Is it Islamophobia when Saudi, Pakistan, UAE, Bahrain, Syria, Egypt, Malaysia, Turkey, and Iran discriminate against and marginalise their own Muslim minorities?
The National actually did well to report this:
Tagged: OIC Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts
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thabet
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aziz
The OIC appears to be actually doing something useful: an Islamic Stock Index. The MASDAQ?
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thabet
Does this opposition to ‘hatred of Muslims’ include opposing hatred of Shi’is and other assorted ‘heretics’ in countries like, for example, Saudi Arabia?
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thabet
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Dan
Shi’as are ‘kaffir’, haven’t you heard? /sarcasm
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thabet
Obviously this demand from the OIC does not apply to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Iran, etc.
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thabet
So, it seems Obama’s Special Governor Of Uppity Muslims, Rashad Hussein was keen to be a big man and attack Muslim citizens around the world when they questioned US foreign policy, but his balls seem to have shrunk when faced with the racist far-right loonies in the US:
Now the American Islamic College (AIC) and the OIC is jointly organizing a conference from September 28-30 on the topic of “Islam and Muslims in America” to be held at the AIC. Rashad Hussein was one of the headline speakers for the conference and his presence was essentially a sure thing considering that his JOB is to be the special envoy to the OIC. The Islamophobe-sphere went buck wild when they heard that Hussain would be a speaker and responded with their usual hate smears calling it a “supremacist gathering,” a “Muslim Brotherhood event,” throwing in all the usual buzz words and the kitchen sink like “Hamas,” “Shariah,” “Khilafah,” yada yada.
In light of these attacks Rashad Hussain canceled his scheduled speech at the conference last minute citing a “scheduling conflict” according to the emcee (hat tip: Joel).
Are you serious? So at the last minute the Special Envoy to the OIC has a “scheduling conflict”? What possible “scheduling conflict” would keep the special envoy to the OIC from attending a major OIC conference right here in the United States, in fact in his hometown? Did he have another scheduled event at the OIP (Organization of Intimidated Pushovers)?
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shams
but his balls seem to have shrunk when faced with the racist far-right loonies in the US:
thass ur homies brother thabet.
you don’t get to be switzerland.
choose a side.-
thabet
I am on the side of this man:
Rizvi held America responsible for many woes in the Muslim world. “You supplied arms to Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, then invaded Iraq in the name of searching for weapons of mass destruction. You created the Taliban with the help of Pakistan. You have been backing Israel ever since its creation. First, right the wrongs that you have created if you want to establish peace in the world,” said Rizvi to applause from the students
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shams
me too.
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thabet
Obama and Rashad Hussein are not.
That’s my point.
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shams
i think Obama agrees with Rizvi, historically on proximate cause of terrorism and accountability……it is just that he is not empowered to arbitrarily right the wrongs, because the american people do not agree with Rizvi.
Obama is not king.
The democrats agreed not to impeach Bush before Obama took office.
Obama is the CinC. I imagine he has extremely pragmatic reasons for not showcasing the horrorshow that was the Bush torture adminstration.
I personally would like to see Bush and Cheney prosecuted to the full extent of international law….Blair too.
I personally would like Gitmo and Bagram closed.
I personally would like us to leave Afghanistan and Iraq RIGHT NAOW.
But that is not representative government in America. -
thabet
You think he agrees with people like Rizvi because he is a ‘prophet’ (small ‘p’) like figure playing some secret mystical game beyond mere mortals.
I do not, because I see him as part of the same system as Bush et al. Crucially all my evidence is in plain sight and does not rely on assuming this or that (e.g. you say yourself you ‘imagine’ his reasons for opposing punishment of Bush-era crimes). My points always rest simply on his own words and his own actions.
Only right-wing lunatics and white liberals seem to be so enthralled by Obama’s personality (for different reasons, of course) whereas I am not (he represents nothing I can identify with).
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Thabet,
As you know I agree with you on your critique of Obama. To a certain extent I agree with Shams when she talks about what is possible “within the system” and this is why I am seriously skeptical that change within the system is even possible. But while it is easy to attack right wing lunatics and white liberals, to be honest Blackamericans are largely enthralled with Obama as well (including Blackamerican Muslims, especially of the older generation.) Despite the fact that there is a depression in Blackamerica and little if anything is even being done to address it, Obama remains wildly popular among Blackamericans as well.
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shams
the kind of person you want Obama to could never have been elected. Im sry, but Obama isnt going to brief the world that he fears another Blackhawk Down before we can get our troops out.
It may happen anyways.
Obama was very good during the Green Wave in Iran– he stayed out. He told Bushes bioluddites to clear their desks and git. He reinstaed fed funding for eSCR. He got HCR passed. He got FinReg passed.
He isn’t superman, and hes not a king.
He does what he can.
tant pis its not enough for you.
I love Obama……im working on the campaign again.
so bite meh.
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thabet
Abu Noor, fair point on Black Americans. I concede that one, and I can see where it comes from. And good luck Shams. I don’t care if you campaign for him. As I said, I am sure he is good on the domestic scene.
I can see what you two are saying. The great modern philosophe Harry Callahan said the same in Magnum Force… Until a better system comes along, do the best with you have.
I actually thought he was doing ok on Israel (remain quiet let Israel dig itself even deeper), and can even see where he is coming from by remaining quiet on the flotilla killings. I thought fair enough, the man doesn’t deserve to be criticised for limitations of his office wrt Guantanamo. But now I don’t think the tiny baby steps are present at all.
Drone killings? Up under Obama. Rendition and torture? Continuing under Obama. Close Guantanamo, ok that’s may be hard for him. But Bagram will not be closed. The slavish covering-up and protection of Bush-era crimes? Just seems like another case of exceptionalism to me. And honestly, when you come on BBC Persia and start prattling on about Iranian state oppression — while remaining completely silent about what Bahrain was doing that very same week — what do you think the reaction should be? Herald the great mind games of Obama? No, it needs to be called out for the BS it is.
As LoA pointed out, militarism and empire are ‘mainstream’ American political positions (whether Republican or Democrat), and to be honest there seems to be no realisation of the dangers of this by the current administration given its behaviour so-far. This is the point made by a number of American commentators (hardcore left to sceptical right) too, so it’s not just the ramblings of a ‘limey’. Hence, my constant critique of Obama offering little real change (those military bases in far flung places aren’t about to close down even if they continue to really impact the local populace), although I am quite happy to agree that Obama offers a lot more intelligence than Bush.
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shams
ill give you the drones– that is just stupid.
i have written 20 mails on that.
But its rich being schooled by a brit– amg, you guys poisoned the world with the Raj. But that too was the biological basis of behavior.
The American president serves at the will of the people– and this is a judeoxian nation, a protestant nation. It is the biological basis of behavior.
That is why i got poleaxed by Islam. Abu-Noor fell in love with the heart of justice and the pure logic of shariah…..but I am ravished by the science of Islam.
Ihya Ulum al-Din -
thabet
you guys poisoned the world with the Raj
Which ought to mean you should listen to me when I talk about empire
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shams
But Iraq and Afghanistan are not Empire.
They are examples of colonialism and missionarism….evangelizing judeoxian/westernstyle democracy.
Failed examples. -
shams
that is why you get Stupid People on the Right like D’inesh raving about Obama being a secret anti-colonial.
The wingnutfucktards that have been running our FP all LOVE COLONIALISM.
Its not Empire– its colonialism, missionarism, and proselytizing with guns. -
shams
and its NOT secular, enlightenment democracy.
its judeoxian democracy……its JESUS democracy. -
thabet
I saw this a few days ago, and being a domestic US issue wasn’t going to post, but I think it is quite relevant here:
Here we are seventeen years later and there’s a young, new Democratic president who replaced George Bush and promised to reform politics and be a transformative leader. Backed by huge majorities in Congress….
Well, by now you can probably guess where this is heading.
I had low expectations for Obama as I always viewed him as a fairly conventional insider. But by any measure, his presidency has been a huge disappointment. It’s true that Obama inherited a terrible economy, but his policies were timid — which is no surprise given that his economic team was composed almost entirely of the same bankers and Wall Street insiders who paved the way for and profited from our bubble economy. There are now 43.6 million Americans living in poverty and more than 15 million out of work; that’s a scandal, and when there’s a Democrat in the White House and the party has ample majorities in Congress, it’s not credible to blame everything on obstructionism by the Republicans.
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Abu Noor Al-Irlandee
Good comments Thabet, but I’m not necessarily saying we should support him because there’s nothing better. I agree the alternative would be worse, but I think it’s damaging morally to support someone like that, and I certainly wouldn’t call for Muslims to follow in his footsteps. So, I encourage you to keep calling out Obama and especially someone like Rashad Hussein. I firmly believe electoral politics are a massive debilitating distraction at best and postively harmful in most cases. Electoral democracy in the west may be better than most alternatives and inshAllah it will be forced to reflect real societal change made through other means but it is not an arena in which real change can be brought to society.
Allah knows best.
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shams
well…if Obama is an anti-colonial like D’Souza says……isnt that the best we muslims can hope for out of Judeoxian America?
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shams
and the real change coming to our society is the evolution of the new social compact– Social Democracy…..like HCR, like FinReg.
If Obama really was Bush redux wouldn’t he be trying to give CPR to the white patriarchy social cohesion model? The rightwing has been keeping that hoary old PVS rotting corpse on life support for years.
the republican party in this country is “the skeletal grasp of a corpse around eggs trying to hatch”.
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thabet
We’re still awaiting reports from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to issue those reports on how Muslim states treat their minorities:
Delegates from Islamic countries, including Pakistan and Egypt, told the United Nations Human Rights Council that treatment of Muslims in Western countries amounted to racism and discrimination and must be fought.
“People of Arab origin face new forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related forms of intolerance and experience discrimination and marginalisation,” an Egyptian delegate said, according to a U.N. summary.
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Hitch
“Related forms of intolerance”? What about Pakistan bullying facebook founders etc?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/17/zuckerberg_faces_criminal_investigation_in_pakistan/
Now of course the thought process is internally consistent. After all the OIC wanted UN blasphemy rules.
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Tec15
Ooh he’s being bullied by having a case filed against him !! How awful !!
That’s the least of what he deserves for the non existent protection of privacy for Facebook users. Not that anything will actually come out of this.
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johnpi
A bad news morning in the media. Rather than crud up the front page with it, I’ll do a round-up post.
• A New York Times article focuses on the hypocrisy of outrage in the Muslim world about the Swiss mineret ban when most of those same countries are repressing their own religious minorities.
“The decision of the Swiss people stood to be interpreted as xenophobic, prejudiced, discriminative and against the universal human rights values,” said the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which represents 57 Muslim-majority nations.
Members include Saudi Arabia, where non-Muslims are arrested for worshiping privately; Maldives, the Indian Ocean atoll where citizenship is reserved for Muslims; Libya, which limits churches to one per denomination in cities; and Iran, where conversion from Islam is punished by death, according to a 2009 U.S. State Department report on religious freedom.
• A conference on sexual harassment in the Arab world concluded in Cairo with a message that “the sexual harassment of women in the streets, schools and work places of the Arab world is driving them to cover up and confine themselves to their homes.”
• A federal judge sentenced a Pakistani-American and a Bangladeshi-American to long prison terms in Georgia on terrorism-related charges. The defendants were defiant in court and said the laws of the US don’t apply to them. They refused to stand at sentencing. “Mankind rises for God. We cannot stand before men.”
• Pakistani cricketers were mocked with racist comments and jeers at a New Zealand match. Spectators in a corporate box shouted “Pakistani terrorists!” at the team and made other comments.
• Another bomb blast in Pakistan has killed another slew of people.
• India claims the two Kashmiri women whose deaths prompted riots drowned in an ankle-deep stream. “The agency filed charges against 13 people, including 6 doctors, 5 local lawyers, an activist and the brother of one of the dead women. The charges included fabricating evidence and intimidating witnesses after the recovery of the two bodies.”
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johnpi
If members of the Organization of Islamic States can get an anti-blasphemy rule passed at the UN to curtail conversations about activities that some Muslims consider Shariah (female genital mutilation, stoning and child marriages), then will the rule also prevent OIC states from criticizing Israel and Israeli settlers for taking Palestinian land, since that too is said to be prescribed by religion?
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khaleeda
fyi, female genital mutilation is not an islamic teaching, and is not shariah. female circumcision is not practiced in islam but can be seen in some part of the world.
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johnpi
Muslim nations shoulder a “devastating burden” of the world’s neglected tropical diseases, according to an article published Monday in the Public Library of Science Neglected Tropical Diseases journal.
The article, a combination of analysis and editorial written by the journal’s editor, Peter J. Hotez, shows that the member states of the Organization of the Islamic Conference account for 40 percent of the world’s infestations with intestinal worms.
Worm infestations, which are most common in children, can stunt their growth and make them too tired to stay awake in school. They can cause dangerous anemia in pregnant women and disabling pain in farmers.
Member countries also have 20 percent of leprosy cases and 21 percent of blinding trachoma.
At the same time, the article said, there is no school of tropical medicine anywhere in the Islamic world, even though several Persian Gulf nations are building top-tier universities.
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thabet
An interesting argument for why Muslim nations should take up the task of helping Afghanistan:
The solution? Muslim and regional states must fill the void.
Emirati, Jordanian and Turkish troops have been in Afghanistan, though in small numbers and doing very limited roles.
The author, Arif Rafiq, continues to the meat of his argument:
The Organization of the Islamic Conference, the association of more than four dozen Muslim states, should set up an Afghanistan contact group, led by Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. The group would lead a coalition of Muslim states responsible for political reconciliation, peacekeeping, economic development, and governmental capacity building in Afghanistan.
I like the idea of the Organization of the Islamic Conference do something other than bleating about ‘Islamophobia in Europe’, though it is unlikely to happen.
And just as some would like the US to admit to its mistakes in Muslim countries, it would be good if Muslim countries which have a dubious foreign policy of their own could admit to some of their mistakes; especially Pakistan and Saudi Arabia with respect to Afghanistan. Though, again, I wouldn’t advise holding my breath waiting for that to occur.
It’s a nice idea by Rafiq. On paper at least.
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee is discussing. 
Dan and 
thabet are discussing. 
shams, and 
Tec15 and 
Hitch are discussing. 
khaleeda is discussing. 
Abu Noor Al-Irlandee 12:10 pm on January 19, 2011 Permalink | Log in to Reply
I hate the term Islamophobia.
Also, is there a single Muslim in the “west” who wants the OIC or any “Muslim country” as an advocate on our behalf?