Islamophobia « Tikkunista!

3. Islam, and Muslims

Feb-10-2012 | Comments (2)

Bird’s Eye: Yes, this is a somewhat mixed set of posts. General statements about a billion people can be. We start with a surprisingly insightful piece from Cracked magazine, looking at misperceptions. Then we look at Islamophobia in Canada, as an example of the absurd demonization Harper is promulgating. Then an interesting pair: Rushdie is blocked from reading in India, as a result of The Satanic Verses imbroglio. Malik’s article quotes the Bradford Council of Mosques’ Shabbir Akhtar who said, at the height of the Rushdie affair, that self-censorship “is a meaningful demand in a world of varied and passionately held convictions. What Rushdie publishes about Islam is not just his business. It is everyone’s – not least every Muslim’s – business.” Akhtar has changed… read his current views on questioning faith from the T.E.S.

* 5 Ridiculous Things You Probably Believe About Islam Cracked (Thanks, Kofi!)

#5. If You’re a Muslim Woman, You Have to Wear the Veil

So for instance, in France they have about 3 million Muslim women. French police decided to figure out how many of them wore burqas and/or niqabs and found the number to be … 367. Not 367,000, but 367, a number so small that from a statistical point of view, it’s barely enough to register as a margin of error. As for the rest of Europe, the numbers are even more disastrous for the burqa business (for instance, Belgium has 500,000 Muslims, a couple dozen wear the burqa).

Yes, there are Middle Eastern countries where the veils are required by law (namely Iran and Saudi Arabia) and combined those countries have less than 5 percent of the world’s Muslims. There are actually more Muslim countries that outright ban the wearing of the veils than there are that require them

* Pep Talk Led To Terrorism SuspicionsCBC News

A Muslim man alleges he’s become a terror suspect simply because of a workplace quip – he says all he did was tell his sales staff to “blow away” the competition at a trade show. Now Saad Allami is seeking $100,000 from the Quebec provincial police force, one of its sergeants and the provincial Justice Department.

Allami says in a Quebec Superior Court filing that he was arrested in January 2011 and accused of being a terrorist because of a pep talk he gave fellow employees. Allami was a sales manager for a telecommunications firm when he sent out a text message to staff urging them to “blow away” the competition at a New York City convention.

* To Name The Unnameable Kenan Malik.

Salman Rushdie had to back out of attending the 2012 Jaipur Literature Festival because of an assassination threat against him. The lack of support for Rushdie shows that the defence of free speech is no longer seen as an irrevocable duty, writes Kenan Malik.

…Rushdie was due to have attended the festival – which is quickly becoming one of the most important global literary events – to give a talk on Midnight’s Children, the film of which is released later this year, and to take part in a discussion on the history of English in India. Rushdie has visited India many times over the past decade and has attended the festival before. This time Muslim activists issued threats. Instead of standing up the bullies, both local and state governments caved in, both exerting pressure on the festival organizers to keep Rushdie away. “I am sure the organizers will respect the sentiments of the local people”, said Ashok Gehlot, the chief minister of Rajasthan, whose capital is Jaipur.

In the end Rushdie cancelled his trip having, he said, received information about a plot to assassinate him, a plot that now appears may have been invented by the Rajasthan police to “persuade” Rushdie not to come. In response, the novelist Hari Kunzru and the writer and poet Amitava Kumar, both speakers at the festival, publicly read passages from The Satanic Verses. Later, two other speakers, Jeet Thayil and Rushir Joshi, did so too. The novel is still banned in India, having been placed on a proscribed list in 1988 by the then-premier Rajiv Gandhi, who, facing a crucial election, crumbled under Islamist pressure. The festival organizers distanced themselves from what they called Kunzru and Kumar’s “unnecessary provocation”, and put pressure on other speakers not to follow suit.

* Ex-Defender Of The Faith Shabbir Akhtar Times Higher Education -

I lived in Malaysia for three years in the kind of uncertainty westerners face only in times of war. The five daily calls to prayer are the only predictable events in the capital city, Kuala Lumpur. The power cuts are frequent, the traffic jams continuous. Islam is the official religion, but materialism is the ruling creed.

Living in a state where Islam was empowered deepened and darkened my idealistic view of my faith and my people. Though born and raised partly in Pakistan, I had a second childhood in northern industrial England. Here I belonged to a powerless minority and a despised religion. Upon arrival at the International Islamic University, I joined the ruling Muslim majority. Before, when I was in the minority, it was easy to play the moral card.

New lecturers must meet the Saudi-Kurdish rector in his opulent rooms on campus. He invites us to settle down into the comfort and security of dogma. It is us against the world; and the world, especially the western hemisphere, is very wicked. Believers, he tells us, having nothing new to learn. Western-style free inquiry is aimless. Besides, what is the point of free inquiry if God has already revealed to us the whole truth?

2. Norway: Solving Breivik

Aug-26-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The horror of the terrorism attack in Norway needs no elaboration, though I was hugely moved by a first person account from one of the survivors. What is noteworthy is how Norway reacted, and the rise of attitudes that supported Breivik.

* An un-American response to the Oslo attack Glenn Greenwald Salon

Over the last decade, virtually every Terrorist plot aimed at the U.S. — whether successful or failed — has provoked greater security and surveillance measures…. The day after the attack — one which, per capita, was as significant for Norway as 9/11 was for the U.S. — Oslo Mayor Fabian Stang, when asked whether greater security measures were needed, sternly rejected that notion: ”I don’t think security can solve problems. We need to teach greater respect.” It is simply inconceivable that any significant U.S. politician — the day after an attack of that magnitude — would publicly reject calls for greater security measures. Similarly inconceivable for American political discourse is the equally brave response of the country’s Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg, whose office was the target of the bomb and whose Labour Party was the sponsor of the camp where dozens of teenagers were shot:

He called on his country to react by more tightly embracing, rather than abandoning, the culture of tolerance that Anders Behring Breivik said he was trying to destroy. “The Norwegian response to violence is more democracy, more openness and greater political participation,”

* Christian Terrorism in Norway William Saletan Slate

On Friday, anti-Islamist blogger Pamela Geller pounced on news of a massacre in Oslo. “Jihad in Norway?” she asked. She posted a second item…Then things went horribly wrong. It turned out that the suspected terrorist in Norway wasn’t a Muslim. He hated Muslims. And he admired Geller. In a manifesto posted online, the admitted killer, Anders Behring Breivik, praised Geller. He cited her blog, Atlas Shrugs, and the writings of her friends, allies, and collaborators—Robert Spencer, Jihad Watch, Islam Watch, and Front Page magazine—more than 250 times….

Geller is outraged. “Attempts to link us to these murders on the basis of alleged postings by the murderer mentioning us are absurd and offensive,” she writes. Breivik “is responsible for his actions. He and only he.” …Now you know how it feels, Ms. Geller. When the terrorist is a Christian—in his own words, a “Crusader” for “Christendom”—and when the preacher to whom he has been linked is you, you suddenly discover the injustice of group blame and guilt by association. The citations you didn’t create, the intermediaries you didn’t recognize, the transactions you didn’t know about, the violent interpretations you didn’t condone—these exonerating facts suddenly matter.

* Cultivating Violence: Israel and its “right-wing Zionists” L. Davidson (Thanks, Linda!)

Anders Behring Breivik had written down a manifesto which runs to some 1500 pages. In this message he identified those who he saw as his allies. He had not, of course, consulted them on this status but he really did not have to. They had been fighting in his chosen cause for a long time and he admired them for their effort. He strongly identified with their worldview and he took encouragement from the general atmosphere of a “clash of civilizations” that they had created. Some had fought for the cause with violence some had not. But he knew that they were all on the same side.
Israel’s Jerusalem Post has looked into this side of Breivik’s manifesto. The paper notes that it “mentions Israel 359 times and Jews 324 times.” Not all of these are positive. Breivik does not like Jews of left wing, multiculturist leanings. Overall the Jerusalem Post describes the manifesto as “an extreme, bizarre and rambling screed of Islamophobia, far-right Zionism and venomous attacks on Marxism and multiculturalism.” Considering the fact that “far-right Zionism” has governed Israel for decades and also characterizes the behavior of most American Zionist organizations, Breivik identification with them is, as we will see, more logical than bizarre. Breivik the terrorist concludes, “let us fight together with Israel, with our Zionist brothers against anti-Zionists , against all cultural Marixts/multiculturists.” The man had found an ideological home.

3. Muslims and Europe

Jan-14-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Three simple factoids jostle around: there’s increasing hostility amongst Europeans towards Muslims; Muslims are increasingly less likely to be the ones causing terrorism in Europe, (and in the US); Muslims are souring on Europe, as Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk notes with typical eloquence. Scapegoats are so useful to people in power who want to distract you from what they’re doing, aren’t they?

* European poll: An Islamic threat? Al Jazeera English

“Islam and integration: French and Germans admit failure,” writes Le Monde, the most famous newspaper in Paris.

According to its poll carried out with marketing firm IFOP, 68 per cent of French and 75 per cent of Germans believe Muslims are “not well integrated into society”. Just as crucially, 42 per cent of French and 40 per cent of Germans consider the presence of Muslim communities a “threat” to their national identities. An editorial in Le Monde adds, “As Islam becomes a permanent and increasingly conspicuous fixture of European societies, public opinion is clearly tensing up, though disparities do appear between young and old and between left- and right-wing.”

* Terrorist Plots Against Europe Are On The Decline And Not Coming From Muslims Vancouver Sun

The European Union’s Terrorism Situation and Trend Report 2010 states that in 2009 there were “294 failed, foiled, or successfully executed attacks” in six European countries. This was down almost one-third from the total in 2008 and down by almost one-half from the total in 2007. So in most of Europe, there was no terrorism. And where there was terrorism, the trend line pointed down.

As for who’s responsible, forget Islamists. The overwhelming majority of the attacks — 237 of 294 — were carried out by separatist groups, such as the Basque ETA. A further 40 terrorists schemes were pinned on leftist and/or anarchist terrorists. Rightists were responsible for four attacks. Single-issue groups were behind two attacks, while responsibility for a further 10 was not clear.

* The Souring Of Turkey’s European Dream Orhan Pamuk The Guardian

In the schoolbooks I read as a child in the 1950s and 1960s, Europe was a rosy land of legend. While forging his new republic from the ruins of the Ottoman empire, which had been crushed and fragmented in the first world war, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk did fight against the Greek army, but with the support of his own army he later introduced a slew of social and cultural modernisation reforms that were not anti- but pro-western. It was to legitimise these reforms, which helped to strengthen the new Turkish state’s new elites (and were the subject of continuous debate in Turkey over the next 80 years), that we were called upon to embrace and even imitate a rosy-pink – occidentalist – European dream….

When looking at the landscape of Europe from Istanbul or beyond, the first thing one sees is that Europe (like the European Union) is confused about its internal problems. It is clear that the peoples of Europe have a lot less experience than the Americans when it comes to living with those whose religion, skin colour, or cultural identity are different from their own, and that they do not warm to the prospect: this resistance makes Europe’s internal problems all the more intractable. The recent discussions in Germany on integration and multiculturalism are a case in point.

1. Racism in the EU

Nov-26-2010 | Comments (0)

* Bird’s Eye: In Germany, Thilo Sarrazin has become the voice for acceptable anti-Muslim racism, (while in the background the Christian Democrats speak out on the need to defend “long established Judeo-Christian traditions against alien incursions”. And just how black do you like your comedy, sir or madam?) We explore this and look at England where the football hooligans of yesterday are the English Defence League of today.

* Thilo Sarrazin: Sunday Profile New York Times

Mr. Sarrazin says his book can be boiled down to a few main ideas. To begin, ethnic Germans are having too few children, while Muslim immigrants are having too many. In a population of about 82 million, there are about four million Muslims (a number he said he calculated partly by looking at census figures for families with lots of children. Big families must be Muslim, he concluded). Within 80 years, he said, Muslims will make up a majority in Germany.

Second, Mr. Sarrazin believes that intelligence is inherited, not nurtured, and since Muslims are less intelligent (his conclusion) than ethnic Germans, the population will be dumbed down (his conclusion). Third, to solve a growing demographic problem, Germany will require immigrants, but he says that bringing more Muslims into the country will only make matters worse. He says that after examining three indicators — success in education and employment, and welfare dependency — he concluded that Islam is by its nature a drag on individual success.

* Merkel, Muslims and Multi-Kulti t r u t h o u t

On August 30, 2010, Sarrazin published his book, “Deutschland schafft sich ab” (“Germany Does Away with Itself”) which grimly warns that unless German women hurry and have more children, the country will be overrun and ruled by Muslims within a few decades. They are already making Germany dumber, he asserted. In one interview he claimed that there are Jewish genes and Basque genes, that mental characteristics are inherited, and that Muslim genes pulled down the average. When leaders of Germany’s Central Jewish Council objected to references to “Jewish genes,” good or bad, he backed down a bit. He hadn’t really meant it genetically, not against Jews. But he strengthened the fears of those good citizens who may accept a nun’s headdress but not a Muslim head covering, a bank skyscraper but not a minaret…..As the government parties continued to wane in popularity, Horst Seehofer, head of the Bavarian wing of Merkel’s party, decided that he must get into the act and into the headlines. He declared that the concept of a multi-cultural society had collapsed. “As reality has shown, multi-kulti is dead.” The German language must prevail as “leading culture,” he said, and Turks or Arabs who did not conform and learn the to speak it and assimilate into the country’s culture might as well leave. Only highly educated foreigners with professional, valuable skills should be tolerated…

* Is a storm brewing in Europe? Al Jazeera English (Thanks, Gabe)

On platform one at Bolton train station in England a mob of about 100 men punch the air in unison as a chant – “Muslim bombers, off our streets!’’ – goes up. Their voices echo loudly, and as more men suddenly appear, startled passengers move aside. The protesters wave St George’s Cross flags – the red and white English national emblem – and raise placards. Some wear balaclavas, others black-hooded tops. There is an air of menace.

These are some of the most violent football hooligans in Britain and today they have joined in an unprecedented show of strength. Standing shoulder to shoulder are notorious gangs such as Cardiff City’s Soul Crew, Bolton Wanderers’ Cuckoo Boys and Luton Town’s Men In Gear: a remarkable gathering given that on a match day these men would be fighting each other…. A group of young men drinking beer at a table eye the protesters warily, but one protester wearing a baseball cap notices their fear and reassures them. “It’s all right lads, nothing to worry about. We’re protesting against radical Islam. Come and join us,” he says, and as the train draws nearer to Manchester, the singing starts again. “Eng-e-land, Eng-e-land, Eng-e-land …” the men sing rowdily. The English Defence League is in town.

Sept. 17th, 2010 :: Year 7, Issue 31

Sep-24-2010 | Comments (0)

Followups

* Islamophobia The latest Mark has an article by Catherine Frid about how media spun her play, Homegrown . “Homegrown is a play about Canada’s criminal justice system that got spun by the media into a work that glorifies terrorism. This fact raises the question: what does it tell us about our society when questioning government methods in the Toronto 18 case is taboo? The answer is that our society is Islamophobic – we think Muslims to not deserve the rights that protect the rest of us.”

* Elizabeth May, leader of Canada’s Green Party, talks about what should and what can be done about the oil sands in this excellent 11 minute broadcast, rehosted (with permission) from Alert! Radio (via Rabble). It’s the most persuasive talk by a political leader we’ve heard in a long time.

* Tea Party Glen Urquhart, Republican nominee for Congress, explains that “separation of church and state” is actually from Hitler. “So the next time your liberal friends talk about the separation of Church and State ask them why they’re Nazis.”

* Dude, You Have No Quran Act One: Jacob Isom rescued a Quran before it could be burned by Christofascists. Act Two: Video of this on Youtube goes viral. Act Three: Someone remixes video with autotune. Unbelievable.

5. That Zero Grounds Mosque Debate

Aug-13-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: While it’s almost irresistibly tempting to share the derision aroused by Palin’s tweet “Ground Zero mosque supporters, doesn’t it stab you in the heart as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls. refudiate.”… no, it is irresistible. Juan Cole demolishes her here in logic, and Tom the Dancing Bug here, in ‘toon. But once you look at the actual facts about the mosque there are two clear conclusions: this is a totally emotion-driven issue, and is being used by the right to whip up further Islamophobia.

* The Proposed Mosque Near Ground Zero The New Yorker

Ah, the “Ground Zero mosque.” Well, for a start, it won’t be at Ground Zero. It’ll be on Park Place, two blocks north of the World Trade Center site (from which it will not be visible), in a neighborhood ajumble with restaurants, shops (electronics, porn, you name it), churches, office cubes, and the rest of the New York mishmash. Park51, as it is to be called, will have a large Islamic “prayer room,” which presumably qualifies as a mosque. But the rest of the building will be devoted to classrooms, an auditorium, galleries, a restaurant, a memorial to the victims of September 11, 2001, and a swimming pool and gym. Its sponsors envision something like the 92nd Street Y—a Y.M.I.A., you might say, open to all, including persons of the C. and H. persuasions….

Pretty scary. Leading the pack of scaredy-cats, along with Palin, was her fellow Presidential mentionee Newt Gingrich, a leading intellectual light of the Republican Party. According to Gingrich, Park51 is “an assertion of Islamist triumphalism,” part of “an Islamist cultural-political offensive designed to undermine and destroy our civilization.” Those who think it’s O.K. are “apologists for radical Islamist hypocrisy” who “argue that we have to allow the construction of this mosque in order to prove America’s commitment to religious liberty.” Gingrich argues for proving our devotion to religious liberty by taking it hostage: “There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia.”

* Mosque Building and Gay Marriage vs. Mob Rule by the Right Juan Cole Informed Comment

The decision of a US district court to strike down Proposition 8, the California referendum item that made gay marriage illegal after it had earlier been legalized by the state assembly, was a blow for individual rights over a tyranny of the majority. In its form, it resembles the decision of the New York authorities to allow a Muslim community center to be built near Ground Zero, which Sarah Palin and other prominent Republican Party bigots have decried as “insensitive.”

Both in the instance of gay marriage and of mosque-building, the American Right mounts opposition on grounds of majority ideas and feelings triumphing over individual rights. No one denies that Muslims have a first amendment right to build a mosque, and it is hard to see why straight people should have a right to get married (which brings substantial social and economic perquisites) but gay people should not.

The right wing argues that Muslims and gays should give up their rights in deference to the moral sensibilities and emotional sensitivities of the majority. This is called a ‘tyranny of the majority’ and it is an evil of which Thomas Jefferson ,James Madison and the other Founding Generation of Americans were well aware.

Note: Another great Tom the Dancing Bug cartoon, this one on Tyranny of the Majority can be seen here.

* ‘People Want Islam To Be The Boogieman‘ The Guardian

The battle over plans to build a mosque near the site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York is fuelling a surge in anti-Muslim protests across the US, including opposition to new Islamic centres from California to Georgia. Religious leaders and civil rights activists warn that a tide of Islamophobia that has swept the country since the destruction of the twin towers is being heightened by political exploitation of the New York dispute before nationwide elections and is increasingly bound up with hostility to immigrants and other forms of racism

6. Blowing Up that Times Square Incident

May-07-2010 | Comments (0)

Bird’s-Eye: 9+11+01= 21! and 5+6+10=21! That proves it! That’s the sort of lunatic resurgence of Islamophobia that the attempted bomb in Times Sq seems to be igniting. So we counter, first with the media story you don’t hear, then an analysis of what intelligent counter-terrorism might look like, and finally a story of how the prejudice is affecting Pakistanis in America.

* Media Ignore That Man Who Alerted Police Is A Muslim Immigrant

Yet one fact being ignored in the American media’s sensationalist narrative about the failed bombing is that the man who was responsible for police finding the bomb was Muslim. The UK’s Times Online reports that Aliou Niasse, a Senagalese Muslim immigrant who works as a photograph vendor on Times Square, was the first to bring the smoking car to the police’s attention:

* Times Square, Bombs and Big Crowds NYTimes.com

It’s much smarter to spend our limited counterterrorism resources on measures that don’t focus on the specific. It’s more efficient to spend money on investigating and stopping terrorist attacks before they happen, and responding effectively to any that occur. This approach works because it’s flexible and adaptive; it’s effective regardless of what the bad guys are planning for next time.

After the Christmas Day airplane bombing attempt, I was asked how we can better protect our airplanes from terrorist attacks. I pointed out that the event was a security success — the plane landed safely, nobody was hurt, a terrorist was in custody — and that the next attack would probably have nothing to do with explosive underwear. After the Moscow subway bombing, I wrote that overly specific security countermeasures like subway cameras and sensors were a waste of money. Now we have a failed car bombing in Times Square. We can’t protect against the next imagined movie-plot threat. Isn’t it time to recognize that the bad guys are flexible and adaptive, and that we need the same quality in our countermeasures

* ‘All Pakistanis are terrorists’ Al Jazeera Blogs

Three weeks ago I was staying in New York, just few blocks away from Times Square. I was sitting with a friend, just talking about everything and nothing as one does. The subject of Pakistan came up and I shared my thoughts. The bartender overheard our conversation and said something startling to me: “Do you know where Bin Laden is?”
I was shocked, but not surprised. My American friend, however, carefully picked up his vodka and cranberry juice, took a small sip and then poured the rest of it on the floor. He then opened his wallet, left a large tip and walked silently out of the bar. He later told me that he felt it was simple racism that he would not tolerate.
Pakistan has become terror central and it’s most public export is terrorism, it would seem.

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3. Islam, and Muslims

2. Norway: Solving Breivik

3. Muslims and Europe

1. Racism in the EU

Sept. 17th, 2010 :: Year 7, Issue 31

5. That Zero Grounds Mosque Debate

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