Stop that wicked woman
And then – why is whoever wrote the headline for this article buying into these assumptions?
Anti-Islamic writer stirs hatred, Muslims warn
That’s a really terrible headline. What next? ‘Apostate Islamophobic hoor stirs hatred, Muslims warn’? ‘Evil bitch must be stopped, Muslims warn’?
Well let’s have a look at some of the ‘warnings.’
A visit to Sydney by a controversial Somali writer who calls the prophet Mohammed a pedophile and says Islam is inferior to Western culture has outraged Muslims, who accuse her of inciting hatred.
The usual misleading slippage, that tricks readers into thinking Hirsi Ali’s visit has outraged all Muslims, which is grossly unfair to all the Muslims who are reasonable enough to be not outraged. The usual coercion and confusion and manufacture of outrage via sloppy imprecise careless writing. Now that’s an outrage!
Nada Roude, of the NSW Islamic Council, said Hirsi Ali’s comments on the prophet Mohammed were a “no-go zone”. “They (prophets) are not just like you and me, they have special status – you’re supposed to show respect,” Ms Roude said. “There have to be boundaries in how far you go in respecting other’s beliefs. The reaction from the community is likely to be quite worrying…Anyone who causes harm to our society because they have the right to express their opinion is not welcome.”
Gotcha. Thanks for the warning.
Talking of buying into assumptions it happens all the time in the case of Ayaan hirsi Ali. The Berman article in the New Statesman shows how the assumptions are unthinkingly perpuatuated from one lazy, credulous journalist to another.
So sydney muslims now can decide who gets to visit the city?
and the poor woman is already travelling under hugely constrained circumstances – with the kind of security ‘normally reserved for royalty’- due to the death threats and hatred of a quite a lot of muslims.
“There have to be boundaries in how far you go in respecting other’s beliefs.”
Yes, there have to be. Every time Ms. Roude publicly asserts faith in Allah she is disrespecting my belief in the “special status” of Voltaire and Thomas Paine.
“In her writings, Hirsi Ali describes being circumcised as a young girl and how she escaped an arranged marriage.”
“Circumcised”?!! I rather doubt that she used that word to describe her ritual mutilation.
You wonder whether Jamila Hussain really said anything quite so stupid as “I think she’d be better staying where she came from”.
If so, I wonder whether she was thinking of Somalia, the Netherlands, or the US?
“Jamila Hussain lived for two years in Malaysia” With having made statements such as the following; – “Anyone who causes harm to our society because they have the right to express their opinion is not welcome.” I am sure there were plenty of people in Malaysia who were only too glad to see the back of her. Malaysia’s Allah O’Ackbar heavenly loss is now very sadly Australia’s hellish gain. By the sound of it anyway
God is great! Hallelulia! +men!
Yes, well, the media thrive on sensationalism, controversy, stereotypes, and general lazy thinking or lack of thinking. What else is new?
A) Media companies seem to hire the stupidest people they can find. Occasionally you find a writer who seems to have a brain wattage greater than one figure, but it’s always amazing when you do. I think this is because either a) the bosses of these companies don’t want anyone to be hanging around who is smart enough to give them back-talk or b) smart people generally don’t choose journalism as a profession.
B) Media companies have to satisfy their stockholders and have to make giga-profits to do that. So of course they have to dumb everything down, or their audience will be miniscule. [This is probably a principle reason for A)b) above.] Wouldn’t it be nice to open up the paper, or turn on the TV, and see a thoughtful discussion of the many varieties of Muslims in the world today (or Christians, or atheists, or whatever), and what is really going on among them. Uh, uh. Never happen. It’s cultural and intellectual car crashes wall-to-wall. “If it bleeds it leads” is not only true of literal car crashes.
(BTW, folks like Sam Harris seem to buy into the stereotypes and catastrophe-mongering, too, when it comes to Islam. I won’t speculate on why.)
Marie-Therese:
“Allah O’Ackbar”? Is that one of your compatriots?
“In nomine Patris, et Fili, et Spiritus Sancti” Will ye be off wid yerself abroad in the bog, sure O’ O’ O’Janey Mac tis it only now ye are coppin’ on to de fact? Bejasus!! Dia Mhuire Duit!
How man cities will be torched? what about we have a sweepstake. I bag 10.
JonJ said, parenthetically: BTW, folks like Sam Harris seem to buy into the stereotypes and catastrophe-mongering, too, when it comes to Islam. I won’t speculate on why.
Perhaps it’s their nasty habit of setting off explosives and stabbing people in the streets an such-like that make people like Harris a tad nervous?
Less flippantly, I ask you this: How is it “buying into stereotypes” to acknowledge the fact that some Islamic fundamentalists actually do such things, and will do more such things, and are endorsed and supported in doing such things by their religious beliefs, religious institutions, religious leaders, and by the Koran itself? I’ll grant that Harris is hyperbolic about the impending wars and catastrophes. But you tread dangerously close to feeding the nonsense position that treats any criticism of anyone Muslim as “Islamophobia” when you reduce real concerns about religious radicals to mere “stereotyping.”
G. I agree 100% with your take on this,all I would add is that islamophobia unlike other prejudices is a rational prejudice.
But ….
Mahmud supposedly “married” Ayisha when she was somewhere between 8 & 12 years old.
Doesn’t this DEFINE him as a paedophile?
I notice also the calls for “exceptionalism” – as in “prophets are different”.
Well, that is one of the rules in what is called the West:
ONE LAW FOR ALL THE PEOPLE, AND NO EXCEPTIONS
“all I would add is that islamophobia unlike other prejudices is a rational prejudice”
If it existed then by definition it would not be.
Islamophobia is a manufactured scareword. It is used to close down debate. I oppose racism, more relevantly I oppose religious persecution, and with direct relevance to the nonsense of “Islamophobia” I oppose lobby groups trying to close down the open society either on what they mistakenly believe to be their patch or in general.
This one
Anti-Islamic writer ‘stirs hatred’ gets also high results, now 18.
“I think she’d be better staying where she came from,” Ms Hussain said. “I’ve read enough of her thoughts. Someone should put a mirror to the latter and get her to repeat her drivel.
The only respect in which “prophets” differ from ordinary sods like ourselves is that they are farther around the twist than we are.
“Allah O’Ackbar”? apology, there is no great “c” in Akbar.
I haven’t seen any statistics comparing the percentage of Muslims in the whole world population who have actually blown up bombs or done other such acts with the percentage of Christians (or members of other religions) who have done them. I wouldn’t be surprised if the percentage of Muslim “terrorists” (using that word for the sake of convenience) in the whole Muslim population is somewhat higher than the comparable figures for other religions (or for the whole human race), but it’s still quite small.
The Qur’an has lots of scary stuff in it, and so do the holy books of most religions (including the Tanach, of course–and get a load of the NT Revelation). But I think most Muslims just ignore the parts of it they want to ignore, as do most Christians, Jews, etc. When I refer to stereotypes about Muslims, I mean ideas such as: because the Qur’an has lots of violent stuff in it, and a few Muslims seem to act on it, it follows that Islam itself is scary, and we have to suspect all Muslims of being at least covert sympathizers with suicide bombers. I don’t think Harris goes so far as to say this explicitly, but I think he comes pretty close.
I would prefer for anti-religion writers to try to be scrupulously accurate in their attacks. There is enough wrong with religion so that there is no need to depart from the truth.
I don’t think it’s the headline’s that’s the problem – if I want to tell you that an indermtinate number of men robbed bank I’ll say “some men robbed a bank”. Translated into headlines that becomes “men rob bank” but no one takes it as a statement about all men. The problem here is that a journalist can’t just say ‘some Muslims’ said such and such without quoting other Muslims prepared to contradict them of which (not surprisingly) there are very few. So truth takes a back seat to bogus notions of balance and dubious notions of journalistic objectivity.
‘Translated into headlines that becomes “men rob bank” but no one takes it as a statement about all men.’
True, but I don’t think it follows that no one takes any headlines of that kind as a statement about all whatevers. ‘Men rob bank’ works differently from the way ‘Muslims warn’ works – though ‘Muslims warn’ also works differently from the way ‘Muslims outraged at cartoons’ works. I think headlines like that tend to leave the impression (we read hastily, after all) that ‘group noun’ does mean ‘group noun in general’ – except in cases where it’s really obvious that it doesn’t, as with ‘men rob bank.’
“But I think most Muslims just ignore the parts of it they want to ignore, as do most Christians, Jews, etc.”
Not quite, I think – not ‘most’ and not ‘as’. I think that move is considerably more difficult in Islam (and of course has been made even more difficult by the rise of political Islam).
As irrational as Christians and religious Jews are, the huge majority of them don’t believe that their scriptures are the verbatim word of god in a particular language. In contrast, the foundation of Islam is that the Qur’an was essentially dictated *in Arabic* by an angel (Gabriel) directly to Muhammad who was writing down immediately upon hearing the words what god wanted in the final holy scripture.
Of course, there are millions of Muslims who dismiss such fairy stories, but I do think that a qualitative difference exists between Islam and the other two Abrahamic religions in this particular regard.
And there are other differences – for one, it’s fairly normal to memorize the Koran.
Read Irshad Manji’s account of the madrassa she attended as a child – until she got thrown out for asking too many questions. Read the accounts in Leaving Islam. It is much more difficult to cherry-pick which parts of The Book one will obey in Islam than it is in the other two. Irshad manages it! And is working hard to persuage other people to manage it. But it is difficult. (Irshad gets constant death threats for her pains.)
Jon J.is it just a coincidence that every war on the planet(exept one)involves moslems fighting with their neighbours?I dont know what the stats prove or disprove but I do know that I will change train carages if there is a moslem looking guy with lugage,I find this avoids my having to bring my familys entrails home in a zip lock bag! This probably makes me a bigot but at least I will be a bigot with a family,I promise to stop behaving like this when moslems stop randomly self imoliating aboard trains,planes ect.
Erm – EVERY war on the planet, bar one?
What about the ongoing war in Congo, or the cross-border troubles in Mauritania/Spanish Sahara/Morocco?
Are you sure about this?
No, of course he’s not, any more than he’s sure that changing carriages whenever he spots a ‘muslim looking guy with luggage’ is why he’s not bringing his family’s entrails home in a bag. Richard do stop trolling. It’s not useful.
Perhaps things are different in the UK; there may be a great fear of Muslims there due to the London tube bombing, etc.
I live in a large Eastern seaboard U.S. city, where there are quite a few Muslim immigrants as well as African-American Muslims, whom one rubs shoulders with all the time on the streets, buses, subways, etc. They set up lots of sidewalk stands selling books and newspapers about Islam. No one really gives it much of a thought. That’s probably why I have a hard time taking the idea that Islam is about to conquer the world very seriously. But I can see why Europeans might be more nervous.
If there’s anything that USers do better than anyone else, it has to be assimilating our immigrant population. Numerous times I’ve been surprised to learn that the grandmother or grandfather of some successful person of my acquaintance was an immigrant and never became fluent in English. I think that’s a big influence on us over on this side of the pond. Even if we’re somewhat repulsed by some alien idea or custom, we assume that the children or granchildren of the believers or practitioners will be a lot more like us than like their parents or grandparents.
“Perhaps things are different in the UK; there may be a great fear of Muslims there due to the London tube bombing, etc”.
From what I gather “the Old Bill” were in the repercussion of ‘tube bombings’ petrified and scared stiff to come within reach of the Moslem commune. The ‘force’ went from what I gather, as far as letting them double park outside their relevant mosques. Pacification/conciliation ‘turn a blind eye’ was/is the name of the game. I wholly conclude there was/is inadequate in-training in Asian cultural matters within the British constabulary.
The Irish psyche as well is hard for the British to understand at the best of times. We were/are classed as being “thick paddies”. The Irish had in the past to live with this image. Therefore, can you imagine what it is like for the British to have to adapt to Asian cultures. The English do not like getting their feathers rustled. They like order – and no change. The unruly Irish were/are hard for them to tame/fathom. Nonetheless, I think the younger generation of Irish today in Britian are more accepted. As they are more cosmopolitan, confident and educated, and fit in more.
There are of course, exceptions to the rule.
Yeah, ‘the stiff upper lip’ is hard to shake off. The British can ber rather ambivilant, they can be very friendly with the Irish but with the same token they will have many complaints and hiccups. But, in the main they are very sincere.
Do the Americans, I wonder, have the same outlook as the British towards the Irish? Are they more readily by them accepted, or what? I have never been to the USA so do not have a notion, except from what one sees on the TV. There does not appear that there is a big discrimination problem?
Nevertheless,Gone are the days when it was posted on doors “NO DOGS OR IRISH ALLOWED.”
Oops, I am once again off topic.
Marie-Therese:
My impression is that USers love the Irish. St. Patrick’s day is right after Easter, and ahead of cinco de mayo as a big spring holiday. And a whole lot of mongrels (I mean this in a good way.) with ancestors from all over Europe will claim that they are Irish if they can name just a couple of Irish ancestors.
However, USers idolize hard workers, and are a little wary of people with a reputation for heavy drinking, which I think the Irish still do have.
(BTW, some of my ancestors are from County Down, but they had an English name.)
Yeah, I took the demon drink for granted. It is a curse. It is a very big problem here. Virtually everyone young and old is at – bar the religious, I think.
Check out a folk song called ” Near to Bambridge Town, in the County Down One morning in July, Down a boreen green came a sweet coleen, And she smiled as she passed me by;…it is very catchy.
Hard work! What is that, says I [with a [cough] puzzled look. I will be left with a furrowed frown and in need of a drink if this is deleted.
Oh, yes, everyone loves the Irish over here in the New World. In fact, as I understand it, St. Patrick’s Day is much bigger here than in Ireland, and everyone is supposed to wear something green that day.
OTOH, anyone with the idea that the land of the free and home of the brave is just one big happy family would be quickly disabused of that notion with a very short first-hand observation, of course. It’s just that you can eventually fit in after a few generations, especially if your skin is the right color, because everybody forgets what was supposed to be so bad about your particular ethic group when it first arrived.
Americans tend to have very short memories in that respect, whereas in some other parts of the world everyone vividly remembers which groups they should hate for something that happened (or is alleged to have happened) centuries before–a behavior that always baffles Americans.
My own homeys, the German-Americans, for instance, were subjected to a bit of hard treatment around WW I, but by the time the second world-wide unpleasantness rolled around that was apparently forgotten. What had been “victory cabbage” was just plain old sauerkraut again. Despite the fact that in the alte Heimat our relatives were behaving even worse than they had done the last time. I often feel sad at the thought that at least one of my distant relatives might well have been a guard at Auschwitz.
O.B. I wasnt trolling that came fom the heart! I probably could have chosen my words better but that is the reality of living in London today,look at it from my point of veiw I have only just stoped playing spot the Irishman and now I am having to play spot the moslem,we all do this here by the way I am just honest enough to own up!
Marie T For the record I have no problem with Asians,I have Asian neibours,30% of my customers are Asian as is my doctor my vet and my local pharmacist,I also never had a problem with the Irish other than the fact that I got sick of being told I was responsible for the potato famine,black and tans ect ect,what I do have a problem with is the prospect of being blown up!
Doug Americans love the Irish I agree but that love sometimes came in the form of raising money for the provo,s and giving safe haven to I.R.A. personel on the run,I remember seeing images of Jery Adams being carried shoulder high on st.Patrics day in New York(pre 9/11).I also used to love the way the American media would refer to the I.R.A. as the Irish republican army and their oposite number(equaly thugish)as prodestant extremests.
G.T. It is dificult to tell exactly how many wars are going on because some of these regions have shaky cease fires ect,but in general I was talking about wars like the mid east,Darfur,the caucases,Kashmere,Indonesia,the Philippines,the balkans,Somalia,even Thailand is having problems with moslem extremests, it just seems disproportionate to me!I know there are always two sides to every conflict but you have to wonder if there is something about islam that inspires war like behaviour.
Richard:
You’re right about the tendency for USers to romanticize all things Irish. I can’t explain it. A lot of them think that all Mexicans are brown, poorly educated, and live somewhere hot and dry. Go figure. And GWB is our president. Don’t blame me is all I can say.
Richard: “I got sick of being told I was responsible for the potato famine,black and tans ect ect…”
Are you OK? Bad cough? Are you going for “echt,” the opposite of “ersatz”? Your writing is sometimes hard to decipher.
“I also never had a problem with the Irish other than the fact that I got sick of being told I was responsible for the potato famine, black and tans”
Richard, did “they” ever tell you that you and yours were also responsible for all that happened to the Irish since the Elizabethan/Penal times, Renaissance period etc. The Famine/Black and tan era in evaluation is only the tip of the Irish Subjugation iceberg.
It is with the “luck of a card game” in a hillbilly knee-high Kilkenny field of malting barley -corn that gives me reason to comment.
Children in some countries are never by the system taught the truth about their bad past wrongdoings. Japan, for example denies that there were Comfort Women . It will not entertain this fact in their education Textbooks.
Moslems also live in total denial about the way it treats women.
There is a good article in B&W’s – In Focus. Date filed 31-05-2007
Why Islamic Hijab By Jahanshah Rashidian. What are the origins of the hijab?
“Does it have any bearing on others who are Atheists? Are they ever beaten, zum beispeil, with this ‘by association’ – stick.”
Ha! Only about seven hundred times a day.
I hope you’re enjoying your intro to atheism, Marie-Therese!
[About deletions – I sometimes thin some threads out a little once they’re no longer active; just a bit of housekeeping. But they get several days or weeks to be read first.]
It’s strange that attackers of atheism repeat the “Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot” smear ad nauseam, but bristle when someone mentions the Inquision. “Not all Christians are Inquisitors!” they huff. I’m so tired of that argument that I refuse to get sucked into it.
I recently saw the film “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” and found it quite educational about the Irish and the occupiers. Apparently it didn’t go down very well among a lot of English critics and viewers. But I’d recommend that anyone see it if they get a chance. The most interesting thing about it to me was the way it portrayed the split between supporters and rejecters of the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. The same thing happens over and over in radical movements.
“I recently saw the film “The Wind That Shakes the Barley” and found it quite educational about the Irish and the occupiers”
Synopsis: Ireland 1920: workers from field and county unite to volunteer guerrilla armies to face the ruthless Black and Tan squads that are being shipped from Britain to block Ireland’s bid for independence.
Background: The English ruling class first invaded Ireland in the twelfth century, when feudal barons staked out their territory. Over the centuries English landlords grew rich at the expense of the Irish People. A settler population to rule on behalf of the English was established and penal laws kept the Irish in subservience. As well as taxes and rents Ireland supplied England with farm produce and cheap labour. Famine, evictions and poverty were the lot of Ireland’s rural population.
My great-grandmother, by law was not allowed to buy out her farm because she was a Catholic [as too were her forebearers]. She was purely a ‘tenant farmer’. Nonetheless, she was lucky as in 1905 she bought it out, which was relatively uncommon, at the time, notwithstanding her female status. Her neighouring farmers were mostly of British Protestant plantation stock – who were given vast acres of good tillage land. For example: Marconi’s [who invented the radio] grandmother’s land adjoined my great Grandmother’s. Regaling this piece of knowledge was a popular partypiece around the hearth.
My grandmother was big time into the
Cumann na mBan. [See Wiki]
“Apparently it didn’t go down very well among a lot of English critics and viewers”
Yes, that is correct.
The film was heavily criticised by some commentators in British newspapers. The Scotsman, called it a “poisonously anti-British corruption of the history of the war of Irish independence” Daily Mail criticised the “portrayal of the British as sadists and the Irish as romantic, idealistic resistance fighters who take to violence only because there is no other self-respecting course”.
“Michael Collin’s” [epic] is another fantastic film of the same genre. It got very little recognition. Liam Neeson’s [protagonist] portrayal of the Irish General was superb.
Oíche mhaith! Good-night! Pardon me! Gabh mo leithscéal!
Jon J. Ocupiers?I take it you mean the Brits.
Hirsi Ali is courageous. Brilliant.
Muslims find no problem with executing apostates. Stoning women perceived to be adultrous to death. Decapitating enemies and raping everyone they deem inferior. So we should worry when they condemn a woman who has seen through their anti-life mentality and has chosen women’s rights and democratic freedoms in the freest country in the world? I dont think so.
Muslims are a savage minority in any western nation, though reproducing faster than many animals. Their focus is filling the world with muslims so they can rule, or simply suicide bombing unbelievers so they can rule.
Whether through reproduction and insinuation or barbaric force, the majority seek to establish the caliphate globally. Never fort that.
They hate the woman who escaped their clutches and calls a spade a spade and mohammed a paedophile because having sex with a 6 or 9 year old is, indeed, paedophilia in any civilized country in the world. To say that prophets are not like us, means to them that sex with infants is ok. Barbaric. Hirsi Ali says Western civilization is superior to Islam. When beasts of burden live in the mud, reproduce annually for 15 or 20 years, rarely get educated, and ask only for servility to man and god, then, well, I dare say Western civilization is superior to Islam whose poverty of thought, philosophy and economy has left muslims dim and dismissable. No one knows that better than muslims, which is why they love their suicide bombers dearly, they represent some kind of bizarre denial of the blatantly obvious.
Piers.I wouldnt disagree with much of what you say although the use of terms like breeding faster than many animals is unhelpfull mainly because it makes you look a bigot.
“I hope you’re enjoying your intro to atheism.”
OB, Ja aber selbstverständlich! – Sì, ma certo! – Да, но конечно!
Vielen vielen Dank, erwähnt es nicht! –
Ringraziarla molto, non menzionarlo! –
Большое спасибо, не упоминайте это!
Marie T are you saying that quote proves Hitler was religious?
Richard in his book, Mein Kampf, Hitler reveals himself as a fanatical believer in God and country.
Roman Catholic parents raised Hitler, but as a schoolchild, he rejected Catholicism as he was influenced – by nationalism. Apparently, after Hitler left home, he never attended Mass or received the sacraments.
In later life, Hitler’s religious beliefs present a discrepant picture; publicly he often spoke positively of the Christian heritage of German culture and of belief in Christ. Hitler’s private statements, as reported by his intimates, are more mixed, showing Hitler as a religious man but also critical of Christianity.
Religion! Religion! Religion! Symbolisms screamed at one – everywhere. Zum beispeil.
“(卐) (卍) Swastika …[I]s a widely-used symbol in Dharma religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism)… [I]t is often imprinted on religious texts, marriage invitations, decorations etc. They mark religious flags in Jainism and mark Buddhist temples in Asia .
Auch,
“The straight-armed Balkenkreuz, the emblem of the Wehrmacht, sometimes erroneously called the Maltese cross”
Revisited thread of Stalin abuse!
“Those undeserved and fearful beatings made the boy as hard and heartless as his father.” The same friend also wrote that he never saw him cry
Note the similarities with the abuse Hitler.
“As a boy, Hitler said he was whipped almost daily by his father. Years later, he told his secretary, “I then resolved never again to cry when my father whipped me. A few days later, I had the opportunity of putting my will to the test. My mother, frightened, took refuge in the front of the door. As for me, I counted silently the blows of the stick which lashed my rear end”.
Nay of course, the quote does not mean that Hitler was religious. He was certainly though by all accounts influenced – by religion by the looks of it anyway.
I would like to go to Berlin to gain knowledge of more of Hitler./German culture etc I, once, a long time ago got as far as Check Point Charlie, but got offensively petrified of going into the Eastern Block to West Berlin, as the soldiers on duty were carrying guns and it did not lend too well to the eerie atmosphere that already pervaded. I have always said that I WOULD RETURN as I had travelled otherwise the length and breadth of Germany. Times there are now very interesting to say the least.
They also speak very good high German. As JFK Ich bin ein Berliner.