The continuing need to cringe and grovel
Robert Fisk in the Independent on the New Year’s explosion of executions in Saudi Arabia:
Saudi Arabia’s binge of head-choppings – 47 in all, including the learned Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr Baqr al-Nimr, followed by a Koranic justification for the executions – was worthy of Isis. Perhaps that was the point. For this extraordinary bloodbath in the land of the Sunni Muslim al-Saud monarchy – clearly intended to infuriate the Iranians and the entire Shia world – re-sectarianised a religious conflict which Isis has itself done so much to promote.
All that was missing was the video of the decapitations – although the Kingdom’s 158 beheadings last year were perfectly in tune with the Wahabi teachings of the ‘Islamic State’. Macbeth’s ‘blood will have blood’ certainly applies to the Saudis, whose ‘war on terror’, it seems, now justifies any amount of blood, both Sunni and Shia.
It’s like this: the Saudis are our bastards, while IS are not. Loyalty is a virtue, right?
It will also present the West with that most embarrassing of Middle Eastern problems: the continuing need to cringe and grovel to the rich and autocratic monarchs of the Gulf while gently expressing their unease at the grotesque butchery which the Saudi courts have just dished out to the Kingdom’s enemies. Had Isis chopped off the heads of Sunnis and Shias in Raqqa – especially that of a troublesome Shia priest like Sheikh Nimr – we can be sure that Dave Cameron would have been tweeting his disgust at so loathsome an act. But the man who lowered the British flag on the death of the last king of this preposterous Wahabi state will be using weasel words to address this bit of head-chopping.
Our bastards.
They more or less deserve each other. The late lamented Imam would no doubt have applauded Iran’s frequent hanging of gay people.
He’s right of course, but it’s hard to accept these words without the caveat that they were written by a notorious apologist for the Syrian regime. Assad doesn’t decapitate his victims one by one; he prefers barrel bombs and sarin.
https://www.google.ca/search?q=ghouta+attack&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiZqqDrtY7KAhXClh4KHazQA7QQ_AUICCgC&biw=1344&bih=731
Fisk, an apologist for Assad?
Are you sure?.
He’s referred to “the ruthless regime of Bashar al-Assad” and noted the Syrian army’s use of barrel bombs. Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/syria-s-moderates-have-disappeared-and-there-are-no-good-guys-a6679406.html
See also: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-revolution-four-years-on-dont-bet-against-president-assad-a-ruler-willing-to-see-his-country-10104945.html
@3
https://shirazsocialist.wordpress.com/2014/04/30/fisk-and-hersh-know-nothing-about-ordinary-syrians/
http://instinctivepath.tumblr.com/post/104547035432/there-was-a-point-in-my-life-where-robert-fisk-was
@3
Though I’m willing to believe that he’s now realized nobody could keep up the charade: Fisk is notorious for his “I’m-just-asking-qestions” line of conspiracy journalism on such events as 9/11 and 7/7 (see “fisking”).
Helene @ # 5: … (see “fisking”).”
Dunno where you found your definition, but I doubt it goes back to the origin of the term.
Back in ’02, when US reporter Daniel Pearl was captured and later murdered by Pakistani Islamicists, Fisk covered the story on-site (for The Times of London, IIRC). He and another western journalist got some coverage of their own when local Muslims beat them up, and Fisk said something to the effect that, all things considered, Pakistani Muslims had plenty of legitimate grievances against western media.
For that statement of treason against
the white race, uh,Christian benevolence, that is, True Civilization™, a self-appointed posse of (mostly US) Islamophobes tore into his every published word seeking further evidence of disloyalty to the eternally righteous Bush-&-Blair Brotherhood. They dubbed their exhaustive line-by-line critique (of the parts of his work they cherry-picked) “Fisking”, which has stuck (no doubt to Rob’t F’s discomfort, but who cares what a wog-loving liberal thinks?), though losing its capitalization and having its meaning twisted by people such as those who have apparently misinformed people such as yourself.@6
For Fisk and company explaining the world is generally simple: “cherchez l’Occident”. Of course, like a stopped clock, he’s sometimes right. As with Saudi Arabia above. They’re our bastards. But – failing to find the source of your reference – pray tell, what “legitimate” grievances do Pakistani Muslims have against western media? That their murderous threats against liberal bloggers (so often carried out) are sometimes reported?
http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2016/censored-in-pakistan/
I know all about Fisk. In fact I heard him talk to a group at our university. He’s slick. But largely vacuous. In those days, having abandoned the hijab and all religious nonsense, I thought that anyone on the left was the natural ally of ex-Muslims. My mistake. As others have belatedly discovered after Charlie Hebdo.
As for being “islamophobic” (what Hitchens called “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons”), count me in. Fisk is not as blatant as some other members of the regressive left (what B&W commenter Great God Pan called G/G/G politics http://www.butterfliesandwheels.org/2015/ecumenical-abuse/#comment-2619359), and when he is right about things he can be persuasive, but he deserves a good “fisking” every once in a while.
https://www.facebook.com/144310995587370/photos/a.271728576178944.71555.144310995587370/1100199956665131/?type=3&theater
Thanks to OB for fixing my html fail!
Helene @ # 7: … pray tell, what “legitimate” grievances do Pakistani Muslims have against western media?
Are you really so ignorant as not to have noticed how a complex nation of >160M people gets lumped into a few cliches and assessed only on how much their oligarchies pander to US oligarchies?
However, Fisk did not limit his analysis to western media as such:
That their murderous threats against liberal bloggers (so often carried out) are sometimes reported?
Do you even know about the differences between Pakistan and Bangladesh??? Two different countries, fyi.
I know all about Fisk.
Why does this remind me of creationists saying the same thing about evolution, when clearly they don’t?
But largely vacuous.
Projection, thy name is Helene.
… I thought that anyone on the left was the natural ally of ex-Muslims.
And how, pray tell, does this tangent have anything to do with Robert Fisk?
… “islamophobic” (what Hitchens called “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons”)…
Hitchens, having shoved his head way up GW Bush’s butt, has no-to-negative authority on this and related topics.
Fisk … deserves a good “fisking” every once in a while.
As does every journalist. You’ve just used a lot of words to say nothing at all, y’know. On purpose?
@9,
I thought I might take your cue and respond item by item, do a “fisking” (e.g., point out that Afghanis are not “Pakistani Muslims”, list just a few names of actual Pakistani liberals/atheists/”blasphemers” killed, and so on), but then I’d be descending to your level and doing a “butlering”, eh? So I’ll just close by saying that that I’ll take Hitchens as writer-commentator over a whole truckful of Fisks (and other “useful idiots” who tried to “explain” the Charlie Hebdo massacre… and conveniently ignored the four Jews killed by the Kouachis’ accomplice). http://leftfootforward.org/2015/01/why-it-is-wrong-to-blame-western-policies-for-the-paris-attacks/
http://www.torontosun.com/2016/01/05/french-president-francois-hollande-honours-charlie-hebdo-kosher-market-victims
At least François Hollande gets it right. Contrast with Fisk’s bullshit about Algeria. For Fisk it can’t be about religion; he never seems to have met an Islamic terrorist he couldn’t blame on l’Occident. That’s not journalism; it’s apologism. And not so much “vacuous” as simply vile.
https://www.facebook.com/faisalsalmutar/posts/906729506085781
Something hilarious (?) on the “It’s not about religion” thing.
@12
Ha (if it weren’t so unfunny) !
And I’m sure Fisk will come up with some way to blame the West for this:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/05/germany-crisis-cologne-new-years-eve-sex-attacks
The Guardian wouldn’t allow comments but the New York Times did.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/06/world/europe/coordinated-attacks-on-women-in-cologne-were-unprecedented-germany-says.html
And this:
http://news.yahoo.com/attack-frances-jews-learn-live-under-armed-guard-105624050.html
Helene @ #s 10,11, 13, 14, 15 – That’s an awful lot of shit-slinging without a single example of Fisk exculpating Islam.
Yes, you could easily find examples of Fisk pointing out where “the West” contributed to the current Middle East mess, but that’s not
quite, uh,exactly, at all the same.If you can’t find any facts to support your argument, maybe you should find another place to make it. Try Ann Coulter or WorldNutDaily, you’ll probably fit right in.
@16,
Exculpate: (from Merriam-Webster’s): “to clear from alleged fault or guilt”
Anas Abbas: http://leftfootforward.org/2015/01/why-it-is-wrong-to-blame-western-policies-for-the-paris-attacks/
Helene, you confuse etiology with exculpation.
@18,
Tell Fisk. For him there is only one cause and it’s never Islam.
Helene, as I’ve noted before, it’s a mess to try to disentangle Islam the religion from Islamic politics and Islamic culture and Islamic nationalism.
It’s doable (cf. Mustafa Ataturk), though (alas!) Turkey has obviously backslid. But he did show a way.
@20
Not only Turkey; everywhere across the Muslim world. My mother never wore a hijab as a young woman but I was pressured to do so.
Google class photos from Cairo University. No hijabs in 1959. Nor in 1978. Today it’s the rule. You can find old photos of women in a Kabul video shop wearing normal dresses and no headscarves when today they would be swathed head to toe in burqas and never allowed in a video shop. When Khomeini came to power in 1979 (helped enthusiastically by “useful idiots” on the left… who were promptly thanked with imprisonment and execution), things changed quickly across the Middle East and from there eventually to Muslims everywhere.
I can’t see many rays of liberal light these days. There are are a few in Beirut (where I still have a cousin) but Hezbollah has put a damper on things and the Christian population is shrinking. Here’s another: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/04/world/middleeast/in-israeli-city-of-haifa-a-liberal-palestinian-culture-blossoms.html – But that’s in Israel (Fisk’s chief bogeyman, btw, after “The West”), an anomaly, and unlikely to be imitated under Hamas or elsewhere in the Middle East in the current climate.