You put fighting ignorance ahead of your own ego?

Curious.

Well...... no.

Ah good. The world has righted itself.

Good job, yes.

But I can't help thinking it seems a waste of time to spend such an effort refuting the very crudest Islamophobic propaganda. Sure its easy & good fun, and better done than not. But the real worry is, to me, that the same kind of bigotry is gaining an intellectual foothold too.

Take this, for example:
Three Myths About Islam. By Edward N. Luttwak.
http://www.writely.com/View.aspx?docid=bbhw9cgmpd96j

At the root, this is the same ill-educated xenophobia, picking and choosing from Islamic scripture and practices to present a suitably disturbing picture -- but very successfully toned down and dressed up for a more sophisticated readership. And, not written by some e-mail forwarding Christian fundamentalist office rat, but by a rather influential public intellectual. (http://www.csis.org/component/option,com_csis_experts/task,view/type,2/id,109/)

That's scarier. And from what I've seen so far, this is where I would assume 'Aqoul's real raison d'être lies. (Which of course dovetails perfectly with The Lounsbury's desire to indulge his ego and verbally lynch idiots.)

wow. someone actually took one of those seriously?

Yes, it would be, but for the moment work and related scheming is taking up all my time.

" At the root, this is the same ill-educated xenophobia, picking and choosing from Islamic scripture and practices to present a suitably disturbing picture"

Assuming his article is as shoddy as you describe ( a large assumption but let us grant it, famous scholars sometimes coast on their rep) there is a reason such writing has resonance with the American public - namely, there is a sizable transnational community of extreme Salafi-Qutbist-Deobandi-Takfiri -Jihadi loons who are exceptionally loud and vicious in their rhetoric in a way that belies their small numbers (relative to Muslims as a whole). And who engage in promoting a highly selective, reified, political extremism that they tirelessly present as " true Islam". That's in addition to the terrorism committed by an even smaller nucleus of active jihadis.

Should those radical views be attributed to Muslims as a whole ? Absolutely not. But this group of fanatics is now large enough to compose an effective security threat that has reached a critical mass that can neither be ignored nor dealt with indulgently. They are a real problem that will be with us for the forseeable future and are not just a phantom of Islamophobia or cultural ignorance.

Well, that piece is alright, as far as it goes. But I can't wholeheartedly endorse anything that claims India has a Muslim government.

I also think he paints with too broad a brush in the other direction. There are strains of Islam -- and not just the two that he identifies -- that are completely incompatible with western-style liberal democracy. Indeed, the Iranian variant that he cites is actually less objectionable than some.

There is a greater inherent tension in Islam with respect to secularism and democracy than there is in Christianity. Strictly speaking Islam posits a unified legal/religious system while Christianity does not. Certainly, that can be gotten around but it cannot just be ignored.

Strictly speaking Islam posits a unified legal/religious system while Christianity does not. Certainly, that can be gotten around but it cannot just be ignored

To some degree, this is true of every socio-religious tradition outside of the Catholic/Protestant West. The explicit fusion of the religious and the secular authorities, in theory at any rate, has been a feature of all traditions that did not experience a Canossa. But I also think it's way overblown to attribute too much to the notions that are, I think, fundamentally medieval.

I'm not objecting to having a debate about the problems of secularism vs. Islam, or about how to deal with the very real threat of Salafi etc extremism. What I am trying to put my finger on, is the way that anti-Muslim stereotypes are getting more of an academic following, and are being refined into a kind of ideology, post-9/11.

In anti-Semitic discourse, you'll rarely hear anyone say "Jews are bad". But you'll always hear the same Talmud snippets and something about Palestine or "Jewish-controlled media". Now, Islamophobia -- for lack of a better term -- is getting the same treatment, becoming increasingly systematized and sophisticated. Activists are rallying around a fixed set of Quran/Hadith quotes, joining them to terrorism or wife-beating or whatever works for them. It's slowly getting to the point where anti-Semitism is, a cultural code of sorts, where dropping a smart reference to the "Jewish lobby" can be enough to get the whole message across.

So it's not just Luttwak, he was an example out of the blue. Although I insist that the text is moronic:

"The only reason the continuity of Muslim aggression is news to some is because until recently almost all Muslim countries were under European colonial rule or subjected to European protectorates. Under Christian rule, Muslims could hardly continue to attack. With de-colonialization, the violence resumed."

New kid on the block, hi. Speaking out of Europe, the problem is that many thoroughly alienated immigrant children completely buy into this crap, whether it is proper Islam or not. I compare the situation of muslim immigrants in Europe to that of East Germans: They have lost their roots, they have to live at the bottom of society, their parents don't understand them, and their culture is widely perceived as inferior. People like that are very easy to radicalize. Hence, since the German reunification, there has been an upsurge of neonazism in former East Germany.

What I don't understand though, is why there are so many Swedish Nazis.

Welcome Klaus.

As to your comment, well.... interesting analogy I think with real meat. Indeed, I like the comparisons (I recall East Germany well), quite evocative of the issue.

thanks for the welcome. Extremism empowers people, so it's usually quite popular with the, uh, disempowered. The Left usually attributes all extremism to material hardship, because Marx was the ultimate materialist, but there's so much unaccounted for in that theory. Neither Saudis nor Swedes are particularly poor, yet have their fair share of nutters. Or American Evangelists. Long list.

Also, those that bomb stuff are usually well-educated middle class citizens, though often from a downtrodden society.

I believe wounded pride has a lot to do with it. Wounded Russian pride (NATO), Arab pride (Israel), Nazi Germany's pride (Versailles treaty), etc. Before WWI, the British were mostly concerned with France, because the French had been clobbered in the French-German war of 1870-71, and so were looking for a rematch.

Um, Klaus, this may just be my wounded White pride speaking, but I really don't think Sweden has the same nut-per-capita ratio as Saudi Arabia.

As far as I can tell -- being Swedish -- there are actually less Nazis here than in other (Germanic) European countries: maybe fifty hardcore activists, plus a few hundred beer-drinking skinheads, all-in-all no more than a couple of thousand sympathizers nation-wide. And, unlike in most of Europe, there's no right-wing extremist or anti-immigration party in parliament.

We try to keep our extremism firmly on the left-wing/tree hugger side of the spectrum. Which can be nutty enough.

the Swedes i know are some of the most passive and anti-confrontational people i've ever met.

case in point: one of my swedish friends stopped a nasty knife fight between an algerian and moroccan... and then helped them become friends!

All the Swedes (I'm Danish, btw) I've talked with always go on about their Nazis. One said Nazism has simply become another youth culture to young people, like mods, ravers, etc. I don't know where you live, though, maybe it's less there. Sweden has, at least in my lifetime, always had a reputation of having the largest contingent of Nazis outside Germany, and the Swedes I've talked with have confirmed this.

I have long been under the impression that Sweden has a highly polarized immigration debate: Either everything is wrong with immigrants, or nothing is. That polarization is because of Swedish Nazism, the existence of which people have reacted to by going as far as possible in the opposite direction.

Klaus: I'm highly jealous of your origins. I so enjoyed those sunny afternoons in København when all the girls were out sunning themselves in the parks!

well, you see, the Danish vikings took all the pretty women from England back to Denmark...explains both countries. :P

Oh, you're Danish. Det förklarar de vilda angreppen på Sverige.

No, honestly, there are some Swedish Nazis, but they're completely, utterly marginalized. There may be a few more of them than in Denmark, but for example the UK certainly has more and stronger Nazi groups. In fact, of the four or so Swedish Nazi groups, two (Blood & Honour and Combat 18) are just prison-gang outgrowths of the British movement, and even keep their English names.

I somewhat agree about the polarized debate, though. But I don't think it has anything to do with Nazis. There's simply no respectable political party or organization that is anti-immigration, so the debate is polarized between establishment and extremists -- which means there hardly is a debate, even if that began changing these last years. Not a healthy situation, but the Danish example, where anti-immigration stances are rather the norm among the established political parties, is just unhealthy in a different way. The main anti-immigrant party, the Swedish Democrats, last polled 1,5% of the population. Compare that to the Danish equivalent, the Danish People's Party, which is post-cartoons around what, 18-20%?

Interesting how two so similar political systems can produce so wildly different results on immigration. It guess it could probably easily have gone the other way around, with Denmark nervously suppressing debate and Sweden caving to xenophobia. That's something for the political scientists to figure out.

But anyway, if Sweden is Saudi Arabia, then I'm afraid Denmark shall have to be Taliban Afghanistan.

[Sorry everyone for the off-topic drift.]

Marhaben bikoum.

Lounsbury, I hope you don't mind us abducting this thread, just say if you do.

Denmark and Sweden have been at war many times, it's about time we had another bash....

3000 Nazis in Sweden here, though I have no idea how reliable that info is:

http://vittoljud.levandehistoria.se/art_vitmakt/27_vitmakt.html

Danish People's Party is at about 16% now, they fell down to regular levels after the popular agitation subsided. We have about 50 organised Nazis in Denmark, and some 100-200 supporters. The level of racist violence in Sweden is also far higher than in Denmark.

One comment I noticed during the cartoon debacle was one pointing out that while many European governments were declaring their respect for followers of Islam, nearly all European countries are tightening immigration laws at this time. Sweden is one of the last bastions of (fairly) free immigration. There's a general sense that things haven't really worked out that well anywhere, and having more immigrants is not going to solve the problems that have arisen.

In any case, if poverty causes extremism, it is only a necessary factor, and not a determining factor. Otherwise many African countries would be in the Premier League of Nuttiness. Most are standard dictatorships or warlord-governed, nothing spectacularly nutty.

No, no, carry on.

BTW on the topic of European Muslim minorities:

For God and country?
Forget the scaremongering — UK Muslims are more
concerned with speed dating, scout groups and women’s
football than dismantling our way of life...:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2155558,00.html

Since we are on the subject of europe. L - I know you try to stay away from domestic US politics, but I haven't seen you say anything about UK politics either. At least you'll dabble in the former.

True. I suppose France and the US provoke me into diatribes more often.

L-
I have read your linked Sunday Times article. I actually found it damning rather than comforting. A muslim chocolate bar? That is ridiculous.
On the other hand the reporter depended on a single newsletter of self-identified 'muslim events'. Of course she wasn't going to find every-day muslims, only activists. When are journalists going to realise that there are muslims outside mosques and so-called cultural centres?
Did she try universities? public schools? her local supermarket? her local gym? No, no, no, and no.

Ali

Damning, Comforting?

Sometimes so very hard to distinguish.

On the other hand the reporter depended on a single newsletter of self-identified 'muslim events'. Of course she wasn't going to find every-day muslims, only activists. When are journalists going to realise that there are muslims outside mosques and so-called cultural centres?

Ah. Well, that is the question, now isn't it?

The problem is of course most reporters thrown on such beats know fuck all about the community, so they go to the self-described "centers" of the community as a short cut and to meet deadline. Where they invariably get the identity-activist view of the same.

Natural, driven by incentives.

I personally found the arty amusing but ambiguous.

I suppose the perspective is "Well they're not all plotting Jihad, many are involved in life's typical shallowness!"

A revelation for some.

L-

'I suppose the perspective is "Well they're not all plotting Jihad, many are involved in life's typical shallowness!"

A revelation for some.'

This might be true in the US, but in the UK the public discourse about muslims doesn't entirely revolve around jihad. Other topics of interests involve identity, language, and assimilation. Most of the examples in the article are about muslims 'doing their own thing' and trying to set up their own versions of stuff. That is what I find damning.

in the UK the public discourse about muslims doesn't entirely revolve around jihad. Other topics of interests involve identity, language, and assimilation. Most of the examples in the article are about muslims 'doing their own thing' and trying to set up their own versions of stuff.

In America, such discussions are reserved for "hispanics".

Ah for the good old days, when such discussions revolved around "jews".

Well, Jihad is the sexiest post 7 July topic. I should say that at least on the East Coast where I am in exile, the Immigrant Fearing Class are also fearful of Muslims integrating. Whole section of New Jersey gone over to "them" is the claim.

Boring really.

However, all things being equal, I am most interested in continental European Muslim minorities as there is serious back flow influence, and this is important to me. US policy of course is the 800 lb gorilla that is constantly afflicted with schizophrenia and whirls around like a hyper-active child. Unlike say French policy in MENA which for all its unpleasant facets, has a certain predictability.

as far as i'm concerned, "they" can have new jersey!