The Angry Exile: Islamophobiaphobia

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? [...] We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

Islamophobiaphobia

I'm not sure if that's the right word to describe a fear of Islamophobia and I'm not even sure that Islamophobiaphobia is a real thing, even allowing for some of the stuff on Comment is Free. But even if it's not a phobia I'm fairly sure that it's a bit of a worry for some Muslims that the actions of some of their co-believers have created where a nervous flyer who also happens to be a Muslim can't say 'Thank Allah we've landed' without everyone else on the plane simultaneously shitting themselves, not least because several of those actions have involved planes and the creation of a whole generation of nervous flyers of all creeds.

So on the whole I think it's probably a good thing for everybody when the sane, moderate Muslims, the kind that in fact are the only kind* I've ever dealt with professionally, come out and say something like this:

"Muslims can be whingers and they tend to blame everyone but themselves for the way people view them."

No, that's not a hypothetical wouldn't-it-be-nice-if-someone-stood-up-and-said-it, they're the words of man called Diaa Mohamed and you probably don't need too many guesses about what his religion is. Nor are they the words of some culturally Muslim secular type criticising a faith they don't really hold - apparently Diaa Mohamed professes to be a devout Muslim and is the co-founder of mypeace.com.au, a website he hopes will tell people of other faiths more about his.** He doesn't stop at saying that Muslims can be whingers either.

"A lot of Muslims point the finger at the media for giving them a bad reputation but it's nobody's fault but our own," ... Diaa Mohamed said. "Muslims haven't done the job when it comes to being out there and showing who they are and what their values are.
"A lot of the things we see on television are acts by extremists and radical Muslims.
"That is not who we are."

Good on the guy for speaking up. It reminds me of the Muslims who pitched up to an Islam4UK do back in 2009, but to protest against them (as well as take the piss out of them) rather than with them. Here's a reminder:

So in fact there are reasonable and moderate Muslims who are prepared to stand up and speak - that's the good news. Now here's the not so good. When I blogged it at the time the title of the post was "More Please", and I wrote that more Western Muslims rejecting violence and publicly embracing liberty, free speech and live and let live would improve their image and reduce Islamophobia more effectively than, well, anything. And yet nearly 2 years on and I can't recall seeing any other articles about British Muslims for Secular Democracy, the group behind that protest, and this is the first I'm writing of any other Muslims doing anything similar.

So where are the rest?

I very much doubt a billion and a half Muslims all read this blog and there's no reason why they should take any notice of me anyway, but I'd have thought that the same thing would have occurred to more of them. Not so much Joe Average Muslim, like the guys (and girls) I used to deal with in West London ten years or so ago who hardly anyone gave a second thought about until September 2001 because they just rocked up and did a 9 to 5 like everyone else apart from working through every lunch hour when it was Ramadan. I was thinking more along the lines of Muslims who can command some media time and encourage others to be more vocal.

So we have a group in Sydney, the BMSD and, er... the only other group I've ever come across is Minaret of Freedom, which came up when out of curiosity I put 'Muslim libertarians' into Google to see what it would find.*** I'm not likely ever to come to believe what they believe (in fact over at the Orphanage I've been explaining that I have a profound lack of belief for anything much) but to me they seem to be reasonable and sane people who are no scarier to me than Christians.

Most Christians

That Diaa Mohamed is in the news for saying Muslims have got to accept that they've not been helping their cause suggests that it's probably not the media's fault for ignoring them, though of course outrage sells papers so Muslims saying or doing something outrageous is a better story than Muslims singing the Coca-Cola song. But even the media are going to get bored with running the same kind of story over and over again and will go with something different just for novelty value. Moderate Muslims, those that can get on TV, can make something of this if they want. Perhaps they feel they shouldn't have to or don't have the time, but if they ever want Muslim communities - and sticking to communities mightn't be the best idea either - to get back to fairly normal terms with their adopted countries I'd say they want to give it a try. The alternative is to let the ones preaching death, destruction and violent proselytisation to continue to have it nearly all their own way.

* Always in work environments, where for some reason I've never met the other kind - maybe they're too busy photocopying leaflets or making placards for marches or something.
** I only had a quick look at the home page and a couple of random links but my first impressions is that Islam4UK it ain't. There was a link about becoming a Muslim, and let's be honest I'd be surprised if there wasn't - it's not like Christians, especially the evangelicals, don't proselytise - but other than that it all seemed pretty non-threatening.
*** Haven't really looked at that either so although their banner professes free market ideals I don't know if they are libertarian as such.

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GA2 · 714 weeks ago

Ask the "reasonable and moderate" Muslims if Muslims have the right to leave Islam.

1 reply · active 714 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 714 weeks ago

It's a bit off the topic of whether more should be doing what Diaa Mohamed is doing but I'll bite. :)

Like millions of others I was baptised at a young age and in retrospect it was against my will, and since there is no way to get unbaptised me and everyone else in the same position are technically still Christians - the respective churches still lay claim to us and there is no right, or even a way, for us to officially leave. So it comes down to a practical point - does anyone come after me for not going to Mass since sometime in the late 80s and do they want to kick the shit out of me for it? The answer to both are no. The next question is whether any Muslims can say the same thing, and there the answer is yes because I've known two or three people who are Muslims in the same way that I'm Catholic, i.e. there may be a couple of documents kicking around somewhere that says they're Muslims but in any real sense they're absolutely secular - for one of them cricket was more of a religion than anything else and Islam was that thing that his parents did. This practically defines whatever Muslims are around them, family mostly I suppose, as being moderate in my book. If they were forcibly dragging them back into their congregation and beating the crap out of them for leaving they would, ipso facto, not be moderate and would certainly be unreasonable. Of course it is true that there are also plenty of crazies who do scream 'apostate' and do some outrageous stuff to anyone who wants out, but it's also worth asking if the same thing ever happens in any Christian sects. And of course it does, and not just among Christians in developing nations but in the industrialised world. Heard of the term 'intervention' for saving someone from themselves? It's often Christian evangelists involved either seeking a new convert or bringing back someone they see as being one of theirs, and it may border on kidnapping.

In short there's really not much you can accuse Muslims of that you can't also accuse Christians of. Probably more of it goes on in Islam than in Christianity, I'm not going to argue that - Christianity has had a few centuries longer to have a Reformation, cut down on the insane zeal stuff and so on, and Islam mostly hasn't yet. But if we're going to look at over a billion people and think of them as being like the fucknuts who just thrashed that bloke in Sydney for having a beer, then shouldn't we also look at the world's two billion Christians as being like the fucknuts who bundle people into the back of vans so they can be brought back to Jesus? After all, of the two religions the one that has most restricted my liberty in the past and has most potential to do so in the future is Christianity. But I'm not going to blame Fr Bob Maguire for things like heavy handed censorship and videogames aimed adults being banned to protect children, and all the other annoying shit Christians have inflicted on us. I'll just stick to the individualist line and treat a moderate as a moderate and a fucknuts as a fucknuts regardless of what religion they're into.

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@JmsHigham · 714 weeks ago

Perhaps they feel they shouldn't have to or don't have the time, but if they ever want Muslim communities - and sticking to communities mightn't be the best idea either - to get back to fairly normal terms with their adopted countries I'd say they want to give it a try.

I'm fed twice a week by a Turkish Muslim woman and yesterday we spoke of these sorts of things for the first time. she was like the Muslims I encountered in Russia - fairly secular, reasonable people. Islam itself is a violent religion, preaching hatred and killing but there are the Christian fundamentalists too I don't like the look in the eyes of.

It's the fanaticism which is the problem.

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 714 weeks ago

Indeed. The people who put the mentalist into fundamentalist are the ones to be wary of, no matter what their religion is. Even fundamentalism itself - and thinking of the discussion over at the Orphanage about the fundamentals of your faith - isn't necessarily a bad thing. It's as you say, the problem is getting so fanatical about it that killing people who don't agree starts to seem like the right thing. Islam has more than it's fair share of those but having met many Muslims, not one of whom was a wild-eyed fanatic, I think they're probably in the minority. I just wish more of the others would speak up. After all, regardless of what I think about Christian belief there were plenty of practising Christians who think that Fred Phelps is a nutter.

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Fraser · 714 weeks ago

I agree with the sentiment of the piece, but what the 'moderate' mozlems need to do is threaten to beat the living crap out of the fundamentalists if they continue to bring the so called 'religion of peace' into disrepute. Methinks it will be a long day in hell before that happens.

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@JmsHigham · 713 weeks ago

Moggsy says, at my place, in reply to your quote I quoted [clear as mud?]:

so maybe Islamo-wariness might be a better word

1 reply · active less than 1 minute ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 713 weeks ago

Good word. Islamophoboa probably does exist but I think Islamo-wariness is much more descriptive.

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Anonymous · 713 weeks ago

British Muslims for Secular Democracy have been very active in the last two years... Have a look at the latest articles, events and publications on their website: www.bmsd.org.uk.

1 reply · active 713 weeks ago

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Angry_Exile 90p · 713 weeks ago

I didn’t say they were inactive, or if I did I misspoke and I’m happy to be corrected (I did actually have a quick shufti at the site before I posted). My point was that they’re not getting much media exposure compared to the Anjem Choudarys and so on. Of course part of that is to do with the media thinking they’ll sell more papers with stories of scary Muslims than they will with stories about Muslims who aren’t a threat, and annoyingly they’re probably right - scary anything sells more papers whether it’s asteroid near misses, warble gloaming, the Large Hadron Collider and it’s black hole production line doomsday funhouse. Basically name your scare story and the press will happily run it, so moderate Muslims are always going to have to work harder to get coverage than the radicals. Good on BMSD and others like them - Diaa Mohamed here for instance - for trying, but boy I wish they had a famous face or two joining in and giving them some publicity. The most well known Muslim I can think of who was mentioned with the BMSD video was Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, and with the best will in the world she’s not exactly a household name.

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Crushed · 713 weeks ago

Islam is NOT a violent religion.

Read the Koran, Higham, before mouthing off- as usual- about things you know next to nothing about. The Koran actually specifically says all believers in God should be respected.

As for Christian fundamentalists- isn't that what you are with your homophobia and your hatred of sex outside marriage? Aren't you the classic example of a God botherer?

If there are Muslims who give Islam a bad name, there are Christians who give Christianity a bad name- you being one of them. I'm so glad at least you don't call yourself a Catholic, Higham, because then you would truly disgrace a great and honourable creed.

If you want to know why I think you disgace Christianity, I'll tell you; you focus on the rather irrelevant aspects- the sex bits- but have no regard for the social justice, world peace and brotherhood of man aspects.

Which means you're not a Christian. You use religion for the same reason Jihadists do; to focus their sexual repression into judging the rest of the world for it's 'sins'.

Like them, you think you feel God because you think that voice in your head telling you that all the wanking you do ( a lot in your case I suspect) comes from God. But it doesn't.

God's actually telling you not to be such a nasty right wing bigot but you won't listen.
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