Category Archives: Islamophobia

The “Science” of Hatred

"Arab Spring", Islam in Europe, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue


A mass grave near Zvornik from which more than 500 corpses were exhumed, 2002; photograph by Tarek Samarah

In a recent open access article, The Science of Hatred, in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Tom Bartlet discusses a psychologist attempting to understand the Serbian denial of the massacres of Muslims in Bosnia in the 1990s. The subtitle is: “What makes humans capable of horrific violence? Why do we deny atrocities in the face of overwhelming evidence? A small group of psychologists say they are moving toward answers. Is anyone listening?” The article is more a profile of Sabina Cehajic-Clancy, a Bosnian social psychologist who studies intergroup conflict, than a probing of the title. The focus is more on “how” Serbs could deny such a well documented atrocity rather than the motivations for the mass killing. There really is no “science” in the article, a part from a nod to some role for our evolutionary trajectory. But if you would like to read a human-interest story about an individual working on a very personal matter to better understand the denial of atrocities, it is worth reading.

The idea that there can be a “science” of hatred sounds promising, but it tends to fall apart less over the debate about what science is than what we mean by the emotionally charged notion of “hatred.” Several religions teach the God is love, but then also note that there are lots of things that God hates. Love and hate go together, not so much as polar opposites but as part of a continuum of how we perceive the world around us as comforting and dangerous at the same time. There is one kind of hate or love that is directed to an individual because of the familiarity of interaction. Falling into love, to quote the romantic rubric, suggests that we can fall into hate as well. But these are metaphors that swirl around fuzzy concepts. Continue reading The “Science” of Hatred →

Shock Value and nothing to snore about

Ethics, Gender and Sexuality, Islam in America, Islamophobia


Billboard ad of SnoreStop, top: the actress sans hijab, bottom

Given the range of images available with a click and the sensationalism-hungry news media, it is hard to find anything that has shock value anymore. PETA asks Hollywood celebs and beauty queens to take off their clothes so rich people will shun mink fur. But there is so much nudity on the web that it hardly raises an eyebrow any more. Spencer Tunick, the Brooklyn photographer who invites several thousand people to don their clothes for a mass aesthetic photograph, sends few shock waves through the media. Gay marriage is slowly becoming a Blue State inevitability; even the new pope has asked Catholics to chill over the hot button moral issues that abort civil dialogue. So what can still be shocking? How about a billboard ad showing an American soldier embracing a Muslim woman in hijab?

This is an ad put up by “SnoreStop,” a pharmaceutical company with a slogan of “keeping you together.” Having identified one of the primary causes of relationship breakups (ahem), they offer a medicalized kit for only $14.95 that will pinpoint where your snoring occurs and zap it with a pill. Here is how the website explains it:

Every night in America and throughout the world millions of spouses have to make a decision about leaving the bedroom in order to get a good night’s sleep, which destroys all intimacy. When we lack a good night’s sleep, we break down emotionally, mentally, and physically. Moreover, snorers have sex less often or have a decreased interest in sex due to being tired. SnoreStop® saves relationships by ‘bringing peace to the bedroom.

Green Pharmaceuticals, a “woman-owned company,” is turning heads (the oldest and easiest way to stop snoring, although the company does not note this) with an ad that will definitely be a cup of tea for conservatives. According to a spokesperson the ad is not just about selling a product but making a wholesome point about people being together. So they went and looked for real couples and found the oddest couple an ad maker could imagine. Yes, this is supposedly a “real couple,” Jamie Sutton or Paul Evans (depending on the news source) and Aleah or Lexy, although it does not appear that the Aleah or Lexy normally wears a hijab, nor if either of them suffer from the trauma of snoring. As it happens “Aleah” is Lexy Panterra and she has a saucy video in which there is no niqab in sight but plenty of flesh. And it seems her boyfriend is not the soldier in the ad. No niqab, no snoring (well, I can not confirm this) and no soldier husband (or at least no longer). Her boyfriend is, appropriately for Instagram fame, Aladdin. How shocking: an ad campaign that deceives in order to sell a product that nobody probably needs. Continue reading Shock Value and nothing to snore about →

Enough! Damn this continued violence

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Iraq, Islamophobia, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Terrorism Issue, Tunisia


Up to 600 worshipers had attended the service and were leaving to receive free food being distributed on the lawn outside when two explosions ripped through the crowd. Photograph by Mohammad Sajjad/Associated Press

Enough blood has been shed in the past few days to make any sane person question how anyone could possibly justify such cold-blooded and senseless attacks on innocent people. The poison gas in Syria is bad enough, but now we hear that the Somali Shabab have decided to kill shoppers in a Nairobi mall rather than play Captain Hook off the East African coast and now at least 78 Pakistani Christians are killed in a blast at a historic church. This is the ugly side of religion. More than a hijacking of Islam, this is dragging the faith that produced great scholars like Ibn Sina and al-Ghazali into the sewer. To say that the Prophet Muhammad would have condoned this kind of indiscriminate murder is as absurd as the medieval Crusader claim that Jesus would bless the slaughter of Jews and Muslims. But at least the crusades ended several centuries ago.

Muslims killing fellow Muslims or Muslims targeting Christians for death are both equally insane acts. Every day the death toll rises in Iraq and Syria, as though we have returned to the days of the Mongols and Mamluks. Continue reading Enough! Damn this continued violence →

CyberOrient, Latest Issue Online

"Arab Spring", Anthropology/Sociology, CyberOrient, Environment, Iran, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

The latest issue of CyberOrient is available online.

Articles

Online and Offline Continuities, Community and Agency on the Internet
Jon W. Anderson
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8355

The Earth Is Your Mosque (and Everyone Else’s Too): Online Muslim
Environmentalism and Interfaith Collaboration in UK and Singapore
Lisa Siobhan Irving
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8336

Telling the Truth about Islam? Apostasy Narratives and Representations
of Islam on WikiIslam.net
Daniel Enstedt and Göran Larsson
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8459

Comments

Digital Images and Visions of Jihad: Virtual Orientalism and the
Distorted Lens of Technology
Raymond Pun
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8391

Reviews

Review: Arabités numériques. Le printemps du Web arabe
Luboš Kropáček
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8352

Review: Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age. The 2009
Presidential Election Uprising in Iran
Zuzana Krihova
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8386

Review: iMuslims: Rewiring the House of Islam. Islamic Civilization
and Muslim Networks
Vit Sisler
http://www.cyberorient.net/article.do?articleId=8385

‘Muslim antisemitism’ and Al-Andalus: a historical perspective

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Islamophobia, Judaism


Image of a cantor reading the Passover story in Al Andalus, from the 14th century Haggadah of Barcelona.

by Ed Swan, Research Intern, Quilliam Foundation

The phenomenon of antisemitism in Muslim-majority societies is usually explained in one of two ways. Either it is seen as something innate to Islam, constituting a core element of Islamic thought and scripture, and exemplified by centuries of persecution and conflict, or it is presented as a reaction to Zionism, and a break with a history of interfaith cooperation. The debate is influenced by absolutist viewpoints, which hold, for example, that the reaction to Israel in the Islamic world is purely antisemitic, or that pre-Zionist relations between Jews and Muslims constituted a utopian ideal of coexistence. The Islamic Caliphate of Al-Andalus, which existed in various forms in Iberia from the eighth to the fifteenth centuries, is often held up as the example par excellence of this coexistence. A closer look at the society of Al-Andalus helps to demonstrate that, while perhaps it was no utopia, the phenomenon of ‘Muslim antisemitism’ as we recognise it today does not have its roots in Islamic history.

Antisemitism in Muslim majority countries is well documented: a recent survey reports that large majorities of respondents in countries such as Egypt (95%), Turkey (76%) and Pakistan (76%) have an ‘unfavourable opinion of Jews’ (Pew Research Global Attitudes Project, 2008). Focusing specifically on the Arab World, where the largest majorities reported unfavourable opinions, there are a number of examples in local media that demonstrate the form of this antisemitism. European narratives play a prominent role, for example, Mein Kampf and the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion continue to this day to be widely published and distributed in Arabic translation, and the latter formed the basis of a 2002 Egyptian television series syndicated across the Arab World.

These European-inspired antisemitic ideas can be seen employed as a response to the two overwhelming perceived threats to Islam: Western imperialism and Zionism. Continue reading ‘Muslim antisemitism’ and Al-Andalus: a historical perspective →

The Tragedy that is Egypt today

"Arab Spring", Egypt, Islam and Christianity, Islamophobia, Terrorism Issue

Egypt is once again under military curfew. Mubarak is gone, but the military and security system that stabilized the Mubarak regime is undeniably in control, no matter what the rhetoric about restoring democracy. The brief flirtation with a seemingly democratic election has been an abject failure, no matter who you think is to blame. There are no winners in the recent protests and crackdown that left well over 500 people dead and several thousand wounded. At this point all Egyptians are on the losing side as violence escalates. The situation today is a tragedy and is bound to get more tragic in the days ahead. Egyptians are pitted against each other in sectarian clashes, Muslim against fellow Muslim and some Muslims targeting the Copts. As many as 20 Coptic churches may already have been torched. God forbid if Egypt still had a viable Jewish population.

Blame is being hurled against all sides with breakneck speed in blogs, commentaries and twitter. But blaming is part of the problem, since it further inflames the frustration that leads to violence. Coptic churches are being burned because the Copts are said to side with the military as though it is only about politics. But the ugly intolerance that many Salafis and Muslim Brothers have preached to their own transcends politics. The military is indeed ruthless and manipulating the media with propaganda, demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. Enough Brothers are acting out their violence to lend some credence to the claims in the eyes of many Egyptians. There is also the atrocity of pushing for martyrdom, as leaders of the Brotherhood encourage those who are protesting Morsi’s ouster to engage the military in what can only be a losing and bloody battle. Both sides are acting like spoiled children; no one is promoting a peaceful mediation, if one is still possible. Continue reading The Tragedy that is Egypt today →

A dowdy pundit and an easy target

Gender and Sexuality, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media

Some journalist pundits follow the Barnum and Bailey freakocentric approach to writing for the public. It really does not matter if they lean to the left or right, since it is never clear where a rational media center would be. I am actually glad that opinion page and editorial commentaries are amalgamated into the acronymical “op-ed” since it removes the genre further away from being taken seriously. There is plenty of hanging red meat around, a recent example being the New York electoral season with former governor Eliot Spitzer running for city comptroller and former congressman Anthony Weiner attempting to fill the shoes of Mayor Bloomburg. Here are two seasoned politicians with two glaring things in common: both fell from grace due to excessive sexual interests and both have wives who have not taken the route of former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford’s wife and jilted.

The tabloids are in paradise over these two. So why not the New York Times as well? I guess that is what prompted Maureen Dowd to unleash her op-edible wit and take down “Carlos Danger” AKA Anthony Weiner. In her piece for Sunday, July 28, she began with the following rhetorical volley:

WHEN you puzzle over why the elegant Huma Abedin is propping up the eel-like Anthony Weiner, you must remember one thing: Huma was raised in Saudi Arabia, where women are treated worse by men than anywhere else on the planet. Comparatively speaking, the pol from Queens probably seems like a prince.

When I puzzle over these opening lines, I am not able to forget one thing: Maureen Dowd must have learned everything she thinks she knows about Saudi Arabia from watching the movie Sex and the City 2. Continue reading A dowdy pundit and an easy target →

Passing Aden in 1860

Aden, Islamophobia, Orientalism, Travel, Yemen


U.S. Powhatan, which made four trips to Japan from 1857-1860

In the mid-19th century a number of American ships sailed to and from Japan. One of these was the U.S. frigate Hartford. An account of the voyage is given by H. P. Blanchard in his A Visit to Japan in 1860, which is online at archive.org. He made a brief stop at Aden, but unfortunately reflected the ethnocentric fear of his day that falling into the hands of any of the “wild” Arabs would be instant death. It appears that most of his time was spent entertaining the ladies and listening to the military band.

Continue reading Passing Aden in 1860 →