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‘Silent Majority’ Of Muslims? Not Any More

Posted September 26th, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Great conversation on Al Jazeera’s The Stream yesterday:  I was with Lisa Fletcher and Anushay Hossain in the studio — I love her blog Anushay’s Point  — and Omid Safi, Nouman Ali Khan, and Michael Muhammad Knight joined in on Skype.  Plus an excellent video comment from Hind Makki in Chicago, which led to a lively post-show discussion, starting at the 25.15 mark, on reclaiming the narrative from both ‘Islamist’ extremists and Islamophobic bigots.

It’s a good thing Nouman Ali Khan wasn’t in the studio, because I’d only have totally embarrassed him by leaping up to give him a huge hug.  I really do have to figure out how to be cool on TV…

Like I say, hang around for the post-show segment — the silent majority is silent no longer!

[youtube=http://youtu.be/mtbsSXe6f2k]

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File under: fundamentalism, Islam, sanity, ugliness | Tagged: Tags: "Muslim rage", Al Jazeera, Arab spring, bigotry, extremism, freedom of expression, Islamophobic video, Libya, NYC subway ads, The Stream | 9 Comments
  1. Mustapha says:
    September 26, 2012 at 11:16 am

    Assalamu alaiki Lesley.

    I watched your programm with Lisa Fletch today. I then learned from Wikileaks that you a Jew. I am sure you cannot trace your tribe. When I meet you I will definitely hug you. You know that Muhammad Rasulullah married a Jewish lady from the famous tribe of Levi. It is part of the Sunna that his followers marry a Jewish lady!
    Good! I expected you to dispell the hope of a stable and peaceful world based on the history of your ancestors. How can the G-d of Abraham be partial? Do not be deceived for you know very well that after the discovery of the Torah and is promulgation by Josiah, the then Jewish race enjoyed peace and prosperity. The Qur’an has been protected and its Laws are intact. yet those upholding it have turned it into shreds of paper.
    Don’t criticize Netanhayu. Freedom of speech demands you to criticize the followers of Muhammad and expose their hypocrisy.
    Mustapha.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 27, 2012 at 10:38 am

      “Don’t criticize Netanyahu”? Are you kidding?
      You “learned from Wikileaks” that I’m Jewish? Wikileaks? Really? You could have learned it from me when I said so on the program you say you watched.
      No hugs, thank you.

  2. Imraan says:
    September 26, 2012 at 2:30 pm

    Reblogged this on Heightened Senses and commented:
    A brilliant edition of ‘The Stream’ speaking of the cartoons and the rage that followed it; is such a shame that more voices of moderation aren’t given this kind of exposure.
    That said, I think the discourse lets-off too easily the greater power-play here – I read it as classical orientalism – a way of subduing the Eastern man because he is quick to murderous rage, necessitating condemnation from Western Governments and schooling in what it is to live in the ‘modern world’ (thank you President Clinton, you very wicked man).
    Nouman Ali Khan was particularly excellent – speaking of the moral imperatives as opposed to the legislative ones which are important. And I think that that moral space should be recognised; as a person of ‘belief’, I wonder if it is a failing on the part of the faithful that this has been allowed to be perpetrated; our world today seems to be blinded by the notion of rights that extend even to the bigoted (which is fine in principle), the only problem being that we are so individualistic that we block out moral voices and moral instruction as soon as it interferes with our whims and desires – isn’t the point of morality (and I speak of universals here) that it should be able to shape or control our impulses for wickedness?

    It’s an unpopular view to have, no-doubt, in today’s world. What do you think?

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 27, 2012 at 10:50 am

      The point about lingering Orientalism is well taken, of course: images of rioting mobs feed into that perfectly, thus the infamous Newsweek “Muslim Rage” cover story. As any African American can tell you, it takes a long time for entrenched images, paradigms, and stereotypes to die. Any Jew, too.
      Re morality, I think a more productive approach might be to focus on the impulse to good rather than to bad. And this is what I understand Nouman Ali Khan to be saying. i.e. religion not as “control” or a system of “curbs,” but as a force that might, in principle, focus on the potential for good. The idea of humans as inherently evil and thus needing to be punished and constricted only creates religion based on fear and hatred.

  3. rehmat1 says:
    September 27, 2012 at 4:56 pm

    Shalom Ms Hazleton….

    You’re one of the three Jewish ladies who adorned by blog. The other two, are – poet and historian Tamam Kahn, and Professor Nurit Peled-Elhanan (Hebrew University). Nurit has not studied Islam, but Tamam did. She authored the book, ‘ UNTOLD: A History of the wives of Prophet Muhammad’.

    http://rehmat1.com/2011/03/14/untold-a-history-of-the-wives-of-prophet-muhammad/

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 27, 2012 at 8:00 pm

      I don’t know Nurit, but Tamam is indeed a dear friend.

      • rehmat1 says:
        September 28, 2012 at 5:20 am

        Nurit is daughter of Israeli war hero Gen. Matti Peled. She along with her brother Miko are among the few courageous Israeli Jews who though born and raised in committed Zionist Jewish families – have the moral courage to challenge Israel’s official Hasbara (propaganda) lies about Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims. Their grandfather, Dr. Avraham Katsnelson, sang Israeli anthem on Israel’s unilateral declaration of a state in May 1948. She lost her 13-year-old daughter Smdari Elhanan in the 1997 bombing in Jerusalem. Nurit turned her grief into quest for justice for the native Palestinians.

        http://rehmat1.com/2009/09/05/israeli-mother-who-refuses-to-shut-up/

        • Lesley Hazleton says:
          September 28, 2012 at 8:19 am

          Thank you. But please note that there are far more than “a few” such Israeli Jews. In fact a sizeable proportion of Israelis detest government policies, on political, moral, and Jewish grounds, and Matti Peled was among them. What I most admire about activists like Nurit is that they do not give way to despair or exhaustion.

  4. anon says:
    September 30, 2012 at 2:46 am

    I enjoyed the program and the discussion and agree with much of what was said—but perhaps some assumptions may have been incorrect?

    I agree that excessively curtailing speech legally only makes it go underground depriving people of the opportunity for healthy debate and combating ignorance….but the idea that non-legal/social means of censorship does not make unacceptable speech go underground may be a mistaken idea—-statistics on Islamophobia show that a rise in hate-crimes/speech against Muslims corresponds to a rise in hate-crimes/speech against Jews in both U.S. and Europe. Therefore, it is possible the old anti-semitism is not dead—it just went underground waiting for a more conducive environment to re-emerge. If this is the case, then it is also possible that social censorship will only make islamophobia go underground in the West….unless the West actively discards its ideas of “manifest destiny/white man’s burden” and comes up with a new narrative that acknowledges the equality and dignity of ALL human beings…..and its one that is needed in the East as well…..

    another myth is that the U.S.(government) respects “free-speech” which its citizens seem to hold as sacred. (one only needs to glance at journalist Glenn Greenwald articles….)
    During the time of Hoover, the FBI rounded up all those whom it felt held “subversive’ views (views about communism)…more recently….
    Whislteblower Bradley Manning arrested, Assange taking asylum from extradition to U.S., Penn state student arrested for posting links to bomb-making site, Jubair Ahmed arrested for uploading pictures of Abu Ghuraib—-there are also incidents when peaceful U.S. protestors were teargassed (new York) or pelted with rubber bullets causing injuries (California)—–others such as singer Cat Stevens and Professor Tariq Ramadhan were not allowed in the U.S. because it did not approve their views….During the Bush era—Al-Qaeda videos aired on al-Jazeera were not allowed to be aired in the U.S.—the U.S. also kidnapped and tortured (renditions) people whose views or conduct it did not like……..(these days it uses drones to bomb them….)

    on a larger scale—one might even posit that the whole idea of fighting “communism”—or of “bringing democracy to Iraq” by war….also contradicts the American value of freedom of speech—-because ideas should be fought by ideas—not by nuclear weapons or tanks…..?…….

    —the concept/value of free-speech is one that Americans should grapple with themselves in the American context….Its just that American excuses about how hate-speech is “legal” ring kinda hollow to non-Americans………

Blood Brothers

Posted September 12th, 2012 by Lesley Hazleton

Once again, the extremists have fed each other.  Once again, with other people’s blood.

The blood is that of one of the best friends the new Libya could have had:  US Ambassador Christopher Stevens, killed yesterday, the evening of 9/11, along with three of his staff as they tried to evacuate employees of the American consulate in Benghazi.  The evacuation was necessary because protestors had been whipped into violence by a 14-minute farce of a video attacking the prophet Muhammad.  Or, as now seems possible, the protest was used as an excuse for a planned attack, since RPGs and automatic weapons were involved.

Al-Qaeda-type extremists are apparently the ones who pulled the trigger, using the insult to Islam as an excuse. But they could not have done so without the help of their partners — their Jewish and Christian brothers-in-arms right here in the United States. That’s who provided the ammunition, in the form of a shoddily crude and absurdly amateurish “movie trailer” portraying Muhammad as a fraud and his early supporters as a bunch of goons.

I’m deliberately not linking to the video here since I refuse to link to such tripe. This isn’t an insult to Islam;  it’s an insult to human intelligence. If you feel sufficiently masochistic, you can find it on YouTube by typing in the title, ‘Muslim Innocence’ (the director’s idea of irony).

You’ll see that it’s made by ignorant fanatics for ignorant fanatics. Nobody else would pay it the blindest bit of attention. In fact nobody else did (even the director, an Israeli-American who goes by the name of Sam Bacile, which may or may not be a pseudonym, admits that the whole movie has been shown only once, to a nearly empty movie theater in California). Nobody else, that is, until Florida’s tinpot Quran-burning pastor Terry Jones — the one who once hanged President Obama in effigy and will apparently do anything to get himself back in the news — decided to showcase the trailer as part of his annual 9/11 Islamophobic rant.

I’ll write more about this very soon (I’m just back from a trip, and jet-lagged). But for now, two things:

1. Rest in peace, Christopher Stevens.

2. As for Terry Jones and the man calling himself Sam Bacile: if such a thing as hell exists, may you both rot in it, alongside your blood brothers in Al Qaeda.

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File under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism, ugliness | Tagged: Tags: 'Sam Bacile', Al Qaeda, Ambassador Stevens, Benghazi, bigotry, Islamophobia, Libya, Muhammad, Terry Jones, YouTube | 13 Comments
  1. lavrans123 says:
    September 12, 2012 at 7:54 pm

    I think it was a Libyan politician who said that the film was like crying fire in a movie theater; you’re free to say it, but once said you may have to pay the consequences. Too bad the wrong people always seem to pay the consequences for these type of people’s actions.

    Another sad facet to the whole thing is how 9/11 rouses so many bigots, and how this sort of thing seems to convince more people to become bigots because they won’t see Terry Jones & Sam Bacile as being complicit. Although I’m sure they’re the same people who really complained about the flag and Christ being immersed in urine…

  2. Zahida Murtaza (@zmurrad) says:
    September 13, 2012 at 4:55 am

    Thanks Lesley, for speaking up once again like so many other times when many of us just cringe and feel upset at such things. There are no words to describe the actions and methods some people choose to show their dislike for someone or something. They must be feeling defeated that’s why they have to keep coming with new ways to show their anger and frustration.
    What I don’t understand about the people who react so violently to such provocations and filth if they really ‘KNOW’ the man they think they are defending by their actions. The man ‘Prophet Muhammad’ suffered so much insult and abuse at the hands of ignorant and misguided people in his own lifetime, but never reacted this way. As a matter of fact, just the opposite. He was most forgiving and used such actions as teachable moments.
    What do we learn from his ‘sunnah’? We will be hurting him more by killing innocent people in his name. I beg all those muslims who respond to hate with more hate to go back to the teachings of Prophet Muhammed and follow his practice. As Allah calls him the ‘ ‘blazing, bright sun’ in the Quran, so what happens when we trying to spit at the sun? I will come back on our face. We should wait for that moment. It will come back on ‘their face’.
    Thanks

  3. Trying God's Patience says:
    September 13, 2012 at 9:59 am

    Always sensible, always well-informed, and isn’t it always not-that-complicated really – thank you, as always. xo

  4. Susan Jackson Weirauch says:
    September 13, 2012 at 10:39 am

    I absolutely agree with you and Jones makes me embarrassed to live in the same state as he does. He is a terrorist and should be arrested and tried as such.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 13, 2012 at 11:09 am

      Obviously I detest the man as much as you. He’s a dangerous big-mouthed loose-cannon bigot, but terrorists are defined by their actions, not their speech. He feeds terrorism, but he does not commit it, nor directly urge people to commit it, and thus, however abhorrent the idea may be, he is not legally liable. If that seems wrong, then answer this: do you really want to live in a country where it’s possible to jail people for what they say? Where under a different administration, you could then be jailed for what you say?

  5. Imraan says:
    September 13, 2012 at 3:11 pm

    Unfortunately this fellow seems to have the usual axe to grind. Following from what you wrote, I did not watch the trailer as you’re right, it’s rather masochistic to willingly engage in such ignorance (if I understood you correctly).

    But I don’t see this as particularly controversial – historically, various sainted characters have been villified, defamed, insulted. But the test of one’s faith is, importantly, whether it can stand criticism. I think Islam fundamentally can. Scholars, Imams, sheikhs historically have been known to respond to various criticisms in the seminaries – and no one had to get killed (in general). Moreover, the voice of the Qur’an has rebutted, in its own days, the claims made against it and the Prophet – so following on in its example, I would hope that Muslims would do the same.

    Now whether (we) Muslims can, is a different question. Of course, and this isn’t legitimising the violence, in a society where the religious culture is more apparent, where religious sentiments are heightened and people hold dear (not in a hagiographic sense always) a truly great and charismatic personality, I can understand how the sentiments spill over.

    This isn’t considering who actually committed the acts of barbarism – if they’re from the mujahid persuasion (and I suspect they might be as automatic weapons were apparently used) then of course their logic is rather different and perhaps needs to be contextualised in a more third-world (lack of literacy, poor socio-economic means, different religious culture?), anti-hegemonic, anti-imperial/postcolonial situation – again not justifying it, and ironically enough these groups tend to be funded from the West or its client states. Unfortunately the actions of those in arms will give fodder to those who think such a film is timely.

    I can understand the anger – what is curious to me is that the US government and its representatives are still, at least in Libyan eyes (and I could be misreading the situation) conflated with both anti-Islamic sentiments, and perhaps even with either a Jewish/Zionist anti-Arab/anti-Islamic conspiracy – and though I don’t tend to conflate Judaism with Zionism, I can certainly understand why in that part of the world they do.

    “[109:5] For you is your faith, and for me, my faith.”

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 13, 2012 at 5:30 pm

      Re “in Libyan eyes,” it seems the majority of Libyans, as well as the Libyan government, are sincere in their denunciation of this murder, not least because they appreciate the role of the US — and in particular of the assassinated ambassador — in helping oust Qaddafi. Paranoid rhetoric about US imperialism in the post-Bush/Cheney era seems to be the much reduced province of militant extremists like Salafis and Qaeda, not the mainstream. As has been noted endlessly in the past 48 hours, Libyan politics are still, in the word of choice of the NYT, “volatile,” but I get the impression that many more citizens of Muslim countries are sick and tired of the way militant fundamentalists distort Islam and manipulate it to serve their own interests.

      • Imraan says:
        September 13, 2012 at 6:24 pm

        Fair points. Thank you for responding. I hope that you’re having a blessed and peaceful night.

        I should have been more specific – In some Libyans’ eyes – but even that, you are correct, is a rather broad generalisation.

        I suspect many are pleased with the ousting of Qaddafi, though I hope Libyans will still remember to view US motives with suspicion. I’m no apologist for political thuggery nor dictators, despots or demagogues, but I don’t believe (but am willing to be shown otherwise) that the removal of Qaddafi was sincere, alas, in the same way that the U.S stood by Mubarak until his position was completely untenable, or becoming an embarrasment for the State Department.

        Moreover the US/Western track record on Iraq, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Iran and the Palestinians are rather problematic. As someone from the anti-war movement said, if the major Libyan export was asparagus, would we be so sure that the U.S would have interveined? Rhetoric aside, it did give me pause to consider that question.

        “Paranoid rhetoric about US imperialism in the post-Bush/Cheney era seems to be the much reduced province of militant extremists like Salafis and Qaeda, not the mainstream”

        Do you mean in terms of how the Libyans/Middle Easterners at large might not be as inclined to agree with the suggestion that the U.S’ interests aren’t imperial? Though I don’t agree with the tactics of al-Qaeda and Salafis, nor do I understand their (rather warped) theology, I do believe sincerely that the U.S (particularly, but not exclusively) is perpetrating a rather sharp imperial agenda (though there could be neomarxist readings into that too, which I might be mistakenly be calling Imperialist).

        Moreover, their funding of militants in Syria (and I do pray that the Syrians win democracy for themselves) via client states i.e. Saudi Arabia, Turkey is highly suspect – I don’t think the concern was so great for the Syrians ten years ago; and as I understand it the Assad and Qaddafi governments were participants in the Extraordinary Rendition project.

        The irony of course was that Syria got suspended from the Arab League – a collection of western-backed totalitarian regimes – for squashing a democratic revolution (!); or that when the Saudi government became one of the leading voices for democracy in Syria, the Obama administration, and Secretary of State Clinton soon realised how farcial it was to call their movement the Friends of Democratic Syria.

        Perhaps I have read too much Chomsky, though!

        Mehdi Hasan (I think) said some months ago, that as a proportion of their population, the Bahrainis have suffered far more repression, torture, imprisonment than Syrians (at least at the time) but of course the arms trade resumed with Bahrain – moreover the 5th Fleet happens to be stationed there so we don’t get as much coverage in the news about it. We (and I say this with some guilt as a British citizen) armed Qaddafi, Saddam, al-Khalifa.

        “http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/04/cnn-international-documentary-bahrain-arab-spring-repression”

        If you haven’t seen the reports yet, alternate new outlets, e.g Press TV, as well as al-Manar and Zee News have been reporting today that ‘surveillance’ drones have been dispached to Libya in the wake of the murders at the US embassy (assassinations? I never know how important one must be in order to be assassinated), as well as ships from one of the Naval fleets – this does worry me indeed and seems to be part of a policy that some might call neocolonial. In the same way that the US is shooting fire from the skies elsewhere over foreign territory (Somalia, Pakistan, Yemen), I fear that this could set a rather terrifying precedent.

        • Imraan says:
          September 13, 2012 at 6:32 pm

          I’ve just realised I’ve been writing an argument rather than a response; apologies if my tone was overly-confrontational.

          • Lesley Hazleton says:
            September 13, 2012 at 7:27 pm

            Apologies accepted, but it’s good to have reasoned argument from another point of view. Killing an ambassador does count as an assassination, though. And thus as an international crisis point. So far, Obama seems to be handling it well. I clearly have a lot more faith in his administration than you do. Or maybe I just don’t expect perfection. That is, I never expected him to be the messiah. What I did expect is what he’s been: a sane, intelligent leader doing his best in the face of intense obstructionism here at home. Only ideologues stay ‘pure’ — and ideologues are precisely the problem, both in the US and abroad.

  6. Imraan says:
    September 13, 2012 at 3:13 pm

    Reblogged this on Heightened Senses and commented:
    I seem to be more and more referring to this blog! In response to the events of the last couple of days, Hazleton writes a rather good piece.

  7. Imraan says:
    September 20, 2012 at 3:36 pm

    Firstly – sorry I vanished! Had a weird week healthwise! Indeed, reasoned debate is something I aspire to. I wonder if it’s much harder to have in the states – the political system seems so be one of extremes – even though in many respects, the centre ground appears much closer to both ‘ends’ of the spectrum in the US in general than it it does here.

    Indeed, the ideologues unfotunately have made having any sort of debate with nuance very, very difficult, and at times, a rather tortuous process. I certainly believe that Obama is better than the alternatives, but alas his capacity, even as a self-proclaimed centrist, has been hindered because of (in my perhaps unqualified opinion) operant (I think that’s the word I’m looking for!) power structures and control of both information and resources – I certainly didn’t expect him to be able to change those mechanisms, at least to any degree that would alter the landscape of the discourse dramatically.

    But I’ll give it to him – the man is actually quite intelligent. I wish he had better PR though – those speeches he gave which appeared to have mobilised a generation is what he should have worked on more – brought the country over to his side so that at least if Congress didn’t act /cooperate according to the new political landscape, he wouldn’t be seen as culpable or as easy a target for the Romney bid. I don’t know if that would have help curb the now nearly fanatical the Tea-Party movement – and I understand he had a rather damaged economy to deal with too.

    In terms of foreign policy, thogh, I’m glad on the one hand that his policies on Iran haven’t been as aggressive as McCain’s or (God-forbid Romney) would be, and that though it hasn’t made much of a difference, his attitude toward the Palestinian statehood-bid has been more positive than we’ve seen for about a decade; on the other hand I’m so gravely disappointed at the policies toward, say, Latin America, Cuba/GTMO, and now the ‘hit list’ scandal which is still being written about in our papers here, at the least. But in terms of domestic policy, of course, living abroad, I can’t gauge the political climate on the ground as well as you can. Though in my opinion, his hand in widening the healthcare availability (though certainly not an ideal system by far) is his saving grace in my eyes.

    But unless if his policies are more focussed or he has better success with Congress in the next term, I’m worried that he will have missed some rather large opportunities in terms of creating a more friendly, fair and less imperial image of the US, both at home and abroad. Maybe once he’s in his next term, with the end-point somewhat in sight, he might be able to take greater political risks. As an example, I’m not much of a fan of Clinton but he appears to be remembered quite well in the ‘liberal’ (and I find it rather odd that Clinton’s something of a liberal – or at least in the O’Reilly, Coulter, Malkin, Limbaugh et al paradigm, haha!) press.

    Reading this back to myself – I’m realising that my own terms and references to American politics is one of extremes also – my discourse if framed by the reportage of the international press and Democracy Now! – so perhaps I’m my own problem here!

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      September 23, 2012 at 4:04 pm

      One of the United States’ many problems: not only is socialism a dirty word (as in the Republican campaign against “socialized medicine”) but so too is the word ‘liberal.’ You’re right in that the mainstream political spectrum here is far narrower than that in the UK and most of Europe. For an ex-Brit like me, it can be… frustrating.

Anti-Semitism = Islamophobia

Posted March 8th, 2011 by Lesley Hazleton

This past weekend, I spoke to a Hadassah meeting – the Women’s Zionist Organization of America.  The subject, of my choosing, was “What’s a ‘nice Jewish girl’ doing writing so much about Islam?”

The easy answer to the question I’d self-imposed was “Why not?”  A perfectly reasonable answer, perhaps, but not with bigots like Peter King about to begin his witch hunt this week in the form of congressional hearings on the alleged “radicalization” of American Muslims.

The real answer is that it’s precisely because I’m Jewish that I find myself writing so much about Islam these days.  Because as a Jew, I know the dangers of prejudice.  And I can smell it a mile off.  When I hear someone talk about “the Jewish mentality,” I know I’m listening to an anti-Semite.  How else stereotype millions of people that way?   Just as when I read someone like Ayaan Hirsi Ali talking about “the Muslim mentality,” I know — no matter how pretty she is, how soft-spoken, and how compelling her life story – that I am listening to an Islamophobe.

And I recognize that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia are two sides of the exact same coin:  the stereotyping of millions of people by the actions of a few.  That is, prejudice.

So it’s particularly painful, let alone absurd and self-defeating and dumb, to see that some Islamophobes are Jewish.  And equally painful – and absurd and self-defeating and dumb – to see that some Muslims are anti-Semitic.

I have no statistics to say what proportion of Jews are Islamophobic or what proportion of Muslims are anti-Semitic (though I could doubtless make some up and throw them out there with such an air of authority that they’d be repeated ad infinitum until they achieve the status of “fact”).   But the Muslim Brotherhood, for all the changes it has undergone, still distributes The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.  And while anti-Zionism does not necessarily mean anti-Semitism, there is a clear overlap, with a venemous hatred finding its outlet in what is now the more acceptable form of anti-Zionism.

So we need to be clear.  We badly need it.

“Islam” did not attack the US on 9/11;  eighteen people with a particularly twisted and distorted idea of Islam did.  “The Jews” do not shoot Palestinian farmers in the West Bank;   Bible-spouting settlers with a particularly twisted and distorted idea of Judaism do.

The Quran is no more violent or misogynistic than the Bible.  In fact it’s less so.  If you insist, as Islamophobes do, on highlighting certain phrases, then you should turn around and do the same with the Bible, which you will find ten times worse, with repeated calls for the destruction of whole peoples. Only the dumbest, most literal, hate-filled fundamentalist, Jewish or Muslim, takes the rules of ancient warfare as a guide to 21st-century life.

We have to stop this stereotyping.  Now.  All of us.

We have to recognize prejudice not only in others, but in ourselves, Jewish or Muslim.

We have to be able to see that the anti-Semitic trope of “the Jews” trying to take over the world is exactly the same as the Islamophobic one of “the Muslims” trying to take over the world.

We have to acknowledge that an Islamophobic Jew is thinking exactly like an anti-Semite.  And that an anti-Semitic Muslim is thinking exactly like an Islamophobe.

We have to realize that American Jews need to stand up with Muslims against Islamophobia just as American Muslims need to stand up with Jews against anti-Semitism.

Because Islamophobia is, in essence, another form of anti-Semitism, and vice versa.  And it’s in the direct interest of both Jews and Muslims — of all of us — to stand up and confront both forms of prejudice.

In the famous words of an anti-Nazi Protestant pastor during World War II:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out —
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me — and there was no one left to speak for me.

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File under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism | Tagged: Tags: 9/11, American Jews, American Muslims, anti-Semitism, anti-Zionism, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bible, bigotry, Hadassah, Islamophobia, Martin Niemoller, Peter King, prejudice, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Quran, radicalization, stereotypes, West Bank | 33 Comments
  1. Mykolas Kimtys says:
    March 8, 2011 at 9:40 am

    You go girl!

    • Maisha says:
      March 11, 2011 at 1:35 pm

      I agree with much of what was said in this post and have no problem with a Jew telling others what they know about Islam. That is, when the information is correct and for the most part, Leslie is correct.. But I think that her knowledge may be confinded to Quran, with out much knowledge of Haditn. And it is kind of hard to separate one from the other because Hadith gives a better understanding of Quran. According to Hadith, the “ancient warfare guide” for Muslims is: no killing of women, old people, non combatant men, and children,no killing of priest, nuns, monks etc., no destruction of holy places such as churches, synagogues,no destruction of crop and livestock.
      Considering that war is horror. Since it appears that war is here to stay. Some of that horror of war could be cut if armies and etc. followed this “ancient warfare guide”

  2. Herman says:
    March 8, 2011 at 10:23 am

    What you are stating makes sense theoretically,

    but practically I have seen very, very few people

    ready to stand up with the Jews when anti-semitism

    appears. Almost no Muslims.

    • JJ says:
      March 14, 2011 at 8:16 pm

      BS

      http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Feb2005/mosque.htm

      http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/4/4/854131/-Film-on-Arab-Schindlers-who-saved-Jews-in-WWII-premieres-at-MOTLA

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmEw5M-xK64

    • JustBob says:
      March 15, 2011 at 6:51 am

      Agreed Herman. We should hope more people, especially the Left, speak out against Holocaust denialism that has gone so far where nation states actually sponsor conferences on whether the Holocaust actually happened or not.

      To this day, I have yet read one single person condemn the anti-Semitic beliefs in many parts of the world who believe New York Jews were in on 9/11 and did not show up to work that day.

      Most would rather ignore Antisemitism. This type of selective silence proves some are only interested in pushing their agenda rather than combating all forms of hatred and paranoia.

  3. Tea-mahm says:
    March 8, 2011 at 11:04 am

    This is great. Wish you could have this conversation on CNN. Tm

  4. Adila says:
    March 8, 2011 at 4:04 pm

    Lesley, I like you. You have sight.

    🙂

    Herman, I’d like to think I’d stand.

  5. sa says:
    March 8, 2011 at 10:20 pm

    Islam is the only faith tradition that declares “There is no Compulsion in Religion”. Its founder, Prophet Mohammed, created the Charter of Medina which protected the rights of both Muslims and non Muslims alike living in Medina. The 47 clause document contains all the characteristics of the preamble to the US constitution. Similarly, the charter of privileges gave protection and rights to the St Catherine’s Monastary in Alexandria, Egypt. This was all necessary because Islam was founded in an unjust and hostile environment and giving protections and creating protectorates was necessary. Today these cultural dynamics are still at play as are geo political issues and other complexities around the world.

  6. Lynn Rosen says:
    March 8, 2011 at 10:58 pm

    You nailed it. You simply nailed it.

  7. Meezan says:
    March 9, 2011 at 1:21 am

    Hear hear.

  8. Yazid Erman says:
    March 9, 2011 at 2:16 am

    I totally agree with you Lazely, and i am a very strict Muslim! 😉

  9. Kamil says:
    March 9, 2011 at 3:13 am

    I’m a Muslim who currently live in London. I studied Jewish Philosophy and the holocaust for A-Levels when I grew up in Hong Kong. I absolutely agree with everything you wrote in this blogpost. I am shocked by the level of anti semitism I find in the communities today and I guess you will find the same vice-versa.

    Thank you for blogging this and hopefully we can all wake up and understand each other’s struggles in so many decades (and centuries). I think what the Muslims are going through today in the western world (at least here in Britain) has a lot of parallel with the Jewish emancipation in the 1800s and we have a lot to learn from each other.

    May Allah swt bless you for your work.

  10. Aijaz says:
    March 9, 2011 at 4:27 am

    I don’t know how much anti semitism is anti Israeli and anti Jewish…Islamophob is anti Islam, not anti Muslims or anti extremism.
    Whoever had invented anti semitic had cleverly covered all the zionist and Israeli crimes under one flag of anti semitic and then made it a Taboo.
    A stand up comedian in Chritian majority USA can easily make Jesus the butt of his joke but before making anti semitic remarks he will think twice.

    IMO theres no equivalence between anti semite and Islamophob.

    I have no idea Iran is making nuclear bomb or not but if they were making bomb then its the result of propaganda under Islamophob.
    After 1979 revolution Iran ban on all nuclear activities but then they were forced into 10 years war with western supported Sadam.
    War mongers in arms industry are loaded with money so same fear was used but as shiaphob.

    In this video a Muslm is protecting a Jewish couple from Christian mob…Had he known their ID would he still protect them….answer is simple…..YES.

    No Christian, no Muslim, no Jew is devoid of human feelings….all are made with same heart with bloody flesh which pump harder when witness human misery.
    The only difference is greed for power and money…that desire of few benficiaries is trying hard to keep hostage the human feelings and to supress extra pumping of human heart…

    The key is fear and promotion of fear through propaganda.
    The war mongers in the name of religion are used as a tool…the beneficiaries are power brokers and Arms industry and Arms traders and media. I am afraid all three primary beneficiaries are zionist based, the secondary beneficiaries are Arab Tyrants, Kings and Dictators.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrjMl3ISkTE&feature=related

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      March 9, 2011 at 7:38 am

      Alas, you demonstrate my point. Anti-Semitism is a Zionist ‘invention’? You might want to read some history.

      Meanwhile, this from Jean-Paul Sartre, as relevant I think for Muslims as for Jews: “If Jews did not exist, anti-Semites would have had to invent them.”

      • Aijaz says:
        March 9, 2011 at 8:29 am

        I think I am getting closer
        Perhaps anti semitism is just like Taliban and Al Qaida, as no one literally knows who they are and what they are but everyonee knows why they are.

  11. Aijaz says:
    March 9, 2011 at 4:41 am

    Drawing U.S. Crowds With Anti-Islam Message
    By LAURIE GOODSTEIN
    Published: March 7, 2011

    FORT WORTH — Brigitte Gabriel bounced to the stage at a Tea Party convention last fall. She greeted the crowd with a loud Texas “Yee-HAW,” then launched into the same gripping personal story she has told in hundreds of churches, synagogues and conference rooms across the United States:

    As a child growing up a Maronite Christian in war-torn southern Lebanon in the 1970s, Ms. Gabriel said, she had been left lying injured in rubble after Muslims mercilessly bombed her village. She found refuge in Israel and then moved to the United States, only to find that the Islamic radicals who had terrorized her in Lebanon, she said, were now bent on taking over America.

    “America has been infiltrated on all levels by radicals who wish to harm America,” she said. “They have infiltrated us at the C.I.A., at the F.B.I., at the Pentagon, at the State Department. They are being radicalized in radical mosques in our cities and communities within the United States.”

    Through her books, media appearances and speeches, and her organization, ACT! for America, Ms. Gabriel has become one of the most visible personalities on a circuit of self-appointed terrorism detectors who warn that Muslims pose an enormous danger within United States borders.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/08/us/08gabriel.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&emc=eta1&pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1299610962-NGSvRzNNaIjSLZ0vYlUW9Q

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      March 9, 2011 at 7:43 am

      This article is linked to in the original post. Always a good idea to read before commenting.

      • Aijaz says:
        March 9, 2011 at 8:24 am

        forgive me for I am as clumsy as I could be.

        I try hard again to find the link about this NYT article or anything about Brigitte Gabriel in original post but miserably failed.

  12. Anti-Semitism = Islamophobia | :: MUSLIM DIALOGUE :: says:
    March 9, 2011 at 8:20 am

    […] http://accidentaltheologist.com/2011/03/08/anti-semitism-islamophobia/ March 9th, 2011 | Category: MUSLIM DIALOGUE, […]

  13. Lavrans says:
    March 9, 2011 at 10:19 pm

    It’s funny as I was just having this very argument with a friend who happens to be… a vegetarian.

    No, it’s not a joke. He was talking about how meat is bad, and brought up a video that made some valid points (animals raised on mega-ranches take lots of land and more resources than the average vegetable), and a lot of points that are subjective and meant to tug at a person’s visceral response (animals are tortured and killed just for human pleasure). My argument that the argument was self-righteous was taken as an indictment of vegetarians as a whole.

    The politics of religion is the same action. That video that was posted isn’t the view of all vegetarians, and while most vegetarians would laugh at it and agree with some of the points, not all are vegetarians for the same reason and not all subscribe to the same beliefs; not all will find the entire argument True. Groups always carry with them a certain amount of prejudice against other groups, the question is really to what degree and whether it’s a prejudice that diminishes their ability to empathize with that other group.

    What we have, in my opinion, is too many people who just can’t get past the concept that any large group carries many opinions. What one person or one part of that group says isn’t necessarily a Truth for the entire group, and very likely to be seen by some as ridiculous.

    I maintain that the most dangerous food out there is processed food. Factory food. Food that is barely recognizable in any part as what it came from. The soda that’s really a corn and oil distillation. The steak that’s softened by force feeding an animal that is kept alive only by the use of large amounts of antibiotics.

    I can’t help but see that as so true of the politics of religion. What’s dangerous isn’t the raw belief; the stories and tales that seeded the tree that has grown up and spread across the world; no, what’s dangerous is what’s been done when a branch is taken from the tree, chopped and processed into a new thing that is barely (if at all) related to what it was distilled from.

    That danger is to the tree itself, in that it adds something that may be a poison. That danger is to the tree in how it is seen by the person on the outside; if they don’t know what’s been done to make that processed, transformed thing, then they may ascribe all the dangers as inherent within the tree itself (rather than the processing).

    And that is the danger to those outside that tree’s canopy; ignorance and doubt are easy forms of belief that are hard to eliminate. If you’ve been taught that the tree is poisonous, it may take a stronger act than most could muster to risk grabbing a piece of fruit from the tree and eating it. Even when done, it will still take a long time to overcome that prejudice. See how many people still think that tomatoes are poisonous.

  14. Aijaz says:
    March 11, 2011 at 5:32 am

    Things could be more complex than complicated as presented by Lavran.
    Simplicity is the beauty of arguments and this simplicity adopted by all religions because religion is for masses not specifically for bunch of intellectuals.

    Theres nothing beyond scope of right and wrong…a complex or complicated aspect of right does no make it wrong.
    All the animals slaughtered for food are fast multiple and has short life span…when reaching a natural death their disposal may cause a serious problem and environmental mayhem.
    Torturous slaughter is valid argument by a vegetarian….every living thing has to endure the pain of death one day…people should be careful to cause minimum pain when slaughtering as much as they can learn scientifically….unfortunately none knows the pain of death and pain of slaughter.

    Disintegration of bones and losening of muscles with diminish senses as growing age, I believe is a mercy on mankind thats about time when natural death is happened.
    So in my guess natural death for all living things should be less painful than slaughtered.

    All of these are God sanctioned slaughters so argument can not be restricted to science only besides science can not prove for sure the amount of pain caused in both kind of deaths.
    A vegetarian can not love the rats and roaches damaging his clean home and furniture.
    Probably he will show mercy on a pop up snake in his household to capture and hand it over to wildlife…but roaches and rats he is forced to kill with poisonous torture.

    A very valid example of Tree and its branches was given…..A branch when seperated does not seek its ID but try to make its own ID…An ID which has no roots is the root cause of all problems.

    Religiously if we take Tree as one God and branches as group of people and leaves as people then it will be easy to understand the concept of Unity of God.
    The one leaf or branch which detach itself from Tree is living a life of its own not a borrowed life.
    This owned life knows its origin from father’s seed to mother’s womb then in being and vanished in darkness…this being which probably achieved status of self during the course of life but after death it becomes a number which was added once but now reduced.
    A self which is not more than a number is not different from an ant which was crushed to death among its flock and this is the result of a branch which try to make its own ID after seperated from Tree.

    Let me present an example to emphasize the simplicity of religion through simplicity of its personalities.

    One day an old woman, who had for many years heard of the greatness and magnificence of the Prophet, came before him. She stood tongue tied in awe of his presence. The Prophet, softly, kindly and simply took her by the shoulder and said, “Why are you afraid? I am the son of that Quraish woman who milked sheep. Who are you afraid of?”

    Though I am thankful to Lavran for generating such a beautiful idea of Tree and its branch to help me elaborate my views

    • Lavrans says:
      March 11, 2011 at 4:25 pm

      True- things are always more complex. The main point to the vegetarian is that it isn’t any more unnatural for people to eat meat than any other omnivore or carnivore.

      Complexity comes in with the addition of civilization (that is, living in cities). Then you have many food pressures- we know of no groups that were voluntarily vegetarian until after the introduction of cities and religion- and all of the reasons for a vegetarian diet are religious.

      With wealth comes the ability and freedom to choose whether you’re a vegetarian or not, and with that also comes other reasons for being a vegetarian- and yet, almost all of them still center on man as apart from and different from nature.

      That’s also a commonality of the monotheistic religions (well, most modern religions; at some point religions move from man being a special animal, but still an animal, to being something other than an animal); man as apart from nature.

      Thus, one’s food becomes a choice. This is part of the “processing” I mention. That thought is as much a process as removing the fat from milk or monofarming corn. The thought process is no more “natural” than a million acres of corn, or the idea that man is not just another animal.

      Continue the processing of thought and action and you can come to the point where raising an animal with the intent to eat it becomes morally suspect and the vegetarian starts thinking that the raising and killing is a callous act done in order to sate a taste for killing. When it’s really not that different from raising carrots with the intent to eat them; the main difference is that we see the animal as closer to us and, therefore, closer to god.

      Why is it not possible for the carrot to have a soul? If it does, is it morally problematic to eat the carrot? Or would that God have designed the various animals and plants to do and eat what they do?

      Again- it’s not the act, but the process by which one gets to that act. Very much like in religions, where all of the religions have the same basic rules and tenets, yet the process used to interpret them gives rise to all these opposing sects that become willing to denigrate or do violence to any “other”.

      That, to me, is the genesis and life blood of prejudice. Ignorance fueled by a processed idea that labels itself a morality while demanding an action in violation and opposition to that morality.

      • Aijaz says:
        March 12, 2011 at 1:28 am

        All things are true in their essence perhaps you mean Truth about certain things is complex.

        Truth of the matter is we don’t know how many things are living things of the total things known to us.
        Anything which breath has a life and subject to feel the pain.
        All the plants,vegetables,fruits,grass etc are living thing…sign of their life is they breath they get their naurishments and they grow….if not eaten mercilessly by a vegetarian in their lifetime they also die as they rots and thats their natural life span.
        A vegetarian, if he must eat apple then he has to wait until its rotten or in other words completely dead to cause no pain to partially alive apple.

        I see no difference between growing apples for the purpose to eat when they are ripe and still fresh and breathing AND breeding animals for the purpose to slaughter and to eat.

        Grass is alive as long as its green and it subject to feel pain also….a proud vegetarian feel no remorse to tread torturously on a lviing thing.

        All this fuss to complicate the simplicity of life into unnecessary complexity is the result of not having real issues faced by humanity and they are in abundance.

        Some says stones also breath but this much I know from Quran that everything living or dead to our knowledge praise God but we know not.

        I have no knowledge how other things are alive other than Human Being…are they ensoul or not…perhaps Lavran has more knowledge, he may enlighten.

        Soul in Quran is described as Amre Rab “Decree of God”.
        Amazingly in whole Quran nowhere plural is used for soul….so this is singular act of Al-Mighty to enliven a thing.
        Self(Nafs) has plural in Quran which is exclusively for mankind not other living things.

        So we are composed of three things…Body,soul and self.
        When soul leave the body we are dead and we are left with body and self…in few hundred years body also disnitegrate..the only thing left is self which is resurrected on judgment day and according to Islamic faith body testify against the self which it used to carry.
        The reality of mankind is SELF which is accountable not the body and soul.

  15. Muslim says:
    March 19, 2011 at 7:37 am

    Why do people claim anti-semitic as only referring to jews..
    semitic is relating to people who are of the groups that speak of Afroasiatic languages that includes Akkadian, arabic, Aramaic, Ethiopic, Hebrew, and Phoenician.

    so american english speaking jews are NOT semitic
    but on the flip side.. christian and muslim arabs alike in the middle east are ALL semitic.. so if you discrimate against a middle eastern muslim, you are being anti-semitic

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      March 19, 2011 at 8:50 am

      Strictly speaking, of course, you’re quite right, but such a definition then excludes the 80% of Muslims who are not semitic. You also ignore the fact that, though many centuries removed, Ashkenazi American Jews are semitic in origin, while Sephardi Jews are semitic in culture too.

      I can see the ironic appeal of saying “Hey, we’re all semites,” but A. it’s not so, and B. challenging prejudice on the basis of strict definitions really evades the problem, and could even deepen it by leading to the weirdly racist game of trying to figure out what percentage of blood origin — a quarter? an eighth? a sixteenth? — makes someone black or Jewish or Arab.

    • hossam says:
      March 20, 2011 at 1:40 am

      Why do we have to discuss what semitic means instead of discussing the actual issue, you are right in saying that semic peoples are not only jews, but to answer your question, the term anti-semitism has been coined and generally accepted to mean prejudice towards jewish people. Would it make a difference if it was called anti-judaism or anti-jew or jewophobia instead?

      we can also spend time criticizing the term islamophobia rather discuss the actual issue

  16. Maisha Liwaru says:
    March 20, 2011 at 8:59 am

    As an African American Muslim, I say we can spend our time comparing and licking our wounds and arguing over semantics or we can come together for human rights. Rather than anti Semitic, Islamaphobia, racism etc. why not use the words humane and inhumane.

  17. Rachel Thomas says:
    March 22, 2011 at 12:58 pm

    This is a really good article, and as a Jew I also see Islamophobia as the flip side of anti-Semitism. I shudder when I see members of my government targeting “the Muslim community” as a whole.

    I do want to make one suggestion/correction to your article. You seem to imply in paragraph 6 that The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is about anti-Zionism. However, it also speaks directly about Jews without connection to the modern movement of Zionism. I think the word “Zion” in the title refers not to that modern movement but to the biblical term for Jerusalem. It’s important that people should know that The Protocols is primarily anti-Judaism, not anti-Zionism.

  18. Mazhar says:
    March 30, 2011 at 12:49 am

    I am extremely grateful for the way you have presented this issue. And I am touched by your ability to speak out with the analogy of Anti-Semitism.

    I have read Quran for more than 25 years. Yes it speaks about how jews interacted
    during the time of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), but it also speaks about polytheism,
    about christians and about muslims who accepted islam but in their heart planned against the Prophet , and they are the worst [….] If you truly understand Quran, ALLAH’s displeasure is on any one who violates his instructions and that of his Prophet…may that be a muslim even. So I agree with you that to take as all Jews are worst is actually UN-ISLAMIC.

    In fact one of the wives of Prophet Muhammad was a Jew who accepted Islam….and sometime people would say that to her (that you were Jew) and Prophet (PBUH) would show great displeasure on such people. And one of the great companions of the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) was Abdullah-Bin-Salam (blessing of Allah be upon him), who was a jew who accepted islam. And once a funeral of Jew (who had not accepted islam) was passing by and Prophet (PBUH) stood up in respect…and some people differed and the Prophet (PBUH) said his account was with Allah and as a fellow human being he demonstrated respect on his passing away.

    I am sorry the comment became lengthy…But I really wanted to appreciate your
    approach and share mine. We need more like you on both sides to put and end
    to this cycle of hatred, blame and violence.

  19. Anand Rishi says:
    April 15, 2011 at 3:14 am

    Well, any hate campaign against any community is deplorable. Those at its receiving end must fight this menace unitedly.

    Sorry for delayed comment. I am a new comer to this very sensible blog.

  20. Rabeeh Zakaria says:
    May 5, 2011 at 12:52 pm

    As a non-radical muslim, I salute you .. We need such a balanced look

    Thank you

  21. Zack says:
    May 16, 2011 at 6:49 am

    To the author of this article.

    Great article. I have posted it everywhere.

    Keep up the good work.

    God bless your kind soul

  22. Anti-Semitism = Islamophobia - Page 11 - Political Wrinkles says:
    January 28, 2012 at 11:47 pm

    […] Posted by Coyote Source: Anti-Semitism = Islamophobia The Accidental Theologist She makes good points No kidding. Some of us know this. And nice people like you come along […]

Burning Jesus

Posted September 7th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

The most effective way to deal with the two-bit Florida ‘pastor’ planning to make a bonfire of Qurans on 9/11?  No, not string him up by his heels.  Something far more effective:  Ignore him.  Pay no attention.  Zip.  Nada.  Nothing.

But that won’t happen. The old TV newsroom adage is “Flames lead.”  A fire, an explosion, a bombing – all are ways to improve ratings, occasions to appeal to the arsonist apparently latent in the visual mind.  In the incendiary anti-Muslim atmosphere carefully built up over the past few months by ultra-right-wing bigots, no “self-respecting” newsroom director will dream for a moment of holding back.

Never mind that General David Petraeus warns that such an event could place American troops in more danger than ever.  Hey, if Americans die because of this, that’s even more news!  So there they are, all the news directors, salivating at the prospect of a huge, hot weekend:  the festive end of Ramadan and the solemnity of Rosh HaShana on Thursday and Friday followed by 9/11 on Saturday (and, just to add a bit of sentimental spice to it all, Grandparents Day on Sunday).

So the heat is on and the bigots are out in force.  The latest to wave his slimy flag:  Marty Peretz, owner of The New Republic and self-appointed champion of any right-wing Israeli government:

Frankly, Muslim life is cheap, most notably to Muslims…  So, yes, I wonder whether I need honor these people and pretend that they are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment which I have in my gut the sense that they will abuse.

Let’s not go into the ghastly vision of the state of Peretz’ gut.  Enough to say that white-collar bigots like him provide the gasoline for blue-collar nutcases like pseudo-pastor Terry Jones, a pathetic crackpot right out of a William Burroughs heroin nightmare, whose fifty followers (yes, all of 50) apparently believe that a dove is a bird of prey.

Peretz would never burn a Quran himself, of course.  He might get his hands dirty that way.  Might even burn them.  He leaves that to the gun-totin’ pastor, who has apparently never read the ‘red-letter words’ of the Gospels – the actual words of Jesus.  Ignorance is ecstasy for Terry Jones, who is blithely unaware that he might as well be burning Jesus.

But then that’s what Christian bigots do – they burn the cross.  On other people’s lawns, that is, prior to lynching them by the light of bonfires.  It’s what fascists did just a few years before, using ovens instead of bonfires.  It’s what Catholic clerics did in the Spanish Inquisition, roasting people alive on spits.  As the poet Heinrich Heine wrote: “Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.”

Could media restraint really hold this back?   The question is moot, because it won’t happen.  When I lived in and reported from Jerusalem, I saw American newsmen shove people to the ground to get a good shot in the aftermath of a bombing.  I saw them practically shouting for joy when there was a terrorist attack which would land them a front-page story or a lead-off spot on the nightly news.   Other people’s disasters were their chance for the limelight.  So they won’t hesitate to help make a nutcase like Terry Jones into an international name, to place naïve American soldiers in danger, and to make Christians the world over targets for retaliation.

All for ratings, all for vanity.  A bonfire of the vanities indeed.

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File under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, ugliness | Tagged: Tags: bigotry, bonfire, burning, David Petraeus, Dove World Outreach church, Islamophobia, Marty Peretz, pastor Terry Jones, Quran, Ramadan, Rosh HaShana, William Burroughs | 7 Comments
  1. lavrans says:
    September 7, 2010 at 9:02 pm

    It’s funny, but I have the same conflicted feelings about the media that I have about education. There’s so much potential, and such a history, of doing truly good deeds; opening people’s eyes to their own follies and illusions, showing them their better facets at the same time they warn us of the ease of following the easy path of bigotry.

    But so often, all that potential is wasted on a headline, even when the headline is the easy point of the day. Like this story about an evil person, the story really isn’t the existence of such a thing, but that the community around him has allowed him and his followers to become what they are; is the whole community bigoted? Does the town all believe the same thing? Does the community manage to survive and become less bigoted because of the controversy (probably- as that town is most likely starting to learn a lot about Islam and the Christian response…).

    We can find that pastor in every country, in almost every community in the world. And the community that doesn’t have some equivalent is probably already controlled so tightly by someone just like him that any dissent is crushed immediately.

    That’s not an interesting story though… or rather, it’s not an interesting headline. “Another bigot plans to incite violence toward those he hates” is just so pedantic. Who cares? But, “plans to burn the Quran stifled by mayor, police” is titillating.

    Makes me think of NCLB…

  2. Lesley Hazleton says:
    September 8, 2010 at 9:42 am

    You’re right, Lavrans — it’s titillation: the trivialization of news. And of course the response of the Gainsville community — from the mayor on down, condemning Terry Jones and his like — has received hardly any coverage.

    Whether people might become less bigoted as a result of the controversy is an interesting question. Can confronting people with their own bigotry work? With the exception of those for whom it defines their lives — the professional bigots, as it were, who rely on it as a means of self-aggrandizement — I tend to think it can. Or maybe I want to think it can…

  3. Zunaid Talia says:
    September 9, 2010 at 11:30 am

    I agree Lesley, as is customary the media is a business that thrives on the dark side of the human persona. With such great access and leverage at their disposal, it is a shame that they don’t use it to promote peace and harmony amongst people.

    I wonder what this infers about us human beings. After all the media are only concerned with ratings and they will always only print the stories they believe will attract the most attention. The media is a business and business as we know, often has no conscience. So we should not be surprised at the position they have taken.

    Clearly this pastor is hopelessly misinformed and based on the information i have at hand, it seems that he is also arrogant. A disastrous combination to say the least. Confronting him might make him even more stubborn. Alternatively, he may be a marketing genius and he has identified the potential to acquire some free advertising for his Church. After all he only has 50 followers at the moment. Incidentally, like millions of people around the world, I hope that reason prevails and that he restrains himself from carrying out this ghastly act.

    As a muslim, I share your view that it might be best to simply ignore this bigot and to deny him the courteousy of an audience.

  4. Ignoring Terry Jones | Harry Katz's Blog says:
    September 10, 2010 at 7:50 am

    […] I agree with author (and my former writing instructor) Lesley Hazleton, who says in her post Burning Jesus, that Florida pastor Terry Jones deserves to be completely ignored.  However, I’m not sure […]

  5. Harry Katz says:
    September 10, 2010 at 8:04 am

    Lesley, I agree Terry Jones deserves to be ignored. I’m less certain we can or should expect the media to do so. Asking the media to ignore (or cover) stories we like (or dislike) seems like a very slippery slope to me.

    More importantly, anyone with a cell phone and a computer is part of “the media” today. And in general that’s a good thing.

    I posted a bit more on this here: http://hskatz.wordpress.com/2010/09/10/ignoring-terry-jones/

  6. Pietra says:
    September 12, 2010 at 11:40 pm

    I have yet to meet the person on the far right who will let fact or truth get between them and the hatred they’ve accepted into their hearts.

  7. Yusuf says:
    January 10, 2011 at 5:02 am

    When I attended Eid prayers, there was a CBC reporter there with a video camera, asking people what they thought about this issue. I was asked and responded that, to my knowledge, burning the qur’an is one of two acceptable ways of disposing of one (the other being burial), and that these people seem to have a lack of respect
    for other peoples scripture, so better they burn
    them then have them in their homes to
    disrespect.
    Apparently, that was as “Fundamentalist” a response as he could get because I don’t think the piece ever saw the light of day.
    After getting over myself Re: the CBC wanting to hear MY opinion, I remembered a story our Imam told during one khutbah. It was around the time of the Salmand Rushdie fatwa controversy. In Ottawa, the same CBC was interviewing people in the Muslim community about their feelings on this topic. Almost everyone asked responded by saying that the man has a right to his opinion and that god would judge him and punish or reward him as he saw fit. The exception was a young man in his teens who agreed with the fatwa. This was the interview which was run. The good thing was that, because of the anger in the Muslim community, the truth was revealed, but only to those interested in digging for it.

Framing the Mosque

Posted August 17th, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

I hate to say this, but whoever came up with the phrase “mosque at Ground Zero” was a political genius.  The phrase is not just an exaggeration;  it’s a lie. But in today’s America, it’s a very effective lie — a horribly brilliant piece of demagogery.

I could show you what’s actually planned, but that’s not the point (okay, the plan’s at the end of this post).  I could point out that the Park 51 Islamic center’s peace- and love-preaching imam is Sufi, part of the mystical branch of Islam (see the medieval Persian poems of Rumi, the best-selling poet in the US), as hated by hardline Saudi- and Taliban-type Islamic bigots as by fundamentalist American Christian and Jewish ones.   I could explain, as William Dalrymple does so eloquently on the Op-Ed page of today’s NYT, that

a 2007 study by the RAND Corporation found that Sufis’ open, intellectual interpretation of Islam makes them ideal “partners in the effort to combat Islamist extremism.”Sufism is an entirely indigenous, deeply rooted resistance movement against violent Islamic radicalism. Whether it can be harnessed to a political end is not clear. But the least we can do is to encourage the Sufis in our own societies. Men like Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf should be embraced as vital allies, and we should have only contempt for those who, through ignorance or political calculation, attempt to conflate them with the extremists.

I could explain and point out and be as rational as you like, but bigotry demands blind ignorance.   It demands the simplistic view, in which Islam is a destructive monolith.  And just as the patriotism of scoundrels wraps itself in the flag, so the bigotry of Islamophobia wraps itself in the deaths of others — those Americans who died on 9/11 (except, of course, for the American Muslims among them).

The idea of Ground Zero as “hallowed ground” is another ghastly piece of framing, veiling bigotry in the holy.   “Too close to hallowed ground,” say the bigots.  “Move it further away.”   But not to the suddenly hallowed ground of Staten Island, where they’ve organized in opposition to a proposed new mosque. Or that of Murfreeesboro TN, ditto.  Or  Wilson, WI, ditto.  Or Temecula CA, ditto. Three thousand miles from Ground Zero is clearly just too close for delicate bigoted sensibilities.

We need to re-frame this issue, and quick.  NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg started the path toward re-framing (read his full speech here, an object lesson in integrity).  President Obama then set an all-too  tentative foot on the same path, only to immediately back-track — an object lesson, it saddens me to say, in the lack of integrity:

“I was not commenting and I will not comment on the wisdom of making the decision to put a mosque there. I was commenting very specifically on the right people have that dates back to our founding.

“No comment”?  Thanks, Mr President.

It’s time to stop pussy-footing around. Time to talk not just about the right to build the Park 51 Islamic center, but the need for it to be built.  Yes, right there, close to Ground Zero, as a magnificent stand of Islam — of all of us — against the crude distortions of murderous extremists, of those who love only their own bigotry, and of cynical political operators now determined to make the “mosque at Ground Zero” a central issue in the mid-term elections.

This is not solely a matter of constitutional rights, Obama, and you know it.   You need to speak out — clearly, forcefully, and eloquently — not just for the right to build Park 51, but for the necessity of it as a major step toward healing this ghastly rift in both the national and the international body politic.

Don’t you remember?  Yes, you can.

…
–

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File under: Christianity, fundamentalism, Islam, Judaism, US politics | Tagged: Tags: bigotry, framing, Ground Zero, Islamic centers, Islamophobia, Michael Bloomberg, mid-term elections, mosques, Obama, Park 51, protests, Rumi, Sufi | 5 Comments
  1. Pietra says:
    August 17, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    I’ve been finding out the truth piece by piece on 1090am, Seattle.

  2. Gustav Hellthaler says:
    August 17, 2010 at 8:25 pm

    Leslie,
    I have tried to sign up to your blog. Could you include me in?
    Gus

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 18, 2010 at 12:46 pm

      Gus, you are hereby declared in! To get email notification of new posts, just click the “Sign Me Up” button under Email Subscription half-way down the left-hand side of the page. (I don’t know why they call it a subscription, since there’s no fee — it just sounds off-puttingly formal. Sigh…).

  3. Tea-mahm says:
    August 18, 2010 at 11:21 am

    The King of Morocco would agree with you. He uses Sufism as a “hedge against fundamentalism.” On behalf of many Sufis and other reasonable people, thank you for this, Lesley.

    • Lesley Hazleton says:
      August 18, 2010 at 12:48 pm

      Thanks T — and in case you missed it, check out William Dalrymple’s excellent Op-Ed piece yesterday in the NYT (I linked to it in the post).

The ADL’s Neo-Bigotry

Posted July 31st, 2010 by Lesley Hazleton

What a bunch of hypocrites they are at the Anti-Defamation League.   The up-front bigotry of the Dove World Church in Florida, whose redneck pastor has declared September 11 “Burn a Quran Day,” is almost refreshing by comparison.  At least he’s not trying to hide beneath a  veil of sensitivity, and he sure as hell isn’t trying to kid anyone that he’s into anything like civil rights.

The ADL has the astounding chutzpah to describe itself as “the nation’s premier civil rights agency,” declaring that it “fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals, and protects civil rights for us all.”

So yesterday it issued a statement against Cordoba House, the proposed Muslim community center whose opponents have deliberately and misleadingly dubbed it “the mosque at Ground Zero.”   (It’s not a mosque, and it’s not “at Ground Zero,” but two blocks away.)   In fact check out the Cordoba House website and you’ll see that it’s a perfect example of what Jewish tradition calls tikkun olam, repairing the world –- dedicated to interfaith communicaton in the spirit of the convivencia, the “Golden Age” of Muslim and Jewish intellectual achievement in Spain that came to a crashing end with the Catholic Inquisition and the expulsion of both Muslims and Jews.

Of course the ADL has no objection to the idea of a such a center.  My God, no.  That would be so intolerant.  Instead, yesterday’s statement concluded with this:

Proponents of the Islamic Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Islam. The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong. But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right. In our judgment, building an Islamic Center in the shadow of the World Trade Center will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.

You see?  Others are bigots, but the ADL is not.  It’s demonstrating its exquisite sensitivity to pain – not its own, of course, but that of the families of those who died on 9/11,  some of whom (presumably not the Muslims among them) find the idea of Cordoba House “offensive” and are,  per ADL director Abe Foxman, entitled to their bigotry because – I wish I was making this up – 9/11 is the equivalent of the Holocaust.

Asked why the opposition of the families was so pivotal in the decision, Mr. Foxman, a Holocaust survivor, said they were entitled to their emotions.

“Survivors of the Holocaust are entitled to feelings that are irrational,” he said. Referring to the loved ones of Sept. 11 victims, he said, “Their anguish entitles them to positions that others would categorize as irrational or bigoted.”

Wow.  So the Holocaust is now a defense for bigotry?  Howzat for new-speak?  George Orwell, kindly rise up from your grave.

Not that this is the first time the ADL has used the Holocaust in such a way.  Witness its support of the so-called Museum of Tolerance  to be built on top of a thousand-year-old Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem as a wing of the Simon Wiesenthal Center.  The Wiesenthal Center is headed by  the oleaginous right-wing rabbi Marvin Hier, who pooh-poohed the idea first that Muslims care about their dead and then that there were even any bodies buried there.  There certainly aren’t any more:  as the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz discovered, Hier hired a contractor to swiftly and clandestinely “remove nuisances in the area of the project” – the “nuisances” being hundreds of skeletons, bones, and skulls.

So in ADL-think, the Jerusalem project is just fine – they’re Muslim bones, not Jewish ones, and besides, it’s all about “tolerance.”   But when someone else proposes a far more meaningful project and that someone else is – gevalt! – Muslim, that’s going beyond the pale .

Listen, Abe Foxman:   if you want to lead an organization of bigots, at least have the intellectual honesty of that dumb-ass pastor in Florida.

Meanwhile, the least you can do is this:  DELETE ALL REFERENCE ON YOUR WEBSITE TO THE ADL AS A CIVIL-RIGHTS ORGANIZATION.  IMMEDIATELY.  Just who do you think you’re kidding?

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File under: Islam, Judaism, US politics | Tagged: Tags: "Mosque at Ground Zero", 9/11, Abe Foxman, Anti-Defamation League, bigotry, convivencia, Cordoba House, Dove World Church, Holocaust, Jerusalem, Museum of Tolerance, Simon Wiesenthal Center | 1 Comment
  1. Lynn Rosen says:
    July 31, 2010 at 11:22 pm

    Bravo! About time the ADL was taken to the carpet.

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