Multicultural mayoring
In a small town near Barcelona a Moroccan-born Muslim woman with a master’s degree
says she was threatened by Muslim fundamentalists because she took off her veil and tried to live like a Spaniard. The treatment of Fatima Ghailan, 31, prompted an investigating magistrate to bring charges against the sheik of the local mosque, Mohamed Benbrahim, and the head of the Islamic Association, Abderraman el-Osri, the leading figures in Cunit’s Muslim community. The case also generated demands for the resignation of Mayor Judit Alberich, a liberal Socialist who, her political opponents said, catered to her Muslim constituents at the expense of respect for the law.
The self-appointed ‘leading figures’ in the male portion of ‘Cunit’s Muslim community’ – except those who don’t agree with them, of course, who never count when journalists are telling us who the leading figures are. It’s just shorthand of course, and we get the drift, but when there is controversy that usage does bestow a legitimacy on putative leaders that they don’t necessarily have or deserve. We don’t really know whether those two are ‘leading figures’ or just bullies. And clearly Alberich catered to some of her Muslim constituents, at the expense of others of them as well as respect for the law. Clearly not all of Alberich’s ‘Muslim constituents’ want women to be bullied by men for not wearing hijab.
Ghailan was an unlikely champion of assimilation when she arrived in Cunit as a teenager. Her father had been the sheik of a mosque in Morocco, and until recently, she dutifully wore a scarf. But things began to change several years ago. Ghailan received a master’s degree in Barcelona…Then she got a job at City Hall, assigned to work with the town’s approximately 1,000 mostly Moroccan Muslims as a “cultural mediator.” Her job was to encourage Muslims, particularly cloistered women, to participate in the life of the town, to take advantage of language classes and to leave their homes to attend festivals. Ultimately, that is what brought her into conflict with Benbrahim and Osri. As a representative of City Hall, Ghailan wielded power over the immigrant community. That, residents said, was something the traditionalists could not accept — particularly because it involved a woman who refused to cover her hair. Benbrahim organized a petition demanding Ghailan’s firing. Ghailan said the dispute soon escalated; she lodged a formal complaint against Benbrahim in November 2008, charging that he had harassed, threatened and attacked her and her family. A local court issued a restraining order, barring the sheik from going near Ghailan or her family, and launched a formal investigation in which procedure dictated that Benbrahim be taken into custody. But, Ghailan said later, the mayor, Alberich, intervened to prevent the arrest, saying that it would disrupt relations with Cunit’s Muslim community.
Alberich is a woman and a socialist – yet she opted to leave Ghailan exposed to the bullying of an imam.
This article about the Spanish woman Ghailan, who ‘decided to live like a Spaniard’, is very worrying. But it does show very clearly that Islam’s black dog is out of the kennel in the West, and we need to find some way of putting it back in. Indeed, the time has come to say that religious voices that keep clamouring for more time and respect in the social conversation do not deserve that respect until they begin to accept some of the basic social norms of the society they have entered. And any social coversation which begins with a woman in a tent is going to be a failure from the start. Going about in a disguise might be socially appropriate in traditional Muslim societies, but if that is what immigration means in the West, then we should take a much closer look at the implications, and begin to do something about it (if those implications, as I believe, are genuinely a danger to our freedoms).
Veiling women subordinates them to all those who are not veiled. The purpose of the veil is to obliterate the woman as an individual human being, and this article shows just how little choice women are given about is use. It is ridiculous to continue defending these offensive garments as though they are a matter of free choice. They may on occasion be, but there is no way, given the culture of purdah, that most will choose to be tented for life of their own free choice. They may be silent about it, and accept it submissively; they might even say that they do it freely; but it is essentially patriarchal and designed to obliterate the individuality of the woman. We should not permit this casual flouting of our deepest values. If women to not come here to be equal to men, then they need an education, and an opportunity to find that equality, and ancient religious beliefs should not permit the undermining of the key regulating principle of democratic polity.
This is an aspect of the black dog of Islam of which R. Joseph Hoffmann writes in his B&W article. The Christian black dog, long kennelled, is now out on a pretty long leash, and has been flexing it muscles and growling quite a bit lately. It’s time, I think, that we began weighing up the costs of developing religious enclaves in our midst that are prepared to do violence. We should also be concerned that other religions are quite prepared to let their black dogs out to stroll our streets in defence of Muslim offences to equality.
I agree with Ayan Hirsi Ali. We should stop Muslim immigration for now, and see how the experiment proceeds. If Muslims do make the transition to civilised, free behaviour, in which our freedoms show some sign of being respected, then we may consider further immigration on those terms. But as it stands, democracies are involved in a very dangerous social experiment, and without some reasonable restraints on the formation of unintegrated communities, we may well live to see the basic premises of democractic governance destroyed.
I think it’s really hard to do that though, without being as illiberal as what we’re trying to avoid. Not least, if we did that, there would be no Ghailans – and the Ghailans will be an example for other Ghailans, and so on.
But at the very least one would hope people would stop siding with bullying imams against women who want to live like free adults. That would help!
Sadly, in too many communities, if you know they’re the latter, then you know they’re the former.
It’s really, really upsetting that “Encourage women to participate in society as if they were something close to human” could be someone’s job.
Which is why traditionalists should be marginalized, mocked and derided for being insecure, sexist morons.
Translation: “Fuck you. I want to win the next election.”
Doesn’t say so in the article, but Cunit is also supposedly one of the centres of Islamic extremism in Spain.
This type of behaviour needs to be roundly condemned by the putative leaders of these communities (if we are to take seriously their claims to want to integrate).
The mayor should have condemned it too, instead of interfering with the legal process.
I have no opinion yet on what Eric MacDonald says but OB, I am not clear on your statement that “I think it’s really hard to do that though, without being as illiberal as what we’re trying to avoid.”
Yes as a practical matter politically it might be quite tough to limit immigration because
1. There are already so many Moslem voters.
2. There are so many liberals.
So are you against MacDonald ‘s idea for reasons of “too tough to do?” or “not a good idea?”
David, I have problems with it on moral (or moral-political, in the sense of political philosophy) grounds – I wasn’t thinking in pragmatic terms. It’s complicated. In a way I think the idea isn’t illiberal, because it’s not about kinds of people, it’s about kinds of beliefs and their consequences for actions. I certainly don’t think Eric is illiberal!
But I think it just is hard to bar entry for huge groups of that kind without getting into all sorts of horrible thickets of misunderstanding, without giving aid and comfort to people who really are illiberal, etc.
I’m not thinking about votes. I am thinking about nativist groups, and the like.
I think OB’s point,
And clearly Alberich catered to some of her Muslim constituents, at the expense of others of them as well as respect for the law. Clearly not all of Alberich’s ‘Muslim constituents’ want women to be bullied by men for not wearing hijab.
more or less covers that. By proposing a blanket ban on muslim immigration we would efectively be shutting out those seeking to escape this brutal and misogynistic version of Islam. We would be telling Ghailan that her ‘community leaders’ were right and she had no place in western society. We would be telling those same ‘community leaders’ that we accept their claim to be the only voice and the true representatives of millions who cannot make themselves heard.
We would be telling the Iranian opposition that no matter how hard they fought against theocratic thugs we would not accept them unless they ditched their religion altogether.
The female teachers and students in Iraq and Afghanistan who fight for education despite the daily terror, violence and murders are themselves muslims. Do we tell them that in our eyes they are as one with their oppressors until they become atheists?
No. Any legislation which is targeted at one group, whether religious or racial, is anti-democratic and I would take to the streets to oppose it.
Eric, I have enormous respect for you and generally find your comments to be so well expressed that any response of mine would be redundant. But I disagree with you on this. I accept that we have a serious problem with aggressive Islam, but to throw up our hands and say, ‘They are all the same. Bar the lot of them.’ is to throw in the towel and desert those we should be supporting.
Note that I understand that ‘They are all the same’ is not your position, but your suggestion sends exactly that message. I’m afraid there are no quick and easy fixes to this.
I admit I instinctively feel a bit uneasy about calls to limit specifically Muslim immigration, since no distinction is usually made between those like the sheik who want to import the worst aspects of Moroccan life and those who are more than happy to leave all that behind (and then there’s those in the middle, of course).
On the other hand, I do agree strongly that it’s certainly the right of the citizens of a country like Spain to be concerned about preserving their liberal democratic society, especially since it hasn’t been long since clerical fascism ruled the country and the Church is still too powerful. I would hardly expect Spanish liberals to look kindly on a theoretical sizable influx of US fundamentalists who immediately started creating their own “Bibletown”!
I suppose at least some of this could have been avoided if it had been made absolutely clear from the very start that actions like that of the sheik would not be tolerated for one instant from ANYBODY, no matter how important in the community he claims to be! I suspect one reason he felt he could indulge in such behavior against Ghailan is precisely because “well-meaning” and “sensitive” people like the mayor found it easier to look the other way.
As for community leaders…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcOkxZsDuEA
The idea of specifically limiting Muslim immigration is repellent and utterly shameful. In the UK it would line you up not merely with ‘illiberal’ people, but fascists.
This is the sharp end of a discussion I’ve joined in with on this site before – that ‘Islam’ is not only a religion in the abstract, but concretely *Muslims*, who are people; and when you’re talking about people a lot of the general truths about the religion break down. That is, there are many, many Muslims who do not conform to the image of ‘Islam’ (even if that image, of the relgion ‘as such’ is accurate).
There is no way that restricting immigration of Muslims would not a) target mainly dark-skinned people; and b) have a terrible effect on the dark-skinned people who already live here.
Well, you could make it a condition of legal residence that you agree to abide by (some list of requirements).
This would apply to everybody. Those who see it as an attack on their religion or culture might not be welcome anyway.
Also, the moment of entry is probably the easiest time to do this, as the prospective immigrant is in a weak position.
For instance, I have a feeling that in some countries, new immigrants are made to sign a piece of paper saying that they recognize that female genital mutilation is illegal.
And of course, if you don’t want to integrate, why do you want to live there, and why should you be allowed to?
Clive,
Agreed.
There is a real problem at the root of all this – but the horrible truth is that there is no way to ‘fix’ it without being overtly appalling – or fascist, if you like.
It applies to immigration from strongly Catholic countries too. If you have mass immigration of very conservative ‘devout’ people then that is going to change the politics of the host country. It’s no good blinking that. I don’t think there’s anything acceptable to be done about it, but it is a reality.
Well I do think there’s anything acceptable to be done about it, which is argument and education, but I don’t think there’s any acceptable way to block the demographic shifts, and of course I tend to fear that argument and education may be too slow and feeble.
While I hazard tarnishing my image, I still think the issue of the effect of Islam on Western democracies is seriously destructive, and needs to be addressed. I am a Millsian liberal at heart, and I find myself in unfamiliar territory, but I think it is territory we are going to have to traverse whether we like it or not.
In response to those who think I am particularly illiberal on the issue of Islam and immigration. While not wanting to sound fascist or racist, since I am neither, I think it is important to understand that religions are what they do. As Hoffmann says, Islam has never gone through an Enlightenment. It has not adapted to science to any significant degree. It has not, in very large part, modified its understanding of women as inferior. Radical Muslims are very frank about their ambitions, namely, to covert the world to Islam by fair means or foul, mostly the latter. And they apparently wield largely unrestricted influence in many immigrant communities.
I recall Salman Rushdie’s remarks about ‘the mass of so-called ordinary Muslims,’ which I quote here:
And since it is now very clear that Muslims in most Western nations (no matter their numbers or their relation to the majority) are very active in silencing their own communities as well as the press and other media, threatening violence, waging lawfare, and other illiberal practices, in order to permit the silent growth of extremism, it seems to me that something needs to be done to deal with these very real threats to freedom.
As for escaping ‘this vicious misogynistic version of Islam’, how many women who come to the West actually escape it? That would be an interesting thing to know. And when we have the Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka saying that England is now a cesspit for breeding Islamist extremists, it becomes important to know. I agree that experimentally stopping immigration to the West would be a very drastic step to take. But until we know what the result of unrestricted immigration might be, illiberal or not, this is what we may have to do in order to stop some of the worst aspects of Islam from spreading to the West as they are rapidly doing.
This is not about Muslims. This is about Islam, and Islam is far more dangerous than Christianity is to liberal freedoms, though it has its own set of problems, especially in its new skin, largely grown to counter Muslim influence in society. And since it has no recognisable legitimate spokespersons, Islam is extemely liminal, wherever it is found, and therefore highly unpredictable, and, I believe, dangerous. If those who come here come here to escape a vicious misogynistic type of Islam, this desire is not prominently on show when they arrive, and the degree of their success in doing so should be studied.
I suspect we have a very serious problem developing. I would be glad to be proved wrong. Ayan Hirsi Ali doesn’t think so, and neither does Wole Soyinka, who thinks that liberal inattention is permitting the development, unckecked, of the Islamist extremist right in Britain. The same applies to a lesser degree in North America, but it does not instill confidence that we know what is happening.
Part of the result of not talking about this problem, and not taking it seriously, is driving perfectly ordinary people towards a kind of racist fascism. This is in evidence now throughout Europe. It is not, I am convinced, based on racism, but it is based on perceived problems of social division, division that is going to get much worse, and all the liberal mantras in the world are not going to make a difference to what is taking place. We even have the specatacle of Christians entering the public space very aggressively lately in support of Muslims, and in support, of course, of their own claims. If this isn’t a diaster waiting to happen, I’m not sure what else to call it, and we can sit back and play the harm principle, and apply the principles of Areopagetica if we like, but this is something new in liberal society. It is extremely illiberal, and it is not reluctant to use the laws to their own convenience, and to break them when the choose. We may need more creative resources to deal with this situation.
Well, Eric, one point is that there is another way to look at it – which is that liberalism and democracy and human rights are pretty powerful too, and it could be that Muslim immigration will work the other way too – will dilute the less liberal versions from the source countries as people go back for visits etcetera, and as the world gets smaller and more interconnected.
And another point is that probably the biggest source of Islamist illiberalism has almost nothing to do with immigration and instead has almost everything to do with Oil. It’s Saudi money that finances madrassas and visiting imams and other Wahhabist outreach. So…
The way that so many institutions seem to be buckling before Islam is also very worrying (like Amnesty, Index on Censorship, the UK Labour Party,…).
Radical Islam may be to our day what he-who-we-cannot-name-in-internet-discussion-threads was to the 1930s.
But I’m not sure that restricting Muslim immigration is the right way to go, and could well be an own goal.
Except that Radical Islam is more like a mix of Hitler and Stalin – because it was not one of the problems in resisting fascism in the ’30s that the left was weirdly enamored of Hitler. The idiotic affection for Islamism is much more like the blind loyalty to Stalin. Trotsky stands in for all the liberal Muslims.
Obviously, though strongly worded, what I have written was written to prompt a response. It is true that democracy is powerful, but it is only powerful if we are free, and right now people are not free to express their concerns about Islam. There is so much active self-censorship going on; there is also a lot of effort being made by fairly radical Muslims to silence criticism, and they use many of the tools provided for them by democracies to do it.
I would certainly like to think that Muslims visiting in Pakistan have the effect of diluting the radicalism of Islam in that country. I see no evidence for this, and it would be nice to know if there is any such evidence at all.
Restricting immigration may not be the way to go, as several commenters have said, but if it is not, then it is time for the voices opposed to radical Islam to be raised loudly, and if they cannot be raised, for fear of the label Islamophobia, or for fear of violence against such voices, or for fear of more general terrorism, then the really powerful features of democracy and liberal polity are rendered ineffective. As you say, Ophelia, democracy is powerful, but it is only powerful if we have full freedom to express our concerns, and to argue them out actively and strenuously in public. This is not happening to any great extent, and that is cause for great concern.
I remark only on the action of AI in sacking Gita Saghal. Here they sided with a known Islamist, and sacked a known defender of gender equality. This is not untypical of “liberal” institutions. Without freedom, democracy is not powerful, and it is freedom that is today most in question, even at the heart of the democratic world. I’ll shut up now.
There’s more at work here than the mere fact of immigration. The US doesn’t have the same problem the EU countries seem to be having. Maybe that’s just a matter of quantity, but I don’t think so. Immigrants integrate over the generations in the Us in a way they don’t seem to in Europe (those ghettos in Paris have 3rd generation “immigrants” living in them, and they haven’t integrated at all).
I think there is a combination of cultural and policy factors in the US that allows it absorb immigrants easily. I would venture a guess at 1) a history of immigration that most ex-colonies have and 2) more flexible labour laws that make it a lesser risk to hire recent immigrants. Work means coming into contact with the culture of your new country and that aids integration.
Whether my intuitions have any merit or not, this is something that deserves further study.
There is, though, also much scare-mongering. In most of the UK, the numbers of Muslim immigrants are small to the point of invisibility. But where there is a growing Muslim population, for instance where I live, for instance my street, the idea that in any way they are interfering with my life is preposterous.
I and my (male) partner live in our street without the slightest threat from our Muslim neighbours.
And I wholeheartedly endorse OB’s comment above, that the dynamic can well be (I think there’s some research which shows it is) the opposite: Muslims growing up in a liberal democratic culture tend to absorb its values, at least to some extent, rather than vice versa.
(I have, by the way, friends from Muslim backgrounds, who still identify as Muslim who, for instance, also self-identify as lesbian. Life is richer and less scary than the stop-Muslim-immigrants-for-fear-of-our-lives pundits believe).
This is not to say that Islam as a religion, like all religions, should not be – sharply – criticised.
Off-topic shout out to Lisa Bauer:
It’s great to see you commenting here! I could not put down your articles in Free Inquiry. Hope all is going well for you. :-)
Thank you, Clive.
Eric, “Islam” is not a threat to Western countries. No ideology can do harm unless it is attached to a particular person or people. Treating ideologies like that leads to McCarthyist behavior. Your philosophy laid out here is a straight path to oppression of anyone dark-skinned or ethnically “different”–which includes me, so excuse me for disliking the idea of Britain limiting immigration in the name of “freedom.”
Some Muslims are a threat; so are some Christians (and in America, the Christians are far worse of a threat to the concept of liberal secular democracy than Muslims could ever be). People were saying the exact same things about Catholics in the US, less than a century ago, that you are about Muslims today. It was repellent nonsense then and it is now.
Yes, Something Must Be Done. How about treating Muslims as people just like any other British citizen, rather than buying into our own paranoid fantasies about how every Muslim is automatically presumed a threat? A lot of the silencing that the mullahs are able to do in Britain is enabled by the British government. How about stopping that?
Also, in what way is either Wole Soyinka or Ayaan Hirsi Ali an expert on terrorism? They both say admirable things, but I wouldn’t consider them to be authorities on the subject of whether all individuals in a large religious/ethnic population can be treated as a security threat. I certainly wouldn’t take their word as a basis for denying people the basic right to immigrate solely based on religious affiliation.
Another angle is that barring Muslim immigration from ‘Western’ countries wouldn’t actually touch the problem at the heart of this article, which for my money is not what happens to Spain but what happens to women like Ghailan. I don’t think it’s an improvement if what happens to women like Ghailan happens only in majority-Muslim countries. On the contrary, I think it’s an improvment that women like Ghailan get to escape!
No need to shut up though Eric.
Well, I won’t shut up, then. But I think I’ll stop commenting on this thread (after this note, of course). I find all religion poisonous, without exception. Having been a liberal Christian, and watched as a fundamentalist variety of faith grew up on my watch, protected by a kind of mindless liberalism, I do not see any form of religious faith as having a significant contribution to make to human community. The history of religion is a history of intolerance and violence.
I believe that we (in the West) were lulled into a false sense of religion’s harmlessness. This (to oversimplify) grew out of two things. First, the regrouping of Christianity after the Enlightenment and the progress of science. Second, the horror of Nazism, in which a cultural/religious/racial group were marginalised and victimised.
The first had the effect, as the recent C of E General Synod vote on the compatibility of religion and science shows, of putting religion beyond rational criticism, making the implicit claim to be itself rational (in its own way, but in a way not inconsistent with science).
The second had the effect, I think, of turning the religious into victims. This is a serious error. It was mainly Christian antisemitism that, together with a perversion of biology and a touch of Nordic myth, created the Nazi Endlosung. The Final Solution was, essentially, the product of religion.
Religions have always been violent and intolerant. They still are. I’m reading John Paul II’s “Evangelium Vitae” at the moment, and his intolerance of all those who disagree with him can be read on almost every page. It’s an imperialist document for an imperialist religion.
Islam is no different, and just as dangerous, and since it hasn’t even had an encounter with the Englightenment, it tends to be even more imperialistic in its understanding of its relationships with others.
These are dangerous forces. And, yes, Islam is a theat to Western countries, just as Christianity is. This is not about individual Christians or Muslims, which, take them one at a time, are mostly ordinary people like you and me. But religions don’t function that way. They are the illusions of people in community, and they act through groups who empower groups and individuals. But the notion that they are not dangerous is itself a danger to us all.
This is not about race. It’s not even about culture as such. It’s about the way religions empower individuals and groups to act in ways that individuals wouldn’t otherwise act. Does anyone really think that Major Hasan would have acted as he did if not prompted by religious belief? That the 9/11 hijackers would have acted as they did without religious belief? Do you think that Scott Roeder would have killed Dr. Tiller if it were not for religious belief?
Religion is a danger to all of us. Islam is a danger to the West. So is the Pope, and dominionist fundamentalists. And no, Salman Rushdie and Ayan Hirsi Ali and Wole Soyinka are not experts on terrorism, but they are experts on the effects of religious violence on their personal lives or on society.
When people hold signs in Trafalgar Square that read, “Behead everyone who says that Islam is a violent religion!”, and the police don’t do a thing, or when high ranking Sikh judges think it is a child’s right to take a knife to school, or when the Pope threatens legal provisions that are made to ensure that people are treated with equal dignity, then religion is a danger. And if, as Ophelia says, the problem with Islam in Britain is Saudi money supporting English madrassas, or radical imams, then that is a problem that must be faced head on, not kept under wraps for fear of offending people’s sensitivities over religion.
Perhaps the idea of restricting immigration is over the top. Maybe it is. But if people are unwilling to look at these problems, talk about them publicly, and try to resolve them, then nothing will stop the steady erosion of our freedoms, and this is the harm that religion is doing now, and I do not see that there is much sign of this harm coming to an end.
Of course, the English, Canadians, Swiss, Dutch, etc. etc., ought to treat Muslim citizens just the same as they treat other citizens. And I think they would have done that, if there had been more sign of a willingness to integrate, and if they were not constantly reminded of the deleterious effects of Islam on other countries. Sure, some white people are racist, but they are also people with a culture and a way of life who can feel threatened. Americans were right to be afraid of Roman Catholicism, and the Vatican is giving them reason to be afraid again.
Imperialist religions are, by their very nature, anti-democratic, and they constitute a clear and present danger. Muslims have it in their power to change the way that people regard them, and some of them, of course, do. But when I see someone walk down the street in a tent, I am offended, and I find it very difficult to give that person the respect that I am willing to give to practically anyone, so long as they accept and value the freedoms that are valued in this society. But anyone who comes here and treats women that way, or believes that they should be so treated, does not earn my respect. There are Baptists in this area whose women go round with little translucent cloth hats, little ones, pinned to the back of their heads as a sign of their submission to the man, who is head of the woman. They don’t get my respect either.
This is not about race. I grew up amongst people with brown skin. When I first came to Canada at the age of 18, it took me a long time to get used to looking at white people all the time. The most beautiful people I knew were brown. This is not a racial issue with me, and I don’t really think it is with most people. Most young people I know don’t really see colour; for religious reasons they’re probably much more anti-Jewish than racist. This is all about imperialistic religion, religion that is not prepared to accept that religion is a choice, that it is not universal, and that universal claims should cease being made for religious beliefs. Such claims are inherently dangerous, and until we learn that, religious violence will continue to be one of the more salient features of life in the world.
Well, I didn’t shut up, did I? Sorry to go on so.
OB, except that there actually were some on the Marxist Left in Weimar Germany who were weirdly enamoured of Hitler, or least of not opposing him, thinking that if he won power it would somehow hasten the Revolution.
But the problem does seem much greater today, with so many on the Left who are prepared to form pragmatic coalitions with anyone who opposes the “capitalist hegemony”. As if the capitalist hegemony is such an evil that it must be smashed at any cost.
Indeed, just the other day I had the misfortune to come across a rant about how horribly Islamophobic Dawkins and the “New Atheists” were…and this was from a progressive atheist of color. The very fact that they attack all religions harshly was held against them, since they should keep in mind all the crimes of the West against Muslims today. (There was also a complaint about how terrible it was for white atheists to expect people of color to give up the religions that had been imposed on them, Christianity and Islam…well, there wasn’t really that much of an argument.)
I’ve noticed that quite a few progressives/leftists are quite enamored of religion, at least as an idea, especially if it can be used to unite people behind some (secular) cause or other such as anti-imperialism, and will berate others for “disrespecting” their beliefs. I always found this more than a little patronizing, because it was obvious they had no use for the religion in itself, but only as a means to (their) end. I remember thinking that this was a rather condescending attitude to take — “let the poor oppressed things have their religion, at least for now!”
And to Emily: thanks! ;-)
Hmm, I made a couple of comments on the newer thread above this, but they didn’t “take”. Anyone else having that problem?
I’m just noting that Cunit comprises Taragona, in which region a Salafist group have been terrorising women and allegedly abducted a young woman with the intent of executing her for adultery.
mirax,
I do recognise that radical, triumphalist Islam is exceptional in that it is being both driven by and driving a massively financed political agenda. I’m not sure why you think that I don’t.
I just oppose sweeping legislation that will put millions into boxes they don’t want to be in.
I have to agree with mirax regarding the insanity of much of what passes for “the left,” especially in Britain — the embrace of the most reactionary Muslim leaders in parties like Respect and the SWP and the subsequent nauseating attempts to defend them and their ideas, as well as the disgusting tendency to throw “inconvenient” things like women’s rights and gay rights under the bus (so to speak) in order to cozy up to religious reactionaries.
Not incidentally, I’ve also noticed the tendency for some male leftists to simply not “get it” when it comes to women’s rights. I’ve seen too many examples of white male leftists dismissing women’s rights as unimportant in the face of the “larger struggle,” certainly not worth challenging the misogyny of any number of alleged “allies”, and even denouncing feminists in, say, Muslim countries as somehow being “dupes” or worse of the “imperialists” or whatever.
I think this is what irritates me so much about this kind of thing — the tendency to set up a simplistic, binary “Western imperialism vs. the oppressed Muslim world” notion of world relations, and then taking people like Ahmadinejad or Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi (of “killing gays is OK” infamy) as “representative” of “Muslims” and totally ignoring the dissent and activism in favor of human and women’s rights in those countries. It’s quite offensive and perhaps even “racist,” in that individual Muslims, especially of certain backgrounds (Pakistanis, Arabs, Iranians) are merely seen as units of one uniformly oppressed group, in contrast to Westerners who are seen as individuals. (I’m not sure if I’m explaining it well, but this is a tendency I dislike immensely in the “moral relativist,” “it’s their culture” mindset — how is the “culture” one undifferentiated whole, and how is it defined? Why is it that the word of senior male authority figures is so often taken as “gospel” about what the culture in question is, anyway?)
I’m afraid this is just a restatement of what mirax said, “If there is one thing that is true, it is that the loony left is totally incapable of distinguishing the muslim from the islamist.” though I’d be careful to define “loony left” as the simple-minded “anti-imperialist” left who do things like defend the Iranian regime — it’s anti-US/UK hegemony, so it must be good, totally ignoring or even denouncing the efforts of millions of Iranian leftists who are very anti-the-regime.
You are explaining it well, Lisa, and it’s something that drives me crazy, that bloc-thinking combined with making the ‘bloc’ the most reactionary version. 1) all Muslims treated as interchangeable and 2) ‘Muslims’ defined as all-agreeing-with the most reactionary possible version of Islam. It’s an infuriating, stupid, pervasive way of thinking.
The mayor was doing it, for instance – saying Benbrahim’s arrest ‘would disrupt relations with Cunit’s Muslim community’ – which simply assumes that all of Cunit’s Muslims agree with Benbrahim. Why the hell would she assume that?! Why would she simply take it for granted that ‘Cunit’s Muslim community’ is basically interchangeable with Benbrahim?
Admittedly, there IS sometimes a tendency for minority Islamic communities in the West to “circle the wagons” when one of “their own” is attacked, even if they personally think he’s wrong, since many are (still) operating under the “We must protect our brother Muslim against the unbelievers” mindset.
That said, oftentimes a lot of this kind of worrying is grossly overstated, since much of the “Muslim community” turns out to either not care or consider the person in question to be some sort of loon.
The tendency you noted is unfortunately in full bloom at the odious Islamophobia Watch (which I avoid like the proverbial plague), run by a white male British leftist and which spends more time going after Muslim reformers and feminists and critics of people like Yusuf al-Qaradawi than stories of mosques being defaced or Muslims being verbally abused — thus we get inanities like Women Against Fundamentalism being referred to as a “nutty group” because they dared to voice support for Gita Saghal over the Taliban-supporting Moazzam Begg. Which is quite telling of this whole ridiculous black-and-white “anti-imperialist” mindset, actually…
No, I assume that Islamophobia Watch is representative of basically the person who runs it! (The “representative” on that link, Bob Pitt, IS IW!) It’s so messed up that I find it hard to believe that anybody would take it seriously, though there are plenty of conservative Muslims along with “anti-imperialist” leftists who do and who link to it (weird bedfellows, but typical these days).
I do recognise that radical, triumphalist Islam is exceptional in that it is being both driven by and driving a massively financed political agenda. I’m not sure why you think that I don’t.
I just oppose sweeping legislation that will put millions into boxes they don’t want to be in.
You dont seem too concerned or threatened by its actual manifestations.
Look at PP where you continue to post and I didnt. Sunny Hundal has effectively libelled Sahgal as a part of a conspiracy out to defame and destroy AI. Contrast this despicable position with the oft awowed ‘progressive asian’ credentials of PP – throwing Sahgal under the bus for Begg! Where are the women – the Sonias- and the secularist types who’d have knocked Sunny a hard one right in the nose for this? Indeed, where are you in this fray? Not your fight right?
There are no laws afoot to disenfranchise muslims – if there were, I’d be in the streets with you.Just so you know.
But I increasingly feel like taking to the streets to fight the theocrats – a militant feminist backlash is way overdue, girls! Who’s for it?
Lisa, oh I know about ‘Islamophobia watch’ – it has of course called me an Islamophobe and B&W an Islamophobic site.
mirax, I’m for militant feminist backlash any time!
Btw, they have started flogging women for ‘illicit sex’ in Malaysia.
When two North eastern Malaysian states fell to the islamist PAS party two decades ago and they introduced hudud (sharia criminal law) legislation, the UMNO led malaysian govt decried that as unconstitutional and swore that it would never be allowed to be applied. Now that same federal government has secretly done carried out hudud punishments and presented Malaysians with a fait accompli.
Let us consider this event. 3 Muslim women have now been caned for having illicit sex. 2 of them were caned 6 times and the third was whipped 4 times. Further details of the cases arent divulged. We don’t even know who these women are and we aren’t told if there were any witnesses to their offences(as required by fucking sharia law).
The question arises as to how these punishments were decided. We are told that the punishments were decided by the Federal Territory Syariah High Court. No transparency, no opportunity for discussion.Have these punishments even been gazetted to the public? Nothing was said in the news. This is how Malaysian Syariah law is carried out. Behind closed doors, far from any kind of scrutiny.
So, muslims in Malaysia are discovering that they dont have to vote for islamist parties to enjoy the benefits of an islamic paradise. They dont have to give a fig for the constitution either.
Fucking great.No wonder Begg feels so at home in Malaysia.
I called Amnesty Malaysia as there was nothing on their website. Spoke to a pleasant woman, Nora, who said that the website was being ‘overhauled’ but that Amnesty International was due to release a statement this evening. She admitted to great unease and urged me to publicise the issue as much as possible.
I see that AI sent out a statement on yesterday. they described the women’s caning as “just the tip of the iceberg” as corporal punishment has laways been meted out to men in Malaysia (and Singapore). They appear totally deaf to any of the implications of what has happened to the 3 women. Nothing new here, eh AI?
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h-w-HoaIgpByr47tMJyEfWoq8mqg