It seems like everyone’s losing their minds about Islam these days.
On the one hand there are many on the left who will accuse you of bigotry or Islamophobia if you criticize anything at all about Islam. Apparently we’re not allowed to notice that there are fifty-some Muslim countries in the world, but you’re hard-pressed to find a single one that is respectful of the rights of women or religious minorities. In fact, it seems like most of them are just despotic tyrannies with little respect for liberal values at all. In Bangladesh, for example, it has become fashionable to execute atheist bloggers for blasphemy. If those death sentences were put to a popular referendum, does anyone think they would be overturned?
Examples of such horrors could be multiplied endlessly. The events in Paris and San Bernardino are not as isolated as we might hope. But almost as worrying are spectacles like this one, in which Maryam Namazie, having been invited to speak at Goldsmiths College in London, found herself interrupted frequently by Muslim hecklers who apparently came specifically to disrupt the talk. Never mind that Namazie carefully distinguished criticisms of Islamist philosophy from criticisms of Muslims as people, and never mind that her talk was largely about the importance of being able to criticize religion as part of free expression. It was still too much for the hecklers.
The video, posted at Jerry Coyne’s website at the link above, makes for difficult watching. Check out the part early on where the hecklers start laughing hysterically when Namazie recounts examples of butchery and savagery going on in certain Muslim countries. The story gets worse, however, when you learn that the Goldsmiths Feminist Society issued this statement in support of the hecklers:
Goldsmiths Feminist Society stands in solidarity with Goldsmiths Islamic Society. We support them in condemning the actions of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society and agree that hosting known islamophobes at our university creates a climate of hatred.
How can you do other than stare at that, slack-jawed? The worst atrocities against women anywhere in the world today are going on in Muslim countries, but Namazie is an Islamophobe for pointing out the fact? A feminist group is coming to the aid of hecklers shouting down a woman for doing nothing more than speaking her mind? What is wrong with these people? Do you think the Goldsmiths feminists have ever been reticent about criticizing Christianity for its frequently retrograde views on women?
I’m really not worried that any more than a vanishingly small number of Muslims are terrorists. Even most radicals are ultimately wimps with an instinct for self-preservation, after all. But I am worried about the prevalence of highly illiberal attitudes in Muslim communities, and by the terribly confused liberal groups who frequently defend them. To dismiss these attitudes as the exclusive province of a tiny fringe minority is simply to deny reality. When someone as mild-mannered as Namazie is thought to be spreading hatred, or when Bill Maher and Sam Harris are reviled as Islamophobes for doing little more than criticizing the bad ideas that are so often a part of Muslim culture, then we have a real problem.
But there is another hand, however, and right now I find it more worrying than the moral idiocy of certain left-wing groups. (We shouldn’t even call them liberals). Charges of Islamophobia are often misplaced and often used as weapons to stifle dissent, but that doesn’t mean Islamophobia isn’t a real thing. And increasingly it’s becoming the default position of the American right.
There is the usual dichotomy here between the left and the right. Many left-wing groups are saying stupid things these days, but they are politically hapless and have no real power. Not so on the right. The right is far better at organizing, electing like-minded people, and actually implementing their own preferred strain of moral idiocy.
It gets easier by the day to find genuine instances of Islamophobia. Remember Ahmed Mohamed and his clock? If he had been white no one would have thought his little circuit board looked like a bomb. (People might have noticed, for example, that there were no actual explosives attached to the supposed bomb.) Or how about this charming incident from my own home state?
Samer Shalaby, a trustee of the Islamic Center of Fredericksburg, began what was advertised as a “community meeting” with a moment of silence for the victims of Friday’s terrorist attack in Paris. After the moment, a man said, “Amen and thank you!” and another person proclaimed “praise God!”
Shalaby then started a presentation on the Islamic Center’s plan to build an 8,000-square-foot mosque at the corner of Old Plank Road and Andora Drive. The mosque would move there from its current location on Harrison Road, across State Route 3 from Harrison Crossing.
But it didn’t take long before Shalaby was interrupted by a man who said, “Nobody, nobody, nobody wants your evil cult.”
Some people in the packed room at the Chancellor Community Center—including opponents of the project—expressed disagreement, while others clapped.
“I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen because you are terrorists,” the man continued. “Every one of you are terrorists.”
Can I call that Islamophobia? It sure looks like a morbid and irrational fear of Muslims to me.
If it’s distressingly easy these days to find so-called liberals suppressing reasonable criticism of religion, it’s even easier to find demented, genuine Islamophobia on the right. Here’s Lydia McGrew, a prominent right-wing blogger whose rantings we have considered before.
One of the most disturbing points in this jihadist murder spree is that there may well have been no warning sign except Islam itself that Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook posed any threat. True, Tashfeen began making more “radical” posts to her Facebook page, but only after she had already received the necessary background clearance to get a “fiancee visa” and a conditional green card. Why should any law enforcement agency have been trying to look at her Facebook page after that any more than that of any other recent Muslim immigrant to the United States?
It is impossible for leftists at this point to lose face by admitting that Islam is a poisonous ideology and that the latent danger of “self-radicalization” is always there in Muslim immigrants and even second-generation children of Muslim immigrants (like Syed Farook), that this springs from the teaching of jihad itself within Islam, and that this should influence our policies.
Simply being Muslim is now a warning sign that you pose a threat. Is that Islamophobia?
And now we have Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, saying this:
Republican presidential hopeful and real estate mogul Donald Trump is calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” following deadly terror attacks involving Islamic extremists in California and France.
“Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension,” Trump said in a statement emailed to reporters on Monday.
“Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” he continued.
On her show tonight, Rachel Maddow had a correspondent asking people as they went into a Trump rally what they thought of this idea. Short version: They loved it. Does anyone really believe Maddow had to engage in highly selective editing to get those answers?
So, yes, it is aggravating, to say the least, when leftist groups suppress free-expression and side with thugs against reasonable criticisms of religion. It is a complete denial of reality to pretend that all is sweetness and light in Muslim communities, with just a tiny fringe minority going in for extremist ideology. But it is no less a denial of reality to pretend that Islamophobia, the real thing, does not exist, and that it is playing an increasingly toxic role in our political discourse.
The Republicans are desperately trying to whip everyone into a frenzy of hate and fear, since they know that high turnout among bigots is critical to their electoral success. They are not finding it difficult to do so. That’s far more worrying to me than a few more morally blinkered leftists.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1OMWKT9
It seems like everyone’s losing their minds about Islam these days.
On the one hand there are many on the left who will accuse you of bigotry or Islamophobia if you criticize anything at all about Islam. Apparently we’re not allowed to notice that there are fifty-some Muslim countries in the world, but you’re hard-pressed to find a single one that is respectful of the rights of women or religious minorities. In fact, it seems like most of them are just despotic tyrannies with little respect for liberal values at all. In Bangladesh, for example, it has become fashionable to execute atheist bloggers for blasphemy. If those death sentences were put to a popular referendum, does anyone think they would be overturned?
Examples of such horrors could be multiplied endlessly. The events in Paris and San Bernardino are not as isolated as we might hope. But almost as worrying are spectacles like this one, in which Maryam Namazie, having been invited to speak at Goldsmiths College in London, found herself interrupted frequently by Muslim hecklers who apparently came specifically to disrupt the talk. Never mind that Namazie carefully distinguished criticisms of Islamist philosophy from criticisms of Muslims as people, and never mind that her talk was largely about the importance of being able to criticize religion as part of free expression. It was still too much for the hecklers.
The video, posted at Jerry Coyne’s website at the link above, makes for difficult watching. Check out the part early on where the hecklers start laughing hysterically when Namazie recounts examples of butchery and savagery going on in certain Muslim countries. The story gets worse, however, when you learn that the Goldsmiths Feminist Society issued this statement in support of the hecklers:
Goldsmiths Feminist Society stands in solidarity with Goldsmiths Islamic Society. We support them in condemning the actions of the Atheist, Secularist and Humanist Society and agree that hosting known islamophobes at our university creates a climate of hatred.
How can you do other than stare at that, slack-jawed? The worst atrocities against women anywhere in the world today are going on in Muslim countries, but Namazie is an Islamophobe for pointing out the fact? A feminist group is coming to the aid of hecklers shouting down a woman for doing nothing more than speaking her mind? What is wrong with these people? Do you think the Goldsmiths feminists have ever been reticent about criticizing Christianity for its frequently retrograde views on women?
I’m really not worried that any more than a vanishingly small number of Muslims are terrorists. Even most radicals are ultimately wimps with an instinct for self-preservation, after all. But I am worried about the prevalence of highly illiberal attitudes in Muslim communities, and by the terribly confused liberal groups who frequently defend them. To dismiss these attitudes as the exclusive province of a tiny fringe minority is simply to deny reality. When someone as mild-mannered as Namazie is thought to be spreading hatred, or when Bill Maher and Sam Harris are reviled as Islamophobes for doing little more than criticizing the bad ideas that are so often a part of Muslim culture, then we have a real problem.
But there is another hand, however, and right now I find it more worrying than the moral idiocy of certain left-wing groups. (We shouldn’t even call them liberals). Charges of Islamophobia are often misplaced and often used as weapons to stifle dissent, but that doesn’t mean Islamophobia isn’t a real thing. And increasingly it’s becoming the default position of the American right.
There is the usual dichotomy here between the left and the right. Many left-wing groups are saying stupid things these days, but they are politically hapless and have no real power. Not so on the right. The right is far better at organizing, electing like-minded people, and actually implementing their own preferred strain of moral idiocy.
It gets easier by the day to find genuine instances of Islamophobia. Remember Ahmed Mohamed and his clock? If he had been white no one would have thought his little circuit board looked like a bomb. (People might have noticed, for example, that there were no actual explosives attached to the supposed bomb.) Or how about this charming incident from my own home state?
Samer Shalaby, a trustee of the Islamic Center of Fredericksburg, began what was advertised as a “community meeting” with a moment of silence for the victims of Friday’s terrorist attack in Paris. After the moment, a man said, “Amen and thank you!” and another person proclaimed “praise God!”
Shalaby then started a presentation on the Islamic Center’s plan to build an 8,000-square-foot mosque at the corner of Old Plank Road and Andora Drive. The mosque would move there from its current location on Harrison Road, across State Route 3 from Harrison Crossing.
But it didn’t take long before Shalaby was interrupted by a man who said, “Nobody, nobody, nobody wants your evil cult.”
Some people in the packed room at the Chancellor Community Center—including opponents of the project—expressed disagreement, while others clapped.
“I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen because you are terrorists,” the man continued. “Every one of you are terrorists.”
Can I call that Islamophobia? It sure looks like a morbid and irrational fear of Muslims to me.
If it’s distressingly easy these days to find so-called liberals suppressing reasonable criticism of religion, it’s even easier to find demented, genuine Islamophobia on the right. Here’s Lydia McGrew, a prominent right-wing blogger whose rantings we have considered before.
One of the most disturbing points in this jihadist murder spree is that there may well have been no warning sign except Islam itself that Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook posed any threat. True, Tashfeen began making more “radical” posts to her Facebook page, but only after she had already received the necessary background clearance to get a “fiancee visa” and a conditional green card. Why should any law enforcement agency have been trying to look at her Facebook page after that any more than that of any other recent Muslim immigrant to the United States?
It is impossible for leftists at this point to lose face by admitting that Islam is a poisonous ideology and that the latent danger of “self-radicalization” is always there in Muslim immigrants and even second-generation children of Muslim immigrants (like Syed Farook), that this springs from the teaching of jihad itself within Islam, and that this should influence our policies.
Simply being Muslim is now a warning sign that you pose a threat. Is that Islamophobia?
And now we have Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, saying this:
Republican presidential hopeful and real estate mogul Donald Trump is calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” following deadly terror attacks involving Islamic extremists in California and France.
“Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension,” Trump said in a statement emailed to reporters on Monday.
“Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” he continued.
On her show tonight, Rachel Maddow had a correspondent asking people as they went into a Trump rally what they thought of this idea. Short version: They loved it. Does anyone really believe Maddow had to engage in highly selective editing to get those answers?
So, yes, it is aggravating, to say the least, when leftist groups suppress free-expression and side with thugs against reasonable criticisms of religion. It is a complete denial of reality to pretend that all is sweetness and light in Muslim communities, with just a tiny fringe minority going in for extremist ideology. But it is no less a denial of reality to pretend that Islamophobia, the real thing, does not exist, and that it is playing an increasingly toxic role in our political discourse.
The Republicans are desperately trying to whip everyone into a frenzy of hate and fear, since they know that high turnout among bigots is critical to their electoral success. They are not finding it difficult to do so. That’s far more worrying to me than a few more morally blinkered leftists.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1OMWKT9
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