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David Thompson has a terrific piece on how apologists for Islamic jihad manipulate the language of victimization:
Last week, I noted how the language of religious coercion has undergone a softening since the era of William Berkeley, and how old struggles for censorship and dominance are now routinely couched in the rhetoric of personal injury: “No-one would use words like 'authority' and 'power.' Not about Islam. Not out loud. Now we hear about much fluffier things, like 'feelings', 'prejudice' and 'sensitivity.' It's the passive-aggressive approach.” Efforts to control what can be said about Islam – and by extension what can be thought about it - have been recast in terms of supernatural sensitivity and an allergy to criticism. Or, no less shamefully, as a reaction to ‘racism.’As, for instance, when the Abu Bakr Jamia mosque in Cambridge invoked a “compassionate and merciful” Allah to intimidate staff and students at a Cambridge college, while describing an innocuous student newspaper as “hate speech” and an “incitement to ethnic hatred.” Or when that tragicomic convert to Islam, Yvonne Ridley, pompously declared: “My faith is my nationality and when you attack it you are being racist.” Some have resorted to other, no less tendentious, ploys; most recently with the notion of “cultural racism” – a term that's used freely in certain quarters and without clear definition, but which nonetheless imprints on the reader an unmistakable suggestion of nefarious intent.
“The word ‘Islamophobe’ - like its pseudo-synonym, ‘racist’ - has acquired the status of a declamatory WMD. Deploying the term, even by vague insinuation, can generally be counted on to shut down the frontal lobes of pretty much anyone on the left, like some rhetorical kryptonite.”
Read it all.
Posted by Robert at March 12, 2007 8:31 AM
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" Yvonne Ridley, pompously declared: “My faith is my nationality and when you attack it you are being racist.”"
This is a renunciation of citizenship?
Begala said Virgil Goode was a bigot and an idiot to say no Muslim immigration. But if this is the view? Has any Muslim organization condemned this statement as un-Islamic?
Paul Begala should apologize to Bay Buchanan, Pat and Virgil Goode
Posted by: Old Atlantic![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 12, 2007 8:44 AM
I will go beyond saying Ban Muslim Immigration....I will also say place a birth quota on Muslims families, two children allowed before mandatory sterilization....
Posted by: exsgtbrown at March 12, 2007 8:54 AM
Wonderful.
Posted by: Hugh at March 12, 2007 8:56 AM
No doubt, the cult of sensitivity is itself a form of intolerance. Officially designated “protected groups” only need to utter the phrase “I find that offensive” to demand capitulation, censorship, and compensation.
What infernal conceit leads anyone to believe that their feels are binding imperatives on others? I find Islam offensive. It should be offensive to any person of reason and decency. What are they going to do to make me feel comfortable? Obviously nothing!
When it comes to an imperialist religious ideology that is offensive (in a military sense) by design and history, it is clearly defensive to respond by any means necessary to insure one’s culture, freedom, and very existence.
I tend to use the world “racism” as a view of genetic determinism. I will not be silenced by those that twist the word to suppress debate. This is crass bigotry baiting
at March 12, 2007 9:08 AM
We have said for a while that it is good that David Thompson's excellent work is getting a wider audience.
Posted by: Granny Weatherwax at March 12, 2007 9:09 AM
The thought police are out in full force nowadays. Heaven help anyone who utters anything remotely offensive unless of course its to offend Christians or Israel, thats A-OK
Posted by: kelisw at March 12, 2007 10:46 AM
Islamophobe and proud of it.
Posted by: Sir Henry Morgan at March 12, 2007 11:14 AM
If viruses could talk, they would decry the "pathogenophobism" of modern medicine.
Islam is, in its essential nature, toxic. Everyone should fear it.
Posted by: Dhimmisoftheworldunite at March 12, 2007 12:07 PM
Does China enforce mandatory sterilization on its Muslim population? I'm aware they still have a one-child policy but how far is it enforced?
Posted by: sheik yer'mami at March 12, 2007 12:27 PM
“My faith is my nationality and when you attack it you are being racist.”
So says sister Yvonne.
No, Yvonne, you half-wit: one's nationality is not the same as one's race; one's belief-system is not one's nationality. End of story.
Furthermore, the English, the Americans, the Welsh are not a race. Nor, for that matter, are Muslims.
How can one begin to have a sensible discussion with someone who arbitrarily redefines words and concepts in this way?
I have blond hair: my hair is MY nationality and if you attack it you are being racist.
I eat cheese and if you don't like cheese you are being racist.
And so on.
Posted by: A Nonny Nonny at March 12, 2007 1:57 PM
Michael Ovey wrote a disquisition of victimhood last year, entitled "Victim Chic? The Rhetoric of Victimhood". Ovey writes from with a legal and Christian perspective and hopefully all reasonable persons can find value in his POV.
Some excerpts:
"The rhetoric of victimhood allows us to cast ourselves without qualification as victims, or as saviours of victims, while dramatising our chosen opponents as demonic without qualification." [..]
"Successfully projecting oneself or one's group as victim can result in legislative protection, or the barring from certain offices of one's opponents. Such successful projection can deflect criticism and minimize accountability. This role should concern Christians for two reasons, one relating to justice, one relating to temptation."
"Concerning justice, such successful posturing as victims risks encouraging a double injustice: the injustice that real victims have not received justice, and the injustice that those who do not deserve compassion as victims have received it. Such inversion of justice naturally concerns Christians. [and non-believers]
Proverbs 24:11–12 tells us that refusing to act for the oppressed risks God's anger, while Proverbs 24:24 describes the curse on those who state the wicked are innocent." [...]
"Where do we see victim claims at work? Such claims can be seen both in the individual and collective sphere. Vitz and others see some psychological practices as encouraging a victim-mentality culture in the United States, particularly in parent-child relations, to which one might add marriage and work.
Yet, perhaps greater dangers lie at group or collective levels, because of the ready association with collective guilt and innocence."
[...]
at March 12, 2007 2:44 PM
Granny, yes, you were right about Mr. Thompson's work deserving a wider reading. Thank you for the links, both present and past. (I would love to be able to write so exquisitely, but such would require about 25 or 30 more IQ points than the Lord has seen fit to equip me with, so I'm pleased to just appreciate that talent in others.)
Posted by: Infidel33 at March 12, 2007 3:22 PM
I suggest we deploy our own phobe word:
People who use the word "Islamophobe" should be called out on what they are:
cog·ni·phobe
n.
1. A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of rational thought or thinking that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous (except to one's own irrationally held beliefs).
Example:
Islamic Polemecist:
Robert Spencer is an Islamophobe because he cannot see that Islam means Peace.
Rational Person:
Clearly you're a Cogniphobe.
Those unafraid of rational thought would recognize the fallacy of such a ridiculous statement and would not utter it. A rational thinker would do their due diligence in researching Spencer's position and draw their conclusions based on the evidence their research produced. If the evidence weighed against Spencer, the rational thinker would be unafraid to debate him without resort to ad hominem attacks and veiled ad baculum.
at March 12, 2007 8:37 PM
Exsgtbrown and Hugh you both show your nazi like thought in saying at muslim must face mandatory sterilization after haveing two childern. Moslim in China are not bound by the one child policy they can have large family but you must declare yourself than muslim an face lower social status for being than muslim and China Muslim population is grown to about 200 million muslim in Sourthern China.
Posted by: DefenderofIslam at March 13, 2007 3:45 AM
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