Comments on: Shut up for freedom

By: martyn

martyn — Sun, 03 Dec 2006 16:27:01 +0000

“I think its a moot point, religion (or anyother group tag) can be used as a ‘proxy’, after all, its not that hard to replace “the Asians…” with “the muslims…”.

It is if they’re not muslims.

By: Andy A

Andy A — Sat, 02 Dec 2006 11:47:03 +0000

Passerby, what you say is true as far as it goes, but the fact is that we don't have to conflate religion and race, and not everyone does. The fact that some people do so is unfortunate (and let us curse them for it), but a non sequitur in this argument. Once we accept that every time I criticise, say, Islam I am criticising South Asians (and, anyway, not all Muslims are brown-skinned), then I'll never, ever, be able to criticise Islam as an ideology again, because you will come along and say, 'Well, whatever you think, it's the people on the receiving end who matter, so stop doing it.' They matter, yes, but don't forget that there have been a number of people lately on the 'receiving end' merely of things they perceive to be insulting, such as the Pope's quoting - quoting, don't forget - Paleogolus (have I spelled that right?), that Byzantine emperor chappie; such as the Danish Mo cartoons. If you had your way, we'd be prevented from taking the piss or quoting a historical figure just because those on the 'receiving end' and a bunch of Grauniad readers would interpret it as racism, when it wouldn't be racism. What we have to do is show up those who do deliberately use criticism of religion in order to get at a racial group, and those who don't. If you study their arguments, you should be able to catch out the former and argue (if need be) on a logical level with the latter.

By: passerby

passerby — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 10:21:22 +0000

So what if one can’t be changed and the other can, when people use religion as the means to do exactly the same thing as they would do if it were a technicality of skin colour or skull shape, then the difference is totaly irrelevant to those on the receieving end.
You can moan all you want about the types who attended this demo, and how “its not really racism if..”, but so long as you pussyfoot around this people on the recieving end of islamophobic bigotry will look to those who are most outspoken about it, namely the peeps at that demonstration. Why the hell are they gonna care whether you think its the same or not?
You could make the BMI irrelevant, but i guess its much smarter to rant on about how its totaly and utterly different to be bigoted towards people on the basis of physiology, and if they don’t like it they can go ‘ship out’.

By: Andy A

Andy A — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:19:50 +0000

Hey, Monitor, I’ve just noticed that your clock is still in British Summer Time!

By: Andy A

Andy A — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 09:18:50 +0000

I agree with Aharon's first bullet point, but not the second. I agree that it may be hard for some Muslims to extricate themselves from the Muslim mindset that makes them feel that their religion and their racial distinction are one and the same. But it doesn't have to be that way. What does remain unchanged and unchangeable is one's ethnic origin. The comment about the 'human race' as the only race is fine in an emotional, feel-good sort of way (strictly, it's a species, anyway, but what he says is a useful model to use in order to encourage us to be nicer to one another), but we are here discussing the difference between racial and religionist categories, so I'm afraid we'll have to put the feel-good thing to one side as not being a useful tool in that argument. Passerby says whether religion and race are the same is a moot point, but you cannot escape the enescapable, and the inescapable here is that there are racial differences hased on the manner in which humankind categorises biological entities; and are religious differences. But the difference is that one cannot be changed, and it's plain wrong in most people's minds to persecute someone on the basis of the colour of his/her skin, angle of the eyes or whatever. Even within racial groups the same would go for people of any physical difference, such as tallness, shortness or baldness. While religion is culturally tangled with race in areas of the world where people have never known any difference, it's another matter. Cognitively, such things are going to be very different for those people from how they are for us. How can they possibly know what it's like in countries that value freedom of speech? (And you can see why a lot of nutty American religiofascists home-school their kids before sending them to these special Chrsitian academies and camps to turn them into monsters.) But most of our criticisms concern Muslims here, who do know such things, but persist in feeling 'offended' if someone draws a cartoon of a warring conquerer who would today be called a paedophile, and demand laws to be bent to suit them (there's falk of allowing sharia now for family matters, and how long before that thin end of the wedge becomes thicker?), when they (the laws) are not of the home culture. They can shut up or ship out - it's really up to them. But we'd rather, I'm sure, give a welcome to those who put down roots here, but the price they pay is that they have to leave certain things at home (just as I wouldn't take the whisky bottle to Saudi Arabia).

By: passerby

passerby — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 05:02:07 +0000

“Religion is not race. Race is not religion. Islamophobia is not racist. ”
I think its a moot point, religion (or anyother group tag) can be used as a ‘proxy’, after all, its not that hard to replace “the Asians…” with “the muslims…”.
Just lump it all under xenophobia, treat it the same no matter who it comes from, but learn to distinguish from genuine xenophobia, and merely finding certain customs a bit odd, questionable maybe even.
The only reason ‘race card’ bullshit crops up is because society has made ‘race’ into something almost sacred.

By: Hector

Hector — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 21:56:57 +0000

From Harry’s Place:
“Shami Chakrabarti, Director of Liberty, seemed to puzzle the audience with her remarks [..]”

No surprise there then.

By: aharon

aharon — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:03:41 +0000

Thought it was more about bananas then colour, Tiger. ..And religions, in many ways, are the human versions of a banana skin..

Yes Nick, we do tend to discriminate in all sort of ways, putting varios things together and others – pulling apart. When such discriminations are dogmatic and/or done without self critique – we get things like BNP, people blowing themselves in london and a community of tacid supporters, as well as calls for people to shut-up in the name of free speech..

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 17:53:36 +0000

The problem is that there are an awful lot of people that can’t discriminate between religion and race, their mind works on the principal that “ther’e different from me so it’s wrong” that, unforntunatly, is life.

By: Tiger Dunc

Tiger Dunc — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 14:26:57 +0000

Aharon – There you go again – Bringing colour into what is a debat about religion. It is an ethnically diverse world. Anymore of that and I’ll have you banned.