What is "Islamaphobia"?

Nodin

volchitsa wrote: »

Sorry. Which thing?

You certainly haven't answered the original question, if that's what you're referring to.

That's fine, your stance has become clear albeit by default.

You've accepted that the Bangladeshi government can't take steps even just to protect its own non violent citizens from murder by Islamic extremists for fear of encouraging yet more support among the rest of the population.

If you had any plausible explanation for why their population is likely to harbour sympathy for brutal murderers I'm sure you'd have given it already. What other gangs can hack innocent civilians to death in the street and still expect to be treated with such kid gloves by the authorities?

....any gang which has relatively unknown membership and can terrorise the local population - eg Mexico, Columbia, El Salvador, parts of L.A. etc.

volchitsa

Nodin wrote: »

....any gang which has relatively unknown membership and can terrorise the local population - eg Mexico, Columbia, El Salvador, parts of L.A. etc.

You seem to be replying to a completely different post to anything I've posted.

Though FWIW, drugs gangs are indeed often suspected of getting favourable treatment in impoverished Central American states, because of the unbelievable amounts of money the "narcotraficants" have access to, to bribe officials and to buy support in the slums. It doesn't stop their governments expressing strong anti-gang sentiments though, they just don't always act on them. So it's not really relevant here.

And for memory, my actual question was not whether these killers are terrorizing people. That's what they're trying to do, so obviously they are.

But I actually asked you about why the government prefers to remain neutral, not even expressing criticism of them - not something that happens in Mexico for example. That's a very different question from the one you appear to be trying to answer.

Look, I totally get that you can't answer honestly without facing your issues of cognitive dissonance, and that's fine by me. You don't have to answer, you know - you can just drop it any time you want. But do stop trying to rewrite my question for me. Ok?

Nodin

volchitsa wrote: »

You seem to be replying to a completely different post to anything I've posted.

Though FWIW, drugs gangs are indeed often suspected of getting favourable treatment in impoverished Central American states, because of the unbelievable amounts of money the "narcotraficants" have access to, to bribe officials and to buy support in the slums.

And shootings, bombings, cutting off heads, cutting up people alive...that kind of thing.

volchitsa

Nodin wrote: »

And shootings, bombings, cutting off heads, cutting up people alive...that kind of thing.

Totally irrelevant to what you were asked. The Mexican government has no problem expressing its abhorrence to these actions, it just can't always ensure individual members aren't corrupted by the sheer amount of money the narcotraficants have available to use as bribes. In a poor country, that's a real problem.

Pakistan has a similar problem with Islamists, but it's because of their connection with Islam, not because the Islamists have more money than the government.

Bangladesh is now facing a similar problem. It's all the starker though because unlike Pakistan, the Bangladeshi constitution is secular, and they have a secular government.

So it's really a question of the government being extremely conscious that it absolutely mustn't be seen to do or say anything that could be presented as any criticism of Islam itself. That gives these extremists a huge PR advantage as far as the population is concerned. Unfortunately. So that's why free-thinking bloggers will probably continue to die in Muslim countries while their governments do little or nothing to protect them. Because the teaching in Islam officially supports killings apostates.

jank

As Sam Harris said, Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas. We should be able to freely judge it, critise it and mock it without the fear of being castigated by middle class western apologists as Islamaphobic.

Michael OBrien

jank wrote: »

As Sam Harris said, Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas. We should be able to freely judge it, critise it and mock it without the fear of being castigated by middle class western apologists as Islamaphobic.

Just a point of clarification, Sam did later admit that was a bit of a strong statement and went for Islam is A motherlode of bad ideas, which is more true than THE motherlode, as there are probably equal or worse ideologies out there. He stated he got caught up in the moment in the 'debate' (shouting match) and made his case too strongly on that point.

Michael OBrien

Nodin wrote: »

And shootings, bombings, cutting off heads, cutting up people alive...that kind of thing.

The theological issue with a religion adds extra complexity than normally available when dealing with extremists or criminals that is not present with secular crime.
It is very risky for a government to criticize actions that have strong religious precedent in a community that is heavily steeped in that religion, at a fundamental level. Cries for their heads can easily occur, and they know it, if they go against the teachings of the mainstream religion, or seem to be siding with the 'western values' over Islam.
There are many levels of adherence in a religion, especially one that is heavily focused on authority and obedience. The extremists do have support among fundamentalists for their actions, and radicals can inflame those fundamentalists to become dangerous with enough rhetoric. Islamic history is filled with such instances, even recently where a politician was killed by his own bodyguard for going against the flow and seeking mercy instead of retribution for a perceived slight against their prophet or religion.

130Kph

Noel Plumb (a youtube blogger some may be familiar with) analyses some contradictory answers in a survey of UK Muslim attitudes from February this year.

Skip to 26:10 for the segment below-
45% disagreed with the following statement:- Muslim clerics who preach that violence against the West can be justified are out of touch with mainstream Muslim opinion.

One possibility for the 45% figure (he thinks) is - the respondents answered earlier questions in the survey in a certain way to show Islam in a good light (aka lying).

Another possibility is remarkable: Are some Muslims in the UK bigoted against other Muslims in the UK?

While it’s a funny idea, it is a reasonable possibility and highlights again the muddled way something as half-assed and nebulous as Islam is tortuously attempting to adapt– over decades - to a Western society.

Looking at it another way, some Muslims may personally feel enlightened, but they think many of their co-coreligionists interpret Islam in a ‘conservative’ way or in the bad old way (that Islam-critics have long complained about).

Not a NSA agent

130Kph wrote: »

Noel Plumb (a youtube blogger some may be familiar with) analyses some contradictory answers in a survey of UK Muslim attitudes from February this year.

Skip to 26:10 for the segment below-
45% disagreed with the following statement:- Muslim clerics who preach that violence against the West can be justified are out of touch with mainstream Muslim opinion.

One possibility for the 45% figure (he thinks) is - the respondents answered earlier questions in the survey in a certain way to show Islam in a good light (aka lying).

Another possibility is remarkable: Are some Muslims in the UK bigoted against other Muslims in the UK?

While it’s a funny idea, it is a reasonable possibility and highlights again the muddled way something as half-assed and nebulous as Islam is tortuously attempting to adapt– over decades - to a Western society.

Looking at it another way, some Muslims may personally feel enlightened, but they think many of their co-coreligionists interpret Islam in a ‘conservative’ way or in the bad old way (that Islam-critics have long complained about).

We can see it among Christians in the west, these people think that Jesus wore blue in this situation, they think he wore red, this means they arent real Christians. Just because 2 people share a religion the strict follower sees the one as an awful person while the a la carte religious person thinks the other is a nut job.

It make sense that it would change as these people integrate more with westerners.

Smiley92a

I'm a gay man living in a majority Catholic country that just voted for same-sex marriage. I'm extremely grateful for a-la-carte religious people, without their supposed hypocrisy I'd probably be dead, in prison, or just living in secrecy and terror at this point.

There were people arguing during the campaign that voting yes was the Christian thing to do and people arguing that voting no was the Christian thing to do. There are Muslim clerics who condemn violence and ones who condone it. Arguing about which of these represents the 'authentic' version of their faith is absurd: people follow whatever bits of their holy book suits them and ignore whatever bits don't and they always have. I don't think this wishy-washy approach is a bad thing on the whole, since it lets us have things like majority Christian countries voting for same-sex marriage.

Anyway, my point about Islamophbia is: Muslims generally aren't permitted the same degree of nuance. I live in Dundalk, there were people just up the road murdering each other over religion... Except most of us know it was actually more to do with economic and political power, with religion as more of a tribal boundary and political shorthand than a motivation.

For decades, Ireland was a closed-off country that banned books and films it disapproved of and locked up unwed mothers. We know it wasn't just because Ireland was Catholic, it was more complicated than that. The new nation was attempting to create a monolithic, nationalist, 'Irish' identity for decades before the war of independence, hence the Celtic Revival. Catholicism became a large part of that identity when religious and political elites found a commonality of purpose. The people herded into the laundries and the industrial schools were, by and large very poor, evidence of the economic failure of the Irish state. The banned books and films were ones which might have disrupted the perfection of 'Irish' culture, even if their authors were Irish.

My point is that Catholicism was a huge and important factor in all of this, but it wasn't the only factor, and it wasn't even always the most important factor either. Many important people knew of the neglect and abuse in the industrial schools long before States of Fear came out, and some of my father's friends can recall Christian Brothers who were known to touch their students inappropriately, but as long as the Church remained entwined with political power, it was above reproach.

You could say the Troubles or the state of Ireland for most of it's history as an independent state was 'because of religion' and you wouldn't exactly be wrong... but it wouldn't be a very useful explanation. They were about more than that. Understanding this doesn't absolve the role religion and religious elites played in all these horrors, it merely acknowledges the complexity of things like the Troubles.

I don't know if I've made this very clear, it's late and I may be over thinking it.

TL,DR:

I don't think it's Islamophobic to condemn the actions of terrorists.

I do think it's Islamophobic to treat Muslims like they're the Borg Collective. Yeah, it boils down to 'not all Muslims...' but so what? Not all Catholics blow up pubs.