The Associated Press has won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the NYPD spying scandal.
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aziz
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thabet
I have to admit I’ve been surprised and disappointed by the Park51 ‘outcry’; however, remember that in Europe things are far, far worse.
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MikeLyons
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Hitch
On Europe, I think it’s fair to say that it’s locally very different within Europe. Specifically anti-immigrant sentiment and pre-history play sizable factors. It’s like mixing the Arizona story with the Park51 story. In Germany it’s Turkey, in France it’s Algier. I don’t know the UK situation that well but I’d guess it’s Pakistan. All not only loaded with anti-immigration but also historic narratives.
But what you say about the US is lunacy. There are plenty of studies that show what you deny. In studies about distrust, conservative christians clock in at 6%, and muslims are at over 30%, baseline is 2%. The Minnesota study is without doubt legitimate, and is published under peer review.
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MikeLyons
HItch,
Hate crime incident based on bias from the FBI, 2008.
Anti-Islamic 105 123 130 85 (Muslims comprise 0.6% of population)
Anti-Jewish 1,013 1,055 1,145 353 (Jews comprise 1.7% of population)Remember, there has been spike in hate crimes in Europe against Jews unaccounted for by European racism, meaning a lot of it is done by Muslim immigrants.
And even the FBI thinks those numbers against Muslims are artificially inflated where “activists” will claim a crime as “anti-muslim” when either it was no such thing or there was no such crime.
BTW, I admit one mistake: I should have said the “Christian Majority”, I was misremembering. But still anti-Christian hate crime outnumber anti-muslim hate crimes.
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Hitch
Well you changed your story. And you still twist number to fit your aim. It’s ridiculous to say that anti-christian hate crimes outnumber anti-muslim hate crimes if you do not normalize for population.
If you normalize you get 1 christian victim for 1 148 3576 (1 in 1 million), 1 muslim victim in 10377 (1 in 10 thousand) and sadly 1 jewish victim in 2341.
Difference in per-group likelihood of being victim of a hate-crime as a christian for being a christian compared to a muslim for being a muslim: A factor of just over 100.
And yes hate crime statistics are subject to all sorts of biases, including reporting, categorization errors etc. But leave that aside. You proposed it as a measure.
You say it’s the same? Clearly you normalize when it serves your argument and you do not normalize when it doesn’t.
Are racist, anti-jewish and anti-gay hate crimes a serious problem? Absolutely. But that is not the story you were trying to tell.
So, yes it is lunacy to pretend that anti-muslim sentiment is anywhere on par with anti-christian sentiments (or anti-southern baptists for that matter). That was your original claim.
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MikeLyons
Not saying it’s not a problem. But it’s nowhere near the problem of the rampant hate-crimes by Muslims against any non-Muslim (or even not-devout-enough Muslims. See honor killings) in Muslim dominated countries and countries with a growing Muslim population. Plus the fact that the FBI, which is known for accurate crime stats, basically handed CAIR their butt and admitted that with the over-reporting of Muslim hate crimes when their not anti-muslim or their not crimes that the numbers would be wildly overstated.
I’m not saying Muslims don’t face bias crimes, we all do; it’s just anti-Muslim bias crimes are so minuscule, and “Islamphobia” such a non-problem (in this country) that it really only warrants talking about on paranoid websites. Muslim-on-Muslim crimes (for not being religious enough) and Muslim terrorism are much larger problems.
Just check the stats….
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Sidwell
Yes, the right-wing often liked to show the tolerance of American by showing a markedly sharp decrease in hate crimes against muslims RIGHT after 9/11.
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shams
Muslim-on-Muslim crimes (for not being religious enough) and Muslim terrorism are much larger problems
that is not our bidness.
our bidness is american citizens, some of whom are currently bleeding and dying in the Epic Fail of the Grand Misadventure of the Manifest Destiny of Judeoxian Democray in MENA.
al-Islam is EGT immune to proselytization in situ.-
shams
aka the Bush Doctrine, and COIN, which is the Bush Doctrine cut down to village size.
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MikeLyons
Muslim Terrorism isn’t our problem? Really? So faced with the 20K Jihadi attempts worldwide and the dozens of attempts nationwide in 9 year we should just shrug?
al-Islam is EGT immune to proselytization in situ.Yeah, that’s many Muslim nations (and Sharia) forbid trying to convert and why Muslims in Michigan called the police because *gasp* four peaceful Christians were handing out leaflets outside their festival.
Because we all know leaflets and open dialogue about religion are far worse than violent terrorism!
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shams
In situ, al-Islam cannot be proselytized. (John Maynard-Smith, Evolution and the Theory of Games).
Christianity evolved proselytizing as a strategy that increased reps over Jewish birthright– anyone could become a christian, by accepting the Christ. al-Islam, the next evolution of Abrahamic religions, became the most inclusive. al-Islam incorporated the constituencies (the doctrine of the People of the Book), the sacred jewish and christian texts, and all the prophets of both older religions. In addition, shariah forbade proselytization and preaching, out-marriage of muslimahs, and created harsh punishment for apostasy. There was freedom of religion in the Caliphate– Jews and Christians could be citizens– but proselytization was outlawed.
That is one reason “implanting westernstyle democracy” was such and Epic Fail.
EGT immunity.-
shams
congregants, not constituencies.
pardon.
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Hitch
I am not a friend of the notion of comparative misery. Certainly human-rights violation or violence in country X does not mean we should turn a blind eye to or apologize the same, even if it’s lesser in country Y.
But it seems to me that’s not the issue even. You have seen the Dearborn heckling videos on YouTube. These guys were not looking for open dialogue. I’m not a fan of how disorderly conduct is used by the police at times, but there is a use for it, as this case shows.
And that’s your grievance? I’m sorry, but that’s not serious.
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MikeLyons
BTW, by anyones standard the local PD and the muslims who called the police in Dearborn were committing a hate-crime of civil rights-violating proportion and should be sued to their last penny.
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shams
why do christians seek to proselytize muslims when muslims are immune?
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Sidwell
Imam Rauf was on CNN last night, danced exactly the way opponents wanted him to with a condemnation of Hamas, and still gets blasted by idiots like Trevino. Seriously, Aziz, why are you friends with such tools as Trevino and Totten?
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Shams al-Nahar
No shit sherlock.
The oligarchs are just spreading more poisoned grain for the cudlips, so they don’t see the hammer of the demographic timer at the end of the assembly line.
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thabet
Someone call those Muslim Liberals who are always preaching about the greatness of civil liberties:
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aziz
bringing democracy and liberal values to Afghanistan is likely an easier task than bringing it to France
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Dean Esmay
We have similar problems in the United States, not with obscene efforts to ban religious garb (which we don’t do a lot of here, although we do let some private companies get away with it), but with other laws designed to “protect women” which do exactly the same thing: intervene in family life, in particular, in ways that simply should not be done. The justification here is the same: “domestic violence,” but based on conceptions of what that is which are practically medieval (violence against “women” instead of where it should be focused, on all victims, male or female, adult or child). In France, it’s so obviously a scam though: it’s religious persecution dressed up as trying to “protect” people by denying them freedom.
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thabet
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thabet
It is worth highlighting Hichens’ demand that American Muslims show him more tolerance:
Let us by all means make the “Ground Zero” debate a test of tolerance. But this will be a one-way street unless it is to be a test of Muslim tolerance as well.
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Sidwell
Shorter Hitch: Rauf has made a statement which I will interpret as supporting repressive theocracy and I hate my DC mosque. Islam sucks. Seriously, take him back. He’ll even get better medical care.
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thabet
You can keep him. It’s payback for offloading Janet Daley onto us.
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Hitch
By experience, I may not be received as intended, but let me still say this. First off, I think the opposition to the Cordoba house is both silly and overt and damaging political demagoguery.
On the article. I disagree what Hitchens said that he hates the DC mosque. He hates what he perceives as intolerance against canines (unintentionally humorous) and selective flag display at the mosque. I would indeed find it also dubious if a church would fly flags only of countries it deemed “christian”, so at least on a comparative level I can see his perspectives on the flags. Not a word that he wants to have the mosque go a way. Yes Hitchens thinks that Islam sucks, but it is not that easy to extract from that article.
His call for tolerance is a real one. He is not just talking about him, he is talking about others.
Hitchens actually correctly identifies and condems the demagoguery that takes place around the house. That his analysis of Rauf can be seen as demagoguery itself is a tricky aspect. I am in no position to judge. But that is what open politics should be. Oppose people on their political views, not on their rights to build buildings and promote theirs.
His discussion of islamophobia is in his polemical style. Sadly part of it is in line with my experience. His flaw is that he sees it only through his eyes and not the eyes of other perspectives. But this can be said of many.
Tolerance is a tricky category. Because one can always ask, who should tolerate whom? The ideal, indeed would be a two-way street. Instead of real tolerance we live in a culture of conditional tolerance.
But I may be trying to point to a nuance that is beyond rescue.
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thabet
You can’t read his pronouncements above in isolation to his general blather about Iraq, war and the Middle East.
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Hitch
That’s a fair point and I try not to.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
HItch, you demean yourself trying to rescue this nonsense. Hitchens has to produce columns that’s his job, so I just ignore him when he strings together nonsense like this.
It is actually extremely rare in this country for mosques to have flags. The mosque he is talking about is on Embassy Row in Washington D.C. and has flags as a holdover from when it was largely the embassies of these countries that paid to build the mosque and because it fits in with the whole area.
I can’t say I understand either your or Htichens problem with the flags, but I for one am not a big fan of them because most of the governments those flags represent are not good examples of Islam. Of course, to some people, the flags represent the ordinary Muslim people of those diverse countries.
Every synagogue in the U.S. that I’ve been in has an Israeli flag — does that bother you?
Listen, I don’t mind you trying to share a different view point, but you have to expect people are going to respond…that’s kinda the point isn’t it.
I don’t like the word tolerance, but to the extent it is meaningful and valuable it refers to the powerful exercising their power in a way that is, to some extent or another respectful of those it has power over. It makes little sense to speak of Muslims generally in this country being tolerant towards the majority. Perhaps in isolated cases, such as inside their own mosques or something, one could speak of Muslims being tolerant or intolerant of visitors. But really there is a different dynamic at issue there.
His opposition to Abdul Rauf’s views is demagoguery, he can say I don’t like the way that Abdul Rauf tried rhetorically to approach the issue of dealing with Iran, but he can’t seriously believe that Rauf actually supports the current Iranian regime, nor that he supports terrorism by Hamas or anyone else. A wide chasm separates myself from Abdul Rauf but anyone who cares about truth and honesty cannot help but be appalled by such nonsense. And HItchens claims that he is all about truth. Not at all.
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Hitch
Well flags do bother me in general yes, but I am still too primed by a time when people rallied around flag symbols to then kill millions. But that isn’t my position here. I agree with your broader critique of some of these flags standing for not very praiseworthy governments or state systems.
My critique is broader in that I do not like if people are divided along any line. And if that dividing line is being inside or outside of Ummah then I do have a problem with that, and I recognize that this is a difficult argument to make. After all we all like the group we hold as noble. Or to reframe it, the selection of the flags indicates a notion of what Ummah should be, for certainly one could conceive an inclusive notion, one that is not aligned with state ideologies and flags. Or is not defined by opposition to people like myself.
I appreciate your nuancing the notion of tolerance. My view is that I am part of a vanishing minority and one that broadly is distrusted by the majority opinion. The only thing that keeps me having at least some ability to speak or worse from being squashed by larger groups is tolerance. But I definitely do not want to advocate a notion of tolerance that is in the end just code word for the power of hegemonic narratives.
I don’t mind if people respond at all. That is fine. In fact I think that’s good and I much appreciate your view on it.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Hitch, I think it somewhat complicated by the particular Center being on embassy row so it was designed in some ways to serve the needs of foreigners, but I don’t think the flags are meant to mean the way you are taking them, not sure what Hitchens thought about them.
As to the point that concerns you, however, that people should not be divided in any way, I see the critique of nationalism, I see the critique of tribalism of any sort, but I of course cannot agree that it is wrong to “divide people along any line”. Of course it matters what happens after the division, but we have people who are from our hometown and people who are not, people who are part of our family and people who are not, people who are part of our profession and people who are not, people who write for TalkIslam and people who don’t. The right of association is not only a constitutional right but a fundamental expression of one’s identity as a human. It does not have to lead to evil results although that danger can be there. As for me, the concept of the ummah is extremely dear to me and extremely real. And of course the ummah is something designated by Allaah (swt) so for me its not really a matter of debate or personal opinion (although I am interested to hear outsider’s perspectives or even the perspective of someone like Aziz who likes to declare the ummah a myth even though it actually hurts me a great deal to hear him say that.)
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Hitch
I think your points on flags are very fair.
On divisions, let me use a different word, difference. I prefer difference over division for rather obvious reasons. But this is in part word-play. You are right that what matters is what we do with difference/division. Sadly I think it is fair to say that subgroup identities were exactly the kinds of things that helped enable intergroup violence because the difference/division is made to matter in a destructive way. If rather we see difference as not dividing, and acknowledge humanity to be the source of identification, I see that as less likely. But I certainly do recognize that I come at this from a very different angle and I don’t want to prescribe, rather show the perspective.
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Arwi
he can say I don’t like the way that Abdul Rauf tried rhetorically to approach the issue of dealing with Iran, but he can’t seriously believe that Rauf actually supports the current Iranian regime
Why do you think Rauf employed such a loaded term in the first place?
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thabet
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Null
“All the feminists I know are horrified by the veil and want it banned”.
What a strange thing for Mona to say. Perhaps she means that this is the litmus test she uses to decide who is, and who isn’t a feminist: support a woman’s right to choose the veil, and you simply cannot be a feminist.
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Dan
And do the niqaabis support a woman’s right NOT to wear the veil? hahahahaha
If anything, they are the type that endorse al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Why else would they be present at every single al-Muhajiroun gathering/protest and represent the Lal Masjid fanatics?
Why don’t these niqaabis ask the victims of the ‘Black Widows’ in Moscow terrorist attacks how they feel when they don the niqaab to hide explosives and murder more innocents? Niqaabis aren’t known to be compassionate anyways because if they were, perhaps they wouldn’t be wearing such disgusting garb to begin with, not to mention they wouldn’t be so virulently anti-Western and highly resistant to the society they choose to live in.
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Null
Do you know any niqaabis Dan? Luckily, none of the ones I know fit your description.
Niqaabis aren’t known to be compassionate anyways because if they were, perhaps they wouldn’t be wearing such disgusting garb to begin with,
I’m not sure what you mean by disgusting here, but putting that aside I think you’ve raised an interesting point here re: compassion of niqaabis. A lot of the talk surrounding these proposed bans on of niqab seem to revolve around the supposed character of “the niqaabi” and what she represents. Mona said that they belong to the “Muslim right wing”, and you have written that they are likely to endorse the Taliban and al qaeda. Ok.
So the logic goes that you can identify a person’s character/political motivations from the clothes that they wear – and if they are unpopular/distasteful characteristics/political motivations than that person can be stripped of their right to wear that item of identifying clothing? Is this right?
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Dan
Well, since niqaabis themselves have made the niqaab a symbol of their opposition to everything the West stands for, then yes, in this case, you can identify a person’s character based on the garb they wear. Niqaabis should honestly go migrate to Saudi Arabia if they want to live in an Islaamic society anyways, because they often bitch and whine about how immoral the West is (just look at discussions on MuslimMatters for proof), and yet they still prefer to stay in the West all the while complaining like little women.
These same hypocrites will never, ever support a woman’s right NOT to wear this backward relic of Arabian culture. And given the fact that niqaabi women have been involved in terrorist acts in the past (“Jihad Jane” and the Black Widows would add credence to my argument), it is fair enough to say that these women, and their garb, are not only a threat to the society they want to undermine, but also a security threat as well.
Besides, is hijab not enough for these losers?
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AA
The people who wear religious garbs are generally telling others that they’re wearing religion on their sleeves. They’re a walking ‘holier than thous’, ‘you are not pious but I am’ types. However, one reason they possibly wear burqa, beards (including other religious symbols of all types) etc is because they think they “can” become religious and pious by adopting such things on to themselves. It is no different than going to caves to meditate or becoming hermits. The underlying need is to fulfill the worldly requirements while you wear and tighten your chastity belt.
One could easily ask, why not trust your inner instincts, why is there a need to visibly label yourself as a follower of so and so religion? Does God not see or listen to the inner voice of a naked?
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Crabby
I just want to put it out there an old interesting account about a lady’s veiling. It is between three Sufi prodigies:
“So matters continued, until one day Ahmad resolved to visit Abu Yazid. Fatema, his wife, accompanied him, and when they entered Abu Yazid’s presence she lifted her veil from her face and engaged Abu Yazid in conversation. Ahmad was dismayed by this, jealousy overmastering his heart.
“Fatema, what boldness was this you showed with Abu Yazid?” he cried.
“You are intimate with my natural self. Abu Yazid is intimate with my spiritual way. You rouse my passion, but he brings me to God,” Fatema replied. “The proof of this is that he can dispense with my company, whereas you need me.”
Abu Yazid was bold with Fatema, until one day his eyes fell upon her hands and he noticed that they were stained with henna.
“Fatema, why have you put on henna?” he asked.
“Abu Yazid, until now you have never looked at my hands and noticed the henna,” Fatema replied. “Hitherto I have been at ease with you. Now that your eyes have fallen on my hands, it is unlawful for me to keep your company.”
“I have petitioned God,” said Abu Yazid, “to make women in my eyes no more noticeable than a wall, and so He has made them in my sight.”
- from Attar’s Memorial of the Saints
Now that is a cool niqabi huh.
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shams
wallah….i loved that.
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thabet
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thabet
The immigration minister has said it would be “un-British” to ban the burqa:
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Lawrence of Arabia
Liberty has threatened to help sue Hollobone, one of the MPs who wanted a burqa ban, if he follows through on a threat not to meet with women wearing a burqa.
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thabet
More on New Labour’s involvement in Guantanamo, torture and ‘rendition’ (kidnapping):
Among the most damning documents are a series of interrogation reports from MI5 officers that betray their disregard for the suffering of a British resident whom they were questioning at a US airbase in Afghanistan. The documents also show that the officers were content to see the mistreatment continue.
The Graun has made the classified documents available on its website.
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thabet
Anti-terror stop and search powers to be scrapped:
Under section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000, officers can stop and search anyone in a designated area without having to show reasonable suspicion. Interim operational guidelines to be issued to the police say that in future section 44 powers will be used only to search vehicles, and officers will have to have grounds for suspecting they are being used in connection with terrorism.
Section 44 stop and search powers were used on more than 148,798 occasions last year and have been a key element in the campaign against terrorism.
The home secretary’s decision to scrap their use against individuals follows a ruling by the European court of human rights in January that the powers were unlawful because they were too broadly drawn and lacked sufficient safeguards to protect civil liberties.
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thabet
Superior Civilisation Watch:
Majorities in Germany (71%), Britain (62%) and Spain (59%) would also support a similar ban in their own countries. In contrast, most Americans would oppose such a measure; 65% say they would disapprove of a ban on Muslim women wearing full veils in public places compared with 28% who say they would approve.
shams, 
Sidwell, 
Hitch, and 1 other are discussing. 
aziz are discussing. 
Arwi, 
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee, and 2 others are discussing. 
AA, 
Dan, 
Null, and 2 others are discussing. 
Anti-Muslim bias is bad in parts of Europe; but that’s Europe. In the U.S. there is no legitimate stat or fact (like number of hate crimes) which shows that the Muslim population here is more put-upon or discriminated against than even the protestant majority (Southern Baptists as slightly discriminated against in the North and Western U.S.)