Dave Sidhu at the great blog DNSI has a very illustrative example of what stinks in the ethnic ghettos of Europe in my opinion. It turns out that Muslims that have the munchies can now satiate their cravings at their own Beurger King Muslim (BKM). The BBC reports:
Parisian Muslims can now enjoy halal meals in an atmosphere that mimics US fast-food joints after BKM, or Beurger King Muslim, opened its doors.
BKM has set up in the northern Paris suburb of Clichy-sous-Bois, where many locals are first or second generation Muslims from former French colonies.
And half of the suburb’s population of 28,000 are aged under 25, the Agence France Presse news agency reported.
Beur is slang for a second generation North African living in France.
So let me understand this. It mimics the atmosphere of the U.S. by essentially being a segregated establishment? I’m torn. I HATE this idea because all it does is serve to further segregate a community whose children sometimes seem to turn fanatical because they feel segregated against. At the same time however it helps fight the poverty that leads to and maintains the segregation:
For most of BKM’s employees, the restaurant had “ended a long period of unemployment”, Mr Benhamid said.One BKM worker called Hakim explained that “young people in these suburbs have trouble finding work and this restaurant will allow the hiring of young people who have no diplomas or are looking for apartments”.
Dave was also kind enough to point me to a related article in today’s Christian Science Monitor about the growing objections in Britain to the concept of a multicultural society (where you let immigrant populations just do their own thing):
Those who want a more robust response to terrorism argue that multiculturalism fosters an aloofness dangerous to social cohesion that has ultimately led young men from ethnic minorities to turn on their own society.“Britain has a proud history of tolerance towards people of different views, faiths and backgrounds,” opined David Davis, the senior opposition Conservative member of Parliament (MP), Wednesday. “But we should not flinch from demanding the same tolerance and respect for the British way of life.” Another MP, Gerald Howarth, said if some Muslims “don’t like our way of life, there is a simple remedy: go to another country, get out.”
But even as government officials Tuesday began their campaign to reach out to Britain’s sizeable Muslim community, those who believe in the multicultural dream say it is already being eroded by the response to the attacks.
I wish I was seeing more articles right now comparing U.S. and European immigration policies. It seems (at the surface at least) to be pretty clear that the U.S. admits immigrants who are more likely to succeed and assimilate than Europe does. Part of this of course stems from the collapse of European empires in the twenty century, which often required giving citizenship to former subjects. If Turkey had a problem being admited to the EU before, I think the events of the last month are not going to do anything to help their ambitions.
Other European countries such as France expect greater assimilation from their newcomers. Britain has taken a more hands-off approach, and its ethnic communities tend to be highly segregated, as a demographic map of London shows: Indians in northwest London; Caribbeans in Brixton; Koreans in New Malden; and whites in the suburbs.Some community leaders insist that multiculturalism still works, that it has nothing to do with terrorism.
At its best, they say, it enables immigrants to settle more comfortably, retaining customs and culture while obeying British law. And it celebrates the diversity of Britain’s population.
Any time a post I write turns into a discussion about Star Terk, I love it. All is right with the Federation.
I registered with imdb for the sole reason to post up a thread entitled The Lamest and the Coolest, where I argued who the 5 lamest and coolest characters were. Ah, happy days.
Geek power.
Some Muslims complain it’s not Muslim enough 😉
Sourpuss.
Seems to me their biggest problem is actually trademark.
this isn’t how this stuff works, razib. if you assume a set of negative essential traits about someone (in this context, that they might blow up a train or otherwise want to kill you) on the basis of some group membership, that’s where the -phobia part comes in. You’re free to criticize maulvis without being islamaphobic and if someone attacks sikhs for being “muslim-looking,” then that’s islamaphobic too. It’s about the mental state of the person and a cultural trend to the extent that many others share it (if that’s the case…which is a separate argument).
It’s obviously not an exclusive factor–it goes with other kinds of racism, anti-Arab sentiment, legitimate critique, economic motives, personality, blah blah blah and it does get misused, but you’ve got to admit that there’s your fair share of baseless and irrational anti-Muslim sentiment these days by ordinary folks.
Do you read some of your blog comments? 😉
-netaji saurav
but you’ve got to admit that there’s your fair share of baseless and irrational anti-Muslim sentiment these days by ordinary folks.
the ordinary folks are irrelevant being the short term, in the long run history is a dialogue between elites 😉 and the ‘islamophobia’ charge, in my eyes, is being used to chill criticism against a religious system and its byproducts. prefixing islam to phobia has i think had the unfortunate (as i’ve stated over and over) effect of coupling criticism of islam with racism, if not strongly, at least enough so that it quenches the anti-religion skepticism that is normative among manys secularists. attacks against sikhs because they look muslim, burnings of mosques, etc. is motivated by racism and ethnic bias coupled with the amplifying power of islamic terrorism as a trigger. i think we should be careful about compressing detestation of beliefs with detestations of race, ethnicity, etc. the latter is far less fungible than the former, and i think that distinction matters.
your fair share of baseless and irrational anti-Muslim sentiment these days by ordinary folks.
and it depends on how you define ‘baseless’ and ‘irrational.’ when i was in college girls were terrified of walking by a particular cemetary because of a rape that had occurred there years before. someone pointed out that the incidence of rape was actually higher in the environs of a local bar, but ultimately women were specifically avoid the cemetary as opposed to the bar even though statistically rape was far more likely at the bar. you know me well enough to know that i don’t believe that the human mind is a classic utilitarian modeling device, especially the stupid human mind (the majority). the public can be educated, but ultimately, within the context of normal cognitive architecture, i suspect the responses you are seeing is quite normal. in fact, the cultural milieu of relative tolerance is of course dampening the response if history is to be any judge.
p.s. many of my comments related to ‘islamophobia’ would probably fall under the rubric of ‘framing.’ i think in the present battle that browns are having to do against ‘islamophobia’ will have long term ramifications with the way muslim groups will be able to utilize the term. i don’t think it is a big step to drop off the ‘irrational’ part from irrational hatred of islam, and i think that tends to happen a lot, as rational critiques are quelched because of the climate.
I know you’re capable of understand the effects of social movements and demographics on institutions and elites and the importance of demographics, so I’m left to assume that you’re just deliberately trying to piss me off because you know the better angels of my nature are populist. 🙂
In any case, the practice of history is a dialogue between a scholar and a primary source and then among other scholars who are doing the same (and maybe their friends); everyone else can f#ck off or more accurately call what they produce “pop history” or “badly done history” (whichever applies).
I can understand what you’re saying about the misuse of “Islamaphobia” as a way of deflecting a critique of faith but if your goal is to promote critiques of faith, there are other ways to do it besides denying the validity of a term (as opposed to calling for it to be used precisely and effectively and calling out people when they don’t do that).
The crux of our disagreement, I think, is that you choose to view Muslims as people who adhere to a particular set of “beliefs” and I choose to view them here as an outsider-defined social group who are alleged to share commonalities–i do this because, imo, those are the grounds on which people are being targeted.
Of course preexisting elements of racism and ethnic bias play into all this (as do many other things–particularly xenophobia, class, nationality-based bias), but rounding and questioning 82,000 immigrants from countries with “Al Qaeda” presence through a single policy is tantamount to official targeting using religion as a primary factor (as was an FBI decision to choose to use the number of mosques in an area as a means of allocating counterterrorism resources). I’m picking just two of about 50 examples of what I consider officially sanctioned policies that rely on religion-based profiling from the Ashcroft years–since you want to talk about elite actions 😉
You can pick another word for “Islamaphobia” if you want–it’s just kind of catchy.
No, I live in Australia. The press here is split on the issue, but there are middlebrow conservative broadsheets and tabloids here which are literally competing with each other to vilify Muslims. No joke, it’s appalling.
The crux of our disagreement, I think, is that you choose to view Muslims as people who adhere to a particular set of “beliefs” and I choose to view them here as an outsider-defined social group who are alleged to share commonalities–i do this because, imo, those are the grounds on which people are being targeted.
your operational definition is understandable, and perhaps pragmatic in narrow constraints of time, but i think in the long term is it numinous and too loose. i don’t really have an axiomatic definition of “who is a muslim,” i say that anyone is a muslim who identifies as a muslim. the question of who is a muslim is rather strange, and one contingent upon subjective perception, and i will offer and anecdote that illustrates this. a friend of mine who sometimes comments on my blog has recently decided to adhere to a more militant anti-islamist stance. she emailed me because she was worried that i would take offense at her anti-islamist stance because it shaded into anti-muslimness. now, i was a little taken aback by the email, because
1) she perceived me as muslim, though she knows i’m an atheist.
2) i don’t perceive myself as muslim.
3) i’m notoriously narcissistic and have a difficult time seeing how anything is really relevant to me that doesn’t have a direct connection me, so the email was a rather poor judge of my character (she was more disturbed by her own views than i was!).
now, am i muslim because some people out there think i am muslim? frankly, i am as muslim as you saurav, by which i mean that most ignorant rednecks would not discern ‘razib’ to be a more muslim name than ‘saurav.’ more sophisticated people would know about my family’s origin was muslim from the surname, and some of these people seem to persist assuming i identify as a muslim even though i am an atheist. but in any case, if there is a strong anti-muslim backlash there is an assumption i might be a target. i would not have a hesitation in changing my name if there was a strong anti-muslim backlash, so i am as vulnerable as any brown person out there. but as i said, the ignorant types don’t care about such things. so i see the many of the short term issues that ‘islamophobia addresses.’
but, the issue relating to islamophobia is partly semantical. i might even object less if it was muslimphobia, as at least that makes people the target of hatred rather than a complex of ideas (there is a range which these ideas cover, but they do tend to exhibit certain features, for example, adherence to the shahada). but again, you are talking about a totally different thing than what i am thinking about, i am not speaking to FBI targeting of mosques or muslim leaders, round-ups, or anything like that. i am addressing a tendency i see in some circles to not treat islam like a regular complex of ideas and institutions which are not sacred to those outside the circle of belief because the religion has started to imbue the untouchable mystique of the oppressed (for lack of a better phrase).
in sum, i think the short term utility of the term ‘islamophobia’ (or the phenomenon) is debatable, but, i think in the long term it lays the seeds for an insulation of islam as a set of ideas and practices espoused by various people because it is instrinsically associated with them like their skin color or gender. i am simply being a moron if i declare that i am not a brown, as that is a fundamental part of who i am because of biology. on the other hand, my religion is fungible, it is up for discussion, debate, refutation and scorn. or should be.
p.s. i think that i would have the same objection to the term “judeophobia,” as opposed to anti-semitism. as it is, i have gotten into arguments with jewish friends and acquaintances because they conflate my objections to various jewish religious customs and traditions with anti-semitism. in fact, i have seen some rather bizarre articles on the net which smear the anti-circumcision movement with anti-semitism!
British Bong Corporation!!!
I vote for British Bong Corporation.
That is all.
Saurav
The trouble is – legitimate criticism of Islamic extremism (which is itself an intolerant and bigoted creed) – a type of fascism that is a menace to the whole of society and produces suicide massacring psychopaths (I am talking about Britain) – is being deflected by recourse of the phrase ‘Islamophobia’
And you know what? Non Muslims who have the best intentions, who stick their heads in the sand because they dont want to face up to this fact also invoke this very elastic concept to create a taboo against the discussion of certain issues.
It devalues the phrase and becomes a hinderance to the frank and neccessary open discussion we need to have about a strain of fascsim that exists and is identifiable and real – soft soaping this issue leads to death – read Kenan Malik’s article which I posted above.
In short, Saurav, any ideology that promtes hatred, intolerance, violence, death, religious supremacism, the oppression of women, and the murder of infidels and homosexuals, DOES NOT DESERVE to have protection from scrutiny in a free and democratic society – especially at a time when this ideology has resulted in the deaths of 55 people and the maiming for life including amputation and blinding and scarring of 200 others – and when this ideology and threat remaisn present and real.
Hence, Muslim organisations need to use the term more carefully and judiciously and should not prevent discussion by throwing it about as a term of abuse – not least because the more they do it and try to stigmatise legitimate discussion the more the use of the term comes to be seen as an example of ‘the boy who cried wolf’
Which does not help anyone.
Yes, I’m using it specifically in context to the discussions that we’re having now. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to try to come up with an immutable definition of what constitutes “Islamaphobia.” I see what you’re saying about how this “trend” might be used by others as a means of essentializing a religion as something immutable in a person, but I think this has more to do with your views on religion than your views on whether or not there’s currently any antipathy towards those perceived to be Muslims or not. Different lenses.
Here we have another disagreement, though–one that we’ve talked about before. I think that religion in this context is closer to the other markers that you mention in the context of a conversation about social relationships. There’s clearly a difference in applying a label on the basis of: how you self-identify; what’s emotionally practical for you to belief; how you’re perceived by others; how you were raised; the community of which your family was a part; what you actually believe; and many other criteria by which you could take on or not take on the label of a particular religion. I could say that I’m not Hindu because I’ve chosen not to be so anymore, but it wouldn’t change particular experiences I’ve had–having been to pujas, having read the Gita, having been exposed to Goddess worship, ritual, etc. You could argue that “Hindu” is imprecise, but I would be as foolish in denying it as I would my brown skin because there was a cultural and intellectual tradition I was brought up in. Even if I myself were not raised Hindu but my parents were, I could see some of the traditions or ways of thinking making their way into my brain. It’s unfortunate in some cases and fortunate in others, but it’s there. The problem with modernity is that it demands you check of a box when people are generally more complicated than that.
On the other pole you laid out, the qualities you’re talking about are influenced by, build on, include cultural ideas that have nothing to do with anything abundantly self-evident. I mean, if we’re talking about skin color–“white”, “black”, and “yellow” are pretty inaccurate terms and “brown” is even less meaningful as a universal social descriptor than “Asian” To wit, I learned today that the first reference to a people being “yellow” was original applied to desi people by Turkish people.
Binary notions of gender can also be problematic (I haven’t quite figured this out yet, but obviously “boys do this” and “girls do this” is something we’re still working through). It’s also culturally specific–transgender and hijra are not the same thing. I take it you mean “sex” and not gender, but that I can draw a distinction makes clear that we’re not talking about something that’s entirely reliant on an understanding of an objective world either.
PB, you’re talking about the use of the term Islamaphobia. I was talking about the existence of a phenomenon that might justify the term. Any term can be politically used in various ways; some Zionists and some anti-Semites and are united in confusing the state of Israel with Judaism (although for different ends.
I don’t know what’s going on in the UK so I won’t comment on that, but the article you provided has some lines that read like a standard denial of a race problem (the “how can we know an Afghan taxi driver” line caught my eye in particular).
But in the US, we had an attorney general (who was then in charge of immigration services, the FBI, and other law enforcement agencies) who decided to go after Muslim communities (which involved investigating, detaining, or trying to deport at least 100,000 people). We also had a war that was reliant on the fact that people would be willing to confuse the secular (if horrendous) Muslim state of Iraq with the almost uniformly Saudi 9/11/2001 hijackers. We have people who call for the United States to invade Muslim countries and convert them all and are still allowed to take the airways. We have a Congressman who’s thinking about running for President who says that a nuclear attack by Al Qaeda should be met with attacks on Muslim holy sites–and whose party chairman is still catching his back. So even if I might choose to view what’s going on in the US through other lenses, it’s kind of important to understand that anti-Muslim sentiment exists.
So, yes, people should be careful about throwing around terms like “islamaphobia”–and “fascist”–i’m still figuring out what I think about this so I’m not going to take up the argument, but you should really back that up if you’re going to use a term so loaded in a context this inflammatory.
In any case, if someone’s bull$hitting, call them out on it–that’s the point of this whole global war on struggle and terror against extremism, right? And if someone baits you, then call them out on that too. I’m all for speaking your mind sensibly.
Do you believe that the political movement that nurtured, gave succour to and produced a bunch of suicide bombers – that believes in the imposition of sharia law and the creation of the caliphate – that discriminates against all non believers – that is rabid with hatred for Jews – that advocates the opression of women and homosexuals – that repudiates democracy – that ultimately believes in violence as a tool for gaining political ascendancy – do you honestly believe describing that as a strain of fascism is inflammatory?
Placing bombs on trains to kill 55 people is not fascist? The ideology that gives justification to this action is not fascist? Calling that fascistic is inflammatory? Inflammatory to whom?
Read the article – nowhere does he provide a ‘standard denial of a race problem’ – you are just laying down your pre-existing ideas and refusing to engage with Kenan Malik’s thesis – Kenan Malik is, I might add, an anti-racist veteran who fought the skinheads in the streets in the 1970’s and 1980’s – so please Saurav dont fall back into a default position of denial – actually take on board what he says – dont try and discredit it sniffily on the basis of a couple of sentences which fit into your pre-conceived notions of whatever you believe in – read the article line by line and think – you will see that your characterisation of the essay and the authors intent is a TRAVESTY.
I do that all the time, no problem, there is alot of bullshit flying around these days
You could argue that “Hindu” is imprecise, but I would be as foolish in denying it as I would my brown skin because there was a cultural and intellectual tradition I was brought up in. Even if I myself were not raised Hindu but my parents were, I could see some of the traditions or ways of thinking making their way into my brain. It’s unfortunate in some cases and fortunate in others, but it’s there. The problem with modernity is that it demands you check of a box when people are generally more complicated than that.
i think hindus are like jews in that they have a broad, and not specifically confessional orientation in terms of religious definitions. i have discussed this issue before in reference to what i perceive as a cartel mindset among american jewish leaders. your definition of religious identity is totally valid, but here is the issue, in the united states right now multiple definitions are battling it out. though i’m obviously not a protestant evangelical, i tend to lean toward their belief-centric definition, because i think that is the closest analogy to a liberal idea of individual self-definition where your roots may serve as a point of departure, but do not constrain you. in the modern american context jews are at one end, a people and a religion, while protestant evangelicals are at the other. hindus are probably closer to jews. muslims are somewhere in the middle. now, observers regularly identify islam and protestantism as similar, as they are text based religions, but like judaism (and hinduism, and to some extent catholicism) it is also a highly praxy oriented religion. it also has a mild ethnic element in that you are muslim if your father is muslim (so someone born of a muslim father is an apostate if they reject the muslim religion even if they weren’t raised in the muslim religion). ultimately for a religiously diverse liberal society to fully express itself i think a radical protestant conception of religious identity should be dominant. there will always be groups which emphasize descent and practice rather than belief, but i am fully in favor of the ‘protestantization’ of all religions so that a free market of beliefs can exist that individuals can choose from without social conceptions of ‘you are always a jew’ or ‘you are always a muslim’ getting in the way.
as for the ‘checking off a box’ issue, well, obviously identities are complicated. being born in the USA you were influenced by many things that someone born in south asia, or east asia, or latin america, woud not be. you are a composite. but as a matter of verbal practicality, you do have to slice and dice identity as if all the parts are reducible and separable. the united states has never been a ‘traditional’ society, it is has been about identity flux.
To wit, I learned today that the first reference to a people being “yellow” was original applied to desi people by Turkish people.
well, interesting reference, but my understanding is that ancient egyptian color identifications of various neighboring peoples coded levantines/west asians (whom they kept as tributaries for centuries) as “yellow.” in any case, i used “brown” as shorthand for my physical type, which is clearly south asian.
Oh, and in case anyone thinks focusing on anti-Muslim sentiment is a “left” argument that only people who care about social justice should bother about, here’s what Marc Sageman says about stopping Al Qaedaish violence (the language is a little different from this quote, which came from his book):
“The war against global Salafi terror also requires active support from American and other Muslim communities….Strong-arm governmental tactics antogonizing Muslim communities in the United States will not earn their support in the fight against the jihad. U.S. government agencies urgently need to implement active measures to restore their previous good relationships with the Muslim community and elicit its support.”
Any good police officer will tell you the same thing.
Okay, before you jump out a window, what I said was that the context was inflammatory–meaning the context of a conversation about Islamaphobia, fascism, and terrorism (and, if I get my way, abuses of state power). I said that the term fascist is loaded–which it is. All I was asking you to do is connect how the ideology and practice that motivates these people relates to fascism.You know–being careful about language and all 😉 So, for example, placing bombs on a train, however horrendous, is not in and of itself “fascist”–it depends why it was done. Like I said, I’m still learning about this and haven’t made up my mind about whether I personally think this is an appropriate use of the term.
I shouldn’t have said anything about the article because I barely skimmed it and, like I said, I don’t know what’s going on in the UK. In any case, I wasn’t trying to characterize the article or the author–I was pointing to a couple of lines that jumped out at me.
Anyway, I can’t read the article line by line and think anything about the particulars, because I don’t have the context that you do for who he is, what race relations are like now, what they were like then, what his documentary was about, blah blah blah. For example, here’s this rejoinder to him. Without reading a lot more about a lot of things, all I can do is make assumptions about who to believe and who not to. At the end of the day, being lazy, I would rather offer you my own experiences and what I’ve seen that bears on the topic that he’s talking about. Which is what I did. Last I checked, we weren’t talking about Islamaphobia (or Muslimphobia or anti-Musilm sentiment or however you want to call it) in Britain, but in general.
Saurav – you are a satirical construct of the morally equivocating relativist – I cannot see the point of debating with somebody who quibbles over whether or not describing the political ideology that leads to the detonation of suicide bombs on the Underground is a form of fascism or not.
Ostriches with their heads in the sand spring to mind – artful sophistry.
I don’t buy this argument in the context of what I was talking about. The use of the census in colonial South Asia had particular uses and stratified things like caste and religion in ways that they hadn’t been prior. I don’t think it’s a contemporary American thing that I’m pointing to but part of the project of taxonomizing the whole world–probably built into the nation-state system and how it operates and with a history of some sort that ties into it. I wouldn’t take issue with the claim that some Americans are more hung up on identity than people occupying similar places in other societies.
Not really–at least, not in 99% of my daily life. I give long wordy answers like “I was raised Hindu but it’s really weird–at the last thing I was at, i prayed to Allah–it was totally weird–and then a lot of my friends growing up were reform Jewish.”…and so forth. I’m trying to move towards “eclectic” when pressed for a one-word answer–which is kind of a cop out that goes into the long wordy answer. It’s more interesting that way anyway.
My points above were more that a) there are several different ways to look at religion and to identify someone beyond self-identification and b) that there are probably elements of ways of thinking and doing that you were exposed to that you have no control over and that stay as remnants regardless of the particular faith tradition you were raised in–that can include what you’re talking about in terms of emphasizing self-definition over, say, identification with the religion of your parents.
In any case, re islamaphobia–you can start out by removing religion from the discussion entirely and say that discrimination form X applies to people perceived to be a member of a specific group and that being in that group makes you subject to df X. It happens (imo) that here, the people making up that group would significantly overlap with Muslims (and probably Muslims of color more strongly in the US…and immigrants…and “foreign” accents…being working class…etc.). Which would then probably lead you to ask whether there was some correlation between being targeted by df X and being Muslim and then whether there was something in df X that created that correlation.
Of coures, I think that’s an ass backwards way of approaching it for the purposes of this conversation, because of the evidence I cited above which makes clear that some anti-Muslim sentiment (governmental and private sector) exists in the U.S. to the point where it’s worth talking about as a form of discrimination nowadays.
Thanks! Apparently, you have no appreciation of irony. This is what you said in comment 62 about the term we were originally talking about:
Enjoy your Saturday 🙂
The Ashes are a bit too exciting today for me to comment on everything (how popular is cricket amongst South Asians in the rounders-playing US? I’ve followed the cricket situation in America, how sad.)
Saurav, we’ve been trying very hard to make people realise that the threat facing us from extremists is fascism, plain and simple. PLEASE do not start saying things like “it depends why they planted the bombs”. No it doesn’t. As I said on here before, if a fascist white group murdered a brown guy, would we wringing our hands and pussyfooting around asking “why did they do it?”
These fanatics are a menace and they are fascist.
Now, back to the cricket. Flintoff; shades of Beefy. We need an early wicket. Nail-biting stuff.
Bong Breaker.
Around 4-5 years ago when I was in India (before 9-11, Iraq etc when Europe was still supporting Hamas and co) there was a suicide attack in an Israeli bus killing many people. I was watching BBC and a young couple (in their 20s) near the crime scene were sobbing in the camera. In the end, I vividly remember, they said “All we want to say to Europe is beware…beware of these terrorists…Now you are supporting them, but one day they will strike your backyard, and then you will understand what we are going through”. Every word that kid said that day has become prophetic…Lets all live in la-la land, they are not fascists. Btw, You can go ahead and ban this IP too. Only my office IP is banned.
anti-Muslim sentiment (governmental and private sector) exists in the U.S. to the point where it’s worth talking about as a form of discrimination nowadays.
ok, i don’t think we’re going to move any further on this topic, suffice to say that i’m simply skeptical that one couldn’t switch to
a) a more general way to characterizing the discrimination (because i think there are general cognitive tendencies being triggered by specific acts of muslims).
b) another more specific term which to my mind doesn’t give muslims too much leverage in other contexts.
i don’t oppose defending muslims against attacks, physical or legal, my point is to prevent what i perceive is a transference of sympathies from one context to another. this can be combated situation by situation, but i think it would be best to undermine the structural-semantic weakness which serves as an opening for opportunists. on this weblog, i will simply continue to fight thread-by-thread when i happen to read this blog. finally, i do think that there is a difference between racism and religionism, i find the former more concerning than the latter, because i think there are legitimate grounds to be prejudiced or biased against certain religions (depending on the tenets of the religion and your own values). in the case of anti-muslim prejucide the two intersect, but not totally (ie; if racism was the principle component beyond anti-muslim prejudice one would presume that blacks in continental europe suffer more animus than light-skinned muslims, but that is not the case to my knowledge).
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blockquote>Saurav, we’ve been trying very hard to make people realise that the threat facing us from extremists is fascism, plain and simple. PLEASE do not start saying things like “it depends why they planted the bombs”. No it doesn’t. As I said on here before, if a fascist white group murdered a brown guy, would we wringing our hands and pussyfooting around asking “why did they do it?”
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blockquote>
You’re responding to something I said that was taken out of context by PB. Here’s one of the things I originally said. None of my points were about culpability. All I questioned, in the context of a discussion about using strong words wisely, was why it’s okay to use the word “fascist” without being bothered about such niceties as backing up whether it’s applicable here or not.
Why do I bother with such trivial arguments? The one thing I’ve learned in the past four years is that unskeptically accepting what I’m told is going on leads to unskeptically supporting poor policies that have enormous consequences. My government hasn’t exactly been “pussyfooting around.”
Hey I know you’re government hasn’t been pussyfooting around (who knows what they’ve been doing), but I wasn’t targetting the statement at the government! Perhaps I did take the comment out of context – sorry – but I don’t see why I should need to back up calling a fascist ideology fascist when it patently is.
My misunderstanding of your sentiment has already been explained; cricket. What a day’s play. Poised on a knife edge for tomorrow morning.
Punjabi Boy, are you referring to violent Islamists as fascists simply because they’re violent? Because I tend to think that what we call them really does depend on why they planted the bombs. I really don’t think it’s moral relativism to point out that they are not fascists, despite their ultimately conservative moral and political agenda.
Islamists have historically been a pretty diverse bunch, and have espoused a range of political positions, sometimes even with a rather sophisticated critique of capitalism, like the Sayyid Qutb brand, for example. Al-Qaeda-type politics, of course, are quite different from Qutbism, and don’t carry a critique of markets and exploitation, except for what I suspect is an instrumental denunciation of Western geo-political interests in Muslim countries. Even so, this is taken up by a constituency which is not necessarily as cynical as Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants.
Also, not all conservatism is fascism. Islamism, even lately, is highly contradictory, and has carried objections to cultural and economic imperialism, and in a post-communist world, has provided notions of utopian change, even while it provides no practical solutions. Terrorism isn’t much of a political strategy, and the utopian vision of a just, Islamic society is completely compromised by anti-Jewish bile and prurient moral conservatism. Yet all the same, al-Qaeda’s Islamism is not ultra-nationalist or strongly pro-capitalist state, which to me are two very important distinctions between Islamism and fascism.
The other problem is that referring to these people as “fascists” tends to feed into a strain of conservative politics which attempts to draw this parallel in order to justify the War on Terror. It does this by arguing that those who oppose the occupation of Iraq, etc, are arguing for “appeasement”. This clever conflation of anti-war sentiment with pro-Nazi collaborationism in Europe is all about presenting the War on Terror as a War for Democracy, or War for Western Values, or Clash of Civilisations, and is used with startling effect by the likes of Daniel Pipes.
None of this, of course, makes the politics of al-Qaeda worth defending, but regardless, “fascism” should not be turned into an empty signifier, applied to anything and everything. I know people get killed and the politics are objectionable no matter what we call it, but the same applies to the US occupation of Iraq, and I wouldn’t call that “fascist” either.