There’s a bee in my bonnet. Let’s talk about the racism of the white wolf who cried Islamophobia.

I’m tired of a certain faction of Western liberals, especially white guys, Westsplaining about how anti-Muslim bigotry and Western colonialism and imperialism and international geopolitics provide *essential context* for understanding the sources of Muslim problems, which don’t come from a vacuum, how there are striking *parallels* between liberal critique of Islam and right-wing anti-Muslim bigotry.

Hey guy, I had no idea that you had such an adept understanding of what it’s like to live in a Muslim culture under the influence of the effects Western colonialism and international geopolitics. Please, tell me more, Westsplain to me, oh white man, how imperialism is responsible for me being forced to wear hijab for 15 years, suffering honor violence, and living a dangerous double life until my escape. Please condescendingly explain to me in the terms of your own culture where my oppression *really* comes from.

Look, I’m not denying that imperialism and geopolitics certainly help this ish along, often significantly. I’m not denying that anti-Muslim bigotry is a pervasive and significant problem. But those things are not an *explanation*. They are contributing factors at best that neither sufficiently explain nor excuse the blatant transgressions of Muslims and the horrible conditions in Muslim-majority countries. There is also an ironic lack of focus on Arab imperialism and the manner in which Islam has been reified, propagated, and been used to justify horrors in the Middle East and South Asia *far preceding* the West dipping its fingers into that mess. Sorry to strip you of credit for this, really, but it’s not the West that created the dehumanizing elements of Muslim cultures. There is also ironic lack of focus on the booming (essentially) slave trade disguised as a migrant worker system exploiting Africans and South and Southeast Asians that is utterly normalized in the Gulf and Levant. This isn’t some big bad monster wrought by the damning hand of Western imperialism and anti-Muslim bigotry. It has well transcended reasonable standards of the acceptable under those constraints, and the prevalence of normalized oppressive sentiment is not some fringe side effect of the injustices of white men. Growing up in Hezbollah culture, it was plain to see how Western-driven war and occupation helped fuel the return to fundamentalist Shia Islam, but it hardly exonerates us South Lebanese and Lebanese-Palestinian mashups from responsibility for the decisions we’ve made since then, for our violence and bigotry, for the culture of control and oppression and we’ve rooted ourselves into in response to these problems. Surely it doesn’t come from a vacuum, but you might have to live and be socialized in a Muslim country under the effects of such imperialism to recognize how fully much of it comes from ourselves, how essentialized scripture and deeply-rooted honor-shame codes fuel Islamism and the grave and rote dehumanization built into our cultures.

Sorry, but the West can’t take credit for this too.

And the supreme irony here? The blatant condescension of this PoV. It really is such a white-centric thing to try to explain the Muslim issue in those terms, to essentialize our problems in terms of your culture’s imperialism. It is also–and I’m not holding my breath for anyone to realize this anytime soon–buying into the same anti-brown racism to continually draw analogies between liberal critiques of Islam and right-wing anti-Muslim bigotries, to present eg the often-racist ignorant spewings of Dawkins and his ilk as the FACE of liberal and atheist discourse regarding the matter so you can self-righteously jump to condemn the obviously condemnable just as you raise it to the level of being representative of the entire liberal and atheist community, ironically completely drowning out and excluding the voices of Ex-Muslims and progressive Muslims, especially women, from the categories of ‘Western’ and ‘liberal’ and ‘atheist discourse’, othering us and contributing to our silence and marginalization. We don’t want Dawkins and Harris to be the driving voices of liberal discourse regarding Islam either. Stop excluding us. Stop alienating us. Stop reducing us to the norms of our home cultures, as if we’re incapable of engaging with them or transcending them, and stop creating a binary between us and our values and liberalism and its values.

Stop making our issues about you and your imperialism. By focusing so long and hard on your condemnation of anti-Muslim bigotry and white savior complexes, you are silencing us. You are othering us. You are explaining things about the very people whose marginalization you decry over and above their own voices and lived experiences. Cut that shit out.

And this is what I hear from you when you continually raise the flag of anti-imperialism above all other concerns regarding the Muslim issues. I hear that you do not think well enough of us as Muslims and Arabs and Persians and Kurds and Turks and South Asians and Africans to grapple with these imperialistic and geopolitical forces without being expected to refrain from falling into dehumanization and violence because of them.

That, because of imperialism, it is okay to hold us to standards that deplete to even the sub-human.

That we cannot or should not be responsible, strong, or aware enough to resist becoming aggressors ourselves because we have been aggressed against.

That Western imperialism is a greater driving force than anything we make, say, or do.

That you do not believe that Muslims and Ex-Muslims and people from Muslim-majority countries speaking on the matter–whether in affirming or critiquing ways–are powerful enough voices to speak to their own experiences, or to be taken as key or representative.

That it is okay for you to refuse to acknowledge our oppression as specifically non-white in source in order to avoid enabling the ‘save the brown women narrative’, because you somehow can’t see anything other than such a white-centric result being possible, as if we do not fucking exist as powerful critiquers of our own cultures, as if acknowledging the oppressive matters of fact of our existence suddenly renders us weak or incapable of engaging with it, as if your refusal to acknowledge our victimhood is anything more noble than a silencing mechanism, because you yourself somehow subscribe to some strange essentializing view that a victimized brown woman is a silent and passive one.

I hear you implying, too, that you have any real experiential knowledge from which to assess the horrors of Western imperialism vs the horrors of Islamist control and misogyny and decide which to decry. That in your transcending fear of enabling the right-wing bigotry that leads to further imperialist force, you can and will make judgments as to what is best for us regarding which of the damning powers contributing to our shitty lives should be enabled or discouraged, that you can and will make judgments as to which of the damning powers holding us down and controlling us is more or less serious or grave.

That, friend, is what is fucking racist.

-Marwa

The Telegraph tells us about Derek Bateman who left BBC Scotland last year…..

Derek Bateman was a long-standing BBC Scotland presenter who now, set up with his own blog, feels free to offer his view of England and Tory policies which presumably made him to toast of the BBC canteen in Glasgow. Here’s a taste of his sarcasm:

• Sorry for allowing your (English) policies to kill men in our biggest city in their mid-fifties – still it keeps pension costs down.

• Sorry you (England) have so many shaven-headed louts with pit bulls on crime-ridden estates and have created one of the least equal societies on earth.

• Sorry for thinking of you as stuck-up, effete, self-centred, unreliable t**ts when there is absolutely nothing in history to support such bigotry.

I can only assume Bateman suddenly had a look in the mirror and didn’t like what he found and decided to write a note to himself about being abusive:

‘I know this is a tiny proportion of public opinion but it does no harm to be reminded of just how airily ignorant and wilfully prejudiced some people are and how it can drive your desire to escape to create our new Scotland free from their contempt and hate.’

Ironically that is in fact his reply to the Telegraph’s article which mentioned him…as above….apparently the Telegraph’s article is ‘nauseating and dripping with racist poison’.

Mote/eye comes to mind.

Bateman is somewhat deluded and obviously blinded by his own prejudices continually referring to Scotland as a ‘colony’ of an imperial England….

‘……the confirmation of an historical truth, that Scotland is returning whence it came and that the game of empire is over. Rule Britannia.’

And all backed by the imperial propaganda of the ‘colonially-minded Telegraph.’

He needs to read some history books about the Union.

Whilst the BBC et al concentrate on ‘nasty, racist UKIP’ you have to ask why the SNP and its supporters get a free pass.

Bateman has left the BBC….and now spills the beans…….apparently the BBC is in thrall to Labour…..well jings…….though he himself has had his own pro SNP bias questioned…….

This might have been a give away on his own blog:

I’m a Scottish Nationalist

Bateman now hates the BBC….and like all good Nats he complains of their pro-union bias…now I’ve heard the coverage…and to me, from what I’ve heard, the bias is pro-independence…Salmond gets the benefit of the doubt and very often not just the last word but the only word in news bulletins.

But its interesting how so often a BBC employee will reveal all the dirty laundry only when they’ve left.

Here he is blasting the BBC’s close links to Labour last year……

The head of news and current affairs at BBC Scotland has been accused of acting at the behest of a special advisor to the Scottish Labour party who it is claimed regularly complained about the political content of BBC Scotland programmes.
 
According to a former BBC broadcaster Derek Bateman, BBC Chief John Boothman questioned the political output of radio broadcasts after receiving complaints from Paul Sinclair.

Sinclair, who is the special advisor to Scottish Labour leader Johann Lamont, is said to have had a special relationship with Mr Boothman through both men’s links with the Labour party, and regularly contacted the BBC man directly to complain about political coverage.

Writing on his blog, Mr Bateman claimed that Boothman was “famous for his unrivalled network of contacts in the Labour movement.” adding that, “…Sinclair had a name for trying to interfere in BBC news decisions to influence output.”

Such attempts at interference were, according to Mr Bateman, something all parties tried to do.  However, according to the former BBC presenter, Sinclair and Boothman developed an unhealthy relationship with the Labour advisor calling the shots.

He added: “But what I didn’t like about Sinclair-Boothman was the informal and insidious way it developed, so instead of old pals, it became almost one of master and servant.

“Sinclair seemed to assume the right to call the BBC head of news to account. It was going on right up to the final weeks before my departure.”

Another ‘Myth’ of Leftwingery at the BBC for Owen Jones to try and explain away I guess.

A Biased BBC reader asks the question why it is that the BBC seems a tad reluctant (shall we say) to publish stories which reflect negatively on the Gay agenda. Such as these two….

Regional daily loses thousands of sales with gay kiss splash

and then…

Gay Birmingham teacher quits primary school after parents complain

To be clear, I am not a member of ANY political party and am cynical about the lot of them. However it is perfectly obvious that the BBC has done its best today to try and undermine UKIP! It started the day pondering if their election posters are “racist” and now the intrepid Nick Robinson has had a go at Farage because he employs his German wife. I suggest that between now and European election day we will see MUCH more of this as the BBC does what it can do undermine the one political party that wants out of the EU. One wonders why….

UKIP are under fire….ironically by Labour…for their ‘racist’ advertisements:

Not quite sure how that is racist….it is after all true…..even the first wave of East European immigrants complain about the next lot undercutting them in pay rates!

The BBC have been reporting it at length…strangely concentrating a fair bit on who funded the adverts….but also happily reporting the ‘furore’ about alleged racism.

Even stranger there is not a mention of Gordon Brown’s own demand for British jobs for British people…you might have thought that would be a perfect piece of ‘context’ for any reporter when Labour MPs are claiming UKIP is racist….and Dan Hodges claims they are worse than the BNP…..

……seeming to forget the similar ‘outrage over Brown’s remarks.

Of course this runs into at least two BBC ‘concerns’…European law and its dominance over the UK,  and immigration….neither of which they will report in a way that would suggest either has a negative effect on the UK.

Just a reminder of the fickle world of politics……

David Cameron has declared that “Britain is a Christian country and we should not be afraid to say so”, in a speech to mark the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible.

“The King James Bible is a book that has not just shaped our own country, but shaped the world,”

When did he declare that?  In 2011.

Cameron told Church of England clergy gathered in Oxford that a return to Christian values could counter the country’s “moral collapse” and blamed a “passive tolerance” of immoral behaviour for this summer’s riots, Islamic extremism, City excess and Westminster scandals.

Where were the 50 Humanists then?

The BBC doesn’t quote his previous statement but merely refers obliquely to it here:

Downing Street spokeswoman referred to a speech made three years ago by the prime minister where he said the UK was a Christian country and should not be afraid to say so.

“He has said on many occasions that he is incredibly proud that Britain is home to many different faith communities, who do so much to make the UK a stronger country.”

The BBC then slips in the suggestion that it might all just be a political ploy……

BBC political correspondent Chris Mason said Mr Cameron’s comments could be politically “useful”, coming as the UK Independence Party (UKIP) has been “emphasising traditional values”

Wonder if Chris Mason has been nobbled in the BBC canteen by the BBC’s nemesis turned best mate, Alastair Campbell….

David Cameron faking Christian convictions, suggests Alastair Campbell

Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair’s spin doctor, doubts sincerity of the Prime Minister’s Christian faith

This week’s Start the Week had ‘Anne McElvoy looking back at the life of the maverick scientist James Lovelock who pioneered the theory of Gaia, of a self-regulating Earth.’

Like that ‘maverick’ label.

Lovelock also looks to the future and the next evolution of Gaia which could lead to the extinction of human life, and a rise of Artificial Intelligence, but the writer and ecologist George Monbiot prefers his future world with wolves, wild boars and beavers living alongside humans.

And physicist Joanna Haigh explains how scientists from all disciplines are working together to measure the impact of solar activity on the Earth’s climate.

Lovelock has been having quite a bit of media attention for his change of heart about climate change, even getting an interview with Paxo on Newsnight.

Lovelock is famous, a scientist, and has a high credibility rating which can’t be easily dismissed.

Therefore when he criticises the climate change lobby people will take note….

‘Take this climate matter everybody is thinking about. They all talk, they pass laws, they do things, as if they knew what was happening. I don’t think anybody really knows what’s happening. They just guess. And a whole group of them meet together and encourage each other’s guesses.’

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books—mine included—because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened.”

I imagine the likes of Roger Harrabin have been tearing their hair out at this unwarranted intrusion by a renowned scientist into their carefully crafted world….and shaking it to the foundations.

Undoubtedly someone, possibly Harrabin, decided to undermine Lovelock…..Harrabin does have form after all when he organised the BBC party line to downplay a court decision that judged Al Gore’s scaremongering video to be just that.

Start the Week notably failed to either quote or get Lovelock to reprise his recent views….the closest they got to mentioning them was saying Lovelock has been a ‘bit dismissive’ of some of the IPCC’s conclusions….and asked ‘Is he wrong?’

And that was that.

We then had much of the rest of the programme not really talking about Lovelock, despite it ostensibly being about him, instead, naturally we got pro-AGW hype and George Monbiot peddling his free range zoo idea.

It was in essence a ploy to downplay Lovelock and big up climate change.

There were some of the usual claims but also some things of note that perhaps they wish they hadn’t said.

The first thing to come out was that we the Public are too ignorant to understand the science, the computer models, or the theories behind them.  We also can’t understand the risks associated with climate change…and that’s a problem for scientists who have to communicate that to us dummies.

Joanna Haigh says that…..

Scientific research produces results that are within a breadth of certainty…certain odds that the climate will do this or do the other and people don’t understand that.

As a scientist you’re not able to do any better than that.

The climate system is so wonderfully complex and complicated and interactive that actually predicting what it will do in a particular place and a particular time is pretty much impossible.

Er…hold on….predicting the climate is pretty much impossible!!!!

James Lovelock does get to slip in that we have been led up the creek by scientists and environmentalists by their use of ice core data…..there is no linear relationship between CO2 and temperature.…in the lab yes, in real life no…but a narrative still pushed by the BBC and the ‘Lobby’:

They tell us that it is a linear relationship…..the BBC’s Matt McGrath  pushing the point backed up by the Met. Office’s Peter Stott: ‘….and it is a clear linear relationship, so that the more you pump into the atmosphere, the more the temperature goes up, its… in a very complex system it is as simple as that?’

Stott: ‘There is this very clear linear relationship between the overall emissions of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, and the global temperature rise, so the more we emit, the more the temperature increases.’

Except it’s not..…if CO2 has risen a massive 40% why is it that temperatures have risen a mere 0.85° C since 1880 and have now stalled even as CO2 increases ever faster?

Joanna Haigh then pipes up and says that the sun is the driver of climate and CO2 is a result of that….surely some mistake!

Monbiot jumps in later to say that we shouldn’t allow doubts and uncertainties about climate to stop us making decisions…don’t be passive and defeatist he says….as opposed to acting on uncertain information in a way that would definitely radically alter your life for the worse which would be the result of following his advise.

Monbiot goes onto claim Lovelock has a ‘profound and irrational prejudice against people who try to turn science into public policy.’

Guess he’s not happy about criticism of the consensus then.

He then says Lovelock suggested that politicians, as they are not scientists, should just shut up…Monbiot said that was ‘terribly unfair’.

Can we take it then that he thinks the BBC’s ‘medieval and ignorant’ approach to dealing with climate sceptics is also ‘terribly unfair’?

Haigh then clambers back on board the consensus and claims that we know the physics of CO2 and that CO2 levels are higher than ever….the resultant heat generated is ‘entirely due to human activity’.

Er…where’s the proof of that….and where’s the evidence about CO2?….all the evidence points the other way…she herself earlier in the programme admitted as much.

Haigh then says that we can’t rely on the ocean to suck up all the heat…it may go into the surface but, if it does mix into the depths, that will only happen over the very long term.

Er….didn’t Harrabin insist that the deep oceans were already sucking up all that excess heat and that was why we were having the ‘slowdown’ as he puts it?

‘We’ve been dumping our problems into the oceans’ and ‘global warming has paused on land but the oceans have continued to warm and we’re not going to get away with it forever.’

I’ll have to go with the scientist here…not the English graduate.

Monbiot ended with a plea that we must trust the scientists…..the subject is so complex that we can’t possibly begin to understand the science…therefore we must take on trust what the researchers tell us….despite him quoting the Royal Society motto…‘Take nothing on trust’.

He also said, in relation to the release of bears and wolves and other dangerous beasts to roam the UK freely in his grand plan for a free range zoo, that people have a strange idea about risk…they overestimate the risk when really there is no danger.

Do I need to fisk that?  Not really, I suspect you’re there already.

All in all an interesting programme…shame it wan’t really about Lovelock at all…. having on two climate change lobbyists regurgitating the propaganda is exceedingly boring….probably I just didn’t understand it.  Examing the life, thoughts and changing perspectives of ‘One of the world’s top public intellectuals, a titan of post-war science working outside mainstream scientific institutions coming up with some of the most original ideas of our time‘ without the interruption of two stooges might have been more interesting.

Just listened to the whole of the Today programme interview with Jack Straw and an MCB rep (Talha Ahmed?)

The question raised by John Humphrys asked that as many schools now have Muslim pupils in the majority ‘How should schools cope with that?’…..also asking……‘Do you see this as a problem?’

Ahmed naturally said no, no problem..in fact all the diversity (?) adds value to the wider society.

He said we couldn’t have a proper debate because it was taking place in a charged atmosphere about Muslims taking control.

Humphrys stepped in there and corrected him…it was surely ‘extremists’ taking control.

Ahmed changed ‘Muslims’ to militants and Humphrys gave a satisfied ‘yep’….nothing to see here about Islamic values and their possible ‘extremism’….couldn’t possibly be ‘real Muslims’ wanting to impose Islam upon schools!

Then Ahmed said something of note that Humphrys didn’t press despite his last intervention….there is no concrete definition of what is an extremist or an Islamist.

That’s very true but it suits the apologists for Islam and the likes of the MCB……if you define an extremist as someone who merely has strong religious beliefs then all devout Muslims are extremist and Islam itself is an extreme ideology.

Therefore dodging that question is essential for anyone who wants to protray Islam as ‘moderate’ and the Religion of Peace.

Humphrys did suggested that the debate is switching from talk of extremists to talk of Islamification of schools.

Straw came in and said yes, in the context that many schools have majority Muslim populations we have to understand that there are many tensions within the Muslim communities themselves…it is a power struggle.

Is there battle between ‘extremists’ and ‘moderates’…or just between different groups of Muslims, all similarly devout?  The BBC always says there is a battle….the Islamists are always ‘extreme’.

However Ahmed said that there is not a battle between extremists and moderate Muslims….so perhaps he is suggesting that there is no such thing as extreme and moderate Islam…there is just Islam?  Heard that before from the MCB.

If there is no battle between extremist and moderate Muslims why does the BBC portray the Islamification of schools as the imposition of the beliefs of Muslims with strongly held views upon Moderate Muslims?  That is…the majority of Muslims don’t really want to follow ‘Islam’….they want Islam Lite….and as such pose no ‘threat’ to a secular democratic state.

Once again the BBC tries to downplay the true values that Islam teaches…and how many people follow them…religiously.

Straw then states that we must accept that we live in the UK and alongside religious values there has to be a clear understanding that there are a set of values which permeate our sense of citizenship.

Ahmed says that Muslims accept that…he knows of no Muslims who disagree with that…however….people should respect the space that Muslims need to practice their religion.

That last of course is where the problems begin…just how much slack do you give a religion to go its own way in society?

As said before such claims from Muslims about accepting ‘one law for all’ overriding Islamic law and culture are questionable….when Tariq Ramadan (who has a large following among Muslim youth in the UK..says the BBC) states that there is no such thing as a Western culture you have to recognise what he means and the threat such language poses to that ‘non-existent’ Western culture:

“But we have to also ask our fellow citizens [to remove the ghettos] by recognising European society has changed. We have to get rid of this idea that there is this homogenous European culture that Islam threatens.”

Throughout the BBC interview Ahmed, from the MCB, repeatedly suggested he went along with everything….no extremists, one law for all, segregation is bad….but on the MCB Twitter feed we get the real views:

So essentially we get the message from the MCB…we listen to your views with interest and agree with them all….except…..

Why the BBC continues to give the MCB credibility and airtime without challenging its real views is a mystery.

Have to laugh at the way in which the BBC instantly turns on one of its more usual favourites, the pro EU CBI, the nano-second it take a view they oppose. In Scotland, the CBI has chosen to oppose Scotland leaving the UK and this has caused those quangos who belong to the Scottish Government and who are also members of the CBI, to resign from the BBC. Listen to the hard time the CBI D-G is given by Evan Davies at at 1.14mins into the programme today.