Islamophobia

[droid]

You are effing joking.

Why? Are they making up the stories they cut and paste into their site?

 

[crackerjack]

Why? Are they making up the stories they cut and paste into their site?

They're making up allegations of Islamophobia against anyone who objects to anything aout islam. Bob Pitt is exactly who I had in mind earlier.

Don't like Livingstone honouring a cleric who wants gays murdered? Islamophobe.

Quote support from a lesbian Muslim for your criticisms of Islam? She can't be a proper Muslim and you are clearly an Islamophobe.

Hari does a good job in this clown here
http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=897

Like all people who cry wolf, those who cry Islamophobia are aiding and abetting the real wolves out there. There is an authentic Islamophobia howling in the background. It is the notion that Islam is a uniquely evil religion, more inherently war-like and fanatical than Christianity or Judaism or the other primitive delusions. These bona fide Islamophobes do not have a principled disagreement with superstition and human rights abuses, as Tatchell does. They have a raw prejudice against Muslims, often because they see them as foreign and all secretly sympathetic to the al Quaeda psychosis. You can see this poison smeared across the pages of the right-wing press every day. Muslims face hefty discrimination in the workplace and wildly disproportionate stop-and-searches by the police. But organisations like Islamophobia Watch are making many gay people – the natural political allies of any minority facing cruel discrimination – dismiss all claims of Islamophobia as concocted nonsense. If Tatchell is an Islamophobe, they say, then so am I.

 

[droid]

I wasnt recommending it on the basis of their opinions or interpretations. They collect stories which (they believe) are indicative of Islamaphobia. Its up to the reader to decide if they agree or not (as with all sources), the point is that the stories are there - unless you have an example of them falsifing or making up a story?

 

[crackerjack]

I wasnt recommending it on the basis of their opinions or interpretations. They collect stories which (they believe) are indicative of Islamaphobia. Its up to the reader to decide if they agree or not (as with all sources), the point is that the stories are there - unless you have an example of them falsifing or making up a story?

Any story which calls someone Islamophobic purely for making valid criticisms of its reactionary element is automatically falsified.

 

[droid]

Any story which calls someone Islamophobic purely for making valid criticisms of its reactionary element is automatically falsified.

How can an opinion be false?

I'm making a clear distinction between the opinions of the people who run the site and the news stories they link to. Surely you can recognise that distinction?

 

[crackerjack]

I'm making a clear distinction between the opinions of the people who run the site and the news stories they link to. Surely you can recognise that distinction?

Obviously, though most are offered without comment and amount to little more than a negative story that relates to Islam.

But can you not see how people who use the charge of Islamophobia to discredit seasoned human rights campaigners - and love him or loathe him, Tatchell has been pretty consistent down the years - are not to be trusted to make objective judgements on the issue?

 

[Gavin]

An uncharacteristic lapse on my part! But hands up, I was wrong. Serves me right for not double checking. Pride comes before a fall and all that.

There are a couple of fairly major qualifications there though.

Yeah, what good is this chart? All the Soviet documents were opened up, but Reagan's people are still sitting on all the documents of his administration's secret weapons deals, which were NUMEROUS.

Additionally, that chart doesn't show where the money to pay for the weapons came from. Billions of this was through Italian loans brokered by the CIA. Here's an old NYT editorial about it (apparently it was almost a big deal before the OJ Simpson case blew up):

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CE6DF163EF933A15756C0A965958260

And of course, "conventional" excludes WMDs -- chemical and biological weapons, which were provided by the U.S. government and corporations, along with logistical support for their use.

 

[Gavin]

WTF? please explain what you mean by this....

You know, things like destroying public health&welfare programs in favor of corporate welfare and earmarks, privatization of social security, massive increases in surveillance and imprisonment of the poor, gentrification, the end of public housing, the use of Blackwater mercenaries to keep people out of their homes in New Orleans, reduced income tax and increased sales tax, nonstop pro-capitalist propaganda in the schools and the media... The rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, social mobility collapsing and the increased militarization that keeps this process functioning consistently, if not smoothly. This is not an accident or a mistake. This is class warfare by stealth.

Islamophobia is something that distracts from this much more real threat, deliberately so -- I would say that is its primary purpose (as well as shoring up as much support as possible for imperialist ventures in the Middle East).

 

[mistersloane]

Was there any truth in the use of Downs Syndrome people on that last attack?

 

[mistersloane]

(re last post) *it refers to the thread, i.e, islamophobia, rather than saying all muslims are terrorists etc.*

What really interests me within this talk is the trickle down effect, how it actually effects people on the street, I say this cos I actually had a guy turn away from me on a market stall the other day and start praying. It used to happen alot with Xtians - people crossing themselves and the like, actively praying in front of me - but it's the first time it's happened with a Muslim guy, (it surprised and offended me too, cos I think I pass now, it's not like I'm walking around with visible devils horns anymore) and what I see on the street - I live in Brent, most multi-cultural place in Europe, believe it or not - is that some people seem to want to make up for the press - being overly nice, really too polite, *I'm a good advert for the faith* - and then other guys *Supersave Kilburn High Street* who take it as a license to actively look down on you - and fuck around with you - when you're buying beer, like I'm the one who's harram and they're morally pious by just profiteering from it. I see it as people internalising the press over the past few years, and that worries me.

I understand the need to look at political positions but I'm also concerned with how it affects everyday life, i.e in the Deleuzian way of being separate from its subject, the affect of Islamophobia.

 

[Mr BoShambles]

You know, things like destroying public health&welfare programs in favor of corporate welfare and earmarks, privatization of social security, massive increases in surveillance and imprisonment of the poor, gentrification, the end of public housing, the use of Blackwater mercenaries to keep people out of their homes in New Orleans, reduced income tax and increased sales tax, nonstop pro-capitalist propaganda in the schools and the media... The rich getting richer, poor getting poorer, social mobility collapsing and the increased militarization that keeps this process functioning consistently, if not smoothly. This is not an accident or a mistake. This is class warfare by stealth.

Islamophobia is something that distracts from this much more real threat, deliberately so -- I would say that is its primary purpose (as well as shoring up as much support as possible for imperialist ventures in the Middle East).

I love the way you lump together a set of at best tenously connected processes, provide no empirical evidence to show that they are even occuring, and then lay resonsibility for the whole dastardly plot on a set of philosophical/economic ideas - neoliberalism.

Each one of these processes you claim needs to be empirically validated, historically situated, and causally explained. But i guess its much easier to conflate them into one grand scheme by the sinister neo-liberal cabal to exploit the world! Not content with impoverishing the lower classes in the U.S., consigning them to misery and destitution 'by stealth', the neo-liberals seek to extend their tentacles overseas by insiduously fostering islamaphobia as a cover for their true intentions?!

Using bullshit terms like

neoliberal class war

has virtually no analytic value, and in the process obscures a far more complex reality.

 

[vimothy]

Gavin would obviously prefer to replace "neo-liberal class war" (I'm no expert on American politics, but I can't think of a single American neo-liberal politican) with all the failed economic policies of the last century -- bring on the 1970s-style stagflation, or better yet, full on eschatological socialist famine and economic collapse.

 

[vimothy]

“Better a thousand Americans than one Tikriti.” Baghdad graffiti, spring 2004.

“You refer to the Iraqi constitution that the Sunni didn’t want? And why didn’t they want it?”

Is it because they would prefer a throne in hell to proportional representation at the table of the new Iraq? Is it because they have spent decades spilling Iraqi blood and are worried by their newfound minority status? Is it because they believe that the Shia and the Kurds are destined to serve and that the Sunni Arabs are destined to rule, that the Americans will leave and that they will inherit Iraq once again? Is it because they are furious, because they are only capable of politics as butchery, because they cannot accept majority rule?

“Because the constitution makes it incredibly easy to parcel up Iraq along “regional” (i.e. ethnic) lines.”

Excuse me while I choke on my tea.

Are you being serious? Are you completely unaware of Iraq’s history? Listen, oh you people, to the voice of Iraq’s forgotten democrats – the Tikriti gangsters, who have repressed Iraq along sectarian lines for decades, who killed the Shia and the Kurds in their thousands without remorse, who murdered children for the imagined crimes of their fathers – they are worried that Iraq’s new constitution makes it easy to divide Iraq along “ethnic” lines!

I hope I am misunderstanding what you have written, but this line of reasoning defies further comment.

“Why would the U.S. possibly allow their client regime to put this incredibly important and controversial clause into the constitution?”

First, let me congratulate you on your wholesale slide into the arms of the Saddamist butchers. You repeat their enraged lies almost verbatim. The new Iraqi regime, made up of brave democrats who have fought and suffered for the dream of Iraq, who probably to a soul have lost loved ones to Saddam’s reign of terror, who even now risk their lives in the struggle to build a new society there, are “clients” of the US. Perhaps you could add that they are also “Iranians” and complete the stereotype.

It casts an ironic light on your assertions that you are in favour of “universal suffrage and democracy”. When faced with its reality, you quickly cast your lot with the totalitarian old guard. “Bollocks to the people of Iraq. What about the poor insurgents?” You denigrate actual Iraqi self-determination in the name of your commitment to the principle that wherever the US acts, it acts for “imperialism”.

Second, you imply that America has absolute control over the wishes of the Iraqi government (another idea popular with the disinherited thugs of Falluja and Tikrit, I expect). I think that even you must realise this is an obvious untruth, because you cannot fail to recognise Iraqi action in the forming of the new constitution. Your complaint is that America lets its Shia and Kurdish clients do what they wish, to the denigration of Iraq! Really, you are the perfect voice of the deposed power: it is a monstrous irony that the torturers of Iraq now couch their whines in these terms, but hardly unexpected. To hear others parrot them is depressing.

"Mass graves and Baathist principles are two faces of the same stinking coin." Baghdad graffitti, spring 2004.

“This is the pretext for partitioning the country, which many members of the ruling class are explicitly (but more often, in hushed tones) urging. Otherwise known as “divide and conquer”.”

If Iraq must be partitioned to know peace, then so be it. It is not clear to me that it will be, nor is it clear that it is the aim of Iraqis now. Certainly, it is in the interests of the Kurds and the Sunni to remain within a united Iraq, and since their numbers give them majority control, it seems that it is in the interests of the Shia to remain as well.

Two questions:

1. When you say “members of the ruling class”, do you mean the newly empowered Shia leadership?
   
2. When you say, “Divide and conquer”, who is doing the dividing and who is doing the conquering?

“The Kurds have already taken this up and are making plenty of money off it – quite mutually beneficial, except to the Sunni, whose territories are oil-poor.”

The first sensible thing you have written all post. Yes, I imagine the Kurds are happy that they can sell the oil found in their homeland (EDIT: I think that only 3% of known Iraqi reserves are located in Kurdish areas), to their own benefit. Yes, I imagine that the Shia are quite pleased as well. Yes, I imagine that the chosen sons of the old regime are unhappy that they are now unable to exploit the natural wealth of Iraq and are unable to use the proceeds to fund their police state. What I cannot imagine, is how anyone could think that is a bad thing. Why is that a bad thing?

“Turkey also has some problems with this set up.”

So fucking what?

 

[vimothy]

*gets out of pram*

*picks dummy up*

 

[vimothy]

The US economy before "neo-liberalism"

Remember this?

 

[vimothy]

By the way, according to Iraq's constitution, the Sunni are entitled to a proportional share in Iraq's oil (and gas) wealth, i.e. 20% of the total, representing their share in the Iraqi population, i.e. 115 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, i.e. the Iraqi Sunni can claim about 2% of total world oil reserves, i.e. they stand to get plenty (e.g. 60 USD/barrel * 115 billion...).

 

[Gavin]

So now I'm a Stalinist AND a Baathist! The wonderful things I learn on Dissensus.

 

[Mr. Tea]

So now I'm a Stalinist AND a Baathist! The wonderful things I learn on Dissensus.

Go take a Ba'ath, hippy!

 

[crackerjack]

So now I'm a Stalinist AND a Baathist!

Holla at your boy.


http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article35554.ece

 

[vimothy]

So now I'm a Stalinist AND a Baathist! The wonderful things I learn on Dissensus.

I didn't say you were either, but you have sung the praises of the (Baathi, Arab-nationalist) "resistance", who have wrought so much pain in Iraqi history, and who are trying to murder their way back into power in Iraqi present.

I think that you are an anti-imperialist, as long as we understand anti-imperialism as relating only to the actions of America. Why else do you write off the Shia and Kurds (victims of a totalitarian state run by a supremecist minority, justified in the name of Arab-nationalism) so easily?

As for your economics, I am simply baffled by the whole thing. There are plenty of "neo-liberals" who criticise the GOP and tax breaks for the rich, who worry about the new conditions of globalised labour (Krugman, Slaughter, Bahgwati, etc, etc, etc) -- where do they fit in?

Neither Leningrad nor Tikriti -- but...?