Julie Burchill abused me for being Muslim – yet she was cast as the victim
This morning Burchill published a lengthy apology for these defamatory statements. She acknowledged that some of them “play into Islamophobic tropes”, and admitted that she was wrong to make “racist and misogynist comments” regarding my appearance and sex life. Burchill has apologised “unreservedly and unconditionally” for the “hurtful and unacceptable statements”, and undertakes not to contact me directly again or “engage in any course of action amounting to harassment”. She has also had to pay substantial damages for the distress caused and my legal costs.
These untrue and deeply upsetting comments had been made following me tweeting criticism of Burchill’s friend Rod Liddle for an article he had written nine years ago, in which he said the one reason why he’s not a teacher is that he “could not remotely conceive of not trying to shag the kids”. I happen to be Muslim (if I’m honest, not a particularly pious one) and Burchill used that to single me out on social media. She had some form in this regard, having previously tweeted me asking whether I had got rid of a bawdy joke in my Twitter bio because of being threatened by my “co-religionists”.
When I replied objecting to her response, which implied that Muslims were tacit supporters of child abuse, I was met with the accusation of “[worshipping] a paedophile”. On Burchill’s Facebook page, she encouraged her followers to “wade in” on social media, and referred to me as an Islamist and a nonce. For weeks afterwards, Burchill continued to publish posts on social media both to and about me.
What followed was a barrage of abuse on social media and by email. People speculated about whether I was really a woman, and really a Muslim – and I was subjected to rape threats and threats of physical violence. I received direct messages on Instagram calling me a “dirty brown whore”, and fantasising about me being raped in “an all white gangbang”. The intensity of the abuse, along with Burchill’s continuing derogatory posts about me, severely affected my mental health. I couldn’t sleep, and had bouts of trembling and heart palpitations. For the first time in my life, I was prescribed anti-anxiety medication.
At the same time, a media storm was brewing. In response to her conduct on social media, the publisher Little, Brown terminated Burchill’s book contract for Welcome to the Woke Trials: How #Identity Killed Progressive Politics. In her apology, Burchill states that she wishes to “to make clear that I accept that Ms Sarkar did not call for my publisher to break ties with me and bears no responsibility for this”. But despite the fact I had never asked for this to happen, media outlets framed the matter as cancel culture gone mad. Burchill’s defamatory statements were reported as merely “[making] a comment on Twitter to Muslim ‘libertarian communist’ journalist Ash Sarkar about the age of one of the Prophet Mohammed’s wives.” The Times wrote that “Welcome to the Woke Trials, billed as … [an] indictment of the ‘outrage mob’ and its impact on freedom of speech”, had itself “become a casualty of the very forces it was describing”. It felt like much of the media’s reporting of the issue played down the defamation, racism and harassment in favour of framing me as part of the woke mob – and Burchill as its victim.
Last week, the Society of Editors was embroiled in a row after its then-executive director, Ian Murray, claimed that the UK media “is most certainly not racist” in response to Meghan’s criticism of how she’d been treated by the press. But what my experience with Burchill shows is that not only is there racism from journalists themselves, there’s also a lack of accountability more broadly within the industry.
The unfortunate truth is that, sometimes, the only thing that separates an anonymous troll and a journalist is a byline. Some of the worst abuse I’ve received is either from journalists or the direct consequence of their actions in spreading misinformation about me. Those at the top of our industry have persistently drawn a veil of silence around the bullying tactics that drum black and brown women out of public life. We cannot claim to have a truly free press as long as those who tacitly encourage and facilitate the harassment of women of colour remain sheltered within the media.
In response to Gaon's second comment on page 89:
In the article where Harris says "we are at war with Islam", he then says "this is not to say that we are at war with all Muslims, but we are absolutely at war with the vision of life that is proscribed to all Muslims in the Koran."
This is exactly my point about how he's not actually attacking all self-described Muslims for being Muslims but rather he's arguing that any Muslim who's a decent person is not actually following what the Koran says.
And while his comment about waterboarding may be immoral (depending on what he thinks are the circumstances that justify waterboarding; I personally think the hypotbetical circumstances that could justify it are highly unlikely to actually happen and thus it is always or virtually always immoral in practice), I don't see how they're Islamophobic. Did he say waterboarding could be justified only if done by Muslims?
I'll concede the point on Maher, though. I didn't realize he'd called for racial profiling and I'd forgotten he was an apologist for Israel's murder of Palestinian civilians.
Edited by EveryOtherHandleIsTaken on Mar 20th 2021 at 6:55:56 AM
It really is something that some people are so desperate to make the Islamophobia thread about how it's totally fine to hate Islam.
Very good point.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Mar 21st 2021 at 11:15:58 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangWe do have a religion thread
to discuss theology in. Just saying.
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As shocking as it may seem from my posts, I myself am not really a practicing Muslim. This is because I have lots of issues with the religion. I absolutely support criticism of any text or doctrine. The issue I have is that Islamophobes and New Atheists and just lots of non-Muslims in general propagate "criticisms" that are low-level and misinformed. Often, they are also phrased in an inflammatory manner. Do you see how "hey, we're not attacking you personally, we just think your beliefs and practices and entire way of life are inherently evil" might come off as inflammatory? (Don't come after me for censoring free speech — people have the right to phrase things however they wish. I just don't think it's productive if these people truly want to have an open discussion.)
I think I'll try and refrain from posting here again, but I will say I have an issue with how this thread is moderated. The excuse that "other threads can become echo chambers about how oppression is bad, but this one can't, because lots of Muslims aren't oppressed" is a little bit ridiculous to me.
There is no war in Ba Sing Se.Aside from the inherent inhumane nature of waterboarding (and what has been said), here's the curious bit: Did he say he'd second waterboard about anything else? White supremacism, for example? the rising tide of Fascist terrorism? No. Just Islamic terror. In fact, he even went as far as saying that Fascists are the only people accurately calling out the threat of Islamic terror.
That kind of endorsement for Fascists makes you at best Fascist-adjacent and at worse an actual Fascist. And anyone in that ballpark is a horrible bigot.
"All you Fascists bound to lose.""This is exactly my point about how he's not actually attacking all self-described Muslims for being Muslims but rather he's arguing that any Muslim who's a decent person is not actually following what the Koran says."
The same could be said about Christianity, or any mainstream religion. It's basically an argument based on cherrypicking: which sections of the Koran, and which interpretations of those sections, are to be considered the most authoritative, and who gets to decide that? To single out Islam in this regard, as opposed to religion in general, is to practice an intellectual double standard, and would therefore be treading the thin line of Islamaphobia.
If we are going to say that being a Muslim, per se, is not a risk factor, then it isn't a risk factor, and the laws that discriminate on the basis of religion, as for example the ones passed recently in France, lose whatever justification they had.
"Do you see how "hey, we're not attacking you personally, we just think your beliefs and practices and entire way of life are inherently evil" might come off as inflammatory?'
Yes, I do, and what's more I think they are usually meant to.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Taking this with a grain of salt. Apparently, Shanmugam's suggesting that maybe female nurses who practice Islam can be allowed to use tudungs, depending on the discussion.
Like in the previous discussion back, he discussed on Yacob wearing the tudung even before she was in politics.
I'm just shaking my head.
Edited by Ominae on Mar 23rd 2021 at 6:00:40 AM
First off, I don't hate all Islam. Just the versions that call for hurting people. Second, this isn't really about Islam but rather how it looks to me like accusations of Islamophobia are frequently thrown at people who aren't Islamophobic.
Thirdly, I one tried to start a conversation about this in a separate thread and the moderators moved it into this thread. What's the point of trying to do this anywhere else if it'll just get moved here anyway?
Edited by EveryOtherHandleIsTaken on Mar 28th 2021 at 3:13:17 AM
Absolutely; I'm not in favor of waterboarding and I'm not denying that Harris has said some idiotic things. That doesn't necessarily make him Islamophobic, though.
And looking at Pew Research polling data about the opinions of Muslims in many countries and passages in the Koran, I don't get how a lot of the things Harris says about the Koran and about the large portion of Muslims who agree with the bad parts of the Koran is false.
And yes, I'm aware of similarly awful things in the Bible. I'm not denying that and I've never seen it denied by the so-called "new atheists" who are so often accused of Islamophobia. However, there does seem to be an odd double standard where it's Islamophobic to point out bad stuff in the Koran but okay to do the same with the Bible. Why is that?
Did he say he wouldn't?
According to Wikipedia (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobaco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany), "some Nazi leaders condemned smoking and several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption."
If that's true, would anyone who said that those Nazis were right about smoking be endorsing Facists? If Facists say the Earth is round, do we need to join the Flat Earth Society to show that we don't endorse Facists? Saying that Facists happen to be correct about something isn't the same as saying that facists are good people or endorsing facism. This is similar to the 2000s when Republicans used this same fallacious reasoning by saying that Democrats sounded like Osama Bin Laden because the Democrats at the time said America should get out of Iraq and Al-Qaeda also wanted America out of Iraq.
Something isn't automatically innacurate just because it's said by bad people and agreeing with a position that bad people also agree doesn't automatically make you similar to those bad people in any other way.
Edited by EveryOtherHandleIsTaken on Mar 28th 2021 at 3:52:57 AM
According to Wikipedia (en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tobaco_movement_in_Nazi_Germany), "some Nazi leaders condemned smoking and several of them openly criticized tobacco consumption."
If that's true, would anyone who said that those Nazis were right about smoking be endorsing Facists? If Facists say the Earth is round, do we need to join the Flat Earth Society to show that we don't endorse Facists? Saying that Facists happen to be correct about something isn't the same as saying that facists are good people or endorsing facism. This is similar to the 2000s when Republicans used this same fallacious reasoning by saying that Democrats sounded like Osama Bin Laden because the Democrats at the time said America should get out of Iraq and Al-Qaeda also wanted America out of Iraq.
Something isn't automatically innacurate just because it's said by bad people and agreeing with a position that bad people also agree doesn't automatically make you similar to those bad people in any other way.
This is a pretty disingenuous comparison. The position that smoking is bad is an extremely innocuous one, thus it's harmless to agree with fascists about it. But when you're agreeing with fascists on how to treat people then that's an entirely different thing.
Fascists do not correctly recognize any kind of threat, their ideology has always been about scapegoating and bigotry. Anyone who thinks they have the right idea about Muslims is a hateful piece of shit.
Edited by Fourthspartan56 on Mar 28th 2021 at 4:10:54 AM
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji YangIf I say that the smoking is bad for you, I'm not gonna say "fascists were right to say that smoking is bad for you." I'm just gonna say "smoking is bad for you."
Same for flat/round Earth.
See? Quite easy, not endorsing fascists.
Edited by djoki996 on Mar 28th 2021 at 4:22:59 AM
And didn't Harris write a book criticizing Christianity called "Letter To A Christian Nation"? Also, doesn't Christianity have a doctrine that all the awful stuff in the Old Testament stopped applying after Jesus came? Harris brings this point up in the You Tube video "Sam Harris and Cenk Uyger Clear the Air on Religious Violence and Islam" between the time stamps 42:28 - 43:30.
Based on the statista page "Terrorism: Most active perpetrator groups worldwide in 2019, based on number of attacks" (it's hard to actually link things on my phone, but hopefully you can find it with Google), it would appear that violence in the name of Islam or Communism is more relevant worldwide right now than violence in the name of other religions. Don't we as a society also tend to focus on the more common perpetrator groups in general? Is it sexism or malephobia to talk about male rapists and mass shooters more often than female ones, for instance?
Same for flat/round Earth.
See? Quite easy, not endorsing facists.
So was Obama endorsing communists when he said that Cuba had a good Healthcare system and high literacy rates? (see the Politico article "Obama in Cuba: 'Change Is Gonna Happen Here'") You really think saying "X is right about this one thing" is identical to endorsing everything X stands for or has ever said?
I wish. Unfortunately, Obama isn't woke enough for that.
And don't try to equate communism with fascism. One is a political ideology accepted as at least valid enough to be debated by political scientists and philosophers everywhere. Another is a ultra-nationalist ideology so vague that it can barely even be called an ideology.
Okay, but do you think Obama was endorsing Cuba's human rights abuses? I imagine most people on this forum would say "no" (given that most of them seem to support mainstream Democrats), yet some seem to not follow that same logic when they imply that Harris is endorsing facism by agreeing with some things facists have said about Islam.
To be fair, perhaps the specific things they said that he agrees with are really damning. It's hard to say given that I don't know exactly which statements Harris was agreeing with.
Edited by EveryOtherHandleIsTaken on Mar 28th 2021 at 6:24:25 AM

Reminds me of the controversy that started after Yacob was made the only candidate fit to be the current Singaporean president.