Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “race2” has a discusses the burning question, “Is Islam a race?”
As a geneticist who has studied issues of “race” (i.e., genetic differentiation among human populations), it irks me to see both Muslims and Jews described as “races.” Both are, of course, religions, and comprise genetically diverse populations. There are black Muslims from Africa, Asian Muslims from Indonesia, and Arab Muslims from the Middle East. Jews as a whole are nearly as heterogeneous. I doubt that these groups would even form distinct genetic clusters if you genotyped people and then tried to group their genomes by religion.
Why they’re called “races,” of course, is so that people can level accusations of racism at those who criticize the faiths. Saying you’re an anti-Islamic bigot, for instance or a racist—simply because you criticize Islam—is far more inflammatory than saying someone is “anti-Islam.” Epiphets like these are thrown around far too often, and deliberately. Even anti-Semitism, which (unlike “Islamophobia”) really is bigotry, is still not racism. And it’s not the same as criticism of the state of Israel, or those who politically support it.
We need to distinguish two issues in this discussion: race is not the same as religious affiliation, and criticism of a religion is not the same thing as personal criticism of its adherents.
Here’s a poster, which appeared on the official Fatah Facebook page on the 50th anniversary of the party (they took it down and denied responsibility after strong criticism), which skirts the line—I’d say it crosses it—between anti-Israel sentiment and anti-Semitism. Note the stars of David on each skull, and the words say “lingering on your skulls.” It is vile, reprehensible, and inimical to the peace process (but who still thinks that Fatah or Hamas really wants peace?) But it is not racist.
Apropos of propaganda, you might have heard that a 23-year-old Palestinian terrorist stabbed 7 Israelis on a bus in Tel Aviv this morning; four were seriously wounded.
Within hours two cartoons had appeared in the Palestinian media celebrating the brutality. Below are the cartoons and their descriptions from the Jerusalem Post:
The first cartoon, drawn by cartoonist Bahaa Yaseen, was posted within the first 90 minutes following the attack. It shows a smiling terrorist holding a bloody knife and praising the attack, which at the time was reported to have injured 10 people. The figure stands in front of a sign that reads “Occupied Tel-A-rabia,” a play on the words Tel Aviv. On the bus is the number of the bus line on which the attack took place and a Jewish star. Blood pours out of the doors and onto the street.
The next one, posted by the Palestinian Shehab agency and also drawn by Yaseen, shows a smiling cartoon knife next to the text “Good morning, Palestine” in Arabic. The blade of the knife has the Palestinian flag with the red part of the it made by blood. Behind the cheerful weapon is an Israeli flag covered in blood.
The Shehab agency, an online news source based in Gaza, has been described by the International Business Times as a “mouthpiece for Hamas.”
As the Post notes, “Both of the cartoons were eventually removed from Twitter and Facebook.” I wonder why?
How long will it be before the Western media decries this sickening, state-approved propaganda, much less even shows it? Why don’t they? As we know, cartoons like this, or worse, are staples in the government-sponsored or -approved media in the Middle East.
Why don’t we hear about them? You know the answer.
h/t: Malgorzata
Re the JandMo cartoon and those accusing Charlie Hebdo of “incitement to racial hatred”.
Is the accusation that their cartoons incite non-Muslims to hate Muslims?
Or is it that their cartoons incite Muslims to hate non-Muslims?
If the claim is the former, I’d reckon they’d be hard pushed to find actual evidence of that. They might find some evidence for the latter.
I think in many cases they level both charges as separate offenses. I.e., that non-muslims read them and then develop a hatred of muslims, AND that muslims consider the cartoons “fighting words” rather than protected speech.
I don’t think evidence is their primary concern. They’re attempting to exercise a heckler’s veto.
Well, first they have to know its there, and most don’t.
For example, in my experience DOD leadership was either not aware or did not pay attention to the fact that, prior to 9/11, many islamist political cartoons used the twin towers to represent corrupt american buisness (the way we might use a fat guy in a black top hat). Maybe some of the spy agencies were paying attention to this, but honestly I doubt it. I think in the US there is a general ignorance and discounting of foreign political cartoons (after all, who read Charlie Hebdo before the attack?) as being representational of what you might call ‘general on the street beliefs,’ and this ignorance even extends to the people in government who should be paying attention to such things, as well as our media.
Material is readily available in English (and a few other European languages as well). Middle East Media Research Institute publishes daily translations of statements of political and religious figures, sermons, TV and radio rpogrammes, press articles, posts on social media, school text books etc., as well as videos with English subtitles from the whole Middle East and main Muslim countries. Palestinian Media Watch publishes translations of much what is said in Arabic in the West Bank and Gaza. There are a few other institution who do a similar job. Summaries are often published by Israeli papers in English, like Jerusalem Post or Time of Israel. Anybody who wants to know has all this knowledge in an accesible English online.
Yes, MEMRI was an invaluable source when I decided to learn about Islam some years ago. As a bit of a by-product, it also firmed up my rather dithery stance on Israel to one of firm support. The IDF are in the front line for ALL of us.
“who should be paying attention to such things, as well as our media.”
That strikes me as hindsight bias. There is almost an infinite amount of data that *might* mean something, yet our resources are too limited to follow up on them all.
Could be…while its debatable as to whether we should be paying attention to it as a national security issue, I’ll stand by my answer to Jerry’s (somewhat rhetorical?) question: they don’t show it because most of the time they either don’t know about it, and most of the rest of the time they discount it as unimportant.
They do know but it is much safer not to write about it. A former AP correspondent wrote about it and his both articles are very well worth reading: http://tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/183033/israel-insider-guide?all=1 and http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/11/how-the-media-makes-the-israel-story/383262/?single_page=true
And it is important, because as the old saying goes: “It starts with Jews but it never ends with Jews”, i.e. society build on this type of hatred and bigotry is a danger for every free society. There are 1,7 billion Muslims and anti-Semitism is rampand in practlically every Muslim society and among Muslims in the West.
Now it is turn for Christians and other minorities in Muslim countries (they already done ethnic cleansing of Jews). Who will be next?
For the West attitudes of a quarter of the Earth’s population should be of greater importance than behavior of 6 million Israeli Jews, not to mention their tiny minority of Haredim who warranted hundreds of articles in the mainstream press in the West.
great stuff. Thanks for those articles.
sub
I understand they even have cartoon shows on TV for the little palestinian kids that shows the enemy Jews and Israel. Cartoons for the kids. Why is that not on the news? It’s like hating the people is almost as important as the twisted religion.
I was thinking republican might be a race but actually there are just more letters in it.
Yes, I’ve posted videos of some of those kids’ shows before. As the song in South Pacific goes, the kids are being “carefully taught” to hate others.
Just to be certain, I googled the definition of a phobia (“Islamophobia”). The Mayo Clinic states that “A phobia is an overwhelming and unreasonable fear of an object or situation that poses little real danger but provokes anxiety and avoidance.”.
A fear of having my arse blown off by Islamic fundamentalists is, although it probably is indeed an unlikely event, is certainly not unreasonable. There is nothing irrational about disliking Islam.
I think the term “Islamophobia” is valid and can be applied to some situations. For example, right wing attempts to prevent Muslims from building mosques. There are plenty of examples of rhetoric and actions which go over the top and fail to distinguish at all between peaceful neighbors and militant terrorists. “Islamophobia” is a fair enough term.
The dispute of course is over where we draw that line.
I agree, but I’d say that that line is not being drawn in a reasonable place at the moment.
I think you’re right about islamophobia being accurate in some cases, specificlly the attempt to deny Imam Raouf in NYC the opportunity to construct a Mosque near the WTC site. But when that term is applied to criticism of islam across the board, then it has a two-fold effect. It negates any legitimate criticism of the institution of islam and it allows the most bigoted and reactionary to define the entire issue.
So, yeah, it’s valid. But, IMO, not in the manner in whihc it is typically used in the press and definitely not when it’s used by someone like Ibrahim Hooper.
I agree.
My only concern is that if we deny there’s anything which is “Islamophobic” people will jump on that as evidence of racism.
Phobia has lost it bite in the last 40+ years, especially in words like islamophobia and homophobia. It means a morbid or debilitating fear, and in these newer constructions seems to imply a hatred or an aversion; not quite the same thing. I was against this “word weakening” trend in the 70s since by implication it made all the real phobias that people suffer from seem less important. But we must go with the flow since islamaverse and homo-averse don’t have the same zing.
Many of the homophobes do seem to be acutely afraid of teh ghey, outwardly expressing a fear that they’ll catch it themselves, and often inwardly afraid that they’ve already caught it. It’s quite sad….
b&
I recently learned “Islamophobia” is a term derived from, irony, “homophobia”. And it’s a term that was constructed from “xenophobia”. Which I believe is the idea that people fear and despise what is unfamiliar. It always put more emphasis on the despising and anger and so forth. So “Islamophobia” isn’t about fear, it’s just a way of saying bigotry. An unhelpful way in my view. Because of the obvious confusion it creates. But also because I don’t believe the xenophobia idea. Bigotry, hatred, anger of the sorts we’re talking about are created by bigots and taught via myths and stereotypes. Think about prejudice against African-Americans. There was this whole system for inventing these hostile myths, pure propaganda, and then perpetuating them on every new generation. Prejudice and bigotry are not just an unfortunate side effect of people disliking what is unfamiliar. And of course the current situation with this what to call it? “Militant Islam”, “Jihadism”, “Muslim supremacism” shows that there certainly is a kind of prejudice that is this active political construct.
Anyone calling the Charlie Hebdo cartoons “crude” and “tasteless” should think again after taking a look at the ones shown here.
It’s certainly true that neither Islam nor Judaism are races. I think people interchange the word “racism” with prejudice or bigotry which itself is problematic since one cannot be prejudiced against the religious ideologies themselves.
That said, there is an important distinction between the two. Muslims can leave Islam (at their peril) and simply be Arabs or Indonesians, etc. But aren’t atheist Jews still (culturally) Jewish? Like Muslims, they’re born into it (no choice there) but even if they renounce Judaism, they can still be victimized by anti-Semites. Thus it seems to me that Judaism is analogous to a “race” (not genetically of course) because one is born with it, can’t easily erase that identity, and may not be able to “pass” as non-Jewish based on appearance, name, etc.
This has always been the feature that has made antisemitism slightly different. My “Jewishness” is, for many, defined not by anything I may believe, but simply by who my ancestors were. So, while Jew isn’t a race in the conventional biological sense, it’s probably best defined as an ancestrally-defined population group. Furthermore, since Judaism isn’t much on exogamy and conversion, those ancestral lineages commonly go way back without incorporating many non-Jewish lineages.
It’s complicated.
Well said.
Culture isn’t a race. Moreover, somebody calling a group a race (whether that person is an in-group proud member or an out-group hater) doesn’t make it a race either.
However there is an important subjective aspect of racism that you kinda sorta touched on. If someone treats you unfairly in terms of jobs or service or what have you because they perceive you to be of a certain race, then that’s arguably racism. It doesn’t matter whether you are of that racial group or not. It doesn’t even matter if that ‘race’ has some discrete biological existance or is just a social construction: they are being racist because they took away your legal rights based on their own understanding of race.
There was a recent incident in the news where a father and son were kicked out of a gun range because the owner said they didn’t serve muslims. They were not muslims; evidently just being swarthy vaguely-middle-eastern-looking was enough. Putting aside the legality of it for the moment, that is an example of religious discrimination even though the victims were not religious (or at least not that religion). In the exact same way, I would argue that racism can occur against people even when they are not in some reasonably scientifically-defined biological race.
Eric,
Exactly my point and thanks for the post. Without question, it is a unfair for the religious to end conversations about religion by branding atheists racist. It is a non-sequitur and a slander in most cases. But I fear we’re oversimplifying the issue.
Atheist logic goes like this:
1) Jews and Muslims are not a race, they are diverse peoples with a belief system
2) All beliefs should be open to criticism in a free society
3) If I criticize religious belief, I am not criticizing those who hold those beliefs and further, calling me a racist is illogical because believers aren’t even a race to begin with.
And yet, I can’t help but think that anti-Semitism is synonymous with racism because even Jews who believe none of it are susceptible to discrimination in exactly the same way as say a rabbi is. The Nazis didn’t round people up based on their beliefs but because of who they were, whether self-identified or not. Ergo the definition of “race” is the problem, not the misuse of racism as an elastic term for discrimination against a minority or out-group faction. Genetically, “black” people are no more or less a race than Jews and yet racism is the word we use for black discrimination. Of course, being black is not a belief but an obvious physical trait which being Jewish can be as well. Thus, racism is in the eye of the racist, not the victim.
If you want to see racism in action against, shall we say, ‘Arabs’, just check out the gangsters/terrorists/gunrunners/drugdealers/villains in almost any Hollywood ‘action’ B-movie of the last couple of decades. A remarkably high proportion of the villains are swarthy middle-Eastern-looking characters.
“Atheist logic”? Is that like atheist science?
When Arthur Koestler wrote The Thirteenth Tribe in support of the theory that the Ashkenazim are descended from Khazar converts, he hoped it would help end antisemitism by showing that Jews are not ‘a race’. Israelis on the whole hated it, and antisemites loved it because they both thought it undermined the Jewish right to a homeland in Palestine. Genetic evidence has shown that Koestler was at least partly wrong, but of course most of the critics and most of the enthusiasts were entirely wrong.
This is eye-opening. Of course Muslims are ethnically diverse. But in my ignorance, I had assumed that Jews were ethnically much more homogenous. Because Judaism, unlike Islam, has been in general not a proselytizing religion. And that therefore there would be a close correlation between Judaism and Jews as an ethnic group, even though there were 1,900 years of diaspora.
I was wrong. Is there any published work on the disassociation between religious Judaism and what I have to call ‘ethnic Jewishness’? On the ethnic heterogeneity of the religious (and cultural) Jews?
If you can answer please assume that, biological ignoramus as I am, it is almost impossible for you to patronize me enough. Hell, I’m so far out of my knowledge zone, I don’t even know if it’s an intelligent question. x
I wonder if there are several genetic clusters, for example: Sephardic Jews (Iberia), Middle Eastern Jews, and Ashkenazi Jews (eastern Europe). But I know very little about this.
I too thought that (for the same reasons you note) that Jewishness had a significant genetic aspect to it.
Interesting.
That was my thought. At least for Ashkenazi Jews. I’d like to get Jerry’s thoughts on this. I also wonder if there is any difference between race and ethnicity. One of my friends in college was Jewish and his family came from Poland. I made the mistake of saying something to the effect of Jewish is your religion, Polish is your ethnicity. He was very upset and replied that the Jews in Poland did not intermix with the Catholics; that a Jew in Poland was much more similar to a Jew in Russia or Ukraine or Hungary, than he was to a Catholic in Poland. He did not consider his ethnicity to be Polish, but Jewish (Ashkenzi). I think he made a good point and I happen to agree. That’s why it’s different for Jews. Both Jews and non-Jews consider “Jewish” to be an ethnicity. When people ask me my religion, I answer “none.” When I’m asked my ethnicity, I answer “half Irish, half Jewish.” Does Professor Ceiling Cat think my answer makes no sense?
To pacopicopiedra
Races are biological. Except that they’re not because they’re fiction. The term when it was invented was just crazy and hilarious. There were three races all of them white, all in Europe. One was called “Alpine”. Pure false knowledge. Later on they came to be considered pretty much the same thing as species. That’s certainly the way it’s used on Star Trek. And the concept’s development was very much influenced by its use to justify slavery. The “species” meaning is completely bogus. Whereas ethnicity is all about culture and history and language and food and so forth. And the way you’re talking about Jewish ethnicity is certainly the idea that all Jews I have ever met, or been, think of it.
As for “Jewish” being a religion there are lots of different Jewish religions today. More all the time it seems. 😉 And even more in ancient times. For instance the Judaism of orthodox Jews today is absolutely not the religion that was practiced in the ancient kingdoms of Israel and Judah. For one thing the ancient religion didn’t have an afterlife. Nor were they always the same as each other since Israel bought the farm 700 years before Judah did.
Modern Judaism has an afterlife?
It does have a genetic component. There are some genetic traits that are more common among certain Jewish groups. For example, women of Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry have a 10 times greater risk of inheriting a BRCA mutation (related to breast cancer) than women in the general population.
This is a little disingenuous Jerry. Right-wing groups do use the term Muslim as code for brown people, and thus is can and is used in a racist manner.
For example, in the UK the BNP, EDL and UKIP (at least some members of UKIP even if it is against party policy) all refer to Muslims when in fact they know their audience will take that mean brown people regardless of religion.
That is almost too many acronyms for me. Sure you are not in the military? So Muslim is a race because others are racist?
BNP – British National Party
EDL – English Defence League
UKIP – United Kingdom Independence Party
The former 2, out-and-out racist parties – bootboys. The latter roughly equivalent to U.S. Tea Party. x
More like the UK Pub Party! (Farrage is almost always pictured holding a beer glass.)
/@
No, the use of the word can be racist because it is used in a racist way.
Why say something so silly ?
Disingenuous, without any modifiers at least, implies premeditated intent.
I’m 99% certain they don’t mean Hindus or Arab Christians.
You would be wrong.
“You would be wrong”
So saith the great mind-reader. It must be true then.
I don’t doubt for a moment that SOME supporters of UKIP or the EDL are racists in the old-fashioned sense, i.e. anti- “brown people” in general, but I think it’s stretching things to claim that they all are. Where we are now, after something like 15 years of almost non-stop Islamist atrocities, I think the great majority of people know perfectly well that the problem lies with followers of one specific religion, not with some undifferentiated category of “brown people”. If extremist muslims in the UK and Europe would just shut up, obey the laws of the land, and practice their religion in private (or, if they’re not willing to do that, then pack up and leave) I think the vast majority of white Europeans would have no problem with them, just as we have no problems with Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists or any other religious group made up mainly of “brown people”.
As an example, I might well consider voting for UKIP in the forthcoming UK General Election. I have no objection to sharing the country with “brown people”, but I most certainly do object to sharing it with muslims who demand special privileges for their religion, who advocate the murder of authors or cartoonists they don’t like, or who plot and support acts of terror at home or abroad. If that makes me a “racist” in your eyes, then I guess I’ll have to wear the label with pride.
And risk the other religion, xtianity+vaticanlobby, forced down your throat?
I am convinced that German populace catch it quite well, what “Pegida, Legida” and other such groups (first letter means city) would do,if they had their way. The double numbers of anti-demonstators show this.
Even the anti-Euro-party AfD will loose votes, BECAUSE they mix up with this “movement”.
Some years ago, in Switzerland, this people´s vote against building mosques, there were many people who would have preferred a “no churches either”- formula, and a French-style law against burka-wearing. But Swiss legal system did not allow to correct the language.
The politically correct speech is often hiding real problems, and someone is about to exploit it. I am very glad that this website has this discussions.
“As a geneticist who has studied issues of “race” (i.e., genetic differentiation among human populations), it irks me to see both Muslims and Jews described as “races.” Both are, of course, religions, and comprise genetically diverse populations. ”
What would you call anti-semitism then? It seems to be more than just about the Jewish religion because anti-semites hate Jews whether they are religious Jews are cultural Jews.
Karen Armstrong just pulled out the argument that the murderers at the Jewish grocery couldn’t have been anti-semitic because they’re also Semites. That’s not an argument I give credence to, nor her claim that the attack wasn’t religiously motivated. But I’m not sure how to think about the hate against Jews. It’s about the religion, but not actually limited to the religion or people who practice it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/01/20/karen-armstrong-islamists-murdering-french-jews-had-nothing-to-do-with-anti-semitism/
Antisemitism is directed as particular persons who have ancestors who identified (at some point in the past) as Jews. Or at least this is the way it’s played out in history. Observant, religious Jews were even simpler for bigots to identify.
But, taking Jerry’s expertise on this, Jew ≠ race.
Recently learned the term “anti-Semitism” was created by some Jew hater in 1890s Vienna as the name for his party: The Anti-Semitic Party (for real!) I guess because he thought it sounded better. And he was using the linguistic term Semitic which referred to all the languages of that part of the Middle East. But his purpose was explicitly to refer to Jews. So it’s a bigot-made giant idiotic jumble, would be my conclusion.
Of course she did, she’s Karen Armstrong. There are no causes of bad behavior except western imperialism. Sigh.
Let’s say I have two job applications in front of me, one for Mike and the other for Ming Wa, and I give the job to Mark not having seen either applicant because I figure Mike is white and Ming Wa sounds Asian. If Ming Wa turns out to be a WASP with ten generations of viking ancestors in his past, that’s still racism on my part. And if some person shoots another because the shooter perceives the victim to be of a certain race, that’s racism. Its racism even when the victim isn’t in the category. Its racism even if the shooter’s definition of race is vague and cannot be linked to any objective biological criteria. Because the motivation was to stop a group based on their perceived race.
Racism is one of those sorts of attitudes where we give an “A for effort.” If you’re trying hard to be one, but failing out of ignorance, then hey don’t worry about it, we’ll give you full credit for being racist.
In my view, in many places in the world Jews are/were a defined ethnic group (e.g. Ashkenazi Jews in prewar Europe), and antisemitism simply means hatred towards that ethnic group. Religion is not the primary factor, although, as someone already noted above, it facilitates identification, and historically it was used to incite hatred (Jews as murderers of Christ, their alleged bloody religious rituals, etc).
In Poland, religious observant Jews practically disappeared after WW2. The majority perished in the Holocaust, of course, and the few survivors often tried to hide their Jewishness, even changing their last names. It also became common among Poles to point to the Jewish origins (real or imaginary) of unpopular people, including those who either practised Christianity or were openly atheist. To this day, identifying the Jewish “enemies of Poland” this way, complete with revealing their supposed real Jewish surnames and family histories (which more often than not is laughably inaccurate) is the favorite pastime of Polish antisemites. It has very little to do with religion (at least with Judaism, because one can point to a strong Catholic component in Polish antisemitism).
I can’t believe that someone who calls themselves a scholar is pushing this nonsense. As the article in The Washington Post points out, despite the fact that the word “antisemitism” is derived from the root “semitic”, its commonly accepted meaning is prejudice towards Jews and not other Semitic ethnic groups. So yes, you can be an antisemite even of you are ethnically Assyrian and Karen Armstrong knows that.
Karen Armstrong has found a way she can let herself believe that the murders had nothing to do with religion is all.
This is exactly how anti-Semitism worked in the former Soviet Union: with most Jews being secular, people were judged to be a Jew and subjected to discrimination based on appearance and/or name. If that’s not racism, it’s still much closer to it than Islamophobia.
It’s not racism, simply because Jews are not a “race”, but rather it’s ethnic/cultural prejudice.
And I agree that antisemitism is less about religion and more about ethnicity than Islamophobia. Even though, as our host noted, Jews are a heterogeneous group, a typical antisemitic argument accuses Jews of bad acts done in the name of their perceived ethnic and cultural solidarity, whereas an Islamophobic argument is based on criticism of Islam and/or accusing Muslims of bad acts done specifically in the name of their religion.
But often things are more complicated, and there could be a racist component there as well. An uneducated person calling a Sikh a “Muslim terrorist” reveals prejudice against “brown people” in general.
This is a main problem at the core of Chris Hedge’s 2008 book critiquing the new atheism. He criticizes Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens of racism.
Hedges also claims both of them make sweeping overgeneralizations about Islam. Whether that’s true or not, Hedges makes many many sweeping overgeneralizations about atheists.
There is a danger that atheist anti-Islamic rhetoric can be translated by dumb people (sympathizing with atheists) into racist rhetoric, but a speaker cannot always take responsibility for how they are interpreted.
(A minor example of an atheist making a similar fallacy is Peter Weiner’s book “Martin Luther: Hitler’s Spiritual Ancestor”. Luther would never ever have sanctioned Hitler’s program of trying to defrock every Christian clergyman with Jewish ancestry, something the latter did very shortly after being elected Chancellor of Germany. This puts Luther just a pinky toe in the camp of criticizing ideas, though he said some damned nasty vicious things about Jews.)
I know nothing about Weiner’s book, but there is much about the way German society developed because of Luther that made what Hitler did possible. In Germany, because of Luther, the state was seen as an infallible instrument of God in much the same way the Pope is. That meant government wasn’t questioned in the same way that, for example, an American government would be.
Entirely true, but it means that illiterate Germans generalized from Luther’s writings in a way that does not follow from Luther’s own (admittedly nasty) beliefs.
I don’t think that is correct. Luther held and expressed widely accepted anti-semetic views among Christians of the time. He didn’t create them.
So, where’re the people planning murderous attacks in response to this particular pair of cartoons?
…oh…right…only Muslims pull that kind of shit…but it has nothing to do with Islam….
b&
You’re a racist for considering the possibility that the ideas of Islam are related to these behaviors! You should be ashamed of yourself! /sarcasm
That was my big complaint with the whole Bill Mayer/Sam Harris/Ben Affleck that when Sam stated that Islam was the mother of bad ideas and Ben Affleck called that racist, that the two of them didn’t respond with ‘Islam is not a race!’.
🗿
That second cartoon, with Palestinian flag represented as a bloody knife looks almost like the artist unintentionally mocked Palestinian regime instead of glorifying the attacks.
That was my initial take too, but then I decided I was looking at it from my own cultural perspective. I wondered if I was a Palestinian who’d been taught to hate Israel all my life I might see it as the glory of Palestine over Israel.
I can’t imagine ever thinking it’s a good thing to see my country’s flag represented as a bloody knife leaving another flag lying bloodied in the dirt, but I wasn’t brought up to hate another people indiscriminately.
The sad thing for me about all this are those who equate insult and murder, and don’t seem to understand the difference. Even if one were to argue that free speech should also covers incitement to violence, to say that to call for violence against another is the same as mocking a religious idea is absurd.
It’s been really eye-opening for me in the wake of Charlie Hebdo how many people think blasphemy shouldn’t be protected under free speech – that free speech is just for the speech they deem acceptable.
Worse, still, it’s been really eye-opening for me just how many supposed liberals are willing to cede free speech to the terrorist scum by trying to cast blasphemy as an attack on a minority culture – that it’s there simply to bolster the intolerant right. Which, again sadly, is that people think only speech they deem acceptable should be free.
All speech is free, but some speeches are freer than other speeches.
Excellent, Diane. Is it yours and can I use it? x
Thanks, Dermot. 🙂 Didn’t think it was especially clever but as far as I know it’s my own–have at it. (Wish I’d left the two “speeches” singular.)
The north European left is far more likely, I think, than an American to refuse to criticize a set of beliefs, particularly so if it is Islam. Probably and partially because liberty of expression is so embedded in and essential to the American psyche. And even after Charlie Hebdo they fear that because you go at the Qur’an you are racist and attacking lower class members of society: hence their self-censorship. I like your aphorism because it refers directly to Orwell, who of course, is North European! That should give them pause for thought. x
Thanks for the insight, Dermot!
Thank you Jerry!
I really had no idea about the genes and the rest. Yet, it had popped up in my mind earlier today exactly on the same theme that anti-semitism should be in another league and not included in the racism. An example: when you have enough dark skinned people – you blame the people with brown skin. Do you have a feeling there are too many slanted eyes on the street? Blame the decay of the glorious nation of X on the slanted eyes. And so on.
On the other hand you have jews all over the place. Shootings in a kusher store. Shootings in a jewish private school. Who owns the banks? Who does this and that? The JEWS! Yet, they are 478k[1] in a 66m country. Which makes less than 1%! The turks do add half of that number in ONLY one year (2008)[2]. According to the same table the Portuguese have added more people to the population of France only in 2008. And I can’t find the reference, but the jewish population of France drops at 2.2k every year only because of Aliah. So how come each time there is broken glass at the temple and the vandalized graves are in the jewish cemetery?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_population_by_country
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_France#Today
Jerry, would you be so kind as to make a series of articles in which you use your knowledge of genetics and mix it with your special talent to make things clear even to someone like myself?
Do expand on the theme of why muslims or jews are not a race. If the races do exist, how do they differ from the nationalistic view. When have the races appeared? Are they going to disappear because of globalization? How do humans differ from a genetic perspective? How deep or shallow are the differences?
People in Romania are raised to venerate a mad-man: dr. Paulescu. They are told from infancy this local nazi nut is the *true* *inventor* of insulin. Paulescu had not discovered insulin, but has opened the university year in the first decade of the 20th century explaining the future doctors that Darwin is an idiot and there is no other evolution than the hand of his god – he was a young earth creationist till he died. The same doctor has proven the world how the woman is a less evolved specie than the man and the jews have brains of a lower weight – from the first 5 examples, two were french and four of them were still alive when Paulescu had died years later. Romania has a population of 18m people and is part of the EU. If that is the schooling there, no wonder what goes through the head of an iranian or palestinian arab.
I suppose those cartoons are meant to generate outrage in the west, so the cartoonist can disingenuously claim that he merely does the same thing as Charlie Hebdo did.
Well, for starters there is an obvious difference between caricaturing a historical character and celebrating mass murder. But even then, I’d like to tell the cartoonist that I welcome the publication of his work. It allows the whole world to see how his ilk reasons, and puts the kibosh on the idea that whatever he defends is a philosophy of peace and tolerance. As far as I now, Charlie Hebdo never, ever celebrated the murder of anyone -quite the opposite, in fact.
The cartoons are similar to an editorial to that effect. I much prefer to have a society where such material is refuted, rather than to simply ban it. We can condemn those cartoons in the strongest possible terms – something that can only be done if there is the freedom to do so. Banning outrageous material impoverishes the conversation.
On a somewhat related note, yesterday Sam Harris tweeted a link to a short documentary about ISIS and particularly the Kurdish militia’s battle with ISIS, filmed by an Israeli filmmaker. One interesting fact is that although the ISIS soldiers believe that if they die in battle they will be martyrs and get their 72 virgins in heaven, there’s a catch. If they are killed by a woman, they don’t go to heaven or get the virgins. The Kurds’ militia is filled with badass women fighters and they have a battle-cry they use when fighting ISIS to let them know they’re about to be killed by women. The ISIS commanders sometimes tell their soldiers to run away, rather than fight back and risk being killed by a woman.
Also, the Kurds appear to have no problem with the Jewish/Israeli filmmaker. I hope they come out of this mess with their own nation.
Obama should have mentioned in his State of the Union address that all of our drones and aircraft are piloted by women. Menstruating, unmarried, non-virgin, half-clothed Jewish women with a grudge against Daesh.
But does that work if the toxic woman is thousands of miles away operating the thing by remote control? Or is that out of range of the evil feminine emanations?
Hate and violence tend to breed and support hate and violence. The Arabs started it when the Israelis decided to take what they can then was attacked by all the Arab Islamic nations around them.
Now that the shoe is on the other foot, Israel is the nuclear military power around them except for Pakistan who is some distance away, but also has nukes.
With the solid backing of the USA against the UN in they have done what they wanted attacked and destroyed who they wanted. It has incurred the fear and wrath of the Palestinians who they don’t even consider real.
However every time a Palestinian fires rockets or sets a bomb just works in Israel’s favor regardless of what Israel has done. But they just cannot sit idly by while Israel smothers them. So it is a losing situation for them.
What has happened to Israel in the mean time is working against them as well.
If Islam and Judaism are races, then that means that Cassius Clay [Muhammad Ali] and Sammy Davis Jr. changed their race when they converted. Nice trick!
Dr. Coyne,
Thank you for the demonstration reminding us that race and religion affiliation are two separate things. Please expand on the other idea that, “criticism of a religion is not the same thing as personal criticism of its adherents.”
The idea of criticizing the behavior but not the person sounds like good advice for raising children but doesn’t this sentiment remove too much responsibility from individuals who should know better?
Bertrand Russel said, “There is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.”
Being careful not to over-generalize or unfairly discriminate against a person, is it acceptable to criticise bad ideas but unacceptable to also criticise and even hold individuals responsible and with a resonable measure of contempt commensurate with their level of agency and identity in those bad ideas? An example of resonable contempt would be something like deciding not to vote for a person running for public office because of her wacky religious views.
As for the cartoons it is interesting to speculate on how well they might have been recieved by the free world and condemned by violent extremists if they had originated from a free press. In either case, they should be shown to the world because it decidedly shows violent terrorism and its glorification as the bad idea it is to those who should be inclined to see it that way. And, since the authors and publishers have chosen to hang themselves with the noose of free speech, and Facebook, by creating them from their own perspective, we have more people to hold in contempt and add to the no fly and terrorist watch lists.
What should we make of Thomas Jefferson’s criticism of the ideas and holding the intended audience responsible when he wrote, “Even those who do not believe these abominations, still read them with complaisance to their auditors, and instead of the abhorrence and indignation which should fill a virtuous mind, betray a secret pleasure in the possibility that some may believe them, though they do not themselves. It seems to escape them, that it is not he who prints, but he who pays for printing a slander, who is its real author.” –Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807.