculiar about the Salafist terrorist network. He used the word delusional, and it is almost that, isn’t it?
Oh, and I here you when you say: “well, what does it do for US interests?” I suppose I have drunk at least a part of the neocon kool-aid in that I think promoting democracy and human rights does ultimately help US interests in the long run. Plus, I’m a lapsed liberal and democrat, so that sort of stuff still appeals to me, even though I am cranky and libertarian-conservative and old and everything….
Punjabi Boy – I swear. You are one of my heroes. You, sir, have style.
He used the word delusional, and it is almost that, isn’t it?
well, i have read a lot about radical islam in the past few weeks, and i have to say that there is a definite disconnect between the world they perceive and the world we perceive. they are ‘irrational actors’ from our perspective, but their behavior makes total sense in light of their axioms. and note, their axioms are pretty bizarre even to most conservative/fundamentalist traditionalist muslims with an itchy trigger finger (some terror groups seem to have gotten pissed off that al qaeda was fixated on americans, when there were anti-islamist dictators and jews to kill nearby).