Pew on Views on Jews, Muslims and Roma

I'm indebted to my friend Georgina for drawing my attention to this section of the Pew Research Global Attitudes Project from May 2014:

Many people in the seven European Union nations surveyed express negative views about minority groups in their country. In particular, negative attitudes toward Roma (sometimes also known as Gypsies) are common, while many also give Muslims unfavorable ratings. Negative attitudes toward Jews are less pervasive, although substantial minorities express an unfavorable opinion about Jews as well, especially in Greece where nearly half the public hold this view. Negative sentiments about all three groups are consistently more common among people on the ideological right.

Of course that was nearly 8 months ago and much has happened since then like the attack on Gaza by Israel and the attack on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish shop by islamists.  And of course it doesn't survey Jewish opinions of Muslims or vice versa.  On that latter point, I wonder what some Muslims make of Theresa May's recent speech against anti-Jewish racism delivered round about the same time as her ministerial colleague, Eric Pickles was sending a patronising missive to mosques throughout the UK. And on that latter take a look at Michael Rosen's compare and contrast piece.

Ayaan Nations?

Who is this Ayaan Hirsi Ali person?  I've been away for a little over a week and I've seen this former Somali former Muslim in various parts of the blogosphere, mostly in connection with an invitation/uninvitation from Brandeis University.

So where to turn when you have no clue about a bit of a news item?  Wikipedia of course.  First up I looked for Brandeis Uni.  Scrolling down I find the Hirsi Ali controversy.  Here's the opener:

In 2014, Brandeis courted controversy when first inviting, then after public pressure from amongst others the Council on American-Islamic Relations publicly uninviting Hirsi Ali, the outspoken campaigner against female genital mutilation, and withdrawing her nomination for an honorary degree. ^[32].

Now according to this Flying Rodent chap, who I keep quoting lately mostly because he wades through all manner of far-right but mainstream stuff so that you and I don't have to, this reported "outspoken[ness]... against female genital mutilation" is somewhat reductionistic.

He seems to be saying that Hirsi Ali makes the following claims:

- Muslims are inherently incapable of negotiating in good faith because of their religion, or that

- We should have a war on Islam generally and specifically not a war on Islamists or extremists and terrorists, or that

- Repressive, religiously-targeted laws intentionally aimed at one faith only are highly desirable

Me? I don't know what to think.  I just noticed that her first name looks a bit like Aryan and her politics look a tad Aryan too.

Harry's Placer Calls AWL on Guru's Racism

Here's a remarkable comment from Sarah Annes Brown of Harry's Place and a few other zionist sites.  She's criticising Sean Matgamna for a racist screed from 2002 reposted recently on the Shiraz Socialist blog of Jim Denham.

Denham doesn't actually post the most explicitly racist part of Matgamna's piece, which is here, but Sarah, who did a bit of digging, quotes it in her comment:

Sarah AB said,

November 19, 2013 at 6:52 am

Jim – some of the analysis may be reasonable, whether or not one agrees with it. But this seems different:

“Like desert tribes of primitive Muslim simplicity and purity enviously eyeing a rich and decadent walled city and sharpening their knives, or country folk in former Yugoslavia eyeing a city like Dubrovnik, so, now, much of the Islamic world looks with envy, covetousness, religious self-righteousness and active hostility on the rich, decadent, infidel-ridden, sexually sinful advanced capitalist societies.

Neither covert Western encouragement, nor neo-con manipulation, is the fundamental root of the luxuriantly thriving Islamic fundamentalism.

The existence of large Muslim minorities in Europe is making political Islam a force well beyond the traditionally Muslim world: the Islam which failed outside the walls of Vienna over 300 years ago is now a force in the great cities of Europe.”

There’s a nasty snark in the first sentence which implies a low view of Muslims generally, appearing to imply almost praise for the ‘simplicity’ of these tribes and then making it clear they are bloodthirsty savages (unlike other people in the Dark Ages/Middle Ages). There are problems with political Islam, sure, but this language is tendentious. Also in the last sentence the enemy is not ‘political Islam’ – just Islam – and this becomes a continuation of a clash which notes dates back to at least 1683, an existential clash with Islam, rather than a clash between one particular manifestation of Islam which has arisen due to a range of social and political factors as Matgamna seemed at first to be arguing.

Now that is good.  But it gets better when Jim tries to pull rank on the non-Marxist Sarah:

Jim Denham said,

November 19, 2013 at 8:32 am

I honestly don’t see any “nasty snark” there, Sarah. I realise you don’t share all the “leftist” criticisms of Sean’s piece, and also that you’re not a Marxist (so, for instance the fact that much of Sean’s terminology derives from Engels, won’t cut any ice with you),but the following strikes me as a pretty devastating riposte to “leftist” critics of Sean’s piece:
http://www.workersliberty.org/story/2013/11/18/reply-yassamine-mather

Now Sarah responds in a way that would get a regular opponent banned:

Sarah AB said,

November 19, 2013 at 10:21 am

Hi Jim – don’t you think there’s a disjunct between ‘simplicity and purity’ and ‘sharpening their knives’? I can’t say I find that article deals satisfactorily with my first objection or, I think, at all with my second (the Vienna one). I do indeed find the invocation of Engels a perverse kind of appeal to authority. A bit like citing Marx to excuse Atzmon.

 Wow!  What's that rule again?  I think Sarah just bravely broke Godwin's Law but there's nothing wrong with that.

Of course there's a quick reversion to type when Jim denies invoking Engels as an authority and Sarah denies having accused Jim of that anyway.  But those old one-two comments were well worth posting.  Now she's made me late for the gym but at least she's confirmed I'm not too old to like surprises.

War on Islam?

According to Ben White and now Richard Bartholomew the UK's army and Ministry of Defence are being advised by a chap with a record of scathing condemnation of Islam and "islamisation" of the west.

Here's Ben in Electronic Intifada:

It has been revealed that a British Ministry of Defense advisor — who helped write the “religious engagement strategy” for troops occupying the Afghan province of Kandahar — believes Islam might “be the rod of God’s anger,” raising disturbing questions for the military and the UK government.

Patrick Sookhdeo, who teaches at the UK’s Defense Academy and has served in the role of “cultural advisor” to troops in Afghanistan and southern Iraq, is also a regular speaker at events held by churches and Christian organizations internationally.

Speaking in a Washington DC church in 2007, Sookhdeo wondered if “[there is a] danger facing the West, particularly with Islam, might Islam be the rod of God’s anger?” (“Understanding Radicalization and Islamicization,” Capitol Hill Baptist Church)

Jumping to more on this "rod of anger stuff", Ben White asked Sookhdeo what it all meant:

He said that the idea of Islam as the “rod of God’s anger” was “developed by the leadership of the Syrian Orthodox Church about 75 years after the death of [the prophet] Muhammad. Faced with the fact that most of the lands that had constituted Christian territory had been lost in the Arab invasions, the church leadership posed the question why this had occurred. Instead of laying the blame on the Muslims and the Arab invasions, they concluded that it was their own fault because they had sinned and gone away from their faith in God by neglecting to be truly Christian in terms of love and compassion, to be humble and not to be motivated by money and power.”

Sookhdeo said that he had used the “rod of God’s anger” concept to ask if Christian churches today are now being punished for their “lack of faithfulness to God.” He added: “Could it be that Islam, which is now seen to be the dominant religion that may well replace Christianity in the future, can be seen as God’s instrument? This is not a negative comment of Islam, but a negative comment on the Church with her intrinsic weaknesses and failures.”

To which Richard Bartholomew responds:

This is somewhat disingenuous: the notion of Islam as the “rod of God’s anger” clearly fits into a long tradition in which disasters are explained as being expressions of God’s chastisement; being placed into a category of calamities is hardly a positive comment. Further, the expression itself is derived from Isaiah 10, where it is applied to Assyria; the Biblical author suggests that being the “rod of God’s anger” has its downside:

“Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath!”… When the Lord has finished all his work against Mount Zion and Jerusalem, he will say, “I will punish the king of Assyria for the willful pride of his heart and the haughty look in his eyes… Does the ax raise itself above the person who swings it, or the saw boast against the one who uses it?… Therefore, the Lord, the Lord Almighty, will send a wasting disease upon his sturdy warriors;… The Light of Israel will become a fire… The splendor of his forests and fertile fields it will completely destroy…”

Further discussion of how Christians used the “rod of God’s anger” concept in the context of early Islam can be found in a couple essays in the book Redefining Christian Identity: Cultural Interaction in the Middle East Since the Rise of Islam, edited by J.J. van Ginkel, H.L. Murre-van den Berg, and T.M. van Lint (Leuven: Peeters, 2005).

Vulgarized versions of the general concept can also been seen in contemporary American conservative evangelicalism: post-9/11, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell notoriously suggested that God had allowed the attack to occur (which is quite not the same thing as causing it) because of liberalism in American society; a current American bestseller called The Harbinger claims that American failure to return to religion following the attack means that further disasters will occur. Last year, an anti-gay evangelist named Bradlee Dean suggested that God would “raise up” Muslims to execute gay people because of the USA’s unwillingness to implement less severe anti-gay measures.

All very unpleasant stuff. According to Richard, this Sookhdeo chap has quite a good academic pedigree and his work has won serious praise but the appropriateness of his advisory role to the UK military is surely questionable.

David Cameron flies the flag

From Dave Brown in The Independent:

Guess who's coming to dinner

There's yet another conference, supposedly on antisemitism, at Yale at the mo'. It started a couple of days ago and finishes today. It's called Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity.

Follow the link and have a look at the programme. It includes a "gala dinner" and a star studded cast of right-wing Israel advocates.

Shaul Maggid, blogging at The Forward, is none too happy about its right-wing tilt:

While the title of the Yale conference “Global Antisemitism: A Crisis of Modernity” implies a broad spectrum, when one peruses the paper titles, antisemitism in the Muslim world predominates. The first plenary session has papers entitled, “Arab and Islamic Antisemitism Today,” “Conspiracy Theories, Antisemitism, an Jews in Turkey Today,” “The Jihad Flotilla to Gaza: Provocative – Antisemitic – Not Humanitarian,” “ and “Nazi Propaganda to the Arab World and its After Effects in Postwar Militant Islam.” While all worthy topics, one gets the idea. Of approximately 91 papers (I exclude keynote addresses), at least 23 are explicitly about Arab or Muslim Antisemitism, 3 are explicitly about Christian Antisemitism, 6 are about the Holocaust, and 3 are about self-hating Jews (all included in a panel called “Self-Hatred and Contemporary Antisemitism” - the title of the panel is itself worthy of a panel). The others are about antisemitism in other parts of the world, are more theoretically oriented, or have titles that are too non-descript to define.

I wonder where Dr.David Hirsh's (yep, that's the one) speech fits into these categories. He is billed thus:

• Dr. David Hirsh, Goldsmiths College, University of London: “Struggles Over the Boundaries of Legitimate Discourse: Antisemitism and Bad-Faith Allegations”

This seems to fit with Dr Hirsh's claim that allegations (I think he means any allegation) of bad faith accusations of antisemitism are themselves antisemitic. It wasn't always the case with him but he's obviously still evolving.

Other speeches at the conference include the following:

Keynote: Itamar Marcus, Director, Palestinian Media Watch: “The Central Role of Palestinian Antisemitism in Creating the Palestinian Identity” and

• Professor Phyllis Chesler, City University of New York: “The History and Psychological Roots of Antisemitism Among Feminists, their Gradual Stalinization and Palestinianization”

Philip Weiss notes that the conference appears to be an attack on "Palestinian identity, ’self-hating’ Jews, and anyone who criticizes Israel". In other words he is doing exactly what Dr Hirsh is going to be speechifying against. He is accusing the conference of bad faith. He is also disturbed that this conference bears the imprimatur and presumably some funding from Yale itself, not the Israel advocacy community.

I don't find that so strange; bang out of order but not strange. What I do find very strange is that Dr Hirsh hasn't mentioned his role in this conference anywhere on the Engage website. He usually announces his attendance at these things and gives a report back afterwards. Perhaps he didn't want to spoil the surprise for when he reports back.

ADL denounced by CNN anchor

Well this could be a career decision by a courageous CNN anchor, Fareed Zakaria.

I don't think any of us has written about the breathtaking hypocrisy of the misnamed Anti-Defamation League in opposing the construction of a mosque and Muslim community centre a good two blocks away from where the World Trade Centre once stood. Well, just quickly, there has been a proposal to construct a mosque about two blocks or so away from "ground zero". Lots of Tea Bag Types, or whatever they're called, have opposed the project that they are calling the "ground zero mosque". And the ADL has lent its weight to what is a nasty islamophobic campaign smearing all Muslims as having been involved in the twin towers attack known as 9//11. Here's the statement from the ADL:

Ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right," the ADL said in a statement. "In our judgment, building an Islamic center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain — unnecessarily — and that is not right.

Now, the ADL give awards for this and that and this Farood Zakaria got the Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize. The what? Never mind what. It was a prize that this Farood Zakaria got and now he's returning it. This is from the Huffington Post:

Five years ago, the ADL honored me with its Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize," Zakaria writes in next week's Newsweek. "I was thrilled to get the award from an organization that I had long admired. But I cannot in good conscience keep it anymore. I have returned both the handsome plaque and the $10,000 honorarium that came with it. I urge the ADL to reverse its decision. Admitting an error is a small price to pay to regain a reputation.

This guy writes for Newsweek and is a CNN anchor. I hope we won't be placing ex- in front of those job titles he currently still has. Mind you, how did he ever admire the ADL?

But he is a plucky chap. Foxman is on the case:

"I am not only saddened but stunned and somewhat speechless by your decision to return the ADL Hubert H. Humphrey First Amendment Freedoms Prize, you accepted in 2005," ADL National Director Abraham Foxman said in a letter to Zakaria. "As someone I greatly respect for engaging in discussion and dialogue with an open mind I would have expected you to reach out to me before coming to judgment."

Foxman added that the League "did not oppose the right for an Islamic Center or a mosque to be built" but rather "[made] an appeal based solely on the issues of location and sensitivity."

But the plucky chap responded:

Does Foxman believe that bigotry is OK if people think they're victims? Does the anguish of Palestinians, then, entitle them to be anti-Semitic?

Of course not! According to Foxman, the Palestinians don't even have the right to be anguished.

Campaign Against Criminalising Communities

Here's a letter in today's Independent on the racist stereotyping of Muslims by various state agencies in the UK:

Smears and abuse of al-Qa'ida suspects

The Pakistani students accused of a terrorist plot have been spared deportation to torture, but they have been subjected to more abuse by the British state (" 'Al-Qa'ida operative' must not be deported to Pakistan, says judge", 19 May). As a present-day star chamber, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) has again accepted racist stereotyping of Muslims as terrorist threats, based partly on secret evidence which remains unknown to the accused and their defence lawyers. This character assassination is a substitute for a criminal trial, with its guaranteed procedures for testing evidence. SIAC colludes with MI5 and the Home Office in this attack on democratic rights.

Les Levidow, Campaign Against Criminalising Communities (CAMPACC), London NW5

Islamophobia on steroids

Enough with the 9/11 conspiracy theories. We have one much better: the evil trrrsts fixing beauty pageants!!!  Or did the society of the spectacle go totally bonkers? We report, you decide.

And you thought beauty queens' infighting was fierce. No pageant managed by The Donald would be complete without its own outbreak of culture war...

This week, Lebanese-American immigrant Rima Fakih of Michigan was crowned Miss USA — maybe the first contestant of Arab or Muslim background to win...the highest decibels have been reserved for her Muslim Arab background (though the contestant herself has spoken little about religious matters, stressing that her family observes both Muslim and Christian holidays).

Daniel Pipes, who publishes a right-leaning blog on Middle Eastern affairs, pointed to a "surprising frequency of Muslims winning beauty pageants." While allowing that "they are all attractive" — Pipes, a former board member of the U.S. Institute for Peace, posted pictures of several — he said that their victories "make me suspect an odd form of affirmative action."

Pipes didn't theorize how shadowy beauty-pageant fixers might be greasing the skids for contestants — but other political bloggers were happy to advance more heated pronouncements.

"Miss Hezbollah is now Miss USA," declared conservative radio talk show host Debbie Schlussel, saying that Fakih's relatives in Lebanon had ties to the terrorist organization based there. Schlussel also said Fakih received some financial backing from onetime Hezbollah supporter Imad Hamad — or, as Schlussel put it, Fakih's "bid for the pageant was financed by an Islamic terrorist." Suggesting the pageant was "rigged," Schlussel wrote off Fakih's victory to a "politically correct, Islamo-pandering climate."

Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin saw a conspiracy afoot, too — generic rather than Muslim-specific this time. Malkin mocked Fakih as a "gaffetastic" contestant who tripped over her gown as well as over her answer to a question about birth control — exposing Fakih's ignorance, Malkin argued, about what constitutes a "controlled substance" and what the purpose of health care is. "Looks like the Miss USA pageant didn't want to risk the wrath of the open-borders mob," Malkin said. (Yahoo News)