Islamophobia and its malcontents
If unhinged wingnuts can be believed, your own TfK is responsible for Rep. Peter King dropping plans to invite Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak at his anti-Muslim hearings. Also, a bunch of clergy have asked him not to pursue his race-baiting hearings, as did a Congressman once interned by the US government because of his parents’ nationality.
While Rep. King’s hearings are still seen by sane people as designed “to cast suspicion upon all Muslim Americans and to stoke the fires of anti-Muslim prejudice and Islamophobia,” his changes to the lineup have begun to frustrate the sort of people who can argue with a straight face: “It is a deception to depict [a Belgian nativist party’s] refusal to vote in favour [sic] of a European Parliament resolution condemning the holocaust as Nazi loving.”
All of this happened the same day Ed Brayton posted his take on Islam and Sharia Law, a typically incisive examination of efforts to legislatively ban Sharia under the guise of attacking radical Islam. After noting that radical Islam is bad six ways from Sunday, he points out:
I am the last person on Earth that wants to see anything like Islamic law imposed anywhere, for the obvious reason that my head would be among the first on the chopping block after such a system was established. â¦
But here’s the thing. None of what I said above logically leads one to conclude either that all Muslims believe in such barbarism or that America is on the verge — or even, in our wildest dystopic imaginations, could be on the verge — of being taken over by Muslim radicals who will impose Sharia law on us. Nor does it logically flow from anything I’ve said above that Muslims in this country are suddenly no longer covered by either statutory or constitutional protections of their equal rights.
This is why I mock those who insist that there are no moderate or reasonable Muslims in the world — because I actually know some of them. â¦
This is also why I mock those who think we have to pass laws forbidding judges to enforce Sharia law in this country. We already have such a law — it’s called the First Amendment. And the idea that there is even the most remote possibility that the courts in this country are going to start ordering or upholding the beheading of Jews or infidels is every bit as crazy as those who would favor such laws.â¦
And yes, this is why I aim my derision at those who want to prevent the Park 51 Islamic center from opening in Manhattan. Because there simply is no legal or constitutional justification for preventing it. The First Amendment covers Muslims too, no matter what the wingnuts might wish was the case.
â¦Even for religions that claim to be based upon a holy book, actual behavior often has very little to do with the content of that book. Religions evolve just like every other human institution.
â¦There are any number of ways that Christians long ago reconciled the barbarism of the Old Testament with modern moral reasoning, something that began largely with the mixing of Christianity with Enlightenment philosophy.
The same process of pushing the evolution of a major religion by mixing it with modernist influence is really only just beginning with Islam. Christianity began that process a few centuries ago, when it was about the same age that Islam is now.â¦
The average Muslim wants nothing to do with beheading anyone or stoning anyone. Those Muslims who work side by side with me and others to fight for equality for women and for gays and lesbians, and who fight for freedom of speech instead of against it, are doing the same thing that liberal Christians do — ignoring the most barbaric elements of their holy books and focusing instead on the many verses that encourage compassion and decency and kindness.
As I’ve said many times, there are enough conflicting statements in both the Bible and the Quran that one can pick out support for nearly anything. Hateful, bigoted, barbaric people can easily find verses supporting their hatred and bigotry; decent, caring, nurturing people can easily find verses supporting their decency and caring.
And you know what? That’s fine with me. We can argue all we want about the finer points of Biblical or Quranic exegesis until the cows come home, but all that matters to me in the end is what people stand for. And if they stand for the things that I stand for, I don’t really care whether we share the same starting point. That’s why an atheist and a Christian can stand side by side at a soup kitchen, doing their part to help those less privileged. And that’s why an atheist and a Muslim can work together for LGBT equality and not give a damn about the other person’s religious views.
Read the whole thing. And ignore the wingnuts.
7 COMMENTS
i don’t disagree with the general thrust of ed’s post, but:
The same process of pushing the evolution of a major religion by mixing it with modernist influence is really only just beginning with Islam. Christianity began that process a few centuries ago, when it was about the same age that Islam is now.â¦
The average Muslim wants nothing to do with beheading anyone or stoning anyone.
seems a touch contradictory. if islam is starting the modernizing process, how is the average muslim so against beheading or stoning? as a point of fact in december pew found that 42% of egyptians, 16% of turks, and 82% of egyptians & pakistanis, do support stoning of adulterers. i guess turkey is the liberal country, seeing as only 1 out of 6 are OK with stoning adulterers.
if these numbers are correct count me as someone scared of islam. there are way more pakistani muslims than western ones (by multiples).
as for american muslims, the survey data shows that they’re about as religiously conservative as evangelical whites. IOW, liberal my muslim standards.
you can find that the pew website too.
the first 42% was for indonesians.
It’s got nothing to do with any kind of real danger that sharia law will be imposed on the United States. Conservatives couldn’t win elections and gain power if they were honest about their intentions so they use distractions for an effective margin of the voters to dupe them. And nothing has worked better for that than whipping up paranoid hatred of one group or another. As one group reaches the point where they aren’t useful for them anymore, they find another to use that way. Peter King is just Theodore G. Bilbo in a different context.
Paranoid bigotry works for conservatives. They will always practice it.
The thing about being “on the verge” is that by then it’s too late to do anything. Obviously.
Sharia law does not suddenly become something that should be stopped only once you no longer can stop it because you waited too long.
Peter King must be one of the most hypocritical politicians in America. He was well known as a staunch supporter of the IRA and is still a supporter of their political wing Sinn Féin. White terrorist good, Arab terrorist bad seems to be his coda. He certainly wasn’t looking to accuse all Irish people of being supporters of terrorism when IRA bombs were exploding in London but he’ll tar over a billion people with the Islamic terrorist brush.
The IRA waged a military struggle against a colonialist occupying force. No one can deny that this was the nature of the armed struggle in Ireland. In other words, the IRA was not involved in terrorism, but rather in a legitimate independence struggle, and one that was far more justifiable than the American Revolution (which was waged by people who were themselves colonial settlers).
Peter King is only interested in terrorists who wish to strike at the United States. Around 20% of all Muslims in the world openly express their support for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. The number might be lower among American Muslims, but recent polling data puts it at about 5%, with over 20% not answering the question.
Apuleius Platonicus(aka “credulous idiot”) wrote “The IRA waged a military struggle against a colonialist occupying force. No one can deny that this was the nature of the armed struggle in Ireland. In other words, the IRA was not involved in terrorism, but rather in a legitimate independence struggle, and one that was far more justifiable than the American Revolution (which was waged by people who were themselves colonial settlers)”.
As a citizen of the Republic of Ireland, who served in the Irish Defence forces, I can deny this rubbish. The Provisional Irish Republican Army(PIRA) was and is a terrorist and sectarian organisation, which was involved in trying to ethnically cleanse large areas of Northern Ireland. It was not “a military struggle against a colonialist occupying force”, but a campaign of terrorism aimed at the Protestant rural population in Border areas initially, and also a campaign of intimidation against the Catholic population they claimed to be “protecting”, in order to protect their profits from smuggling and protection rackets. They are a smear of excrement on the good name and reputation of my country.
Peter King is a slimy piece of hypocrisy.