[Repost] Islamophobia: more mindless generalistic demonisation of religion

Honestly, I really do hope to put something up that isn't quite so heavy some time soon because I'm not loving the general wave of tone I've been posting in the last month or so. That being said, the current state in which the world is simmering, boiling, burning, however you want to put it, does lend itself to moments of unavoidable painful reflection and self-reflection so it simply is what it is.

In that spirit, current events, particularly in the US and Europe this last month, have only shown that despite the flurry of events, so many core realities don't change. In trying to find answers to the horrors of the world, people respond in a myriad of ways, some as hopeful and as positive as can be mustered under the circumstances, some innocently misguided and others resorting to outright hatred, anger and vitriol.

It is that last point my original post looked to address. Anger, fear and hatred are actually genuinely natural responses to horror. But at the end of the day, if we've voluntarily chosen to remain blind to any further human consideration for other individuals, we have to take responsibility for that and any damage it may cause which, let's be honest, it often will.

I don't condone the notion of never questioning the beliefs, backgrounds and histories that lead to acts of violence, in fact that can only be a huge step in hopefully addressing the roots of so many problems. However attacking genuinely innocent people is simply unjustifiable. We can argue till we're blue in the face about systemic ignorance leading to extremism going unchecked (has that peacefully practising Islamic family passively condoned acts of terror simply by being Muslim? I personally absolutely do not think so, but the scores who disagree will) but ultimately, those who acted and those who encouraged and trained them to do so are entirely responsible. Any retaliation aimed elsewhere is just wanton and pointless vengeance.

Though ideally, I identify as a pacifist, I do believe in fighting for what's right and fighting for what you believe in which is why I can often admire even those who fight vociferously for things with which I absolutely do not agree. However I definitely believe in fighting against those who decide to attack who we are and what we believe in.

What I will never believe in is attacking innocent people.

Originally posted October 6, 2014.

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Over the last week, the two videos below have been all over my Facebook, Twitter and news feeds. Both tackle the question of Islam and Islamophobia and the impact generalisation has on how people view Islam. I finally got to watch them today and, well, let's be honest, I love watching spirited debate and both delivered, just in very different ways.

'Criticize the person doing it, not the [country]'

It is odd to find myself potentially siding with Bill Maher because in general, I've never liked the man. I'm not a fan of his smug, sarcastic brand of commentary and his 'documentary', Religulous, while certainly entertaining, could hardly have been called objective and the fact that it is now treated as a factual representation of all (not some, all) religious folk by some still makes my blood boil. 

However, at the beginning of the video, particularly in comparison to Ben Affleck heatedly spluttering his disgust for their views, it was difficult not to see Maher and Harris' calm reiteration of the statistics as more reasonable. It wasn't until further on in the video I was able to see what Affleck was trying to say underneath his irritation and that, I believe, is the same point that Reza Aslan was far more eloquently able to make in the next video.

'To say that 'Muslim countries' as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same, as though Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are the same... is stupid.'

His point was so very clear and yet Camerota insisted on using the term, 'Muslim countries' as though Aslan hadn't already pointed out that the term was invalid about 5 times. Within the first few minutes, he succinctly points out that the examples that Maher was using to criticise Islam are in fact not representative so much of the religion as they are of the countries in which they are practised. I understand the point that Maher and Lemon and Camerota were trying to make about the statistics of mainstream Muslim belief and their own belief that this is indicative of a faith that ultimately promotes violence at its core and not just in its extremes, however it still doesn't change the fact that they cannot use that to justify a broad judgement of all or even most of who identify as Muslim - and yet they continue to do so. 

People say statistics don't lie. I don't imagine they do, but they certainly don't always tell the whole truth. If anything, the picture they end up painting more closely resembles an incomplete puzzle than a crisp and clear photo of reality. 

People and statistics are two separate entities and one thing I've grown to hate is one being mistaken for the other. They are indicative of either what has happened or what people think but they don't determine everything. I don't care if say, for example, a lower socio-economic area in society has a statistically higher rate of crime, unemployment or teen pregnancy or any other category of marginalisation for that matter. If you live in that area, until you as an individual finally act in a way that makes you fall into one of those categories, those statistics do not represent you as a person and are therefore in no way a determinant of your future. They do not define you until you let them.

It is based on this point that I agree with Ben Affleck more than I did his counterparts (until Sam Harris acknowledged that they were speaking of ideas as opposed to people). His point was that judgement should always fall on those who are perpetrating disaster. Not the faith they claim to represent, not the race or country from which they came, but the perpetrators, the terrorists themselves. The end. To focus the blame elsewhere based on statistics is misguided and dangerous because then the victim count extends beyond those directly affected by terrorism or genocide to even more innocent people who had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

I'm certainly not saying that we shouldn't condemn dangerous ideas. Ideas are what drive these attacks and to pretend they don't serve a vital role is naive. But that still provides no excuse to unfairly judge and demonise innocent people who haven't adopted those more violent ideas. The beheadings in Iraq do not make it ok for the beatings and harrassment of innocent Muslims in Australia to have occurred as they did after the police crackdown this last month. That they did is abhorrent and a tragic manifestation of blind and uninformed hate. No number of bombings, attacks, beheadings or kidnappings will ever justify retaliating against the innocent and I say this as someone who has lost a family member to a terrorist attack. 

As Aslan said, those individuals, those societies or those governments that actively oppress and abuse people should be condemned but to breed fear and misunderstanding based on blanket generalisations leads to discord beyond borders because therein lies a very dangerous idea - that we have the right to judge people based, not on their own actions, but on the terrible actions of someone else. 

A very, very true article I read and wanted to share...

Plane crashes, terrorism, random violence - new realities amid our relative security 

by Waleed Aly

From the article:

'Here's the thing: in our streets, in our bank accounts and in the air, we in Australia lead about the safest, most secure lives of any people. Ever. Our real income is up and the road toll is down (the lowest since 1945, by the way). We live without any genuine prospect of political strife. We're not about to be invaded or bombed with nuclear weapons – our most feared enemies have knives and guns, not armies in tanks. We're not likely to be decimated by some disease or virus – Ebola or otherwise. Yes we have problems, but they're the kind most of our species could only have dreamed of having. And yet that's so easy to forget because there's this continuous, churning fear.

Our mortal selves aren't under threat, here. But the myths we've built about ourselves very much are. The myth that our addiction to alcohol is innocently, endearingly larrikin, for example. Or that the problems of the world – like Russia's incursion into Ukraine or the disaster of Iraq and Syria – have no call on us and simply don't raise their heads in Sydney or Paris. Indeed the myth – that incidentally underscores how cheerfully we'll slash foreign aid – that we can set ourselves apart as (largely uninterested) onlookers: that the world is a sideshow to which we'll occasionally buy a ticket, but not our society.'

It has certainly been a hell of a year.

As I've already had my rant about Islamophobia, I'm not going to repeat myself on the matter. What with Martin Place, Charlie Hebdo, the continuing horror in Nigeria (which, if magnitude were measured by media coverage, one would assume only involved a handful of victims as opposed to the hundreds more people and the ongoing nature of the onslaught), alongside the sheer reach of news nowadays, Islam has never had a higher profile. 

{{ If anything, as always, what follows these sorts of events is a pretty decent display of human nature's extremities - those calling for the death of all Muslims, beating their chests about how these attacks prove without a shadow of a doubt that all Islam is the root of evil, etc, etc. Then you have those who immediately jump to the defence of all Muslims (not a bad thing) and attack those who would dare to say anything potentially critical and citing agendas left, right and centre, without a glance at the victims and the perpetrators. }}

Ultimately, however, it can't be denied that our existence down here in Australia could not be more sanitised - whether it be by our sheer historical youth (something only made more glaringly clear on my recent trip to Europe) or our cultural propriety, though we certainly bear scars from the inevitably deep wounds endured by any colonised country with an indigenous population, as the article stated, we are a country neither plagued by real famine, violent social upheaval or any kind of real threat - or even experience - of invasion. Though our freedoms are flawed, one could argue that that is more to do with the very flawed nature of freedom itself as opposed to our country actively oppressing us in ways that could ever begin to compare with places like North Korea or Russia.   

In terms of our exposure to active bouts of violence or even visual displays of real carnage, our news coverage is clearly censored or otherwise plastered with warnings of 'graphic images'. We barely see real live active horror onscreen, let alone in real life. Compare this to Filipino news where, when I watched it for the very first time, they were covering a story about a road accident and as the camera panned over the scene, I watched mindlessly for a few seconds before having to blink and exclaim, 'Is that a dead body? Is that the guy right there? Oh my gosh!' The dead man was clearly there on the screen, still, mangled, bloody and completely uncensored. My eyes, so much more accustomed to footage of fully zipped gurneys or camera shots aiming just that inch over from accidents courtesy of Australian news, were wide with shock and horror. And that was from a news report. Of a road accident. 

The next news item was actually worse - a case of escalated road rage in a country not only in possession of guns, but hot and high temperatures. The images in my memory are somewhat fuzzy, but the most outstandingly clear image is of the men actively shooting at each other at surprisingly close range, protected only by ducking behind their vehicle doors. Again, I was shocked. Although again, this was still just footage of a crazy road rage incident. 

Essentially, though the media insists on telling us that we are becoming desensitised to violence and gore in society, this doesn't include one very particular form of desensitisation - the kind that comes with actual personal experience. Outside of those who have come from countries filled with turmoil or those who have travelled to fight, work or live in such countries, the most people down here have had to endure are occasional bouts. 

This is not to diminish these events as real, shocking and genuinely frightening events - to this day, thanks to Wade Frankum and his shooting at Strathfield Plaza in 1991, 23 years ago, though it has weakened significantly over the years, I still experience hesitance when thinking of going there. For years, it made me wary of Strathfield in general. Sure, you could blame my childish naivete for such fears but even now, at 32, some of it still remains. After 23 years. Hell, 18 years after the fact, the words, 'Port Arthur' are still kind of chilling, all thanks to Martin Bryant. 

But at the end of the day, a large part of why these incidents are so shocking is because they still stand out as relatively rare. We compare ourselves to places like America and we feel secure in the fact that that stuff just doesn't happen here. Australia's last high profile hostage taking was in 1984, 30 years ago (though there have been a few incidents in between, it is still a very small number over a 30 year spread). Compared to the number of reported shootings in the US alone, we're doing a lot better. These incidents are rare, which adds to their level of horror. 

Whereas in other parts of the world, this sort of terror is a way of life. Syria, Iraq and Nigeria could not stand out more right now. Or how about Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Eastern Ukraine, just to name a couple more. In places like these, the possibility of raids, kidnappings and straight up slaughter is actually a part of every day living. 

Life is nothing at all like that here in Australia. Not one bit. And true, this has led to the degree of separation many down under feel from the rest of the world's woes. And true, this sense of distance from those harsher realities was shaken, a lot, on December 15 last year as we all watched as those hostages stood with their arms raised against the windows of the Lindt Cafe in Martin Place. And truly, it all did not feel like something that belonged here in Sydney, least of all at Martin Place in the Lindt Cafe, but watching it unfold, the myth to which Aly refers took a solid beating.

Now the bigger, more widely (if subconsciously) perpetuated myth that needs busting? That events of any kinds like these belong anywhere.

Islamophobia: more mindless generalistic demonisation of religion

Over the last week, the two videos below have been all over my Facebook, Twitter and news feeds. Both tackle the question of Islam and Islamophobia and the impact generalisation has on how people view Islam. I finally got to watch them today and, well, let's be honest, I love watching spirited debate and both delivered, just in very different ways.

'Criticize the person doing it, not the [country]'

It is odd to find myself potentially siding with Bill Maher because in general, I've never liked the man. I'm not a fan of his smug, sarcastic brand of commentary and his 'documentary', Religulous, while certainly entertaining, could hardly have been called objective and the fact that it is now treated as a factual representation of all (not some, all) religious folk by some still makes my blood boil. 

However, at the beginning of the video, particularly in comparison to Ben Affleck heatedly spluttering his disgust for their views, it was difficult not to see Maher and Harris' calm reiteration of the statistics as more reasonable. It wasn't until further on in the video I was able to see what Affleck was trying to say underneath his irritation and that, I believe, is the same point that Reza Aslan was far more eloquently able to make in the next video.

'To say that 'Muslim countries' as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same, as though Indonesia and Saudi Arabia are the same... is stupid.'

His point was so very clear and yet Camerota insisted on using the term, 'Muslim countries' as though Aslan hadn't already pointed out that the term was invalid about 5 times. Within the first few minutes, he succinctly points out that the examples that Maher was using to criticise Islam are in fact not representative so much of the religion as they are of the countries in which they are practised. I understand the point that Maher and Lemon and Camerota were trying to make about the statistics of mainstream Muslim belief and their own belief that this is indicative of a faith that ultimately promotes violence at its core and not just in its extremes, however it still doesn't change the fact that they cannot use that to justify a broad judgement of all or even most of who identify as Muslim - and yet they continue to do so. 

People say statistics don't lie. I don't imagine they do, but they certainly don't always tell the whole truth. If anything, the picture they end up painting more closely resembles an incomplete puzzle than a crisp and clear photo of reality. 

People and statistics are two separate entities and one thing I've grown to hate is one being mistaken for the other. They are indicative of either what has happened or what people think but they don't determine everything. I don't care if say, for example, a lower socio-economic area in society has a statistically higher rate of crime, unemployment or teen pregnancy or any other category of marginalisation for that matter. If you live in that area, until you as an individual finally act in a way that makes you fall into one of those categories, those statistics do not represent you as a person and are therefore in no way a determinant of your future. They do not define you until you let them.

It is based on this point that I agree with Ben Affleck more than I did his counterparts (until Sam Harris acknowledged that they were speaking of ideas as opposed to people). His point was that judgement should always fall on those who are perpetrating disaster. Not the faith they claim to represent, not the race or country from which they came, but the perpetrators, the terrorists themselves. The end. To focus the blame elsewhere based on statistics is misguided and dangerous because then the victim count extends beyond those directly affected by terrorism or genocide to even more innocent people who had absolutely nothing to do with any of it.

I'm certainly not saying that we shouldn't condemn dangerous ideas. Ideas are what drive these attacks and to pretend they don't serve a vital role is naive. But that still provides no excuse to unfairly judge and demonise innocent people who haven't adopted those more violent ideas. The beheadings in Iraq do not make it ok for the beatings and harrassment of innocent Muslims in Australia to have occurred as they did after the police crackdown this last month. That they did is abhorrent and a tragic manifestation of blind and uninformed hate. No number of bombings, attacks, beheadings or kidnappings will ever justify retaliating against the innocent and I say this as someone who has lost a family member to a terrorist attack. 

As Aslan said, those individuals, those societies or those governments that actively oppress and abuse people should be condemned but to breed fear and misunderstanding based on blanket generalisations leads to discord beyond borders because therein lies a very dangerous idea - that we have the right to judge people based, not on their own actions, but on the terrible actions of someone else.