Watch It
John Sutherland is a little worried that Phyllis Chesler may have an Islamophobia problem. He cites a very weighty and authoritative source to back this up:
The blog Islamophobia Watch suggested that this signalled “the point of total dementia”.
The blog Islamophobia Watch? Has he read it much? It equates any criticism of or dissent from Islam at all with ‘Islamophobia’ and (of course) it equates ‘Islamophobia’ with hatred of Muslims which it equates with or simply considers identical to racism – so, criticism of Islam (including of course by people from Iran, Pakistan, and other ‘brown’ countries) amounts to racism. That’s stupid, and it works to stifle criticism and dissent, and it works to stifle them in advance of consideration of the substance of the criticism or dissent – it stifles them sight unseen, as racism. This is not intelligent or thoughtful stuff, and it seems peculiar that someone as clever as Sutherland would refer to it in that breezily uncritical way.
Well, OB, didn’t you think the post was overall very, very sympathetic to Ms. Chester? I didn’t read this as any more than “Well….we gotta give the other side” tokenism :) But, of course, we know this type of thinking leads exactly to the problems you list, so…never mind
Brian, not entirely, no. I thought Sutherland was playing the Islamophobia card himself a good deal. But even if he hadn’t been – why cite Islamophobiawatch of all places? There are Islamophobia watchers who are less silly than that outfit.
Do you remember the interview with Michael Behe? It seems that Sutherland can be remarkably stupid at times; either that or he can’t be arsed to do his research properly.
Yes I do. I thought of it – didn’t link to it because it’s on a different subject.
It’s odd about his occasional credulity or whatever it is – because he’s not a bit stupid most of the time. Maybe he’s bad at interviewing? Or has blind spots on these particular subjects?
I don’t react nearly as charitably as you do to Sutherland, OB. I’m no longer a regular reader of the Guardian, and I’m not familiar with him. It seemed to me he was making typically pseudoleft criticisms in their typically unthinking way. E.g. But are the Islamic nations as culturally monolithic as Chesler suggests? when he hasn’t shown Chesler to be making such a suggestion. And yet he doesn’t follow up when she gives an answer about Iraq that doesn’t respond to the question of women’s rights in Iraq.
That makes me think he is going through the motions and perhaps not too enthusiastic one way or the other. Similarly, he accuses her of inconsistency with nothing, at least in the text as published to substantiate it:
All in all, though, he seems to let her speak and let her make her points.
I recall a few years ago J Sutherland wrote one of his many pieces for the Guardian, this one on how to earn decent money as an academic. It was, I suppose, meant to be a little tongue-in-cheek, but it suggested a willingness to resort to hack-work which interviews like this, and some of his other recent productions, have confirmed. He seems to be the kind of professional commentator — and what, after all is his area of expertise? Eng. Lit., that fount of moral and political wisdom — whose fame resides in his willingness to produce work quickly for commercial publication. Nice for him, but to what consideration does it entitle him?
I must stand up, however meekly, and defend Sutherland qua Victorianist–he wrote one of the sacred texts of Victorian studies and has been hugely influential in the area of publishing history.
That being said, the stuff he does for the Guardian is, well, not as good as one might desire.
Thank you, Miriam – I kind of wanted someone to defend Sutherland who could do it with knowledge I don’t have.
I have to admit to a possibly debased taste for his two little Oxford Classics books on nagging questions in English novels.
But yeh, he does seem to go into over-relaxed mode for the Guardian. (Is it part of the job specification there, one wonders?)