Darkness at Noon
Normblog’s Writer’s Choice was by Pamela Bone the other day. I’ve linked to several of her columns in the Age here. She’s another one of these eccentrics who think women’s rights shouldn’t be just for the lucky people of the developed world.
On that drive across town Perowne sees three black figures, women in the body and face-covering burqas, huddled together on a pavement.
“He can’t help his distaste, it’s visceral. How dismal, that anyone should be obliged to walk around so entirely obliterated… And what would the relativists say, the cheerful pessimists from Daisy’s college? That it’s sacred, traditional, a stand against the fripperies of Western consumerism? But the men, the husbands… wear suits, or trainers and tracksuits, or baggy shorts and Rolexes, and are entirely charming and worldly and thoroughly educated in both traditions. Would they care to carry the folkloric torch, and stumble about in the dark at midday?”
I have wondered this too, and why left-leaning women do not protest at such an oppression of women’s rights (even if the women go along with their oppression). The reason, as Fay Weldon has said, is that today racism is seen as a much worse crime than sexism; and many people confuse criticism of religion – especially Islam – with racism. It has, of course, nothing to do with racism.
And so have I. Several million times, at a guess.
because MOSt muslims are arabs – or seen as such “its racist”
sorry to be a pedant but most muslims are asians- from the subcontinent and SE asia. So there’s no racism at all in the muslim haters? Honestly?
Criticism of Islam is very often a mask for racism, but it is seldom a convincing one. People who suddenly develop an unlikely and disproportionate concern for, say, potential vitamin deficiency in burqa wearers, should be regarded warily as having a possibly murky agenda, but vigorous secularist criticism of islam should not be hampered because a few racists try to hitch a ride.
Unfortunately, as we see all too often, such parasites can de-rail the debate if not detected early enough. By the same token, the accusation of racism is too often a first response to criticism.
Can we sort out the confusion between muslims and Islam.
Muslims are followers (either tightly or loosely) of Islam.
Islam is an ideology, like Christianity or Liberalism or Naziism. It is Islam, the ideology, that we need to criticise and its strict followers, as it brings misery and enslavement to millions (and let’s not forget death, and for us infidels, or critics, the threat of death).
Liberalism allows criticism (I do not regard myself as a liberal, but as a democrat) and this is an important difference between this ideology and the others. The others allow for no criticism. And, yes, I have deliberately chosen a totalitarian political ideology to lump in with the religious ones. I think this is an important link between them.
Mike Rogers:
But, is being a “democrat” really in and of itself an “ideology” or merely a political mechanism? As OB has discussed before, what if those following a more repressive ideology (Islam, or Maoism, or Naziism or whatever) use the democratic system to impose their ideology? “Liberalism” is the underlying thought pattern that encourages (perhaps, even, allows) “democracy” to flourish. Can one be a “democrat” but not a “liberal” (in the old-fashioned, broader meaning of the word)???