Harry’s Place Racism Watch - Part 1
Harrys’ Place, also known to it’s opponents as the Brown Sauce - on account of the frequent appearance of Far Right racist comments in its comment threads, the well known neoliberal and staunchly pro-Zionist blog has in place what by now practically amounts to a policy of deleting/banning ‘anti-Zionist' commenters (I use quote marks because anti-Zionism like most movements is rather a broad church). Bloggers like me, 'The Hasbara Buster' and Tony Greenstein (himself here on HP’s racism) have had comments deleted or have been banned in the past or present. This censorship is based on a standard Zionist trope: anti-Zionism equals antisemitism and thus anti-Zionist critiques of Israel can be dismissed as racism and the deletions and bans justified on the grounds of ‘keeping it clean’. Needless to say as an 'anti-Zionist' I disagree with the AZ = AS equation but that isn’t the object of this post: the alleged identity of anti-Zionism and antisemitism has been proved false extensively elsewhere, see e.g. Tony Greenstein’s blog for extensive debunking.
The question I’m asking is why if the Brown Sauce is so keen on scrubbing its comment sections from “
This post is one in a series of posts aimed at exposing racism in HP’s comment threads and filling up the first instalment with excellent examples of deep seated racism was made particularly easy by a post by frequent HP flyer ‘Sarah AB’, clunkily and with hindsight also ironically titled Anti-Muslim Bigotry vs. Islamophobia. I won’t go into Sarah’s piece, which strikes me not to put a finer point to it as a bit of a w*nk piece. Apparently ‘Islamophobia’ is somehow tainted as a term and ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’ is to be preferred. Whatever Sarah, you say tomato and I say… tomato.
So lets get that party started and what follows now is your finest selection of… erm, Islamophobic commentary (two are just plain anti-religious nuttery), lifted from the comment section of said piece, presented here completely unadulterated, any emphasis by the authors reproduced and none added, for your delectation. A sick bag at the ready is recommended for sensitive souls.
Peter @ 26 January 2012, 10:39 pm
Exactly. The absurd, counterproductive (and imo, designed to stir up hatred) term ‘Islamophobia’ was invented for one purpose, and one purpose only (or at least, 2 closely related ones): to promote a victimhood culture, and heap contempt on those who stands in its way by attaching to them the stupid ‘racist’ label.
Armaros @ 26 January 2012, 10:43 pm
I fully reject the crypto fascist term “islamophobia”.
There is bigotry out there, some directed at Muslims because of their faith or because of their race (if they happen to be non white).
I reject the “racist” label also because Islam is not a race and its adherents come from all races and classes.
Trespassers Will @ 26 January 2012, 11:39 pm
What if, having read and understood the fundamental tenets of islam as defined in the quran, you have concluded that islam is repulsive? That it is vile and toxic in its scripture, aspirations, and throughout its entire history? That it has no branch which isn’t revolting?
Does it ever occur to you Sarah, that if anyone should declare his membership of the Ku Klux Klan, it might actually be delinquency on your part if you did not express your disgust? Would it be bigotry, to denounce a KKK follower because to the best of your knowledge, he hasn’t actually set any black people on fire (yet)? Would it make you a klanophobe?
If you state your allegiance to some ideology, or some society or religion, with an agenda of cruelty or torture or crime, you deserve to be called to account by your fellow men and women.
Think of England @ 27 January 2012, 3:11 am
I should be able to express my hatred of Islam all I want; using the Koran to pick up dog poop, for instance. Or my hatred of Christianity; perhaps putting a crucifix in a jar of urine and hoping some museum will buy it. As soon as I’m forced to respect someone’s beliefs, I lose my freedom. I don’t respect religious beliefs; I think they are laughable (at best); pathetic, pitiable, and frightening. Currently, the West, I’m not afraid of Christianity or Judaism (or, Christians or Jews, if you will), even at their worst and they are often horrible, especially the Hassids who are nauseating to me. But Muslims are a different problem. Nothing, no arguments, statistics or whatever, can, I believe, show me that I have nothing to fear from them. All you have to do is read the newspaper; you don’t even have to read JihadWatch. My dislike of Islam is certainly not irrational at all.
Nick (in South Africa) @ 27 January 2012, 6:54 am
All well and good, however the term Hinduphobia doesn’t get banded about. This is practically a science experiment.
There is not a problem with Hindus in the UK, there is with Muslims, it’s that simple.
This is because Islam is a political system that happens to come wrapped in the guise of religion. One with global imperialist aspirations, one that is deeply authoritarian, highly misogynistic, profoundly intolerant, violent and much more besides.
We DO have unfettered serial immigration to the UK of huge numbers of ill educated Muslims with a mediaeval World view. There are now 4 million Muslims in the country and not a hint of any stop to it. This IS causing problems. A very large percentage of these first, second and third generation immigrants hold views inimical to life in a pluralistic tolerant liberal democracy, and these views are directly informed by mainstream Islamic dogma. There IS an ignoble record of this manifested in Muslim violence, hundreds of terror plots, terror attacks, ‘honour’ killings, blatant intimidation, nothing other than utterly cynical sexual predation by gangs of Muslim men on vulnerable white girls, grievance monging by Muslims with hair-trigger sensibilities and special pleading for dress concessions, diet concessions, prayer rooms, protective censorship, faith schools and so on.
People notice.
Islamic Kuffarphobia and the endemic Jew hatred amongst Muslims – both directly informed by Islam – is orders of magnitude a more pressing issue than any Islamophobia amongst the Kuffar.
Charges of Islamophobia are overwhelmingly used by grievance monging Muslims, overweening bleeding-heart guilt soaked liberals and deeply illiberal Lefties in attempts to shut down critique of Islam, mass Muslim immigration and attempts at obtaining privileged status for Muslims.
Many of us despise Islam because it really is profoundly nasty.
CBinTH @ 27 January 2012, 9:03 am
Just popping in to say, that however much I agree that Islamophobia is a politically-manipulative term, and that varying degrees of anti-Islam feeling could simply be described as such, the fact is that we DO have ‘irrational’ responses to everything.
The comment thread has turned into an Islamo-sceptics mutual appreciation society, and people are congratulating themselves on their spiritual, mental and emotional purity.
But I think irrational dislike of Islam (“Islamophobia”) DOES exist, and is even pervasive in our society.
And that I personally am quite Islamophobic.
For example, I personally like to see nuns, not that you get many of them in the UK ; – for me, they carry positive connotations. Perhaps this is irrational. On the other hand, I don’t like to see the Niqab, the full veil, especially on British streets. I don’t even really like the hijab, though to a lesser degree. And yet the headscarf and the wimple follow exactly the same principle, and the nun has a more restricted life and sexuality than the niqab wearer, so why my inconsistency?
I can try to rationalize it all I wish – the coercion or pressure forcing a woman to conform, the wearing of clothing as a badge of belonging (or seperatism, or allegiance,) the implied insult to all women who don’t wear the same, the impracticality that results from the niqab, and (most accurately) a negative reaction simply to mere ‘foreignness’……. But the truth is that none of these truly explains my reaction.
I react that way on a very basic level, and the reaction has vastly increased in intensity since 9/11. Before that, it was more the reaction of a contemptuous shrug – or even acknowledgement of quaint old fashioned customs – but after 9/11 it was something that would please my enemy, and therefore, I find these badges of identity annoying and react as if they’re almost inherently hostile.
So, while Islamophobia is a problematic term, let’s be alive to the fact that, A. We CAN be prejudiced towards a religion, B. These prejudices can affect our attitudes towards innocent people, and C. Since we react emotionally towards ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING, we should neither be ashamed nor defensive about this, but simply work to recognise these traits in ourselves, and try to behave and think in an ethical manner. This means being polite and loving towards those who dress differently, and, also, having the intellectual integrity to realise when we are simply looking for ammunition to justify our emotional prejudices.
Peter @ 27 January 2012, 9:06 am
Nick (SA) is spot on. This is not a ’sensational fantasy’, as Sarah characterises it, but a very real situation, which is disastrous to this and other countries. Since it was brought about by the acts of commission (variously stupid and nefarious) and omission of bleeding heart so-called ‘liberals’, it’s unsurprising that bleeding heart so-called ‘liberals’ try to brush it under the carpet.
Albert Fischer @ 27 January 2012, 10:05 am
1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.
Umm yes..? Look at egypt: as soon as a relaxed author such as nagib machfus shows up, they kill them. static and unresponsive to change and homogenous in its twatishness
2) Islam is seen as separate and ‘other’. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.
Ummm….yes….? The differences are vast and decisive.
3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.
Quite.
4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a ‘clash of civilisations’.
Yes, indeed. have some egyptian state television:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=X0Py-1iggFQ
5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.
See above.
6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.
I am not aware of any positive responses. or anything positive flowing from islam altogether, as such
7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.
Well they’re not exlcuded from mainstream society are they? they just bought london’s entire zone 1, among other things
8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.
Yup
Flaming Fairy @ 27 January 2012, 11:12 am
And that’s a recipe for shutting whole swathes of people up, Normative. What if someone decided that Gay Pride was “Islamophobic”, for instance?
I am in favour of ditching any and all terms which single Muslims out as a unique victim group. They aren’t.
Lamia @ 27 January 2012, 12:04 pm
Think of England and Nick are correct.
It is a self-evident fact that the greater the presence of Islam in a society, the worse that is for freedom of speech, democracy, and human rights. I am not interested in discussing its theological merits or whether it is any more absurd than Christianity, Judaism etel. The point is that currently it is far more dangerous and oppressive than all the other world’s religions put together. It is a blight. I don’t welcome its increased presence in Britain because I see the societies it has created and they are at best miles worse than any Northern European country and at worst absolutely appalling.I am not going to enthuse about the spread of the religion that is king of the most barbaric, lunatic region on earth, no matter how much some ‘liberals’ wring their hands and some ’socialists’ chant ‘racist!’. Islam deserves no respect from me, only justified caution and dislike. Its numerous murder-preaching, rape-justifying clerics and preachers deserve to be stamped on very hard, preferably fatally.
Evan @ 27 January 2012, 1:43 pm
What Alcuin said at 12:45, and what Nick in S. Africa said at 6:54.
Islam is not a religion. It is a belligerant, imperialistic, intolerant, political movement that seek global domination
There are 56 or 57 majority Muslim countries, almost all of which are completely dysfunctional. Those that aren’t suffering that state of affairs have been able to mask their more primitve and backward aspects by purchasing a veneer of westernisation andf sophistication with ( temporary) oil money.
When that money runs out many of these countries will resemble Somalia.
When it comes to islam, there’s no there, there. People fall over each other in order to embellish, to nuance and to display ‘balance’. WE foolishly commit to islam all sorts of qualities and properties it simply doesn’t have. We canot call something vulgar, even when it is truly vulgar because WE don’t want to be considered vulgar.
Well, consider Attaturk’s vulgarity, raised a pious Muslims and later the founder of secular Turkey when he referred to Islam ( all of it) as a “rotting carcasse”.
And as for the essentialisation aspect, when the various intelligence agencies get to the point where most of their resources and manpower are devoted to keeing tabs on violent and belligerent Muslims, should those managing the budgets of those agencies be accused of essentialisng Islam and Muslims? Are they engaging in bigotry and islamophobia?
Or are they just doing their jobs seeings the nature and number of threats they face coming from Muslims?
Accusdations of islamophobia are nothing more than lame attempts at supressing the awful truth about the ideology.
Nick (in South Africa) @ 27 January 2012, 1:43 pm
Muslims who in public, identify with Islam should be fair game to be held to account for the ideology to which they subscribe, this doesn’t happen nearly enough.
Muslims should be made to feel pressure that their ideology is beyond the pale; because it really and truly is. Self identifying Muslims in dress, deed or word should be treated as pariahs in exactly the same way as members of the EDL and the BNP are. If you rock-up for work in an office in the UK dressed in a dish-dash or a burqua, it is a political statement, one quite clearly endorsing mainstream Islamic ideology, which quite undoubtedly is a form of Fascism. This is functionally no different at all from rocking up to work in BNP regalia.
We need more conversational intolerance towards Islam, not less. We shouldn’t tolerate its intolerance. The fact that it is a religion as well as a political ideology, the fact that most of it’s adherents are brown skinned really shouldn’t be seen as any kind of mitigation. Alas it is seen as mitigation, double standards are applied, the soft racism of low expectation is rife, bend over backwards self hating liberals and more malign Leftists do sow confusion. As does fear of being branded ‘racist’ or ‘Islamophobic’ and that’s hugely wrong.
What I won’t do is try to pretend that Islamic ideology is what it isn’t. It isn’t ‘a religion of peace’, it isn’t tolerant…. it’s horrible. I don’t and won’t try to make fluffy, cooing noises in its direction in the hope that it will be de-fanged; indeed I think this approach, which has been quite common, even amongst even HP posters – the David T of yore springs to mind, is very deeply misguided.
Is my view towards Islam an ‘irrational fear’?
Bollocks it is!
Is it Islamophobic – the word tells you more about the person using it than it does about the person or group its directed against.
Muslims are best advised to abandon this especially nasty ideology. Again if we – the British collectively – don’t catch a wake-up we are setting ourselves up for the most appalling sectarian strife.
Trespassers Will @ 27 January 2012, 4:16 pm
Its the equivalent of declaring yourself a SUPPORTER of one. By definition, by scripture, and by practice, islam demands a continuous campaign of violence and oppression against all non members, and absolute unquestioning solidarity between members. Any muslim denying any of these tenets sincerely, is, by definition, apostate.
M=o=r=g=y @ 27 January 2012, 4:24 pm
so in your view being a Muslim is the exact equivalent of being a member of a terrorist organisation.
Being a monotheist (of whatever stripe) is the same as being a Nazi, to be honest.
M=o=r=g=y @ 27 January 2012, 4:32 pm
Look at the history of monotheism. Look at the history of Nazism.
They’re pretty much identical. The same aims. The same methods. The same results.
The same death and destruction.
They’re the same thing.