"Islamophobia"

  1. Raúl Duke
    Raúl Duke
    Is it just me or is some sections of the left become keen in instead of joining to criticize superstition/delusions/etc (religion) has instead join them in their defense?

    Somewhere on this site I read this:

    There is a highly Islamophobic (racist) culture on the board at the moment and this lead to your restriction.
    as a comment on someones profile.

    Currently, there are now people who use the term "Islamophobia" and claim it at the same level as racism. These people criticize leftists of their so-called "Islamophobia" as if by attacking a religion you are attacking a race (i.e. these people have elevated muslim to the standard of race instead of as a term denoting a specific religion adherent.).

    What's your opinion/etc on this?

    (I also put this up because I wasn't seeing much activity on this sub-forum)
  2. F9
    F9
    yeah we let this sub-forum go down since the site updated
    it depends on how are the arguments set against the religion or against the people believing in that religion,i think rascism and islamophobia comes when you attack people of a religion.yeah we have our positions against "gods" we dont want them and we fight them but people can believe in whatever they want.Ristrictions although attacking a religion is something we should consider especially in this sub-forum,some members could go restricted for nothing,but i think restrictions have become for attacking relgious people!

    Fuserg9
  3. Kami
    Kami
    People can attack Islam for racist reasons, but attacking Islam itself is most definitely not racist.
  4. mykittyhasaboner
    mykittyhasaboner
    islamophobia is mostly equated to bigotry/hatred against islamic people, not just islam. it just depends what the context of it is, if someone is an anti theist thats one thing, but if they single out the islamic people then it could be seen as racism.
  5. Raúl Duke
    Raúl Duke
    islamophobia is mostly equated to bigotry/hatred against islamic people, not just islam. it just depends what the context of it is, if someone is an anti theist thats one thing, but if they single out the islamic people then it could be seen as racism.
    OF course yet these people in specific are, seemingly, against anti-theism of any kind and when a nominal anti-theist, who questions all religions, begins to question islam the religion these other leftists drop the charge of "Islamophobia/Racism" when in reality it's not true (the person is not racist).
  6. Bastable
    Bastable
    islamophobia is mostly equated to bigotry/hatred against islamic people, not just islam. it just depends what the context of it is, if someone is an anti theist thats one thing, but if they single out the islamic people then it could be seen as racism.

    What?

    As has already been noted the term, "muslim", "islam", "islamic" refer to a religion. the term "islamophobia" is no different from "christainophobia" (to be tacky and use a dodgy term). to say that hatred of muslims is racist is to say that hatred of christians is racist too. remember, there are "white" muslims too.
  7. Comrade Rage
    Comrade Rage
    What's your opinion/etc on this?
    Well, I think that almost all of the claims of 'Islamaphobia' or opposition to Islam being racist are bunk. There are people on the right who attack Muslims as being subhuman and having sex with goats - that's racist, but being opposed to Islam, political or otherwise, is by no means racist.
  8. BurnTheOliveTree
    BurnTheOliveTree
    I think all of us should be clear that we do not hate muslims as a people, but Islam as a belief system. This makes it clear that we are not racist.

    -Alex
  9. Raúl Duke
    Raúl Duke
    I think all of us should be clear that we do not hate muslims as a people, but Islam as a belief system. This makes it clear that we are not racist.

    -Alex
    Of course, I agree. However, surely some of us have realized that some "comrades" in this forum have already began to distinguish anti-theism directed against Islam has some sort of racist attack. That's what I'm criticizing; actually I think they construe such attacks that way so to use a loaded term (racism) incorrectly to "score points" for their "religious apologism".
  10. Coggeh
    Coggeh
    Interesting topic indeed .

    I think we should distinguish between the culture and people of Islam and Islam as a belief. We should be very careful about this as some may interpret leftists who are anti-islamophobia as jumping into bed with a certain religion and those who are anti-islam(purely as the religion itself) as islamophobes.

    I think this confusion is easy to make which is why leftists should try and always recruit purely along class lines .
  11. Killfacer
    Killfacer
    I'm islamaphobic. I hate islam as much as i hate Christianity, Judaism, Hunduism, Buddism and all the other shitty little cults.
  12. dez
    dez
    I think the specific focus against islam is discriminatory.
    I have no problem with religious criticism, at all, and I even think that criticizing the theist/doctrinary aspect of islam is commendable, but a line has to be drawn.
    Muslims are being made the new jews, and critics against the religion often come in contrast with the western lifestyle and with subtle claims that christianity/the west is better.
  13. welshboy
    welshboy
    I think the specific focus against islam is discriminatory.
    As is a focus upon Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, hinduism etc etc
    All these faiths are absolute nonsense that serve to divide the class and spread bigotry and hatred.
    Islam is a religion followed by people of many ethnic backgrounds it is NOT racist to criticise or attack Islam or to challenge and attack the ideology of Muslims. Same as it is not wrong to do the same to Christians, Jews, Hindus etc..
    The reason that the subject of Islam comes up so often is both the topicality of it at the moment, where the state and press are indeed trying to racialise Islam as something wholly Arabic. Plus we have certain portions of the left, followers of the Tony Cliff I'm looking at you now, cosying up to reactionary Muslim group like the Muslim Association of Britain.
    Were these sections of the left cosying up to pro-zionist organisations then we would probably be accused of being anti-semitic for challenging this.
  14. LOLseph Stalin
    LOLseph Stalin
    I hate all religions equally.
  15. Black Sheep
    Islamophobia? So if i say that islam is a stupid neurological disorder, violent, racist etc i am an islamophobe?

    Cool story bro.Nice ad hominem attack when all arguments attacking your stupid faith cannot be countered.
  16. dez
    dez
    As is a focus upon Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, hinduism etc etc
    All these faiths are absolute nonsense that serve to divide the class and spread bigotry and hatred.
    Islam is a religion followed by people of many ethnic backgrounds it is NOT racist to criticise or attack Islam or to challenge and attack the ideology of Muslims. Same as it is not wrong to do the same to Christians, Jews, Hindus etc..
    The reason that the subject of Islam comes up so often is both the topicality of it at the moment, where the state and press are indeed trying to racialise Islam as something wholly Arabic. Plus we have certain portions of the left, followers of the Tony Cliff I'm looking at you now, cosying up to reactionary Muslim group like the Muslim Association of Britain.
    Were these sections of the left cosying up to pro-zionist organisations then we would probably be accused of being anti-semitic for challenging this.

    Challenging is not the problem, not acknowledging and promoting awareness concerning the racialism / cultural imperialism involved in the islamobashing is.
  17. marxistcritic
    We must remember that Islam causes people who would be otherwise intellegent and logical to run into buildings covered in bombs and kill thousands of people.
  18. Salabra
    Salabra
    Let me start by arguing my “bona fides” as an anti-theist.

    I am female, so I am FOR women — very few of the belief systems to which humans have adhered throughout history are free from misogyny. I despise christianity, which (on the basis of “Saint” Paul’s dictum that “Man is the head of woman, as christ is the head of the church”) has treated women like dirt for much of its 2 000-year history as much as I despise judaism for refusing women a place in public life as much as I despise islam with its public execution of “whores” in the Kabul stadium as much as I despise hinduism, in the name of which lesbians are raped and murdered by their fathers, brothers and husbands to “cure” them as much as I despise confucianism because it condoned footbinding, etc etc, ad nauseam.

    I am a lesbian, so I am also FOR gay folks. All three Abrahamic religions scorn women like me — I have been promised beheading by the odd muslim or two, stoning by an ultra-orthodox jew (a relative of my partner’s, in fact) and burning at the stake by MANY christians. Not a few christians have told me that their invisible friend loves me anyway but would love me a lot better if I ”abandoned my sinful ways” (a few used the word “cured”) and chose the path “for which I was destined”! For what it’s worth, some hindus have told me that I am a “disgrace” too. So bad cess to the lot of ‘em, say I!

    OK, now on to the topic at hand. In the sense of criticizing the religion to which muslims adhere, “islamophobia” is a perfectly acceptable position to hold IMO. However, as Coggeh says, the word is also used to mean “fear/hatred of muslims (as people).” In this case, it is racism, pure and simple, not only criminal in and of itself, but also counterproductive — those who are treated as “outsiders” often become the most vociferous zealots.

    What worries me is something that welshboy has already pointed out. Some of our comrades on the left are in the grip of the opposite condition — “islamophilia” which at times verges on “islamomania.” In the name of “anti-imperialism” and “solidarity with the oppressed,” they bend over backwards to trail after the reactionary clerics and crazy jihadis — skinning Soviet soldiers alive in Afghanistan, throwing acid in the faces of unveiled women, and strapping bombs to one’s body to reduce women, children and men to bloody gobbets of meat are hailed as “revolutionary acts.” These so-called leftists applaud wildly when a member of RAWA (the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) claims that Western clothing and inter-gender fraternization are “contrary to Afghan culture,” they support the stoning of Iranian women for “adultery,” and the murder of Iraqi lesbians and gays, and consider “progressive” the establishment in “Western” countries of a parallel court system, based on sharia law, to deal (like the equally reactionary beit din of judaism) with matters of “family law” — marriage, divorce and inheritance. For such comrades any left-wing protest against anti-woman Islamic reaction can only be racist and pro-imperialist.

    If I hear one more description of the veil as a sign of “respect,” much less “liberation,” I’ll happily slap the speaker into the next state — and if I hear the claim that it is “revolutionary,” I will continue the slapfest until I reach the Indian Ocean on the other side of the continent! I will have no truck with a “revolutionary” organization that says, “you can march — at the back ... behind the beardies ... and dressed in a black tent with an eyeslit ... oh, and if you're really eager to do something for the cause, you can be a suicide bomber!"
  19. Dyslexia! Well I Never!
    Dyslexia! Well I Never!
    Islamophobia = directly "the fear of Islamic culture or people."

    I freely admit I'm afraid of any group with members that might want me dead just for being who I woke up as this morning.

    In fact I freely admit I'm afraid of religious groups as they stand. As state sanctioned sleeper cells of idiocy and oppressive counter-revolutionary doctrine. The very idea of clerics spreading pro-Jihadi fervour chills me to the bone as a rational being for the idea of somebody who'll kill and die for an ancient storybook is nothing if not terrifying.

    However I view the majority of Muslims like I do those of any religion, insidious posionous dupes who play party to their own subversion by their acts in the name of their faith and gleefully spew the vile chains of arachaic moralistic posturing into the forming minds of their children purposefully to fuck them up and perpetuate the cycle of hatred and destruction that is the history of religion. I don't hate them as such, but I refuse to (and happily am not compelled by any faith to) forgive them for their dangerous and deluded actions.

    I find you help more people to begin thinking for themselves by using the method of talking to people, than one can by simply hating people. You can't free those who you refuse to show the way out.

    To paraphrase (and correct) Mr Tom (what a prick) Cruise. Sometimes you see somebody and you know that only an Anti-theist can help them. Usually they're praying or somesuch deluded bullshit.
  20. RedStarOverChina
    RedStarOverChina
    We all should, doubtlessly, consider ourselves against Islam. The issue for me has always been how to present my views as honestly as possible to Muslims. It is hard for people to understand how you can be staunchly against their religion yet not prejudiced against them on a personal level. Some people will always take you for being a racist; if that's the case, nothing can be done.

    To be fair, religious people are also staunchly against our views (atheism), yet they do not have to justify their views as not being racist/discriminatory.