The False Narrative That Criticizing Islam Is About Hating Brown People
At Front Page, Danusha V. Goska explains:
There are several problems with Islam-apologist dogma that any criticism of Islam is motivated by white supremacy and xenophobic hatred of foreign, brown people, and their insistence that criticism of Islam is linked to hate crimes against Muslims. The most obvious problem: America and the West host millions of foreign, brown Hindus, Buddhists, and Confucians. There is no real threat of "Hindu-phobia," "Buddhist-phobia," or "Confucian-phobia." Rather, Hindu guru Deepak Chopra, Buddhist reincarnate Dalai Lama, and Confucius-inspired Tiger Moms are beloved. Mahatma Gandhi has achieved virtual saint status - indeed Gandhi's image graces the cover of Robert Ellsberg's All Saints, a Catholic publication.Clearly, Islam is different from Hindusim, Confucianism, and Buddhism. Clearly, the problem is not the foreign-ness or brown-ness of Muslims. There is a villain, an antagonist, a bad guy here, and that bad guy is not a white supremacist.
Former and current Muslims, many of them foreign and brown, have produced a library of critiques of Islam that agree in every respect with non-Muslim critiques of Islam. There is a significant enough body of literature by those raised in Muslim cultures thoroughly to indict Islam on every count raised by non-Muslim critics. Both Muslim-raised critics of Islam and non-Muslim critics of Islam speak as one voice. Both groups agree that jihad and gender apartheid are problematical aspects of Islam. Both Muslim-born and non-Muslim critics point to the exact same Koran verses, hadiths, history and cultural trends. These facts are not racist, nor are these facts dependent on the culture of the speaker for their truth value.
Ibn Warraq was born in India; his Muslim family joined the mass exodus to Pakistan after its founding in 1947. Local educational options were limited to madrassas, so Warraq's father sent him to the UK for schooling. He studied Islam at the graduate level with the influential scholar William Montgomery Watt. The 1989 fatwa ordering the death of author Salman Rushdie was a turning point for Warraq. Even nice Muslims insisted to him that Rushdie must be killed, and even Westerners who were quick to criticize Christianity refused to critique Islam or defend Rushdie. Warraq, who had been a shy child, and an apolitical teacher and businessman, began to publish Islam-critical articles. In the three decades since; his activity has been wide-ranging, and it includes publishing Why I Am Not a Muslim in 1995.
And this, from Goska's piece, from Hamed Abdel-Samad about Mohammed, is instructive:
[Abdel-Samad] says that Mohammed can never be a role model for people in the twenty-first century. "He made his living from war, selling slaves, the tax he was imposing on unbelievers, and assaulting tribes' caravans. I cannot consider a man a role model who was married to nine women at the same time. I cannot have someone as a role model who executed hundreds of prisoners of war who surrendered to him. I cannot have somebody as a role model who married a six-year-old girl while he was over fifty years old." Further, he says, "I don't believe in the reform-ability of Islam ... You cannot screw the Koran till it fits our time. As long as they (Islamic ideas) are from God, who am I, who are you, to correct God?" Rather, he argues, we must look anew at Islam as a human creation, and regard Muslims, as human beings, as capable of reform.
And Gorska winds up with this:
Yes, there are such things as white supremacists. Yes, there are bigots who don't like Muslims. But when it comes to responsible criticism of Islam, criticism that adheres to scholarly rigor, the words "Islamophobe," "white supremacist" and "imperialist" must be recognized for what they are: propagandistic smokescreens whose only goal is to protect an edifice, Islam, from the same necessary and cleansing intellectual sunlight that is permitted to illuminate every other belief system. Jihad and gender apartheid hurt real, live human beings - most of them Muslims. Every day another little girl like Ilham Mahdi al Assi, who was raped to death at age 13, is forced to "marry" an adult man. Another Mallali Nurzi, trapped by an arranged marriage and no civil rights, burns herself to death in Afghanistan. Another Iqbal, a fifteen-year-old Pakistani dancer, is attacked with acid. There are more Sarahs and Aminas, two Texas teens who were honor-murdered by their father. There are more like Mayar Mohamed Mousa, a 17-year-old Egyptian girl who died from complications during an FGM procedure. Every day another boy is lost to dreams of bringing on the caliphate by shedding the blood of innocents - or his own blood. These human beings deserve the truth. Those who squelch the truth about jihad and gender apartheid aid the fist, the bomber, the hand holding the razor. Those courageous enough to tell the truth bring closer the day dreamed of by lovers of freedom and dignity, heroes like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sara Azmeh Rasmussen, and Hamed Abdel-Samad.
Mahatma Gandhi has achieved virtual saint status
Not bad for a child molesting racist
lujlp at May 10, 2017 11:43 AM
These blog posts never get any less provincial, but they attract ever-less comment.
Crid at May 10, 2017 4:07 PM
Criticizing Islam is not racist at all. There are White muslims and Black muslims. The problem is not Whiteness or Blackness -- as is always the case. The problem is ISLAM.
mpetrie98 at May 10, 2017 8:05 PM
Tell me also, what good comes from describing something as a "false narrative"?
I thought we weren't into pussyfooting on this blog.
Why not just call it "a lie," or "wrong"?
Crid at May 10, 2017 8:28 PM
Tell me also, what good comes from describing something as a "false narrative"?
I thought we weren't into pussyfooting on this blog.
Why not just call it "a lie," or "wrong"?
Crid at May 10, 2017 8:28 PM
Because *false narrative* is one of those woke words you only get to use aftter throwing down 60k a year of borrowed money at some smarmy liberal arts college on a worthless degree in gender studies.
Ya gotta pay your dues man.
Isab at May 11, 2017 2:35 AM
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