Our Fanatics and Theirs

I was watching, by accident, the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other night and was struck by the language used by the NBC network anchors. As the U.S. delegation came onto the field and was met with a thunderous ovation, the NBC guy said (paraphrasing closely): “The Greeks clearly distinguish between the American people and the American government – most of them oppose U.S. foreign policy but they love and admire individual Americans.”

Fabulous! Is this the historic vindication of the New Left? For this is precisely the same language we old SDSers used back in the Sixties to describe how the Vietnamese felt about the Yankees who were napalming their fields (and sons).

Now, I wonder if we are allowed the same latitude in describing Islamic terrorism. Some of my friends on the Left are still having some trouble admitting such a thing exists – at least as some form of agency independent of U.S. imperialism.

And those who do, still have tons of trouble criticizing Islam itself. This is awful strange given the supposedly overwhelming secular nature of the American Left. The same people who can publicly, and rightfully, slap around the Pope and the institutionality of the entire international Catholic con game all of a sudden go mum when someone suggests that Islamic terrorism might – to some degree, just maybe, perhaps, sorta-kinda- have its roots in Islam itself!

Oh, heavens no. A thousand curses on your 72 virgins! To criticize Islam itself is ipso facto racist.

But are you sure? Why can’t we apply our Vietnam/U.S. Olympic Team standard to this question? Something like: we clearly distinguish between individual Moslems some of whom we love and admire on the one hand and on the other the obscurantist traditions of a major religion which refuses a modernizing reformation and which conspires to keep hundreds of millions (especially women) in spiritual and even physical bondage?

Well, with a hat tip to Carl Bromley of Nation Books, and via Wicked Thoughts, click here for an interview that ought to get your gears grinding (if not, pal, you are already dead).

The interview is with Bahram Soroush, an Iranian leftist civil rights activist living in the U.K. He was interviewed for satellite TV on a program produced by the Iranian Communist Workers Party (For those of you conservatives who hiccup over this, remember that in the fight against Islamic Fundamentalism the Marxists are your allies. They sat on the Iraqi Governing Council created by the U.S. after overthrowing Saddam). Here’s some thoughtful excerpts:

On supposed “Islamophobia:”

“…That is the trouble with this term, because I think it is being used for scaremongering, for political scaremongering, for what I would call 'intellectual blackmail', and trying to stifle any criticism of Islam, which is very legitimate. Given the atrocities of the Islamic movements and organisations in countries such as Iran and Afghanistan, and the carnage of September 11, the honour killings, which are claiming hundreds of lives everyday, and so on it is very understandable that people should have a dislike of Islam and that this negative perception of Islam should have grown. So, of course, any attacks or any ghettoisation of people because they follow a particular religion should be condemned wherever we find them, but that should not be confused with racial attacks, something where I think there is a great deal of confusion…

…Well, a lot of Islamic lobbyists and their supporters, even from within the Left, like the Socialist Workers' Party here in the UK, are very fond of portraying any criticism of Islam as racism. So it has become almost politically incorrect to criticise Islam. And this is apart from the fact that even physically you should be really careful! Because in countries like Iran if you criticise Islam you should await a Fatwa against you and the punishment can be torture and execution. In the West, where at least political Islam is not in power, what you are witnessing is that you are being blackmailed into silence by this scaremongering. Racial attacks do happen and they should be confronted head on. But at the same time we should make it clear that this attempt is being made to portray anything that is directed against immigrants and blacks and members of so-called ethnic minorities as an attack against Islam…

…Take the case of the Islamic Republic in Iran. It is not just a group of pious believers in Islam who out of their purity are trying to practise their ideas. That's not the case. It's really a political movement, which has a political agenda and is using a religion that has an infinite capacity for violence and for being against freedom, against the basic rights of the people, to defend their own position, their own privileged status. This is used by Islamic organisations as well throughout the world…

Great reading, Make sure you the read the whole piece before sounding off.

Comments

[Beth Sestanovich]

Checking out your blog Marc....

[Pat]

Great article, Mark, and that thought process explains why politicians have relegated our soldiers to cooling their heels outside the "holy city" of Najaf out of respect for a building, while a bunch of bad guys are inside said building stockpiling weapons and shooting at our soldiers--a contradiction completely ignored by every journalist in the known world.

[Michael Turner]

Having read to the end of this somewhat incoherent interview, I find: "They say, don't call them 'Islamic terrorists'; call them 'terrorists'. This is an attempt to separate something, which, in my view, is inseparable. Because what Richard Stone and people like him should try and show us is in what way these acts of terrorism, or the violence we are seeing everyday, are incompatible with the tenets of Islam."

Gee, I think quite a few muslim clerics and intellectuals in the Middle East and elsewhere have already done that. And keep doing it.

Strictly speaking, the suffix "-phobe" translates as "IRRATIONAL fear of ..." An islamophobe, to my mind, is someone who spouts nonsense about Islam as some general threat. As an ex-Catholic, I suppose I'm still slightly christianophobic and may never quite get over it, but I've had to finally admit that the Pope isn't out to get me.

And I don't think we should have terms like "Islamic Terrorist" unless we also have terms like "Catholic Terrorism", "Hindu Terrorism" and so on. "Islamofascist terror" I have no problem with, because it ties the terrorism - a political act of violence - to the ideology. "Islamic fundamentalist terror" I likewise have no problem with, because I have yet to meet a fundamentalist from any religion who has no radical political agenda.

As for equating "islamophobia" and racism, admittedly this is pretty silly in strict terms, but 'phobes of all streaks don't think in strict terms when it's too hard on their overtaxed brains. I've met people who don't know that Iranians are racially different enough from Arabs that Hitler felt he could safely have them categorized as "Aryan", who don't know that the Middle East only contains about 25% of the world's muslims, who don't know that Sikhism is a separate religion (turbans, doncha know), who don't even know that Indonesia is a different country than India. They've never met a white muslim, and they've never met an Arab Christian. So, to a very good first approximation, islamophobic behavior and thinking is hardly distinguishable from racism anyway, since it's often race that triggers the association with islam in the first place.

Yes, islamophobia exists. It's an irrational fear of a particular religion. And it's very widespread.

[steve]

Some of my friends on the Left are still having some trouble admitting such a thing exists – at least as some form of agency independent of U.S. imperialism.

--actually, most mainstream non-left analysts wouldn't agree with your belief in such 'independence', nota bene serious analysts like Juan Cole or journalists like Ahmad Rashid. Then again, even Colin Powell wouldn't agree with such assertions, nor would the president of the Philipines.

[Michael Turner]

Pat writes: ".... that thought process explains why politicians have relegated our soldiers to cooling their heels outside the "holy city" of Najaf out of respect for a building, while a bunch of bad guys are inside said building stockpiling weapons and shooting at our soldiers--a contradiction completely ignored by every journalist in the known world."

"Completely ignored by every journalist in the known world?" Not sure where this "known world" is that you're talking about, but on my planet, Earth, journalists don't tend to belabor the obvious: Najaf IS a holy city in Shi'a Islam, and severe damage or outright destruction of its religious core would provoke Iraqi outrage all across the spectrum.

Scare quotes around "holy city"? You mean Najaf is NOT a holy city to a majority of Iraqis, 98% of Iranians, and a non-insubstantial minority of Saudis? The temple is just a building? Try framing an effective war plan around those assumptions and see where it gets you.

I think the REAL "thought process" might actually be informed by intelligent calculation on both sides.

India could root insurgent separatist Sikhs out of a central temple without destabilizing India because

(1) the vast majority of Indians are NOT Sikhs,

(2) the Indian government is indisputably legitimate to most Indians,

(3) India is not bordered by a Sikh religious state with double India's population.

Iraq is a very long way from meeting such standards.

The Occupation force leaders know this. The provisional Iraqi government knows this. And the Sadrists know this. In fact, the only person I've noticed recently who can't seem to figure it out is you, Pat. Pull your head out of the sand. (I will generously assume that it's a hole in sand, and not a certain other kind of hole.)

[steve]

michael turner, dont' you get it? them evil, us good. vatican holy, najaf evil.

[Michael J. Totten]

Steve,

Who said Najaf is the evil antithesis to the Vatican? I must have missed that one.

[steve]

Who said Najaf is the evil antithesis to the Vatican? I must have missed that one.

-- all the business about 'let's bomb the holy moses out of the shrine' [caution: not a direct quote]...musta missed that too?

[Marc Cooper]

The left correctkly identifies the ADL as an organization that often uses the broad charge of anti-semitism to promote a rather narrow POLITICAL agenda, usually a pro-Israeli position. Who is the "ADL" of the Islamic world? Is anyone willing to indentify them? The organizations that use the charge of anti-Islamic racism to promote the POLITICAL interests of Islamic states and groups? I can.

[steve]

The organizations that use the charge of anti-Islamic racism to promote the POLITICAL interests of Islamic states and groups? I can.

--ACLU? The Nation? Monthly Review?
Center for Constitutional Rights? SEIU?

[Michael J. Totten]

Marc,

The answer to you question is CAIR.

[steve]

http://www.cair-net.org/html/911statements.html

[Natasha]

HOT article cooper! In between the groupthink, the filipino studies circles, and the constant threat of being deployed for "House Visits For Kerry" this is a breath of fresh air.

[miklos rosza]

Brave post, Marc.

[steve]

brave? what is he saying that you don't hear out in the echo chamber of blogistan? or in the mainstream media for that matter?
brave. hmm. you mean for attacking CAIR Marc will be subject to threats of murder? or torture? talk about heightened states of anxiety.