The threats directed at Maajid Nawaz on Twitter continue. It’s very dispiriting, seeing people devote so much energy and outrage at something so thoroughly
- not a problem
- not a source of real harm or suffering
- not a big deal
- not their business
- not “forbidden” except in the minds of people who insist on sorting the world into Forbidden and Permitted
- not even what they think it is, to wit, “a drawing of the prophet”
when the world is so packed to the rafters with real problems, real harm, real suffering.
In general I don’t like that argument – that “don’t talk about what you’re talking about, talk about something more important” – because it’s so often deployed to tell feminists to shut the fuck up and because we have to tackle ALL THE THINGS not just the very most important and because we’re allowed to do what we’re good at, what speaks to us, what we know something about, and the like.
But still. There are limits. There are spoiled entitled self-obsessed people who think their every annoyance is earth-shattering while some pesky famine across the world doesn’t get their attention. And there are fanatics determined to rage at trivia while ignoring tragedies.
The people raging at Nawaz are in the second category, and they’re a depressing example of humanity.
As for me, I’m kind of wishing I could make myself eligible to vote in Hampstead (I did live there once! is that any use?) so that I could vote for Nawaz.
Nawaz doesn’t share the Islamists’ opinion about depictions of Mohammed. A lot of Muslims don’t share that opinion, just like a lot of Muslims don’t think gender segregation is a requirement of Islam.
This Mr. Nawwaz is to be commended, but let’s not pretend he is anything but a minority viewpoint, even if we all hope his views gain influence. Blaiming it on “Islamists” implies their is some silent majority effect here. There isn’t.
Aniconism in Sunni islam is a longstanding norm, and Sunni Islam constitutes the overwhelming majority of Muslims. Shia Islam, even the Islamists of that branch, do not have such a prohibition, so that excuse is not even coherent.
Fundamentalism does not imply minority viewpoint. The majority of a religion, that is its mainstream, can be fundamentalists. I see people make that false implication often, but we only think that way because that is how Christianity is in the West.
But we don’t know there isn’t. We know we don’t hear from them as much, but then that would be the case, wouldn’t it. I don’t think we get to just assume that most Muslims are like the people shouting at Maajid Nawaz.
@2,
“Fundamentalism does not imply minority viewpoint.’ Agreed.
I’m also very skeptical as to the reality of the “Silent Moderate Moslem Majority” assumption, if the majority of Moslems were indeed “moderate’, majority Moslem countries wouldn’t be such as they are, oppressive, misogynistic and dysfunctional. The term ‘moderate Moslem’ really needs definition, particularly by Western liberal democratic standards, current usage seems to be propaganda or wishful thinking.
When stating your moderate views can get you kill by some fanatics, it’s not surprising that very few will be public about such beliefs. So saying anything about what people think in majority Muslim countries is at best a wild guess. I don’t know what the proportion of people are moderate there but I don’t think anyone does.
That should have been “get you killed”.
@5
The Pew surveys of majority Moslem countries are indicators of the population’s views on women’s rights, “democracy” and other issues, the idea that the population is cowed by a small number of psychopaths is open to debate.
Well there’s a fairly complex web here, isn’t there, which I suspect most of us are quite familiar with. Moderates of any religion or other crazy regime exist and are – en masse – enablers of extremism. They’re the ones who impose crazy, horrible and destructive rules like female genital mutilation, for example. They’re the ones who praise their sons and daughters for doing well in classes that they know are fronts for training people to be terrorists. More often, they are the ones who turn a blind eye or turn up on the news when their neighbors do horrible things. They’re the ones who praise popes when they know better than anyone what popes do for a living.
And so on. I still think that moderates are complicit in extremism, although that idea seems to be going out of fashion lately.
But moderates do other things too. For one thing, they’re moderate. For another, they go about their daily lives caring more about the same things everyone else cares about than the things people don’t have in common. By definition. I’m a strong advocate of the idea that “muslim” isn’t the same thing as “islamist”. I was persuaded of that by someone who certainly has a better insight than most, certainly better than me.
Oh, but what do I mean by moderate? Well, you fucking know so stop pretending you don’t.
But we don’t know there isn’t. We know we don’t hear from them as much, but then that would be the case, wouldn’t it. I don’t think we get to just assume that most Muslims are like the people shouting at Maajid Nawaz.
There have been surveys in the UK which show Muslim tolerance towards homosexuals is pretty much zero so I wouldn’t bet that there’s some silent minority of liberal Muslims being drowned out by a handfull of extremists.
@Shatterface, jesus the information is right here on this network, ignorance and broad brush tarring of muslims as intolerant while comparing them to a minority calling for violence is daft. I see Katherine Woo gets in on this above as well… So how about a survey that asked ->
What a bunch of extremist intolerant muslims eh?! Frankly I’d be surprised if you got better results if you polled certain christian groups. Certainly my very liberal methodist in-laws and family were/are against gay marriage, an intolerant homophobic position.
Obviously that survey I quote is the best result I saw quickly re-skimming the article so don’t bother pointing out there is good and bad there. I know this and it applies to *all* people with religious views and plenty with no religion as well. Homophobia and bigotry in general is not a purely religious phenomena or limited to a particular religious world view. Also as @latsot points out the moderates are usually quiet and don’t call out the extremists, again, of *all* religions. We know this given the lack of much serious criticism of the fundies in the US from more moderate christians. Even as far as US fundies supporting the Ugandan “kill the gays” bill, can’t get much more extreme than that.
As someone who has lived and worked among British Muslims all my life, it is my experience that the overwhelming majority do not support the Islamist position on these matters. I’m struggling to think of any British Muslim I have met, over many years, that would support the haranguing of Maajid Nawaz, or get irate about cartoons for example.
My experience is, of course, anecdotal. But as a result, I am far more inclined to believe that there is a ‘silent majority’ of British Muslims. Certainly over the opinions in some comments here, which are made apparently by people with no experience among the British Muslim community.
A lot of Muslims don’t share that opinion, just like a lot of Muslims don’t think gender segregation is a requirement of Islam.
There is quite a straightforward way to determine if most muslims don’t support gender segrgation.
Make a list of the mosques that don’t practice it, both here and abroad.
I suspect it wouldn’t take all that much time to do so and would involve no more than one post-it note.
And just for blanace it should be noted that certain Christian denominations, like the Copts, DO practice gender segregation. However, it’s not a front to back form of submissive segregation like blacks at the back of a bus, but rather a left/ right one which sees women on one side of aisle and men on the other.
http://fleasnobbery.blogspot.com/2014/01/collector.html
Thank you, Ms. Dandridge.
@ 4 –
Wrong on at least two counts. Most majority-Muslim countries have unelected governments, and it makes no sense to extrapolate from people in majority-Muslim countries to Muslims who live in secular democracies. Some of the latter have chosen secular democracies because that’s what they want, so already they’re in the “moderate” (I prefer liberal) camp. And even those who don’t want secular democracy are still more exposed to its norms than are people who have lived their whole lives in Saudi Arabia or Egypt.
oolon, you are so obviously cherry-picking one data point it is a joke. The hard fact is 0% of British Muslims polled said homosexuality was morally acceptable. Minorities of Muslims in France and Germany said the same, so it is hardly outside the general trend of the majority rejecting homsoexuality.
Your excuse, hate the sin — love the sinner, reminds me of similar BS coming from Christians on a variety of topics. The fact you swallow it uncritically for Islam, but then make sure to take a swipe at your Christian family is pretty much leftwing double-standards on Islam in a nutshell.
You completely ignore the shocking disparity in global views on homosexuality as revealed in this poll:
The Global Divide on Homosexuality
In particular Turkey and Malaysia blow away any notion that democracy creates (or reveals) tolerance among Muslims. They have 9% acceptance.
Even Latin American with mass poverty countries are several times more tolerant than much wealthier Muslim ones. Brazil has been a super-Catholic, screwed up dictatorship most of the 20th century, and look at its level of tolerance, 60%, a result backed by legal marriage equality.
So I am sorry, spare me any claims that there is some liberal silent majority of Muslims lurking out there. The burden is on anyone making that claim to provide proof, and sorry your “experience” working with the Muslim community in some vague context and the gut feeling that creates does not cut it.
This comment is a smoking gun of leftwing racial paternalism. The fact it follows your attempt to spin Islam as really having no problems with homosexuality flows form this in my view.
If a handful of “US fundies” are you focus when an entire nation of brown people is considering implementing a law, you are a racist who on some level does not consider non-whites as morally capable and thus responsible. I am sorry that is very harsh, but you need to get called out if it is ever going to change.
“US fundies” have visited Russia as part of their global crusade, how come I do not see leftists mentioning them again and again when Russia goes reactionary on LGBT rights? Because Russians are white.
The message is clear.
I want to add that those “US fundies” have to go to Uganda, because they have no hope of their views gaining ground in the U.S. where we have NEVER had a death penalty for homosexuality since independence.
Further the only countries with a death penalty for being gay are Muslim ones. If your focus is really what “US fundies” are doing in that global context, then sorry, but you are being a leftwing version of the ugly American. Not everything is about us, and we are not the all important focus of every debate.
Back to the topic, I cannot find a specific poll myself, but for a silent majority to accept depictions of Mohammed, Muslims would have to be defying an overwhelming, unchallenged norm in the Sunni Muslims world that has lasted throughout the period of Islamic Art.
If you have real evidence for the silent majority, please present it. The general conservatism revealed among British Muslims across a variety of subjects allows for a reasonable inference that as a group they are not suddenly liberal on this particular issue.
Further Britain’s press was uniformly too cowardly to reprint those Danish cartoons. A nation that clung to its blasphemy laws into the past decade, hardly would inspire a liberal sensibility on religious depictions among immigrants.
Wow three in a row all missing the point! Don’t want to stick up for homophobic muslims but ONE datapoint that shows 98% will accept a gay child is more than enough to counter broad brush statements about how the majority of muslims in the UK are extremists or hold extremist views. That was enough “defence” for you to spew a load of verbal diarrhoea about how awful the muslims are again … Not only that but a bunch of bizarre straw representations (Not even strawmen really, total fantasy from who knows where) of my views that you discerned from that comment. Such as …
Wut?
Wut? Wut?
Your foaming anti-muslim rhetoric is very revealing, almost as much as what you read into my comment. I dismissed the broad brush claim about the majority of muslims having extremist views. As I said ONE data point is enough to disprove that stupidity, the situation is clearly a lot more complex. I also made reference to my cherry picking of one stat to just dismiss that claim NOT assert the opposite, and linked to the whole article, which you presumably did not read. It also being from a left wing supporter of islamic homophobia… Who just happens to be gay O_o
So where does that leave us? Me dismissing the obviously false claim, you assuming I’m asserting the opposite and going on a bizarre rant… Of course none of that dreaded “islamophobia” led you to this exposed position 😀
@15
(1) “Most majority-Muslim countries have unelected governments,”
You’ve ignored the question–“why do most majority majority-muslim counties have unelected governments?”
Those countries that have elected governments are not liberal democracies, e.g. Turkey and Indonesia fail human rights tests, particularly in regard to the rights of minorities. Also, as Western governments have long understood, free and fair elections in majority Moslem nations usually result in an intolerant Islamist government, Egypt is an excellent example. What does that demonstrate in regard to the values of the majority of the population?
(2) “Muslims who live in secular democracies” Are you referring to Moslems who live in Western countries or those Moslems who live in the so-called secular democracies of Turkey and Indonesia? Malaysia is not a liberal democracy either, the country has a history of racist legislation and the oppression of non-Moslems. There was no extrapolation from one to another, I relied on the Pew opinion surveys. The only Moslems I can think of that “live in secular democracies’ are those who live in the West and, according to surveys mentioned on this thread and elsewhere, their opinions are often alarming intolerant and anti-democratic.
“Moderate” or “liberal” in reference to the social and political opinions of Moslems are misleading terms when interpreted by Westerners. Would any liberal democrat have regarded a “moderate” or “liberal” Communist regime as democratic.
So, we’ve returned to the perennial question—“what do “liberal/secular/ moderate” Moslems actually believe? The answer is usually “not in the Western model of secular democracy”, the Islamic ideology is totalitarian.
oolon, your post is nothing but empty recriminations. I mean “verbal diarrhoea” and “foaming anti-muslim rhetoric” because I performed some basic analysis of a broad global poll on homosexuality by a major research organization?
The datapoint you cling to comes ultimately from a WordPress site, “British Born Muslims,” from an unnamed organization. The fact you so aggressively assert that “ONE” result in the face of results reported by the likes of Pew and The Guardian, just shows what sort of mindset you bring to this debate.
And really you are just butt hurt that I called you out as the typical white Christian obsessed leftwinger who treats non-whites as less morally capable. You reek of white paternalism and the fact you are gay, just makes your attitude even more shameful.
Here is another Pew poll on Muslim attitudes about homosexuality for you to close your eyes to:
But those of us who dare suggest that the majority of Muslims are homophoboic are Islamophobes engaged in a “bizarre rant.”
Before you jump all over it, I realize you meant the person with the original apologetic for Islamic homophobia is gay, not you. I forgot to change that before posting.
I have seen leftwing women aggressively defending Islamic misogyny, so there is nothing shocking in seeing an LGBT person with certain leftwing politics doing the same with Islamic misogyny.
I finally found a germane poll on British Muslims specifically: Many British Muslims Put Islam First.
Three strikes and you are out.
Sorry, the silent majority notion is just wishful thinking. Even Nawaz admits he is a minority within a minority.
Obviously I wish I had found this earlier rather than getting drawn in to oolon’s disgusting attempt to gloss over how normalized and widespread Muslim homophobia is.
RJW @ 20 I meant living in places like the UK, France, Canada, Germany, Sweden, the US, Australia. Of course I’m not describing Indonesia and Turkey as liberal democracies! They have elections, but they’re certainly not liberal.
I think I remember that poll, or one very like it. I think I remember blogging about it, and also I think Jeremy drew on it for part of Does God Hate Women?
The British Muslims for Secular Democracy Facebook page seems depressingly in line with the poll. Most people on it aren’t secular at all.
Katherin Woo, I believe you’re quite right in your take on this