Everybody is exactly the same
More precision needed. There should be a stamp for that. MPN should be like LOL or TMI.
It is essential, therefore, that those wishing to criticise the excesses of Islam avoid making generalisations about the two million Muslims living in the UK. “I don’t have any problem with people critiquing some of the things that are done in the name of Islam,” says Tarry. “Some horrific crimes against humanity are committed in the name of religion, but that doesn’t mean every Muslim walking down the streets of Britain thinks that way.”
Of course it doesn’t, but it also doesn’t mean, for instance, that only a tiny minority of Muslims think that way. It doesn’t actually tell you anything about every Muslim walking down the streets of Britain. For that you would have to find things out.
“They’re just going to work and living a normal life. Muslims are as diverse as any other group of people living in the UK, yet the attitude towards them is very much as if they are a monolithic block.”
But there again – that’s a matter of fact, not something that can just be declared from the armchair as if it were self-evident. Are Muslims as “diverse” as any other group of people living in the UK? Are all groups living in the UK exactly as diverse as each other, neither more nor less? I don’t see why that would be the case. It’s certainly not impossible that there is something about Islam and/or the history of people who emigrate from majority-Muslim countries that makes Muslims as a group tend to be different from other people as groups, including being less “diverse.” That’s something to find out, not just to announce as a necessary truth. Or a sacred cow…
I’m actually kind of a new convert on this. I thought that the concerns about Islam were overstated. Then I heard Islamic activists speak about it. Wow. Changed my mind in a hurry. I don’t think it’s a bigger “threat” than Christianity, but it takes different appearances, because of the inherent power differentials between the groups.
Harris put it in a very good way. These things mean things. The atheistic/skeptical approach that religion actually means something is actually more respectful of religion in a way than the other approach of that nobody takes religion all that seriously just because they don’t take their own religion all that seriously. It’s little more than a tradition, a social club, where everybody knows that what they’re saying is just a metaphor and needs to be translated into modern times.
But not everybody is willing OR able to do that. That’s the big mistake.
Hmmmm… My thought runs this direction:
“Criticism” of Islam and Muslims is very often thinly-disguised racism, xenophobia and/or religious bigotry. Absolutely the people who used to say “n*gger” in public are some of the same people who are going after Muslims now. That’s a fact and a fair complaint for Muslims to make. It is also fair to say that some people who have legitimate criticisms of Islam sort of look the other way and ally themselves with the bigots on this issue… “strength in numbers” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and all that. It isn’t all, or necessarily most, but it is a not-insignificant number.
On the other hand…
Everything I just said can be turned around and applied to Muslims and Islam. Islam as practiced by some Muslims is sexist, anti-science and anti-freedom, stands against generally-accepted Western values, and occasionally turns violent. Some Muslims more or less accept Western values, but nevertheless provide cover for their more extreme brethren in the name of cultural unity or other reasons. It is fair to criticize both the extremists and the moderates and liberals who nevertheless tolerate extremism. It isn’t all, or necessarily most, but it is a not-insignificant number.
So, I don’t see how you can accept one of those ideas without being forced to accept the other. “It isn’t all of us” isn’t any sort of defense against the criticism that “it IS some of you.”
Well,yes,we could argue from first principles, however there are some observations in regard to Islam.
Where’s the evidence for moderate Moslems? If only a tiny minority of Moslems thought “that way” the nature of majority Moslem societies would be quite different,however, Islamic nations, no matter how ‘diverse’, are chaotic, backward and misogynistic. Where are the ‘moderates’ in those countries? Who are the moderates in Moslem communities in the West? So, appeals to ‘diversity’ are probably attempts at diversion. Which were the ‘moderate’ communist nations where the political systems were compatible with Western liberal democracy? We have to consider the nature of the Islamic ideology itself and the obligations it placed on the faithful from its inception.
Indonesia is often cited as a moderate Moslem nation even though members of its Christian minorities and Moslem dissenters suffer continuous and sometimes murderous oppression.
Actually,in reference to ‘horrific crimes’, whether or not Moslems are a “monolithic bloc” is really irrelevant . Security agencies don’t consider the probability of any particular Moslem’s potential to commit a terrorist act, but rather, “what is the probability that any given terrorist attack has been, or will be, committed by Moslems”.
I don’t understand this.
Two religions have books with rules written in them. In order to be members of this religion you have to believe in the rules written in the book. if you don’t believe in the words written in the book you are not a member of that religion.
So you are either a bad Christian or a bad person.
You are either a bad Muslim or a bad person.
Have they not read their own “holy” books?
So you are either a bad Christian or a bad person.
You are either a bad Muslim or a bad person.
The former is false, Catholics for example, are in good standing with their church if they do what their church says to do, rules in book be damned. Other xtians believe in resurrection or whatever, but don’t believe the Bible is God’s inerrant word, but only divinely inspired. You can argue ’till the cows come home that that’s incoherent, but I’m happy to have as many xtians as possible ignoring the Catholic church or cherry picking from the Bible to justify their secular drawn morality. I’m not into driving them to become fundamentalists or sticklers for the Pope’s latest woman hating dictum because that’s a coherent position for them to hold.
The latter is probably true, there doesn’t seem to be a group of muslims who hold that the Quran is divinely inspired, but not inerrant word of God. There are plenty of muslims who don’t follow the rules, but it’s not because they don’t think the rules true. At least that seems to be the case, and well argued by Eric it was recently. :)
Terry Glavin points out one answer to “where are all the moderate Muslims?” in his forthcoming book Come From the Shadows. Where are they? They’re gone. They’ve been killed by the Islamists.
Joe @2,
As others have pointed out, Islam is different from the two other monotheistic religions in a key aspect: unlike mainstream Christianity and Judaism, mainstream Islam remains absolutely literalist; the Koran is the inerrant word of Allah (and never in translation!), and Islamic practice has never undergone any sort of reformation or Enlightenment-enduced moderation/modernization. As well, (mainstream) Islam is a far more militant and uncompromising creed than any other major religion today. The contemporary manifestations of its militancy — the vicious misogyny and homophobia, the barbaric implementations of Sharia, not to mention ceaseless terrorism within and without Muslim countries — are not coincidental.
There is one important difference between religious groups and ‘any other group of people’. Belonging to a religion is voluntary, belonging to some other groups — like a racial group, or residents of a particular neighbourhood, or groups with a particular sexual preference, or with a particular disability — is not. This has some important implications.
In the first place, it helps to answer the question ‘Where are all the moderate Muslims?’ They are keeping a low profile, not attending mosques, not reading the Qu’ran, not protesting — because they don’t have to. They are in the same position as I was as an eighteen-year-old atheist in Australia over thirty years ago. I described myself as ‘Church of England’ on survey forms because ‘atheist’ wasn’t even given as an option. But that had no implications whatsoever for my beliefs or my behaviour. For a growing number of ‘cultural’ Muslims, particularly in the West, ‘Islam’ is just a convenient box to tick on a form. As time goes by and they lose more of their ties to their cultures of origin, they will stop ticking ‘Islam’ and start ticking ‘Atheist’, but their behaviour will remain the same.
It also entails an extra responsibility for those people who claim to represent and speak for Muslims, because they are obliged to explain why people who make that religious choice should be respected. It’s clearly wrong to single out members of non-voluntary groups — Indians, say — for attack, precisely because they can’t help being members, but that courtesy doesn’t — and shouldn’t — extend to people who choose to join a particular group. We shouldn’t be polite and respectful to members of the Ku Klux Klan or the British National Party, for instance, because everyone in those groups has chosen to be there. And to the extent that religious groupings are the result of choice rather than compulsion, we shouldn’t feel compelled to be polite and respectful to them either.
Now of course the reasons for membership of many religious groups is a grubby mixture of compulsion and coercion and choice, so we can’t be quite as insistent about all their members being as despicable as the BNF or Ku Klux Klan. But we can and should be prepared to challenge any claim to the effect that Muslims — or any other group — deserve extra rights or special treatment simply by virtue of being Muslims, and the challenge should be simple and obvious: “If you think Muslims are discriminated against and you don’t like it, then stop being one.”
I have a relative who is gay, she is also a “devout” christian (her description) When asked about the pretty obvious contradiction she says “I just don’t think about it”.
It makes me very nervous and uncomfortable around her, because I honestly believe she must be kinda crazy. I mean I know I am kinda “crazy” but my crazy is a predictable kind hers is not.
David, that kind of crazy is called compartmentalization. It’s pretty ubiquitous in humans, isn’t it?
I suspect that what people like Sims gloss over is the Saudi oil/money pipeline. When a brand new mosque pops up in a poor neighborhood, who funded that? Usually the Middle East oil barons, indirectly through their local clergy, who are, almost to the last man, extreme by our standards. So the little school or mosque down the road, built by the locals, is moderate and inclusive, while the giant gold domed palace that rises above the neighborhood comes complete with raving Wahabbist Imams. Someone called Islam the Arabian Imperial project. It is just that, and I strongly suspect that most of native Muslims in Europe resent seeing their children go to these places to be recruited for jihad. Fortunately, most people are not fanatics. But that is what the religions want them to be.
The word Islamophobia is an attempt to force acceptance of an ideology. If Sims is looking for a word, it would have been Muslimophobia. But he can’t quite bring himself to admit that yes, Mohammed did intend to conquer the world, to eliminate all rival belief systems, and the extremist Imams have actually got his intentions right. The problem really is Mohammed and the Koran. When I look back at the founders of religions–L Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, Mohammed, and even Jesus–what I see are confidence men. It’s the Big Lie; no one can believe that anyone could be that brazen. But they can be. They were. But how do you convince billions of people that they have been had by mere hucksters? Who wants to believe in a betrayal of trust on that scale?
@ Jon Jermey,
I think you’re rather optimistic in the belief that Western Moslems will necessarily lose their “ties to their cultures of origin”. Islam is also a political ideology, there’s no ‘God/Caesar’ dichotomy in its doctrine, it’s all the one package. Moslems also develop Islamic political structures in the West–the result is that enclaves have already appeared in the UK and other parts of Europe. These areas are described as “Sharia” not only by those notorious “Islamophobes”, but by Moslem “sheiks” and other “community leaders” who live there. Why don’t all those ‘moderate’ Moslems subvert the process?
So it’s more likely that(some)Moslems will reproduce,in the West, their cultures of origin and that process is corrosive to liberal democacy.
I believe I once had a lesson in English class where they tried to get us to relay empirical facts without making generalisations, I never got the hang of it.
This does link in to what I was saying but to list my thoughts:
Belief systems are a zero-sum game (pretty much), if you wish to promote atheism, (which I think is perfectly reasonable) that policy is opposing Islam by definition.
You’re right we should not state that Muslims are diverse before we know, but I would probably use it as my default position in absence of evidence, (moral individualism and all that)
Oh and I do criticise the Quran and get labelled Islamaphobic.
What I would like to see is demonstrations by British Muslims, for example when there is a stoning or a murder etc, saying “Not in my name”.
That would make me feel a lot more comfortable in my own country and less likely to tar all Muslims with the same brush.
Felix @ #16:
How is that supposed to work exactly? Moderate Muslims stand up for being moderate… and who stands up with them? The extremists move to bash them, but so do non-Muslims on the Right and the Left who claim that Islam is some sort of magical exception to normal rules and has no moderates and is some sort of nearly supernatural danger to freedom and democracy and puppies and rainbows. Once you’ve already been tarred by nearly everybody across the entire spectrum, what does it profit you to stand up and make yourself a target?
I should have made it clear that I was generalising. But really, I don’t see much difference between modern Islam and Catholic Christendom prior to the Reformation. Both involve deferring your important life decisions to some external authority, and both are deeply hostile to individualism and personal achievement. You can sustain that kind of system for centuries in an environment where 95% of people are equally poor and the rich are seen as alien beings who answer to a different code, but you can’t sustain it when knowledge means wealth and information about the rich and their failings is flooding in faster than anyone can read it. The Catholic church is taking a long time to topple because the forces building against it have taken a long time to develop: but once those forces are turned against Muslim beliefs it won’t be long till they start to fall apart too.
I don’t expect it to happen in my lifetime (I’m 53) but I hope it will happen in my kids’ lifetimes. If the petrodollars run out soon that will accelerate the process, but either way it has to happen.
And not just Islam — one of the most encouraging things I read recently was in a book about Aboriginal Australians. The elders were bemoaning the fact that the ‘kids’ didn’t want to follow the old ways: but since the ‘old ways’ were massively sexist and ageist, involved corporal punishment and ritual mutilation, and created a whole generation of self-segregated people who were unable to find employment, I was delighted to hear that ‘the kids’ had had enough. Bear in mind too that millions of government dollars have gone into sponsoring this unsustainable lifestyle.
Show people the way out of poverty and oppression, and they — well, most of them — will take it.
There you go again Ophelia – facts, facts, facts!! You don’t seem to realize that PC is another way of knowing that, being revelatory in nature, has no need of facts – or rather can make up its own “facts” as needed.
Jon @ #8
Not always true. In Iran and Saudi Arabia, and other countries, apostasy (leaving the faith) is a capital offence.
‘Islamophobia’ is a very bad word, and should not be allowed to pass without question in normal discourse.
Islam is a religion, but a phobia is by definition an irrational fear. Therefore those whose criticism of Islam or hostility to it is deemed ‘Islamophobic’ are automatically accused of being irrational. Catch 22.
Yet many people have a perfectly rational fear of Islam and what it can do to people’s heads, and also of some Muslims – ie those who have had the full-on head treatment.
‘Race’ is also a word out of favour. The modern synonym is ‘ethnicity’; means exactly the same thing of course. But just for good measure, Islamophobia is deemed to be racism. The fix is in, and the setup is complete.
To conflate hostility to a religion with hostility to a race of people, given the appalling history of racism, is to attempt to ban criticism of the religion, intentionally or otherwise.
So I think that people who use the word ‘Islamophobia’ other then to attack the very concept of it, should be asked to set out very precisely what they are getting at, and what they are trying to say. Islamophobia shall not pass (accusations of I mean)!
Thus I agree with Ophelia.
MPN! TMI! (whatever that is); LOL! (IMHO of course)
Also BMW! and KFC!
Speaking from personal experience I’ve met Muslim people from Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Dubai, and many other places and these are distinct cultures with their own unique characteristics. I’m quite certain that if you took a Muslim from Kosovo and a Muslim from Indonesia you’d find very distinct cultural characteristics. Likewise with a Turk or an Iranian. I’m sure there are sociological studies to corroborate this, however generally speaking distinct languages is in my experience tends to also be an indicator of distinct cultures.
Heck, I grew up in Greece where the current population is predominantly Greek Orthodox and we still have some oriental customs that are shared with neighboring Turkey and the Balkans in no small part due to the Ottoman Empire of which we were a part for 400 years.
On a separate but related note there is a lot of ignorance and conflation of the terms ‘Arab’ and ‘Muslim’ in the US. There are Arabs who are not Muslim eg Lebanese, Palestinians. There are Muslims who are not Arabs eg Iranians, Turks, Pakistanis.
Omar Puhleez @ #21
I think “Islamophobia” is exactly the right word, since there’s absolutely plenty of irrational fear to the point of fucking stupidity about radical Islam. Right now America’s got 1000+ troops in Afghanistan for each individual member of the Taliban there. That’s rational? TSA is strip-searching grannies, and idiot politicians are trying to pass anti-Sharia laws… that’s rational? You’ve got morons claiming that Dearborn Michigan has been taken over by radical Islam and is no longer safe for “Americans”(as though Muslim Americans aren’t real Americans, no bigotry there), and that’s a sane thing to say?
“Phobia” is exactly the right word to describe what’s going on: Islamophobia and xenophobia and bone-deep cowardice expressed as anti-Muslim aggression, that has little or nothing to do with the very real and serious problems with Islam.
I know plenty of moderate muslims. I work with them, socialize with them, eat with them, drink with them, dance with them. I even married one once.
That said I think the regionality question is important. For instance there are plenty of moderate muslims in Turkey, proportionate to their population, compared to more conservative parts of the middle east.
There is, however, an inherent problem with Islam that makes it almost impossible to have a majority Islamic country which fully respects the rights of non muslims. Islam is essentially prereformation – it hasn’t gone through a split that produces a wing that is content with purely secular political leaders and so there is no significant segment of the organized religion that supports (or accepts) secularism in the same way that the major christian groups do so in western democracies.
@sigmund
“I know plenty of moderate muslims. I work with them, socialize with them, eat with them, drink with them, dance with them. I even married one once.”
Living in rural England I don’t.
Do they publicly renounce the many ‘unpleasant’ things done in the name of their religion? That is to say, if you didn’t know them would you still be aware that they opposed these things (as I am not)?
Which country are you in? Does that make a difference?
Joe – but the fact that there’s plenty of irrational fear of radical Islam doesn’t make “Islamophobia” exactly the right word, because it doesn’t include the “radical” part.
The fact that stupid nasty people also have objections to Islam doesn’t make it phobic to have objections to Islam.
It’s really not exactly the right word because it implies (on an analogy with e.g. “homophobia”) irrational fear and hatred of something there’s no sane reason even to dislike.
@Felix
I live in Sweden but lived in London, Hampshire and Dorset when I was married to my first wife – she was a Saudi Arabian national.
I think the UK has a unique problem in that most UK muslims are from families who come from one particular region, Pakistan, which has its own slant on the religion and its own conservative customs that are not universal to all muslims – and is also the epicenter of current fundamentalist islamic activity. I have a lot of Turkish and Iranian friends here who would definitely be considered apostates by conservative muslims from other regions but by Turkish or Iranian emigre standards are ‘muslim’, just not ‘religious muslim’. The closest analogy I can think of is that of catholics – some of them are pretty much catholic in name only but still describe themselves as catholic, despite being in favor of birth control,, divorce and abortion, opposing the churches actions in the child sex abuse scandals etc, while others are raving fundamentalists like Bill Donohue.
Ophelia, when you include the bit of people refusing to believe that there’s any such thing as moderate Islam, and the irrational claims about Muslims taking over the world, it IS an irrational fear separate from rational criticism of Islam. There’s a giant pile of perfectly good reasons to oppose Islam, starting with the fact that it is a religion and all religions should be opposed on principle. There’s no reason to invest Muslims with special evil powers to cause violence and mayhem, since it just isn’t the case. For instance, we could easily make the case that Christian cultures are at least as prone to violence as Islamic ones. And here in America, most terrorism is committed by Christians although the media has decided that it doesn’t count as terrorism unless the bomb was planted by a Muslim.
Sigmund, or also “Jewish,” no? Not exactly the same since “Jewish” somehow morphed into an “ethnic” category over time, but almost the same since that’s kind of what you’re describing – muslim and catholic as ethnic terms.
Joe, I realize that, I understand that you’re describing something real – what I disagree with is the claim that “Islamophobia” is exactly the right word for it. (There’s no law that says a single word has to be found to describe it. Maybe it’s just too complicated to sum up in one word. In any case, “Islamophobia” isn’t that word.)
Indeed.
@ Sigmund
The Muslims I’ve known have been African-American converts, plus Filipino and Iranian immigrants, and you make a good point about the culture of origin. Lots of avoiding bacon and other sort of superficial lip service to the religion, not much else to distinguish them from any other people.
I like the word Islamophobia, but I’m not here to argue semantics. If you get my point then I got my point across and the label doesn’t matter.
Indeed Ophelia, it is also similar to Jewish people.
“Jewish” somehow morphed into an “ethnic” category over time
That time was probably two thousand years ago, Ophelia. Jews are one of the few groups (Sikhs are another) in whom ethnicity and religion coincide. Because, traditionally, they don’t proselytize (except within their own community), their numbers have remained very small. But surprisingly distinct.
“Who are the Jews? For more than a century, historians and linguists have debated whether the Jewish people are a racial group, a cultural and religious entity, or something else. More recently, scientists have been weighing in on the question with genetic data. The latest such study, published today in the American Journal of Human Genetics, shows a genetic connection among all Jews, despite widespread migrations and intermarriage with non-Jews. It also apparently refutes repeated claims that most Ashkenazi Jews are descended from Central Europeans who converted to Judaism 1000 years ago.”
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2010/06/tracing-the-roots-of-jewishness.html
http://www.cell.com/AJHG/abstract/S0002-9297%2810%2900246-6
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20531471
So anti-Semitism (Hitler didn’t care whether a Jew had converted to Christianity) is, strictly speaking, racism, while “Islamophobia”, or whatever might replace it, is — again strictly speaking — not. Of course the term “Muslims” is sometimes just a stand-in for “foreigners”, but I can’t see where hating Islam (or Judaism, for that matter… as opposed to “Jews”), is “phobic”.
Oops, it seems three links in a row triggers automatic moderation!
Many of the people immigrating from Muslim majority countries aren’t actually Muslims. I recently ran an analysis of refugee stats from UK Borders Authority, and 51% of female refugees from Iran aren’t Muslims – they’re Christians, atheists and Zoroastrians. (I wasn’t actually too surprised by that finding, from the Iranian women I know.) In fact there’s substantial non-Muslim minorities in all Middle Eastern refugee groups. A Middle Eastern friend of mine dutifully ticked the Muslim box at the last census, but in terms of belief, he’s absolutely an atheist; it was a cultural, not a religious identification for him. He didn’t see any contradiction in being a Muslim atheist and considered it pretty normal amongst his peers.
The problem I have here is that we’re hearing the same thing from two angles: from Islamists, who want Muslimness to be a master category that occludes all other aspects of identity, and from a UK policy that that’s replacing a failing multicultural policy with a kind of multifaithism that makes all the same errors as its predecessor. Marie-Aimee Helie-Lucas says something like – ‘by repeatedly insisting on a homogenous Muslim world, Islamists have been able to convince certain Muslims and non-Muslims of its virtual reality’ It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. To go back to my stats – of Middle Eastern refugees, around 70% of males have *never* been to a mosque, church or other religious institution in the UK; just as many belong to ethnonational type organisations as religious ones. And yet we have UK think-tanks publishing papers about how the mosque is central to Muslim life and how we need to build alliances with all the usual suspects for a cohesive society.
There’s something very peculiar about this position that relations between the state and certain groups need to be mediated through non-elected leaders, giving them policy input and a media platform, even where these leaders have very little support – or even recognition – within the groups they purport to represent. And to add to Sigmund’s point about how the Pakistani interpretation of Islam has overinfluenced British perspectives, I’d also want to point out the umbrella ethnic categories (especially Asian) used in most UK statistics conceal a lot of variance between ethnic groups.
I just googled ‘british muslim diversity’ and I got this link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/apr/16/communities1
Joe @ #22:
For those pushing the ‘Islamophobia’ barrow, all opposition to Islam and all opposition to the activities of any Muslims is either ‘Islamophobia’ manifest or dangerously close to it: based on an allegedly ‘irrational’ fear.
Actually, there were perfectly rational justifications for the original western intervention in Afghanistan, likewise for the intervention to continue. Think on the potential present state of the world if GWB had done nothing after 9/11. For a start he would have lost popular domestic support, which was overwhelmingly for taking action. But beyond that, I suggest it would be a vastly different world, with Islamism on the advance everywhere. OBL and his fanatics demonstrated the power of a well bankrolled ruthless and secretive minority to cause a lot of death, inconvenience and expense. I am reminded of it every time I check in at an airport. Minorities can be powerful.
Yes, I know all about the grannies bit. My wife and I recently tried to get a 92 years old aunt of hers (with a walking frame) onto a plane after the final call. Tell me about it. Except guess where the bombers would head (yes, those ‘rational’ bastards are still around) once it was out that little old ladies would not be checked over. As for passing ‘anti-Sharia laws’, if that is code for refusing to allow the setting up of two parallel systems of law, I support it, on grounds I maintain to be rational.
I disagree, precisely because one cannot talk about the “very real and serious problems with Islam” without provoking some knee-jerk reaction from somewhere and a charge of ‘Islamophobia’.
‘Islamophobia’ is the asbestos suit certain Muslims like to dress themselves and their religion in when critics appear. It is a conversation-switcher of the first rank. Those Muslims may only be a minority, but they can be powerful.
BTW at an individual level, I have always gotten on well with Muslims.
@Omar Puhleez: Methinks the world would have been a better place if W had lost more domestic support in 2001. Just sayin.
Simon,
Mealsothinks that if GWB had been tossed out after 9/11, he would not have been replaced by a pacifist.
And that’s not just supposin’, but based on serious conversations at the time; in a liquor store in Colorado.
Great comment, Galloise B.
Second that, Ophelia.
Great comment, Galloise B.
Ophelia,
Can my comment (above #34) be freed from “moderation”?
<blockquote>“Criticism” of Islam and Muslims is very often thinly-disguised racism, xenophobia and/or religious bigotry. Absolutely the people who used to say “n*gger” in public are some of the same people who are going after Muslims now. That’s a fact and a fair complaint for Muslims to make. It is also fair to say that some people who have legitimate criticisms of Islam sort of look the other way and ally themselves with the bigots on this issue… “strength in numbers” and “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” and all that. It isn’t all, or necessarily most, but it is a not-insignificant number.</blockquote>i’d say that all of this can be applied to judaism without much difficulty.
<blockquote>“It isn’t all of us” isn’t any sort of defense against the criticism that “it IS some of you.”</blockquote>the question is, though, what is one to do? are we all to be held collectively responsible for the stupidest utterances of our most stupid co-religionists?
<blockquote>Two religions have books with rules written in them. In order to be members of this religion you have to believe in the rules written in the book. if you don’t believe in the words written in the book you are not a member of that religion.</blockquote>i’ve previously had quite the argument with edmund standing on more or less this subject. to say, with ben goldacre, that “i think you’ll find it’s a bit more complicated than that” is putting it mildly. edmund has maintained, i think it would be fair to say, that where certain *practices/behaviours* (i don’t think beliefs are policeable) are, as it were, “rationalised out”, that is, effectively, not following the religion “properly” any more, the fact that that is not the normative or consensus view notwithstanding. in other words, you can’t just pick fred phelps as being a representative christian any more than you can pick abu hamza as a representative muslim, or yitzhak shapira as a representative jew. is there some sort of rule one can apply whereas the amount of opprobrium that a given extremist attracts from his apparent co-religionists can be measured?
<blockquote>You can argue ’till the cows come home that that’s incoherent, but I’m happy to have as many xtians as possible ignoring the Catholic church or cherry picking from the Bible to justify their secular drawn morality. I’m not into driving them to become fundamentalists or sticklers for the Pope’s latest woman hating dictum because that’s a coherent position for them to hold.</blockquote>personally, i don’t mind showing how my own belief system is coherent, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most important consideration there is.
<blockquote>There are plenty of muslims who don’t follow the rules, but it’s not because they don’t think the rules true.</blockquote>the other explanation is that their understanding of the rules is different. this, for some reason, appears to get ignored.
<blockquote>There is one important difference between religious groups and ‘any other group of people’. Belonging to a religion is voluntary, belonging to some other groups — like a racial group, or residents of a particular neighbourhood, or groups with a particular sexual preference, or with a particular disability — is not. This has some important implications.</blockquote>particularly for jews and, i would probably argue, sikhs. in many ways i am damned if i do and damned if i don’t – i will be treated as a jew either way, so i might as well be jewish in a way that seems to be true, consistent, integrated and honest both philosophically and intellectually. if that means having to constantly fight to assert this, then so be it.
<blockquote>It’s clearly wrong to single out members of non-voluntary groups — Indians, say — for attack, precisely because they can’t help being members, but that courtesy doesn’t — and shouldn’t — extend to people who choose to join a particular group.</blockquote>this is more or less why certain groups choose to make the word “zionist” interchangeable with “jew”, because, of course, one can choose to be zionist or not. except, of course, one can’t if they really mean jew. and, of course zionist then means what they want it to mean, except what it actually means.
<blockquote>But we can and should be prepared to challenge any claim to the effect that Muslims — or any other group — deserve extra rights or special treatment simply by virtue of being Muslims, and the challenge should be simple and obvious: “If you think Muslims are discriminated against and you don’t like it, then stop being one.”</blockquote>i can’t stop being jewish and i don’t think i have asked for extra rights or special treatment over and above say, being a parent (which was also a choice, of course). parents make choices for their children all the time. being a parent is about making those choices for people who are not able to make their choices for themselves. bringing your children up to be religious is, i would say, an inalienable choice. you can do nothing about it once they are grown-up, of course, but i find the challenge as stated above both illogical and illiberal.
<blockquote>When I look back at the founders of religions–L Ron Hubbard, Joseph Smith, Sun Myung Moon, Mohammed, and even Jesus–what I see are confidence men. It’s the Big Lie; no one can believe that anyone could be that brazen. But they can be. They were. But how do you convince billions of people that they have been had by mere hucksters? Who wants to believe in a betrayal of trust on that scale?</blockquote>this is interesting, although i would counter that judaism doesn’t have a “founder” in that way; we have a foundational document, of course, but our history would seem to *vindicate* the trust we have in our way of life rather than the other way round – if anything, we should no longer exist, but we still do. if it’s a con, i’d like to know precisely in what we have been conned.
<blockquote>What I would like to see is demonstrations by British Muslims, for example when there is a stoning or a murder etc, saying “Not in my name”.</blockquote>firstly, there are organisations like “british muslims for secular democracy” that you might take account of. secondly, not everyone reacts to these things by demonstrating, signing petitions, or taking out full-page ads in the guardian. most people simply vote with their feet.
<blockquote>How is that supposed to work exactly? Moderate Muslims stand up for being moderate… and who stands up with them? The extremists move to bash them, but so do non-Muslims on the Right and the Left who claim that Islam is some sort of magical exception to normal rules and has no moderates and is some sort of nearly supernatural danger to freedom and democracy and puppies and rainbows. Once you’ve already been tarred by nearly everybody across the entire spectrum, what does it profit you to stand up and make yourself a target?</blockquote>you can even be a target if someone else’s extremists provoke a backlash against them which is then extended to a general prohibition which penalises people who have done nothing to offend. ask the dutch jewish community.
<blockquote>“Jewish” somehow morphed into an “ethnic” category over time</blockquote>that would be since we banned evangelisation, which is a major difference between us and the other “abrahamic” religions – we don’t believe you have to be jewish to be a good person and we don’t have a “saved/damned” approach to life. i think religions should ban evangelising – because if you feel that people have to join your religion to be “right/good/true”, that is a recipe for trouble.
and what galloise blonde said.
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bananabrain
argh, dammit. i thought i knew what i was doing with the coding. bah. sorry, everyone.
b’shalom
bananabrain
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I would agree that Muslims are very diverse, but I plead the fifth on the “just as diverse” part, as I really wouldn’t know. I think there’s value in pointing out, when someone generalizes about a group, that there is diversity of opinion in that group. In order to claim just how diverse, though, it’d be important to cite some numbers before reaching a conclusion.
Re: Religion being tied to ethnicity in some cases:
My stance is basically that a person should have the choice to leave the religion of their family if they want to and that they can stop following certain aspects of the culture that they were raised in if they disagree with it. While I understand that certain religions (e.g. Judiaism) don’t try to convert others, and so may be considered something a person is “born with”, they’re still ideologies, and a person should be able to leave. I don’t like bullying from family members forcing someone to stay in any religion any more than I like bullying aimed at converting people to a different religion.
Sometimes, even if there isn’t really a link between a certain country or ethnicity and a religion, people still make an assumption, which I think is what leads to people saying something that they claim is a criticism of a religion when it’s just prejudice against people from a certain country.
@Improbable Joe (#2 and #27): Good point. A great deal of my frustration about the discussion/arguments about Islam is the apparent inability of people on both sides to think about the content of what someone said and decide whether it was actually discriminatory or it it was actually a good point. One side assumes that everything is discrimination against Muslims and the other side assumes that there is no legitimate problem of discrimination against Muslims. And I also get upset by the willingness of critics of Islam who make good points to ally themselves with the actual bigots.
@Galloise Blonde (#36): Absolutely excellent comment. I definitely agree with the part about it being odd how the government feels it has to communicate with communities through these leaders that don’t really represent everyone in the community. It always bothers me when Islam and immigration are talked about as if they are synonymous when, as you wrote, there are lots of immigrants from these countries who are not Muslims. There are also Muslims or former Muslims who are glad to live here, because they realize just how much better their lives are here.
@Omar Puhleez (#37): Yes, there are people who think every criticism of Islam is “Islamophobia”. There are people on the other side who think every criticism of Islam is justified, even if it actually is based on hatred towards anyone from a different country, and that any action can be taken against Muslims, no matter how discriminatory. The fact that there are false claims of discrimination doesn’t mean I’m going to give a pass to (or assume good intentions on the part of) the people who really do favor discrimination against Muslims.