The Islamophobia Thread

And not a single one of those pushes has ever been a) enforced at gunpoint by a bunch of men, or b) imposed on women without their say so. Telling women "you must expose your skin or we will punish you for it" is hardly progressive.

Seriously, are you saying that if I, as a man, were to walk up to a woman you know and demand she remove her clothes because I think she is wearing too many of them you would be okay with that? And assuming you are, should she refuse me would you also be okay with me calling the police and demanding that they strip her for me?

Because what you are, if not endorsing, then at the least making excuses for, is exactly that—police officers forcing women to remove their clothing or be expelled from public spaces.

Article on the ban being struck down.

edited 26th Aug '16 12:01:13 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

That's a flawed argument. If you demanded money from speeders or locked up people for killing, you would be arrested for extortion and kidnapping respectively, but the (French) government is still allowed to do these things.

For clarification, I'm not pro ban. The ban is highly patronizing, mysoginist and Islamophobic. You don't free people by controlling them.

Yeah, I don't see how it helps the women who are forced to cover up by their male relatives/husbands. Now they can't (or couldn't, since the ban has been struck down) go to the beach, but other than taking a potential source of enjoyment away from them it does nothing.

Bans like this are a classic example of addressing a symptom rather than a problem. A woman whose husband will beat her if she doesn't dress modestly enough for his tastes isn't suddenly free of that threat because you've banned the item of clothing he wants her to wear. He's still an abusive dick, and she's still living with him.

Make more laws against domestic violence. Get better at identifying religiously motivated abuse for what it is—and among all communities at that. But people have got to stop thinking that banning an item of clothing will solve the problem.

Fair. Allow me to rephrase. If I demanded women at the beach strip because I don't like what they're wearing you'd have a pretty good case to make about me being a misogynist. And when a government participates in the same sort of activity that same case can be made.

edited 26th Aug '16 12:49:27 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Yeah and as noted, it's particularly counter-intuitive because any Muslim women who are going to the beach in burkini or otherwise are presumably fairly secularized themselves and likely have fairly secularized spouses/male relatives.

While I think that the law's supporters are probably sincere in seeing the burkini/Islam in general as horribly oppressive (although I think they are off base on both counts), and maybe are also sincere in thinking they are somehow doing Muslim women a favor with the law, I think the law most strongly comes across as a statement of hostility toward French Muslims in general, especially the idea that they can have any degree of acceptance unless they abandon their own culture entirely. It reminds me of something I read recently about how Verona Italy banned kebab shops and other restaurants identified as "ethnic" takeaway. It's kind of a white supremacist sort of idea that the culture of a country is the one set by the inhabitants who have citizenship through blood and those who don't aren't allowed to make their own contributions.

This burkini issue is a logical follow-up of the stupid, stupid, stupid ban on the muslim veil that happened a few years back. Considering the current legislation, if you forbid something that only covers the hair because it is "proselytism", you can't really let one that covers the entire body pass.

I wish our government was smart enough to realize where the source of all the crap was, and remove this fucking disgrace of a ban. But since our PM is the first supporter of anti-burkini decisions (despite being "left-wing" - at this point, he is as much a left-winger as Donald Trump is a friend of Mexicans), well...

Remember when England was under attack by Catholic terrorists and we banned nuns from wearing the veil?

Yes, much better.

Nah we just shot unarmed children. Not exactly a tactic that the French should copy.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Hodor2 pretty much sums up my thoughts.

Quoth Julep:

Well historically secularism and opposition to religion in general are left-wing stuff, while right-wingers endorse Christianity. Both sides are hostile to Islam.

In fact, when it comes to Islam, Americans see muslims as backward and sexist, right? Well we see Americans as backward and sexist too, so it applies double for Islam. And the current Vocal Minority of "muslims" is most definitely not helping their case (nor do they want to).

Edit: Plus, Islam wants the Church to be the State even harder than Christianity does, which is a big no-no for the French.

edited 28th Aug '16 12:52:12 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

A Michelin-starred restaurant in France refused service to Muslim customers because "all Muslims are terrorists".

It would appear that the chef is now in full cover-my-own-ass mode. Seems like the "I don't actually believe what I'm saying, it's just ironic" defense is popping up in real life now...

I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiot

Except that it doesn't. While many Islamic states have claimed caliphal status in an attempt to bolster their prestige, the reality of 1500+ years of Muslim history gives the lie to the notion that it is a religion in which church and state are intrinsically intertwined. That the Sunni Abbasid caliphs spent the better part of their existence under virtual house arrest by one Turkic sultan after another (including a Shia sultan, in the case of the Buyid Turks) should demonstrate that quite effectively.

Better yet, barring a few rare aberrations when a newly crowned caliph started acting all tyrannical with the backing of enough blindly-loyal troops and governors, the caliph usually didn't tell the ulema ^note lit. "scholars", meant in the religious sense here; they're the closest equivalent to Christian clergy how to do their job, and neither did the ulema unless the caliph broke a sufficiently huge Islamic taboo (e.g. ordering the mass slaughter of hundreds/thousands of innocent people just because he didn't like what they said about him). The caliphates were often a lot closer to modern secularism than most people think — Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

edited 29th Aug '16 10:09:58 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

And before the Revolution, Iran was rather secular too. Political Islamism is an invention of the 20th century.

The only full blown theocracies that I can think of were the Almohad Caliphate in Spain and the Mahdiyya in the Sudan—and since both of them were religious revivals that turned into revolutions and then states, that's not particularly surprising.

There's also the Almohad's predecessors in the Almoravid Sultanate, who are very religious, though oddly so—their women went unveiled while their men covered their faces.

I hate revivalism...Why do people keep doing that? Religious nutcy fades away, and then some strict literalist assholes bring it back up again. Is it regenerating From a Single Cell or what?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

So, anything on Central Asia? Heard the Islam there is more moderate than West and South Asia. Granted, most Westerners don't even know that region exists except for maybe Kazakhstan.

edited 30th Aug '16 1:55:31 AM by Bat178

So it's all a reputation thing in fact? Because the Muslim Brotherhood, the the Iranian Muslim Revolution, the Taliban, and Daesh sure suggest that Islam should be all-encompassing and direct the country they're in. So I guess it's once again the Vocal Minority making all muslims look like assholes...

edited 30th Aug '16 1:40:50 AM by Medinoc

"And as long as a sack of shit is not a good thing to be, chivalry will never die."

Not sure I'd call it a vocal minority – Islamist parties/groups tend to be pretty popular in Muslim-majority countries. I wonder if it isn't a reaction against all those secular dictatorships.

Popular and after an all encompassing Muslim state are not the same thing, the Tunisian Islamists won the frost democratic elections, suffer protests, held new elections, lost and then handed over power to the secular parties without issues.

Some Islamists parties are simply a similar version of the Christan parties you get with say the Christan Democratic Union in Germany, the Conservative Party in the UK or both the Dems and Republicans in the US.

But yes in part it's a reaction against the forced secular states and also a result of the secular dictatorships shooting all the moderates and letting the hardcore Islamists live so that nobody shakes the boat for fear of a hardcore Islamist takeover.

That doesn't always go well however, as Syria demonstretes.

edited 30th Aug '16 5:29:14 AM by Silasw

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

Religious revivals begin because someone believes that their problems—and those of their congregation—stem from a lack of fealty to the faith. Whether they work is entirely dependent on how many people share that opinion.

In the specific case of the Mahdiyya, it worked because Anglo-Egyptian rule over the Sudan had become not only corrupt, and not only tyrannical, but an active case of the left hand and right hand fighting with one another. The British were trying to stamp out the Sudanese slave trade at the same time that their Egyptian protectorate was trying to make as much money as possible out of enslaving the Sudanese. The end result was that the British drove a whole lot of Sudanese slavers out of business, but without improving life even one whit for the tribes that were traditionally being enslaved—they just now ended up in Egyptian rather than Sudanese markets. Throw in crippling Egyptian taxes and the visible subordination of the clerical class by the Egyptian governors, as well as the British appointment of Christian fundamentalists like Gordon to serve as governor, and you have a recipe for disaster.

So when Muhammad Ahmad declared himself to be the Mahdi, he had a ready audience. The genuinely zealous signed on for the chance to expel the infidel Christians and heretic Egyptians. The Sudanese slavers signed on to break the Egyptian monopoly. The tribes that were targeted by the Egyptians slavers signed on for the chance to rid themselves of at least one group of predators. Numerous tribal chieftains, both black and Arab signed on for a chance to remove Egypt's onerous taxes. It's worth noting that many of the southern black tribes who joined with the Mahdi weren't even Muslim, but saw supporting him as the best chance to enhance their interests.

Anyway, long story short, the Mahdi shattered the Egyptian Army, killed Gordon at Khartoum, created the Mahdiyya, and then promptly died of typhus. His successor, Khalifa Abdullahi took over and reigned for a decade before the British came back for revenge and conquered the Sudan. It remains one of the most successful African colonial rebellions in history—and one of the most poorly understood, being constantly structured as a religious revolt and nothing more.

Wow.

Shame on the UK.

And shame on the Egyptians too, WTF?

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Well, yeah. People often forget that the one-sided abolition of slavery by Great Britian, followed by the very global and outright militant suppression of the slave trade (which was legal in most other places)... caused economic collapse for much of Asia, Africa and parts of the Americas. Which led to a lot of political and social upheaval. -_-

The setting up of large-scale, trans-Atlantic and trans-Indian Ocean slavery was vile. But, so was suddenly throwing a wrench into the global, interconnected market you helped create the shape of for over 200 years. :/

In Britain's defence... you really need to point at the VOC (Unified East India Company: Dutch) for really getting the ball rolling for building the foundations for the mess. But, the Honourable East and West Indian Companies really screwed the pooch upon taking up the VOC's ideas and running with them in the C18th in particular.

Suddenly growing a conscience when the atrocities in places like the Congo Free State/ Belgian Congo (Leopold went even further than the worst the United or "Honourable" Companies dreamed up) came to public light was sweet and all... But, Britain pulled a Daenarys Targaryen on most of the world and somehow expected things to work out OK because "it was the right thing to do".

Oh, and going in guns blazing was considered both cheaper and less complicated than, you know... trying to use other means. <_< Yay, gunboat diplomacy!

Wars, famine, political instability and the fall of nations ensued. In places that are still recovering from it today.

edited 30th Aug '16 2:42:02 PM by Euodiachloris

The problem in the Sudan was not so much the attempted suppression of the slave trade, as the fact that they only suppressed it on one side of the border. You can't stamp out slavery in one region but not in the one right next door and expect it to work.

This is pretty typical of how the colonial powers operated. There was a lot of general incompetency and outright malice on the part of Britain, France, the USA, et al. About the only thing that can be said for them in most cases is that they weren't quite as horrendous to their colonial subjects as Spain and Belgium were to theirs.

The problems of the Islamic world are not uniquely Muslim problems. They are, for the most part, postcolonial problems, first and foremost. Rwanda and Burundi are not Muslim states, but that didn't stop them from collapsing into ethnic violence and genocide with the same fervour shown by the Sudanese and the Somalis. Why? Because while they don't share a religion they do share a past as colonial property of European nations.

The Egyptian Khedives were trying to buy their way out from under the Ottomans and the British and into Great Power status, and do it all at once. To that end they ruthlessly exploited the Sudan, their one colonial possession, for everything that it was worth, using money from, among other things, the Sudanese slave trade, to try and charge into modernity—because when your options are the return of the old imperial power or subjugation under a new one you'll do just about anything to go your own way. For a while it actually worked—under Khedive Mehmed Ali (Muhammad Ali in the Arab rendering)—Egypt looked ready to seize the Ottoman mantle as the greatest of the independent Islamic powers. Failures under his successors, bad financial decisions, and an economic crash, as well as the Mahdist War eventually crushed those dreams and left Egypt financially, militarily, and politically dependent on Great Britain, with the Khedives as little more than puppet rulers controlled by British governors and army chiefs.

Long story cut short, their gambit failed and had horrible effects on the Sudan but given their options it's hard to blame them for trying.

edited 30th Aug '16 3:18:17 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Going in all guns blazing is not gunboat diplomacy, by definition.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.