Politblogo

Eid mubarak

It's kind of late, I guess, by a few hours---on the Islamic calendar, the day ends/begins at sundown.  But I just celebrated Eid ul-Fitr with my family in Ottawa.  As usual, there was the worldwide confusion over whose interpretation of the moon-sighting rules was more correct; one sights the moon to determine the end of the month, in this case, the month of Ramadan.  Yes, I've gone back into blog-delinquency (bloglinquency?) for no reason other than "meh" and "ennui", but I thought it was necessary to write something to close off my Ramadan post.

Why am I back in Canada?  I am satisfying the demands of our global police state.  I find the whole process annoying and offensive, and believe that it doesn't have any intrinsic benefit or merit to my life or to the life of any of the people I know that we should all have to obtain permission and submit documents to see any other part of the world.  Limited freedom from our national prisons costs $90.  I can only imagine what it must be like to carry a Syrian passport or something like that.

Papers, please!

Ramadan mubarak

Today (actually last night) is the first of Ramadan, A.H. 1428.   I just had the dawn (sehri) meal.  It was largely cereal and junk food, washed down with reduced-sugar lemonade (on sale!) and a large quantity of water.  I won't eat or drink for about 14 hours or something, and then at around 7:30 today, I will have the evening iftaar breakfast.  This will go on for about 29 or 30 days until Eid ul-Fitr.

Some people already started counting Ramadan because of the usual inconsistent disagreements about when to start it.  Saudi Arabia had an early moon-sighting, whereas I gather that the Islamic Society of North America is using astronomical calculations rather than the traditional way.  Most North American Muslim organizations are following suit with ISNA, but not everyone goes along with this.

Anyway, l'shana tova to my Jewish readers, some of whom are celebrating Rosh Hashanah/Jewish New Year.  Probably not coincidentally, this is apparently also Ethiopian New Year for Ethiopian Orthodox Christians.  That I found out a couple of days ago during the DC outing with Chuckles that is the subject of my previous post.

STEYN ATTACKS!

My first foray into the dangerous world of political mockery by image editing.

Johann Hari has an excellent takedown of Mark Steyn's book on the impending European Islamopocalypse. 

Johann Hari - Archive: But this cannot hide the gaping holes of logic and fact in his argument. To fulfil his headline predictions, Steyn needs to turn 20 million European Muslims into more than 200 million European Muslims - in just 13 years. Only Fallacci's rats could reproduce so rapidly. Steyn even admits that the history of demographic predictions is hysterically inept, noting that "most twenty-year projections... are laughably speculative, and thus most doomsday scenarios are too" - before offering his own.

Europe's real demographics are described in a similar book by a slightly more scupulous author. Tony Blankley, editorial page editor of the Washington Times and DC grande dame, last year wrote 'The West's Last Chance' predicting an enfeebled Europe would collapse before the Muslim hoardes. But after studying the figures, he admitted: “For almost every Western European country, their populations do not even begin to decline until at least 2025... In fact, for the next few decades, they continue to go up, even without any new immigration… The numbers only begin to move decidedly down about fifty years from now.” So for Steyn's predictions to hold true, the current Muslim birthrate needs to hold steady through five decades of life in the West, all Muslims have to become communitarian Islamists bent on sharia law, and there must be no natalist policies from European governments in the meanwhile.

Perhaps sensing this groaning crack in the foundation of his argument, Steyn adds hastily: "It is not necessary, incidentally, for Islam to become a statistical majority in order to function as one. At the height of its power in the eighth century, the 'Islamic world' stretched from Spain to India yet its population was only minority Muslim." But they were - a fairly obvious difference - not electoral democracies, where any group has to command a majority to rule.

And it goes on thusly to deconstruct Steyn's panicked racist natalism.  The main flaw of the article is that he resurrects the common multiculturalism strawman (and I am told he is an otherwise odious libertarian conservative of some kind?  Many people I like seem to hate him, and this is the first time I've ever heard of him), but for shooting the pirhana in the barrel so well, I'll forgive him.

Liberal Party bloggers, gaze upon the zombie rictus grin of your party!

Once again, we are back on the My Blahg treadmill.  It's rare that I link to or even pay attention to the foul miasma that regularly belches forth from Warren Kinsella's virtual mouth, but his column today in the Notional Pest obnoxiously outdoes some of the worst that his slavish imitators have accomplished.  And it's even more rare that I link to the Pest, which, for my American readers, is the Canadian newspaperly equivalent of Faux News.

And we do not have to look far for signs of verbal putrefaction:

National Post - The NDP's blog blow-back [alliteration, how creative of the Pest headline writers!]:  One month ago, at an Ottawa gathering of the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA), Ed Broadbent stood before the hundreds of Jews in attendance, and wept.

The former New Democratic Party leader was present to receive the first annual David Lewis Memorial Award on behalf of his deceased wife, Lucille. As current NDP leader Jack Layton stood by to give support, Broadbent cried, thanking CIJA for recognizing the work of Lucille on behalf of oppressed Soviet Jewry. He, and Lucille, received a long standing ovation.

It was an extraordinarily emotional moment, and one that signalled -- some hoped -- the beginnings of a rapprochement between Canada's political left and those who support Israel. In recent years, and as the National Post has reported many times, there has been an undeniable and yawning gap between Jews and the left. As prominent NDP supporter and lawyer Clay Ruby has observed, "Some critics of Israel conveniently focus on Israeli wrongdoings to mask their blatant anti-Semitism." Too often, these days, this sort of criticism has emanated from the left.

The emphasis is mine.  Take a look at the utterly dishonest slight of hand he demonstrates right there:  Lucille Broadbent worked laudably on behalf of oppressed Soviet Jewry.  She won a posthumous award for this.  To receive this award is presented without evidence is a sign that Ed Broadbent is reconciling with "supporters of Israel."    "The Left" is personified in the figures of Ed and Lucille. Since Ed and Lucille accepted an award for work on behalf of oppressed Jews, we are expected to indicate The Left is now "supporting Israel."

Of course, we can take this further, and in doing so, we see that this is merely a repetition of the Standard Calumny.  What is this "support Israel" thing, anyway?  Why, it presupposes, in the standard lawyerly have-you-stopped-kicking-cute-puppies way, that The Left, that great unified colossus, previously "opposed" Israel.  Of course, any rational person would recognize that one does not "oppose" or "support" a geographical demarkation, such as Israel---any more than one supports or opposes the North Pole.  Instead one supports or opposes a political position and/or state ideology.  So what could Mr. Kinsella mean by this obviously calculated presuppostion?

He means, of course, that The Left, this single nefarious body represented by Emperor Layton and symbolized in the Broadbent Caliphate, is a Nazi.  And in doing so, he delegitimizes any robust support of the Palestinians in their plight, a cause to which Lucille Broadbent's laudable work is more similar than to the cause of the Israeli state.

The rest of the article is a hatchet job on the Canadian left blogosphere, which Warren Kinsella has always hated, even as he promoted himself as an anti-racist activist and a punk rocker---hilarious given the fact that he helped Jean Chrétien, symbol of The Establishment, retain power by performing the hilarious but trivial task of squashing Stockwell Day like a bug in a wet suit.  What McLelland said was clearly offensive---abusing Holocaust imagery in the case of Jews---but Kinsella takes what is a heartfelt negative reaction to McLelland's words and mendaciously turns it proof that The Left is recovering from its previous evil ways and will henceforth cast the Palestinians under the bus.

Finally, he reveals the hatred that certain brands of political operatives have for self-publishing media like blogs.  First of all, he makes a snide reference to pseudonymous bloggers.  That's because Mr. Kinsella has a deep love of destroying people, and it annoys him when their identities aren't ready on hand to destroy.  And then he describes his desire for the blogosphere to be controlled by organizations (he is also clearly aware that most blogs aren't party-endorsed, but he loves to smear the NDP even more than he loves to smear the Reformatories):

The McClelland incident is a cautionary tale, for political parties and the media alike: Each of these cases testify to the need for increased reputational vigilance. As the popularity of blogs has exploded, many corporations and political parties have scrambled to ensure their presence in the blogosphere. But they have not been as watchful as they should be.

Finally, in case my American readers don't understand the ways in which him and his adoring groupies like Jason Cherniak (who repeats an old slander against Noam Chomsky) are a pustulent boil on the face of Canadian politics:

For example, John Edwards' presidential campaign recently endured a withering blow when two women who contributed to the Democrat's campaign blog -- Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan -- attacked Catholics, and referred to opponents as "Christofascists." Unfortunately, Edwards did not ask for Marcotte and McEwan's resignations, although both apologized.

So whenever I hear that well-intentioned people join the Liberal Party in the belief that they are assisting progressive politics in Canada, I mentally welcome them to a front row seat at Warren Kinsella's lower intestine.

Pork, peace, and their discontents

I love that "...and their discontents" trope.  I should use it more often.

Via the Adorable Girlfriend at the Republic of Dogs, we come across this bit of cobaggery*, Peace Through Pork.  It's a cafepress store selling T-shirts that purport to bring about peace by confronting superstition.   The T-shirts have the slogan presumably translated to Arabic and Hebrew, a clear reference to the Middle East conflict.  Obviously, they mean to imply that the Mideast conflict emerges from religious differences among the inhabitants of the area, and by confronting a major cultural and religious taboo, they can efface those difference.

This absurdity would make more sense if it weren't for the following.  If there is any local historical cause for the problems in the Middle East, it certainly wasn't the religious, but rather secular nationalists, some of whom were willing to eat pork.  And then the conflict was fed and nutured by nations with allegedly Christian histories, most of whom did and do engage in wide-spread pork consumption. 

I know that Peace Through Pork is a joke, but it's still only funny if you suffer from the lazier forms of liberalism.  Or are a pork eater of Jewish or whatever-ethnicity-is-usually-Muslim extraction, but that's another story.

Oh, and, confidential to AG: I forgive you!  Honest!  That last "another story" applies to you because of UC.

*"cobag" is short for colostomy bag and a rather evocative epithet invented and used by a small group of US humour blogs, including the Republic of Dogs, in order to reduce the frequency of more common racist and sexist epithets in humour, I think.  Way to spoil a joke, eh?  But my Canadian readers would be confused or, for that matter, most US bloggers.

Intellectual giant waxes wroth against fantasy novel character

Anh Khoi Do's inner self, determinedly marching forth to smite the pseudonymous Internet hordes.

I'm sure my recent posts on Anh Khoi Do, "secularism", and race---really a case of majoritarian wannabeism if you want it brought down to a nutshell---are still fresh in the minds of my multitudinous throngs of adoring, adoring fans (posts first here and then here).   Woe unto me, for I have awakened an intellectual giant, a figure of true blogular prowess and courage.

Finally, unlike you, Mandos, I have enough courage to publish my works with my real name. Now, who’s the one who doesn’t have guts and balls, eh?

I actually anticipated most of his responses on my subsequent post.  For instance, I do, in fact, think France is a racist country, in the sense I think that this planet is swaddled in a somewhat uneven blanket of racism among other ills.  But the purpose of this paragraph mystifies me.  I never questioned the "guts and balls" of the great eponymous orator Anh Khoi Do.  I never mentioned anything about his or my name.

From my "pathetic blog brimming with weak analysis," I merely pointed out the ideological consequences of Anh Khoi Do's stand.  And behold his truly glorious riposte.

Racism, secularism, and "secularism"

I recently wrote a post containing a strident but brief critique of a position by a Progressive Blogger named Anh Khoi Do, whose writings I had only just encountered.  I critiqued primarily his desire to copy the behaviour of certain European countries in what is to him an unwillingness to accomodate religious minorities in the public individual compliance with their own beliefs; in fact, I critiqued it as a form of racism, which in the present context it can only be.

Not surprisingly, I received a few irate comments from random visitors (who curiously appeared to write in a style and form very similar to each other).  One such commenter, Pipi---with the charming fake email address of pipi@caca.com---wrote the following, apparently entirely without irony:

Moreover, a secular country doesn't entirely "make people's personal choices of dress extremely inconvenient". It only says that you can't wear religious symbols in public places. In fact, France doesn't forbid people to wear their religious symbols in religious places. By implying that European countries are racist, you definitely show an extremely weak analysis.

Of course, I believe that any robust analysis would demonstrate that European countries all have components of racism, as racism is ubiquitous, and recent former imperialists must necessarily have more racism than their fair share. 

But let's look at this odd comment more seriously.  I definitely contend that these sentiments are well contained in any serious and robust understanding of racism, in particular this individual's concept of "secularism", which appears to be congruent with that of the works of Anh Khoi Do.  In order to do this, however, we need first to define our terms, in particular, racism and secularism.

Racism

First of all, it must be immediately understood that a standard English dictionary is totally insufficient for giving us definitions of overtly political concepts like racism.  A dictionary serves as a guide for those unfamiliar with terms to gain a grasp of what they are reading; it cannot encompass a term like racism.  The act of racism emerged in a particular and evolving social context.  The description of racism continues to evolve with that act.

When most people think of racism, they first and foremost think of skin colour, as this is how it emerges in North American society in particular (but also elsewhere, of course).  It is not hard to see how the differentiated treatment of individuals based on their skin colour leads to a concept of race as a biological characteristic.   (The act of that differentiation---the act of racism---creates the concept of race in a real way.) 

But when we look at history, biology as the marker of race and the trigger of racism is insufficient.  In relatively recent and shamefully long-running European history, the act of being Jewish was frequently made criminal to the point that the death penalty was imposed on millions for that "offence."  We remember most recently that this was justified due to biology, but it was earlier justified due to the cultural characteristics of Jews.  Fairly innocent Jewish beliefs and rituals were retold to the masses as lurid, disgusting fabrications in the service of what we call now anti-Semitism. 

But even those who did not follow those rituals, of course, were subject to the stigma.  Consequently, racism is not defined in terms of biology or even culture---it can only be best encompassed by a relation between identity and culture.  To be racist is to laud or enact oppression on the bases of that identity.  Thus it is a racist act to discriminate based on an identity and, by implication, on the visible display of that identity.

There is an implied ingredient in a robust concept of racism that I have not yet directly exposed: that of privilege.  This ingredient is essential.  For an act to be a racist act, it must be an exertion of power from a position of privilege, in addition to being an attack on individual (and perhaps collective) identity.

One of the most common forms of privilege is that which accrues from being a member of---or incorrectly imagining that one is a member of---the majority identity.

Secularism

Like racism, secularism is a present-day political concept that is best treated by direct analysis of present-day events in the context of history rather than by dry prescription from a dictionary text.  As an English word, it reflect the ideology that the state should be neutral on matters of religion.  American idiom often cites the "separation of church and state" as the mark of secularism.  By this, it means that the state should not interfere in the practice of religion by its individual members.  It is easy to extend this concept using the principle behind it: the state should be neutral on the matter of identity and the expression of identity.  This is the same principle that underlies the Canadian government's present-day attitude towards those of the homosexual persuasion as prescribed by the courts. 

There is another concept, laïcité, that is often considered to the French equivalent of secularism.  It emerges, I am given to understand, from movements in France and in Québec to decenter the power of the Catholic Church. which stood as a colossus on the neck of political dynamism.    It is not quite the same as secularism, because it appears (from the present day debates ongoing in francophone media) to encompass the possibility that society may choose to decenter the church by diminishing or abolishing its public identity.

"Secularism" as racism

Now we return to the question of the comments made by Pipi and, by extension, the ideology of Anh Khoi Do that they appear to reflect.   For convenience, I reproduce the words of Pipi yet again:

Moreover, a secular country doesn't entirely "make people's personal choices of dress extremely inconvenient". It only says that you can't wear religious symbols in public places. In fact, France doesn't forbid people to wear their religious symbols in religious places. By implying that European countries are racist, you definitely show an extremely weak analysis.

So Pipi equates a "secular" country with one that prevents the wearing of religious symbols in "public places" (by this I assume he/she/it means "public institutions"), but, ever so kindly, permits them in religious places.  Religious symbols, however, are often an expression of religious and cultural identity, an identity that often happens to differ with that of the majority community that often controls the state.  Given that it is necessary to make use of public institutions in order to be a functioning member of society, it is doubly clear that Pipi's injunction permits the majority to use its racial privilege (given that religious and cultural symbols are subsumed under racial identity) to exert power via the identity of the minority community.  This is racism.

Pipi also offers us a standard majoritarian objection:

A secular country is a country that strictly separates religions from the state. Therefore, religiously accommodating minorities is a complete violation of the principle of secularism. In fact, while the state refuses to accommodate Christians, it grants prerogatives to religious minorities. As a result of that, the only way to treat people equally is to copy France, which means that nobody is to be treated on religious consideration by the law.

But far from granting "prerogatives to religious minorities"---a hilarious phrase that brings to mind images of religious minorities eating bonbons in bed fed by long-suffering Christians---"religious accomodations" merely acknowledge that the majority community's privilege is that it lives in a society that is thoroughly defined by its history and identity, and that to force this identity on others is a racist act.  As such: an act of illegitimate power.  Even applying the history of laïcité to the present context is an expression that power: the power to apply what was necessary for majority society steeped in Catholicism to what are recent immigrant communities.  And make no mistake; that's what this is all about.

It must be noted that Pipi's views are contained strikingly well in what has been expressed on Anh Khoi Do's blog, which furthermore appears to express a racist ideology that minority identities should be subsumed by the majority, which can only happen because the majority is privileged.  And both in France and in Canada (and elsewhere) this issue has come up in a certain context: the context of Muslims.  Consequently, it is fair to say that this ideology is inescapably racist against Muslims, because it cannot be held in this present context without that logical consequence and connection. 

(It is fascinating that a subsequent commenter and apparent supporter of Anh Khoi Do, again very similar in style to Pipi, writes,

I agree with Inaritu and Pipi. It looks like you're an offended Muslim who is desperately looking for attention, Mandos. If Anh Khoi Do was so racist, he would tell Muslims to leave.

By the way, stop playing with the words. Anh Khoi Do is not an "extremist", because he never said that he wants to kill people for a "Holy War".

This commenter seems to set a very low standard for Anh Khoi Do.  For him to hold a racist and immoral view, it would require for him to advocate the worst kind of violence, clearly encoded in the phrase, "tell Muslims to leave."  Also fascinating is his association between the words "extremist" and "Holy War", when the English language---both in common usage and in the dictionary---requires no such association.  I leave what this means as an exercise for the reader.)

A caveat

I have spent most of this post discussing why Anh Khoi Do's views and the views of a couple of commenters are actually racist opinions.  Now I would make one final cautioning statement: nowhere in this post have categorically denied that the collective sometimes has an interest in limiting some of the practices of its individual members; it should go without saying.

Stabbing your fellow in the back

This gentleman's blog ("Anh Khoi Do's blog") is part of the Progressive Bloggers aggregator, and yet his take on religious accomodations in Québec is bizarre and ugly and extremist, and the fact that he belongs to a racial/cultural minority in Québec does not excuse it.   Let's face it: the argument over religious accomodations is an argument about Muslims, and that's all it's really about.  Yes, a very conservative fringe was a little bit scared of Sikh turbans in the RCMP, but it hardly generates the angst that this does.

And it's not just about Muslims, but about Muslim women.  Muslim women who wear the hijab.  The hijab is involved in a complex conversation and conflict which the gentleman completely fails to understand, but he can be forgiven that.  There are issues about it that can be discussed and are among Muslims in the West.

But what must be understood: he hates the woman who wears it.  To argue against "religious accomodations" is exactly to argue that it is legitimate for the state to tell a hijab-wearing Muslim woman that she just take her hijab off when she attempts to make use of the services offered to citizens.  That is hatred.

Kosher dates

I recently bought a package of dried pitted dates to replenish my stock for this second week of Ramadan.  For those who don't know, it's traditional---though by no means obligatory---to break a Ramadan fast in the evening with a date.   I actually like the taste of dates, so I tend to eat more than one a day, and my stock diminishes quite quickly.

Anyway, these dates are from, God help me, the Dole company.  And they aren't that great, as dates go.  A little stale-tasting and mushy, but passable.  Dates should be a bit chewy, really, and a little more sweet.  More heartening, however, is that mark that this package of dates bears.

The sign it bears: the familiar and welcome mark of the Orthodox Union, one of the Jewish kosherifying bodies in the USA.  Prior to the OU providing kosher examination services to date distributors, you see, there used to be an unfortunate practice in the date industry called "date-porking".  You see, it was discovered a long time ago that they best way to keep dates fresh tasting---not stale like these Dole dates---was to wrap the date bunches in large slices of ham for transport, and then "dust" the dates off afterwards by lovingly rubbing the ham slices over them individually.  Kosher approval of dates has put an end to this unfortunate practice, and I, for one, am grateful to the OU for this service.

Veiled complexity

Jill at Feministe has a good post on the problems with Western excitement over the Muslim hijab:

Feministe - Uncovering Iran: At the same time, though, we have to recognize that we are operating within a highly patriarchal social context, and I think we need to do what we have to in order to make sure that women from all backgrounds and walks of life can be heard. In my personal opinion, this does not mean making the hijab, or any sort of clothing, mandatory — but it also doesn’t mean banning the headscarf or other religious symbols in certain contexts, like France did a while back. It simply means recognizing women as people, not as coat-hangers or symbols. And it demands looking at things like the hijab as fully as possible, and seeing the many paradoxes that crop up when modesty is mandatory.

Now, I certainly think there are often problems with the motives of some people who don it.  But in Western media, there's a whole other lurid dimensions to the consternation over it, one which infantilizes Muslim women and papers over the complexity of the debate for propaganda purposes.  I wrote about this very effect before my most recent long blog-hiatus.

Actually, the very nature of the attitude and coverage of the hijab as a symbol of the frightening and mysterious nature of Islam, itself almost seeming analogous in presentation to the fear of the feminine, has the very effect of inducing the kind of identity politics one finds played out in the behaviour of many young Muslim women living in the West.  When one is told that one's very existence is a contradiction, one can either repudiate the contradiction or embrace it more fully, defiantly.  There are multiple paths to the hijab, but the latter is an motive that many who choose the hijab very likely hold.