The News Thread

[Einherjar86]

While it's true that the overwhelming majority of Arabs are Muslim, I think the depictions are actually of Arabs rather than Muslims - the religion is downstream. If we look at the political structures and struggles in the Middle East going back hundreds of years even until the present, such negative depictions from the vantage point of western sensibilities and history (perspective) rings true.

You just hit the nail on the head. The point is that popular opinion frequently conflates the two (i.e. Arabs and Muslims).

 

[CiG]

Seriously? One Muslim celebrity is evidence of acceptance for you?

And yes, it has been like this for a long time in the West. The stereotypical image of the villainous Muslim has long been standard fare in Western narratives. Thomas Pynchon pokes fun at this as early as 1961, in his short story "Under the Rose," which is set in Egypt in 1899. Muslims are represented as being treacherous and traitorous, and as easily bought. He wasn't just plucking these representations out of the air, he was commenting on normative depictions of Muslims in popular fiction.

Not of acceptance, I wouldn't conflate a lack of suspicion with acceptance.
But consider this, do you think you could have a celebrity in England who is a Muslim that openly talks about their faith and be appreciated broadly by the country in the last say, 15 years?

I don't really see your literary example ringing true, for example Sinbad is an extremely popular character going back many years both in books and film, and then there is Disney's Aladdin. So while there have been some negative depictions of Arabs in literature, you're assuming these examples you present are widely known to the average person therefore tainting their perception of Muslims, when actually the more popular Muslim depictions are positive characters.

Unless you're suggesting your examples had a bigger impact on the citizens of the United Kingdom's perception of Muslims than mine did?

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not saying that Pynchon's "Under the Rose" is a widely known story--I said he was poking fun at the popular perception of Muslims. He was channeling representations that he likely saw in other places, such as popular cinema (movies like The Sheik). Additionally, I do think that plenty of people would have been familiar with certain literary works that did depict hostilities between the East and West, such as Forster's A Passage to India (which fed Western misconceptions of Muslims even as it criticized them).

In short, there are cultural artifacts that openly foreground Muslim otherness (such as Forster's and Pynchon's literary works, or Melford's film), either intellectually or ideologically. Then there are cultural artifacts that elide otherness by whitewashing it (Sinbad, Aladdin, or Sharif's films). I just don't think you can make a compelling case that Islamaphobia didn't exist prior to the '90s. Even if I did grant you your examples, there are plenty of counter-examples of distrust and/or negative attitudes toward Muslims (or, as Dak rightly suggests, Arabs in general) going back into the early '20s.

 

[Dak]

https://eppc.org/publications/i-and-my-brother-against-my-cousin/

Universal male militarization, surprise attacks on apparent innocents based on a principle of collective guilt, and the careful group monitoring and control of personal behavior are just a few implications of a system that accounts for many aspects of Middle Eastern society without requiring any explanatory recourse to Islam. The religion itself is an overlay in partial tension with, and deeply stamped by, the dynamics of tribal life. In other words–and this is Salz-man's central argument–the template of tribal life, with its violent and shifting balance of power between fusing and fissioning lineage segments, is the dominant theme of cultural life in the Arab Middle East (and shapes even many non-Arab Muslim populations). At its cultural core, says Salzman, even where tribal structures are attenuated, Middle Eastern society is tribal society.

 

[CiG]

I reject the term Islamophobia outright, but what do you mean by whitewashing?

Also, why is it we see people readily accepting Muslim protagonists all the way until the late 1990's in the west, then suddenly the only kind of Muslim protagonist is one who sets himself or herself against the bad side of Islam?

In early cinema Muslims could just be depicted as good in their own right (while yes, negative depictions also existed), hell a cheesier yet somewhat popular example would be Rambo III.

 

[Dak]

https://newrepublic.com/article/142...election-turns-democrats-conspiracy-theorists

As it turns out, though, the left wasn’t smarter than the right; it simply wasn’t terrified enough. Waking up to a country run by a man who openly boasts of sexual assault, who has systematically targeted immigrants and Muslims for deportation, whose every utterance seems to bespeak some form of mental instability, liberals suddenly find themselves adrift in a world they never imagined possible. In a landscape this dystopian, conspiracy offers a salve. It promises an order behind the madness, some sort of rational explanation for the seeming chaos. It validates your paranoia, which paradoxically confirms you’re not paranoid.

 

[CiG]

Everything he says leading up to his point in that quote is itself pure paranoia.

 

[tagradh]

Lels.

Trump is such a pussy that he can't handle the prospect of facing some minor protests in the UK.

Worthless cunt.

 

[CiG]

Yeah dunno why he's worried, a possessed van will probably drive through the protests anyway.

 

[Dak]

Yeah dunno why he's worried, a possessed van will probably drive through the protests anyway.

It's a small price to pay for Diversity.

 

[tagradh]

So hard to tell if you're being serious. But obviously Trump is. So he's still a fucking pussy. Part of the fucking job of being the leader of a country is to take criticism. He has less spine than a fucking slug.

He makes May look hard as shit.

 

[Onder]

So hard to tell if you're being serious. But obviously Trump is. So he's still a fucking pussy. Part of the fucking job of being the leader of a country is to take criticism. He has less spine than a fucking slug.

He makes May look hard as shit.

He watches Fox News.

 

[CiG]

London's mayor seems to care more about "online hate" than the hundreds of ISIS fighters from the United Kingdom who have returned from Syria.

MUH ISLAMOPHOBIA!

 

[CiG]

Blasphemy laws, next stop - Canada.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...-facebook-in-pakistan/?utm_term=.a5a0858e4ec1

 

[HamburgerBoy]

What does that have to do with Canada?

 

[CiG]

It was a jab at M103.

 

[Dak]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...6439f4-510f-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html

lol bernie bros

 

[The Ozzman]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/loca...6439f4-510f-11e7-91eb-9611861a988f_story.html

lol bernie bros

#notallBerniesupporters

A Facebook page belonging to a person with the same name includes pictures of Democratic presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, and rhetoric against President Trump, including a post that reads: “Trump is a Traitor. Trump Has Destroyed Our Democracy. It’s Time to Destroy Trump & Co.”

Color me surprised

 

[rms]

i cant wait to see dems blame this on mental illness and not vicious dialogue, the exact opposite of what they critique of Trump-ians

 

[J.]

Nah, they'll blame the Russians