Mr. Tea
Let's Talk About Ceps
There have been some fuck ups and dubious alliances for sure but they run from policies of Blair to the SWP and you see we are getting into funny definitions of left-wing too. That attitude is based on the same sort of stuff you get from the right that routinely instrumentalises perceived oppression and passiveness of muslim women. From EDL to Dawkins to Hilary Clinton, we see some shady shit dressed up as saviour bullshit.
It's not about trying to be a "saviour" - well maybe it is for some people, it certainly isn't for me**. I dunno, I'm just extremely opposed to relativism and the attitude among a lot of people that considerations to do with culture and belief trump all other considerations, such as gender violence, homophobia or indeed antagonism to other ethnic or religious groups. When I see a woman walking down the street completely covered from head to foot in black cloth with only her eyes showing*, I'm sorry but that does look very weird and not particularly OK to me. It's an explicit statement of men's ownership of women, and it distresses me that some people are able to blind themselves to this with a shrug and a "Well it's just their culture, innit". Or even to imply that people who are concerned about it, from a very basic humanitarian or feminist position, must necessarily be "racist". Whereas I think it's far more racist to adopt the relativist position that concepts like gender equality are appropriate for white people but not for Muslims.
[Before anyone jumps in with the OH SO WHITE PEOPLE HAVE SOLVED SEXISM, HAVE WE?!? - no, of course not. But that doesn't make issues like the niqab or female genital mutilation go away.]
I know fuck all about Muslims, Islam or the middle east tbh. Just because of who and where I live but there is plenty of past and present in Ireland - and we haven't even scratched the surface - that wouldn't be out of place in the fearmongering you see about Tehran or Bradford or where it is this week.
None of the horror and sensationalism strikes me as something unique that marks Islam out as the "single greatest threat" that Dawkins shites on about. It is dangerous and oppressive dont get me wrong, like most religions but that is not the some total of belief it's not taking over Europe or America any time soon is it and if it did, it wouldn't be any different to most of Europe a few decades ago. With that in mind, we know that much of the oppression didn't melt away as Europe became increasingly secular. When New Atheists talk about Bronze Age Sky Faries they are positioning all the bad bullshit we associate with religion in the past when the reality is, women in particular can tell you that the state, men and all sorts of crap is just wearing secular clothes.
The Irish parliament has just legislated to allow abortion on grounds that were decided by referendum twice in the last twenty-two years. What was once the rule of bishops, now in 2014, sees suicidal women contend with dozens of doctors and psychologists. Most will just get the plane to England, as they continue to do in their thousands each year because the power has just shifted from clerical to 'expert' technocratic hands. We will have to deal with this ourselves the same way countries and people in various stages of secularisation will, on their own terms.
The racism thing is ginormously complex, incomprehendible in its entirety for all sorts of reasons and an increasingly good rule thumb is listening to anybody other than Richard Dawkins.
I agree that there is nothing inherently unique about Islam - in particular, that there's far more in common between Islam and Christianity, and Judaism too of course, than many followers of those religions would be prepared to admit. Nevertheless, Islam does seem to be very widely politicised in a way that other religions aren't (these days) to anything like the same extent. (Then again, I get the impression the Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox sects in Israel have such a disproportionate degree of influence in the Knesset that you could make the case for the country being a quasi-theorcracy.) Obviously there are many people in America who would quite happily turn their country into a Christian version of Iran, and that's extremely worrying - but they haven't got there, yet.
*I lived for a five years in a part of east London with a Bengali plurality, with its own directly elected (Bengali) mayor who got into power by playing the basest sort of tribalist ghetto politics and, not far away, streets where there are regular demonstrations by Islamists and it's becoming increasingly unpleasant and even unsafe for white people to walk. This isn't "right-wing propaganda", it's actually just how things are.
**Which is why I think France's veil ban is worse than the problem it purports to solve, and in a broader sense why I think Dawkins is not helping the secularist cause. People in Europe didn't stop being fundamentalist Calvinists and Puritans and Catholics because of an obstreperous campaign to convince them that religion is a terrible thing - it happened over the course of centuries as democratic institutions challenged the power of the church, people became wealthier and gained wider access to education and as progress in science, technology and medicine overturned the mediaeval worldview. People retreat into the old certainties when they feel under threat, and I can appreciate that for many Muslims Dawkins is one part of a many-headed Thing made up of Israel, US foreign policy, Hindu nationalism, domestic Islamophobia in Western countries and so on.
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