My criticisms of Ayaan Hirsi Ali seem to have annoyed a lot of people. I have been told that I am completely demonizing
her and that I’ve been assailling
her, and of course any criticism of a right-wing anti-muslim person produces frequent accusations that I’m a “dhimmi”. It’s kind of amazing.
I could turn Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s logic right back at her, of course. She’s safe and prosperous in the US, with a nice conservative sinecure in a wingnut think-tank, so how dare she be lashed with words on a blog. People in Saudi Arabia are lashed with real whips! Everyone must shut up about the fact that some of us are willing to point out her neo-con connections!
But that would be absurd. We should be encouraging criticism of people like me, just as we should be encouraging criticism of people like Ali. My real problem is with the hero-worshipping tendencies of some people, like this one:
.@pzmyers Why are you even going after her in the first place? You're acting like an apologist in doing so. You should be on HER side.
— Religion and History (@AcharyaS) April 6, 2015
Why are you even going after her in the first place? You’re acting like an apologist in doing so. You should be on HER side.
I am on Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s side in opposing Islamic extremism. I am not on her side when that opposition is used to justify war. That shouldn’t be so hard to understand. There is no one for whom I suspend my critical faculties and simply endorse, follow, and obey in all things. You shouldn’t either.
I also think it’s important to be especially critical of those on my own side, and even more so when I think they are leading “my side” down a destructive path. How else is a diverse group to establish a good direction if we don’t have a chorus of voices speaking out?
The person who sounds like an apologist is the one who demands uncritical devotion to their leader.
.@jhmi I disagree. @Ayaan is deserving of SUPPORT in her efforts, regardless of any perceived gaffes. @Bacon_Eater @pzmyers @micknugent
— Religion and History (@AcharyaS) April 6, 2015
I disagree. @Ayaan is deserving of SUPPORT in her efforts, regardless of any perceived gaffes.
Regardless of any perceived “gaffes”? Supporting a person regardless of their position on a topic is disastrous position for anyone to take. And I notice now we’re reducing the destruction of nations and people to mere “gaffes”.
I remember when Christopher Hitchens, a fellow I admired for his eloquence and ferocity, declared that we should bomb Iran to prevent them from developing nukes, and that dead bodies bouncing in the rubble don’t become terrorists, and I was horrified. I guess I should have just ignored it as a little “gaffe”.
I tell you what, atheists. I think it’s a good thing to replace religion with rationalism. How about if we all also agree that it would be a good idea to replace this ghastly hero-worship with independence and openness?
Oh, wait, you all already agree, because I’m an atheist (if not a self-appointed ‘thought leader’), so of course you will all bow down before my every word and follow it fanatically. Because that’s what non-apologists should do!
It’s a bit distressing, just how popular blind faith is among secular peoples. There’s not a whole lot of critical thinking going on.
I like the way even slymepitters have suddenly become concerned about race and gender issues… but only to the extent that they can attack PZ over yet another imagined slight. No hypocrisy is too great I suppose.
Is this @AcharyaS person a slymer? They seem pretty dumb so far, but if that’s their affiliation, I’d just block.
PZ @ 3:
I don’t know if they are this person, but they might be: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acharya_S
Caine, it indeed seems to be her.
Perusing her twitter feed and blog, her criticism of religion seems to be very lopsided against one particular religion. You can maybe guess which one.
And I also see she is a fan of Geert Wilders, a right-wing would be Dutch fascist who wants to destroy freedom of speech and freedom of religion because he really, really hates islam.
So, yeah, islamophobe.
The Young Turks did a nice job critiquing her (sensibly), and dismantling Sam Harris’ defense of her : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZdFSohIW-0w
The new atheist perspective on Islam isn’t simply that its texts are terrible. That would be fine. They are. Or that some Muslims quote those as they do things, like Russell Wilson prays to God before and after TDs. The new atheist says Islam is worse, more dangerous, more violent, etc. than Judaism and Christianity. They rarely put it in such unambiguous terms though and they have nothing to back it up. Well it’s not even clear how religion, especially where it refers to millions of people in different circumstances but even where it refers to a single person, causes anything but they’d need to at least show a correlation between Islam and violence just to get started. They assume that part but don’t show their work. If they did, we’d see a scorecard where drone bombings are non-violent, or good, even, and beheadings are, like, a million evil points.
PZ @ 3, Caine @ 4:
Yes, that is the real Acharya S (her web page lists the same Twitter account.) For those who are not familiar, she is best known for putting together one of the more wacky Christ Myth theories – the one featured in the movie Zeitgeist where Jesus is a metaphor for certain astrological events. What got me about that one was that it was not just based on a bad interpretation of facts, but in so many places it would outright invent facts to support the theory.
If someone like Dawkins said that 2+2=5, and a Muslim said that 2+2=4, then a lot of atheists and “skeptics” would accuse the Muslim of lying.
devinlenda #7
I disagree that there’s any such thing. I think recent years have clearly demonstrated that the New Atheism is in fact a wildly divergent bunch of groupings, who do not always have very much in common, either in goals or tactics.
I’ll grant that there are people, who identify as atheists and who hold the views that you mention. That’s not controversial. However, I don’t think I’m willing to cede the New Atheist label to them.
Yes, this. But also, why does this seem to happen so much more often to neocon atheists instead of progressive ones? It should not happen at all, of course, but still I wonder why it is more common on the other side.
Well, obviously by “2”, Dawkins meant “2.5”. He just had to leave off the last bit because of the character limit on twitter. You can’t blame him for that. He was misunderstood.
it’s just a way to stand in the way of progress, and could be used against anything. How dare suffragettes want voting rights when women in [place] have to deal with [things].
The real irony is that, if followed, it would have prevented the west from becoming the safe haven she could escape to.
LydeX @ 10
I’m sorry but I think that ship has sailed. Sam Harris & co. are who the label is associated with.
Roberto Teixeira
Because authoritarianism correlates strongly with conservative thought.
Roberto Teixeira #14
That sucks. New Atheism did do some good things, such as getting atheists out of the closet and generally putting criticism of religion on the agenda. I’d hate to have the asshole brigade get all the credit for that.
Jees, does Nugent ever stop?
http://www.michaelnugent.com/2015/04/05/ayaan-hirsi-ali-pz-myers/
I would say that Islam, as it is practiced now(and that’s the most important part) is more violent than Christianity. Could be ‘Murican biased reporting though. Note that I am not saying that modern Christians are not violent and murderous. Just that the Christian violence has been waning while the Islamic violence has been waxing.
Most the Christian caused deaths here in ‘Murica are due to Christians killing their own children because God doesn’t believe in medicine.
However, in terms of atrocities, hatred, and overall dickishness I’m going to call a tie.
Can I just say I can’t stand Ayaan Hirsi Ali? She has already proven to be political opportunist by moving ever further to the right, a trend which started when she moved from the labour party (PVDA) to the liberal party (VVD) in the Netherlands.
I really can’t think of a single character trait she might have that would offset her horrible, indefensible right wing view of the world, and solutions to any perceived problems she may have.
So in short, can the US do me a massive favour and keep her there? We have enough fascist, racist, populist and assorted nincompoops (including the religious right) over here without her adding fuel to the fire.
hyperdeath @9:
And math is, historically speaking, one of those things that the Islamic community should probably get the benefit of the doubt on.
Please don’t link to the Irish wanker here.
PZ, you are making it difficult for me to avoid hero-worship here ;) … but I WELL-SAID! My Facebook post: PZ Myers is exactly right here, in his challenge to the atheist community: whatever you think of Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, Ali or himself, you should never demand group-think obedience to their positions. Debate and criticism are healthy. Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Sam Harris should stop confusing disagreement with their positions as ‘smearing’ or ‘character assassination’. Such is the road to authoritarianism, which is exactly what atheists, freethinkers and indeed all humans should reject, categorically
jd142,
No doubt there are plenty of violent people calling themselves Muslims but since WWII, the Christian U.S. leads the world in starting wars by a mile. Several millions killed in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Korea, Iraq…The world wars were fought mostly by Christians, along with plenty of atheists. I doubt it has much to do with religious (or nominally anti-religious) brand, though. Action first, rationalization second. Geopolitics first, (sometimes religious) rationalization second. The decline of God religions, sadly, will result in humans creating new ingroup narratives as excuses to be assholes. For example, new atheism. They’re filling the asshole ingroup narrative vacuum.
zenlike beat me to it.
Also this should be used instead of things like “blind faith”. The psychology is more informative. Conservatism is a fear-based instinct of a threatened power structure.
Remember: Criticizing authority figures is violence! Mocking and spreading stereotypes about minorities with no power or authority, though, is just pure morally neutral freeze peach.
On this site I had previously mentioned the progressive atheist WEB Dubois who was instrumental in the civil rights movement. Yet he had previously written a eulogy for Joseph Stalin. But no sane person here would truly hold that against him. There are atheists we really want and the atheists we get. I can’t stand Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s right wing affiliations but she is similarly a vital person who desires reform in Islam. Personally, I would like to see her, Heina Dadabhoy, Taslima Nasreen, Maajid Nawaz, Irshad Manji, etc… to pool their efforts to that end. And we should support them. And perhaps, with such dialogue to successfully reform Islam maybe Ayaan will in turn reform? Am I preaching to the choir here?
It’s much worse than mere hate: Wilder’s (and by extension, pretty much the whole european far-right scene) is playing an old cynically perverse tune: promising white plebeians that once in charge he’ll use the power of the state to disenfranchise and enforce the self-abasement of ethnic/sectarian minorities and therefore guarantee that the white plebs won’t ever be at the bottom of the food chain.
ragdish@26: Why shouldn’t I hold W.E.B. Dubois’ fawning eulogy for a totalitarian mass-murderer and torturer against him? This is exactly PZ’s point. Dubois’s legacy on civil rights in the US deserves to be applauded, but that legacy should not give him blanket immunity for his Stalinist apologetics.
Sorry, PZ, but I appreciated the link. I am amazed that the Irish wanker is such a hero worshiper, himself. I guess he plays the part of the The Jester at the SPI “Court of super, thinky peoples”. But, we of the tinfoil blog brigade are criticized for point of legitimate criticisms?
Basically, atheism is being split between liberal, progressives and conservative libertarians. The libertarians who vote republican but are ostracized within the GOP based upon their atheism. Hence, AA’s targets at CPAC. Splitting the GOP from the religious clutches in order to create a libertarian/conservative party based upon separation of church and state but leaving the poor, less educated, less prosperous individuals to “libertarian by themselves” and pull themselves up by the boot straps?
Humanism? Fuck that! We got our separation of church and state, so fuck you?
@5 zenlike
@27 laurentweppe
It’s much, much worse than even that. Wilders wants to get rid of article 1 of the Dutch constitution, which sets up equality and anti-discrimination.
Specifically, Article One says that all persons within our borders shall be treated equally under equal circumstances, and that discrimination on the basis of religion, worldview, political view, race, gender or any other reason, shall not be permitted.
(dutch) http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0001840/geldigheidsdatum_06-04-2015#Hoofdstuk1_Artikel1
Obviously, I’m immensely proud of our article 1.
Wilders wants to get rid of it entirely, and replace it with a declaration that our dominant culture is judeo-christian and humanistic. It’s obvious why he wants this; to discriminate on the basis of religion and race. He declares this himself in his manifesto, which is publically available on his political party’s website.
(dutch) http://www.pvv.nl/index.php/component/content/article.html?id=706:klare-wijn
Incidentally, I had a long discussion with DM Murdock on Facebook about Wilders. Nothing came of it. He’s a hero for saying what he says, and is thus immune to criticism, just like AHA.
Brian: “You’re all individuals!”
Crowd in unison: “We are all individuals.”
Man: “I’m not!”
Crowd: “Shh!”
One of the things I’ve found distressingly ironic is the people who tell us to keep quiet and remain unquestioningly unified will come back and call us a hivemind for having basic moral standards for who we’ll accept and who we’ll criticize.
Careful here: keep this line of thought and you’ll eventually reach the conclusion that Atheists are not intrinsically different/better than Christians/Muslims/etc… insofar as many happen to be selfish pricks who use their professed worldview as a way to rationalized their own douchiness, at which point you’ll be blacklisted by the Gatekeepers of Real®True©Skepticism™.
I have a special hatred for that word. A dhimmi is a non-Muslim living in an Islamic state who has separate sets of rights and obligations from the majority. Respecting the right to freedom of others to have their own beliefs does not equate to wanting a goddamned theocracy. I am opposed to Islamic states the same as I am opposed to any other religious state.
As for Dawkins, I owe a lot of my personal growth to him. I rediscovered my love of biology through his books, gained a better understanding of evolution, and realized it was okay to not believe in the supernatural. But the most important lesson I learned from him was that hero-worship is foolish. That’s even before I saw the way he dismisses any substantial criticism from fellow atheists.
ragdish #26:
Really?
what she’s doing there is claiming that all Muslims should be radicals, because her reading of the Qur’an leads her to believe that they should; completely ignoring the very obvious fact that plenty of Muslims quite obviously do not share her opinion. It’s kind of a switcheroo on the No True Scotsman argument: ‘If one Scotsman is a murderer, then all Scotsmen should be murderers, and so we should treat them as such.’
She makes noises about it being possible to reform Islam. Those noises, are about as convincing from her as they are when Pat Condell makes them. What she says is that Islam—not radical parts of Islam, but all of Islam—needs to be defeated. When asked if she means militarily, she agrees, saying ‘In all ways.’
Sorry, but I fail to see how bombing people—many of whom will be the very victims she says she cares about—can in any way be seen as ‘reformation.’ Nor do I see it being effective, unless the aim is to create more radical Islamists; because that’s surely the only real effect—barring the obvious death, mutilation and so on—which it would have.
@Ragdish #26:
No, you’re preaching to the scholars. Sure, all those people you mentioned have desires to reform Islam, but I’m willing to bet that they all have wildly different ideas of what “reform” would look like, what the priorities should be, and how to get there. Having a diversity of ideas and opinions is generally a good thing, but when some in the group are actively dismissing and/or undermining the others, it’s ludicrous to expect them to “pool their efforts.”
This is the same logic we keep hearing from the people who think there’s a middle ground between “SJWs” and the ‘pitter/Reddit/GG crowd. “We should stop the infighting and instead work together on the things we agree on.” That might be possible if one of the things we disagreed on weren’t the basic rights and humanity of people in the group. This argument necessarily means that we should put aside any concerns of minority groups to work on what the majority thinks are the important issues, which is no way to build a cohesive movement or accomplish much of anything worthwhile.
So I find it hard to imagine Dadabhoy finding a lot of reason to work with Ali when the latter keeps making snipes at western feminists like the former. That’s not a trivial concern, and the attitude that people should just suck it up and work on the important stuff is presumptuous and dismissive.
But then, suggesting that a neoconservative who thinks Palestinians are wholly responsible for their problems and that Israel is a perfect liberal democracy is going to gain any traction in reforming Islam is also pretty presumptuous and dismissive.
Aaaaaaand I just discovered the Sam Harris
interviewecho-session where Ali blames “multiculturalism” for Anders Breivik’s actions. Then she blames “political correctness” for people misinterpreting her remarks.Nope nope nope nope nope. She is a victim-blaming hypocrite. We can’t rely on her as having genuine humanitarian intentions.
ok, I am one who would step up to defend A. HIrsi, but I do listen and try to learn new things. I do agree that one should not offer blanket support to someone over everything, but the reverse is also true: One should not offer sweeping condemnation about someone over a limited # of gaffes or views that differ from your own.
This is the 1st time I have seen PZ even say that he supports Hirsi in anything, which is good. Now, can someone please tell me where A. Hirsi had defended / advocated going to war? I have not personally heard about that. Thank you.
And if you find a Scotsman who doesn’t murder people, he’s using taqiyya in order to trick you into thinking that he doesn’t wish to murder you dead, eat your wife alive, rape your children and enslave the fruit of his rape therefore you’d better shove the bastard’s kilt down his throat first.
***
And what she means is that Muslims -as in, actual human beings instead of abstract creeds- need to be bullied into submission otherwise her patrician buddies won’t feel safe.
When you look at AHA’s background, you really want to be on her side, but with every “gaffe”, so-called, she makes it harder and harder. I note that she has changed her mind (her claim) on the possibility of reform in the Islamic world since the Arab Spring. I think there is a morsel of truth to this as many of her most extreme comments on Islam seem to have been made before 2011.
@devinlenda
I would not disagree with that. I was thinking in terms of violence identified as being done in the name of religion. The Vietnam and Korean wars were presented in geopolitical terms if you ignore the “fight the godless commies” meme; religion was present, but not at the top of the list. Iraq was all about
oil and gettin’ the man who tried to shoot my pawpreventing terrorists from getting chemical weapons.The crusades were all about money and power, but were promoted as religious in nature. The inquisition and witch hunts were presented as being religious, but the victims just happened to be either people the church didn’t like or had assets that could be seized.
Certainly the perpetrators like ISIS present religion as their reason for committing atrocities, but there are a whole host of reasons that have nothing to do with religion that started their movement.
The only other party I know of that ever wanted to do the same thing are the Centrum Democraten, which is quite telling imho. That, and his association with the likes of Marine LePen of course.
Pieter @ 30 – DM Murdock=Acharya S.
https://www.facebook.com/acharyas?fref=ts
Marcoli – shut the fuck up, neocon.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali endorses genocide, Israel’s ethnic cleansing in Gaza, lauds Sisi as a “reformer”.
That’s a wonderful euphemism for repeatedly shifting blame to the victims of mass murders.
Yes, she does say many things I agree with, but so do a shit-ton of other people, including ex-Muslims. The difference is that Dadabhoy and Nasreen and Namazee haven’t, to my knowledge, endorsed right-wing politicians or blamed the left for Breivik’s attack.
2014: Thinks Netanyahu deserves Nobel Peace Prize.
2012: Suggests Breivik massacre was the fault of political correctness and censorship.
2012: Doubles down on Breivik and the blame she places with liberals. Essentially, her argument is “Yes, he quoted me in his manifesto, but it isn’t my fault. Oh, but he expressed frustration with multiculturalism, so it is the fault of multiculturalism.”
marcoli: A simple google search leads to these
http://www.alternet.org/belief/5-ways-ayaan-hirsi-ali-has-attacked-islam-and-smeared-muslims
http://www.salon.com/2014/04/20/ayaan_hirsi_ali_and_the_dangerous_anti_islamic_logic_of_the_war_on_terror/
http://www.loonwatch.com/tag/ayaan-hirsi-ali/
It isn’t simple gaffes in question here. It is a consistent ideological bent.
God-worship is just hero-worship, writ large.
Which makes hero-worship god-worship, only in a smaller type font.
–
@41 erikschepers
Yeah. That tells you something, doesn’t it.
Dear Professor Myers,
As an Irishman and a skeptic, I wish to object to your characterisation of Michael Nugent as “the Irish wanker” in the strongest possible terms. The Irish wanker, indeed! Professor Meyers, are you aware of just how many wankers we have here in Ireland? How am I possibly meant to know who you mean when wankers are general all over Ireland? When we have them on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, wanking their way softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly wanking into the dark mutinous Shannon waves?!
For a man of science, you are most imprecise in your language sometimes.
Yours, etc.
The Sea-Cat
Cat Mara #48:
That’s why there’s always a queue outside Allen’s loo?
@ 41 anteprepro,
Thank you! Those were very interesting. It was not out of laziness that I asked. I am just extremely busy. I have a lot to think about, and this will help.
Cat Mara @ 48
::wipes tears:: Such poetry.
The Irish do have a way with words.
Especially when we steal them from one another…
Damnit.
I was going to say,
But I have apparently been preempted.
marcoli: I have been there. Research is kinda my thing but you definitely need free time to do it in. Not the kind of thing that is easy to do when you are on the run.
Well, now, someone on Nugent’s blog has called PZ a racist for the’ Irish wanker’ comment. Yet it can’t be racist because the Irish are not a race.
It seems only fair that PZ should call the comment libellous and tweet at Nugent every day until he gets an apology from him for publishing it on his site.
@Tom Foss #35
AHA has said many contemptable things. But I am willing to give her the benefit of the doubt regarding whether she may be changing course. I have begun to read her book Heretic wherein she emphasizes that the vast majority of muslims are non-violent. Her idea of reform circles around 5 amendments:
1. Muhammad’s semi-divine status, along with the literalist reading of the Quran.
2 The supremacy of life after death.
3. Shariah, the vast body of religious legislation.
4. The right of individual Muslims to enforce Islamic law.
5. The imperative to wage jihad, or holy war.
As a kick-off isn’t this a place to start? Don’t you think Heina, Irshad or Maajid would engage with AHA on these points? Remember the old Vulcan saying “only Nixon could go to China”.
No doubt there are plenty of violent people calling themselves Muslims but since WWII, the Christian U.S. leads the world in starting wars by a mile.
It’s also important to note that the most chaotic and savage violence the Muslim world are currently seeing, is happening in places most directly affected by (among other things) good-old-Christian-US military intervention. This doesn’t mean it’s all America’s fault, of course, but it does mean that all this violence we’re blaming on “Islam” is not exclusively caused by Islam as a religion.
dereksmear @56:
If David Malki ! hadn’t been so apropos, we could’ve ended up calling sealioning “nugenting”.
I think someone else noted how these people only feign offense on issues of race, gender, etc. It’s just a pathetic “gotcha” attempt. A “NO U!”, or a strained attempt to show hypocrisy. “Irish wanker” as racism is about as strained as you can get.
@polishsalami #39: It might, if one wasn’t aware of the extent to which her background is something she fabricated for the sake of political expediency.
@57
Hirsi Ali’s approach is utterly worthless as a way of starting reform. The audience for her book will be Harris fanbois and neoconservatives. After all the comments she has made against Muslims, the wars against Muslims she has backed and all the repressive laws she has called for aimed exclusively at European Muslims, there is no way she can be seen seriously as a woman backing and leading peaceful transformation. Also, the people she identifies as reformers, such as Maajid Nawaz, have absolutely no influence with, and are generally hated by, Muslims. The reason for the dislike is that they glorify themselves at the expense of Muslims, shill for neocons, whitewash criminal Western foreign policies, spread anti-Muslim bigotry, and consort mainly with anti-Muslim bigots,
Her book is nothing more than a cash in. Harris’ book with Maajid Nawaz will be the same.
After she ran from the Netherlands, Ali associated with the neocons. She can’t criticize Christianity without loosing her allies.
Apparently it is our job to shut our mouths and send our money to “heroes” who represent the exact opposite of decent values and ethics. Someone saying things that are virtually identical to war-mongering theists without the religious aspect doesn’t suddenly become worth listening to because they’re on the atheist “team”.
Well, with conservatism, anyway.
Joe
Well, apparently NOT sending them your money, deciding that, you know, maybe Dawkins doesn’t need another million so you could back somebody’s kickstarter or go to a small local con is apparently already a crime in itself, because how can those people have their frozen peaches if you don’t pay handsome money for the privilege of listening to them?
It would also require them to really mean “WE should stop the infighting” rather than “YOU should stop in-fighting-back.”
I’m sorry but PZ Myers is embarrassingly wrong on his nasty hateful attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and it’s an embarrassment to the entire atheist community.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is “happily exploiting atrocities to justify continued injustices”
– PZ Myers
What a load of crap from Myers. He has taken Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s comments out of context and projected his own twisted view of what he apparently did not understand.
PZ Myers :”.@AcharyaS Bye! You’re just too stupid for me.”
Then, he insults everybody who disagrees with him. Wonder why nobody likes atheists to this day? Calling other atheists/freethinkers like Acharya “stupid” merely reflects your own lack of integrity and character.
https://twitter.com/pzmyers/status/585101013826183168
“Why be so harsh and critical? Do you appreciate obsessive nitpicking of your own work? @Ayaan deserves respect and gratitude.”
– Acharya S
Acharya is spot on.
http://www.freethoughtnation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=29534#p29534
Dhimwit: “A non-Muslim member of a free society that abets the stated cause of Islamic domination with remarkable gullibility. A dhimwit is always quick to extend sympathy to the very enemy that would take away his or her own freedom (or life) if given the opportunity.”
http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/Pages/Dhimwits.htm
Taber, I’ll believe PZ before you I take what you say as anything but bullshit. There was no hateful attack. Just disappointment that AHA can’t get off her “kill off all muslims” bandwagon. Which turns me off too. There is no nuance. Just hate by AHA, and misdirection with the “dear Muslima” idiocy to try to get people behind her. I’m not one who will get behind her because of her attitudes.
Ooh, what a coincidence:
https://www.facebook.com/acharyas/posts/10155480782010604?comment_id=10155481763680604&offset=0&total_comments=14&comment_tracking=%7B%22tn%22%3A%22R8%22%7D
Buck Rogers I’m sorry but PZ Myers is embarrassingly wrong on his nasty hateful attack on Ayaan Hirsi Ali and it’s an embarrassment to the entire atheist community.
“Why be so harsh and critical? Do you appreciate obsessive nitpicking of your own work? @Ayaan deserves respect and gratitude.”
– Acharya S
Acharya is spot on here.
2 hrs · Edited · Like · 1
dereksmear @ 62 – that’s garbage about Maajid Nawaz. It’s especially garbage to say he has “absolutely no influence with, and [is] generally hated by, Muslims.” I know a whole slew of progressive feminist Muslims who think very highly of him. You seem to be assuming that only reactionaries are authentic Muslims. How insulting is that.
taber #68
That’s factually untrue, as demonstrated by the OP itself. AcharyaS said:
My emphasis.
This attitude is unforgiveable in any community that proposes to care about skepticism or critical thought. This isn’t just about diverging opinions, it’s about whether some people should be beyond criticism, regardless of what they say.
If you disagree with PZ’s criticism, that’s one thing, but to say that he shouldn’t voice his opinion at all, that’s just stupid. As such, his appraisal of AcharyaS was absolutely correct.
Taber. Fuck off, and then go and fuck off again, you neocon.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is married to the raging gay-basher Niall Ferguson. Bigots of a feather make sweet hate together, you neocon.
ALSO, Ayaan knows how to earn big post 9/11 dollars: “Ignore facts, blame Muslims, trumpet US propaganda.”
Please don’t insult out fucking intelligence, neocon.
We should support Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s efforts to start a world war? That IS worth of scorn and even insult towards people who hold those views. AHA isn’t just accidentally misspeaking, she is actively asserting positions that decent people should find abhorrent.
I don’t understand the whole “this is a famous person, so turn off your brain and support them no matter how wrong they might be” but it is an ugly instinct that should be resisted at every turn.
Oh. I “abet the stated cause of Islamic domination”? Seriously? Have you ever read my blog?
What seems to confuse these people is that I detest religion, but don’t think we ought to shoot everyone who believes in a bad idea.
This conversation is never easy. But the Tabers of the world don’t have to end up on the wrong side of being willing to question anyone, regardless of fame and/or prior issue agreement.
Give it a try, Taber. Who knows, you might find it useful someday.
@ rietpluim 63
The version I’m familiar with is that she lost her Dutch citizenship because of the false documents she used to get naturalized. (not passing judgment on that though, she came from quite a distressing place) If I’m not mistake her autobiography is opened by her mentioning her full name. A name that, in a way, eventually toppled the Dutch government in 2006… But her running away from the Netherlands is new to me. Care to share?
If’n you think about it PZ, the attitude you’re opposing is the one that supports “the stated cause of Islamic domination” more than you ever could. Murdering innocent Muslims creates terrorists, and declaring war on 1.2 billion people radicalizes them no matter how strong or weak their religious beliefs. The actual experts on religious extremism and terrorism have been saying, for the last decade and more, that fighting extremism with extremism only makes both sides more dangerous and less open to the idea of peace.
Terrorism has two goals: to show fence-sitters that a more powerful enemy can be hurt, and to provoke that more powerful enemy into overreacting and using excessive force, which drives more and more people into the arms of the extremists. You’re not the danger, both because you’re not saying dangerous things and you don’t have the platform to be truly dangerous. Ayaan Hirsi Ali on the other hand is a dangerous extremist who is making the leaders of extremist Islamic movements a bit more powerful every time she opens her bigoted mouth.
taber, #68
“Dhimwit” … oh, I get it. That’s clever.
I’m not surprised you chose that horrendous website as a resource. “The politically incorrect truth about Islam”….. uh, no thanks.
As an ex-Muslim, and if that’s the type of support we’ll be getting from the “enlightened” western atheists, on behalf of all of us I’ll have to say we’ll pass. Go read something from Ali Rizvi if you want to see real meaningful criticism of Muslims from an ex-Muslim. Or Muhammad Syed or Sara Haider or Heina Dadabhoy.
AHA doesn’t give a shit about reform within Islam. She’s dangerous because she has the same anti-Muslim bigotry as some of the never-Muslim atheists but with a good amount of personal knowledge of Islam. That’s a dangerous combo, because it’s exactly what the neocon warmongers need.
Ha, and so it begins.
https://twitter.com/Vodkaninja/status/585212992863735809
@71
If you say so.
I do say so.
Shame UK Muslims think otherwise.
Serious question: Other than being female and atheist, what exactly distinguishes Ayaan Hirsi Ali from a typical right-wing islamophobe?
Does the Nuge object to being called Irish or a wanker? The evidence is strong for both accusations.
Ayaan goes wrong in advocating for war. As several people pointed out, this is playing directly into the actual terrorists’ hands. She is, however, entirely correct about how hideous Islam is…though to be consistent she ought to point out the parallels in Christianity.
The correct thing to do with the Muslim world is wall it off. The US is responsible for a lot of Islamic terrorism not only because of the direct wars, but because of the constant meddling in geopolitics to retain control of the oil supply. We ought to be off oil completely, and moving on to a combination of thorium, thermal-mass solar (giant tanks of molten salt which can retain enough heat to power through days straight of Seattle-style overcast), and wind where appropriate.
This is not just sound economics, it’s excellent statecraft, in that a nation which is not dependent on any other for energy is not held by the short hairs. Stop enabling the human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia by bankrolling it with oil money. Lift the sanctions in the Middle East. And get the fuck out. Leave them to their own devices. They either have an enlightenment from within, or they cleanse themselves from the face of the Cosmos, and either way we all win.
Because, unfortunately for the more pollyannaish among you here, Islam cannot be reformed. Christianity was not reformed in any meaningful sense either; people simply started ignoring it. Islam is a polity, not just a religion, and as such holds a far tighter grip on its adherents than most modern forms of Christianity do.
“No true Scotsman” is not a fallacy in this case, because by definition there are certain things one must do to be considered a Muslim. Or a Christian. It is not fallacious to point out where people are being inconsistent with the very ground rules of their religion. We have almost no actual Christians (and truth be told haven’t since Nicaea), no matter what the theologically-illiterate bliss ninnies call themselves. Similarly, if you want to know what a true Muslim is, you must return to the source text.
There are good people who identify as Muslim/Christian/whatever, but they are good to the extent that they flip their demonic godling the bird and steal the concepts of morals from those with a humanistic worldview. They’re good people, but they suck major ass at their religion.
@Area Man
Nothing? Nothing worth commenting on. She’s hooked herself onto the same wagon as Pamela Geller and Frank Gaffney… although she might be slightly more profitable at it?
dereksmear @ 83 – some UK Muslims think otherwise – but you don’t speak for all of them, do you. As I said, I know a bunch who don’t think otherwise. As I said, you’re simply talking as if all (UK) Muslims were reactionary. That’s a very nasty implication.
Re: The Irish Wanker
He was actually going quiet for a while. A month or two without whining about PZ. I guess he finally realized that his blog was going dead without coming up with something PZ related to complain about. And suddenly he gets a comment thread with a hundred or so comments instead of the usual 0 to 6. He can see where his bread is buttered. Too bad he isn’t checking to see what exactly they are buttering it with.
I watch a lot of UK chat/panel/etc. shows, and this is something I’ve noticed – people on various shows, etc. originating from there tend to use “racist” a lot to describe jokes from Brits about the French, from the French about Italians, , from English about Scots. etc. They seem to have decided that nationality=race, so that Europeans consist of dozens of different races, based on culture or language or national boundary.
Of course, I gleaned this only from TV shows, so that’s worth… not much.
She’s basically like Magneto
I’m quite sure that right-wing islamophobes in general have no interest in pooling efforts with the left, given that an inordinate amount of their efforts are spent attacking liberals for being insufficiently alarmist and worrying about pansy crap like civil liberties and mass war casualties. Take that way, and much of their reason for existing disappears.
Whether or not Ali qualifies as a right-wing islamophobe, from what I can tell she seems to be entirely on board with this counterproductive exercise.
This is nonsense. It only makes sense if you believe in “ground rules of…religion” which are independent of what actual believers think and do. Sam Harris may think fundamentalism is the true face of religion, but I doubt you’ll find any anthropologist of religion who agrees.
Christianity for one had major rifts from the beginning. That’s why the council at Nicaea was called in the first place. And as you may have noticed, it really didn’t settle things for everybody.
@93:
This. There seems to be a strange divergence between what you might call prescriptivists and descriptivists when it comes to religion. I am a descriptivist. Religious belief is defined solely by what believers believe and by what they do, not by some True Religion that exists out in the cosmos that can we can all objectively observe. If that were the case, we wouldn’t have endless schisms.
Declaring Islam to be a violent, oppressive religion is nonsense by the mere fact we can observe vast numbers of Muslims who don’t think this way. Calling Islam a “religion of peace” is nonsense for the exact same reason, but at least the people who say such things aren’t (usually) acting out of malice. Islam is what Islam does.
To clarify my comment at #2, I did not mean to imply that ‘AcharyaS’ was a slymepitter herself, but that I had seen several of the usual suspects on another blog throwing that accusation around.
Neocons really want you to blame Islam rather than theocratic regimes, both official and not, because many of them want to impose Christian theocracy in the US and they don’t want people to be thinking “hey, what if we were no longer a secular government and the Christian fanatics here were in charge?” Thus the narrative that Judaism and Christianity somehow worked out all their problems permanently hundreds of years ago is hugely important in selling what many neocons view as a holy war. Bill Maher and other liberals are idiots for falling for such a nakedly obvious con job.
If she doesn’t, then Lenin didn’t qualify as a communist, nor Mussolini as a fascist.
It’s even worse: fighting extremism with extremism makes extremists more likely to win. (Which was fucking obvious from the get-go, but now it’s been quantified)
***
Not being white.
Azuma Hazuki@86
Oh, right. You mean, like, put all the Muslims who live in north America and Europe in walled enclosures – we could call them “concentration camps”, or if that doesn’t have quite the right connotations, “ghettos”.
Well, quite. I mean, we can see that Islam is a unified political entity (because that’s what a “polity” is), by the existence of the single government ruling from Morocco to Indonesia, and from Niger to Albania.
She did not lose her Dutch citizenship, although she would have done so had normal legal processes not been overridden at the request of the Dutch Parliament. It was ruled that her citizenship had been wrongly granted, because of her (admitted) lies on her application. I don’t think these lies should be held against her, given the circumstances, but she undoubtedly benefited from special treatment due to her political prominence.
@Nick Gotts #100 – Indeed. Ali was already in the States when the debate in The Netherlands was still going on. Why she went to the States I don’t know. I guess that she didn’t feel very welcome in The Netherlands anymore, and that she was very happy with her neoconservative friends.
I’d like to add that the Dutch liberal party she was a member of is more conservative than liberal.
Nick Gotts
Indeed, I wouldn’t hold anybody responsible for lying on their asylum application form. We all know how fucked up those systems are. What I do hold her responsible for is cashing in on those lies later, painting the story of a horrible life with terrible attrocities committed against her that never happened and using those lies to further demonize muslims as a whole group.
BTW, I would not bother with Azuma
Giliell,
Yeah, I think it’s best to take that advice.
@30 / Pieter: Well, there’s one more vote against LPF / Trots op Nederland / PVV as soon as the King decides on my application for citizenship. I just need to figure out which party to support now – it’s really difficult to mentally go from a two- to a multi-party system.
Odd, article 1 seems to say that even though I’m not yet a citizen, I should have the right to vote! Guess I’d better read the rest of the Constitution, though…
Although perhaps more liberal than the current, marxist-commie-muslim PotUS.
@#90, Jafafa Hots
Using that to claim people as “racist” may be new, but claiming that national/lingual barriers constitute “races” in Europe is an old shtick. I’ve seen books from the nineteenth century which had that idea.
The actual experts on religious extremism and terrorism have been saying, for the last decade and more, that fighting extremism with extremism only makes both sides more dangerous and less open to the idea of peace.
It’s pretty simple, really: when bigots fight bigots, bigots win. And the rest of us lose, and lose big, no matter which bigots win.
The correct thing to do with the Muslim world is wall it off.
Wow, you’re even less imaginative, and more rigid in your thoughts, than AHA. All you did there was repeat Republican illegal-immigrant “policy” word for word. (And that, in turn, was itself a word-for-word repetition of just about every “response” the Republicans have to complex messy foreign events.)
They were more than happy to form a minority coalition with the christian democrats, and support from the PVV. It was an unholy clusterfuck, which had the even more unfortunate side effect that the PVV never had to share any of the responsibility seeing as how they weren’t actually in the coalition, or even had to provide ministers or secretaries of state.
Jerry Coyne, predictable as ever.
https://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2015/04/07/ayaan-hirsi-alis-speech-at-the-american-atheists-convention/
PZ Myers: “We don’t need any heroes!”
I have a new hero
Posted by PZ Myers on January 8, 2011
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/01/08/i-have-a-new-hero/
Kathy Griffin is my new hero
Posted by PZ Myers on September 11, 2007
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007 … -new-hero/
Markey is a hero, Rethuglicans are morons
Posted by PZ Myers on March 12, 2011
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011 … huglicans/
A Moroccan hero: Imad Iddine Habib
The state religion of Morocco is Islam, so it took real guts to establish a Council of Ex-Muslims in that country Imad Iddine Habib was awesomely courageous to do so.
https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/ … ine-habib/
It’s official: Matt Damon just became my hero
Posted by PZ Myers on August 2, 2011
I don’t care what his next movie is about. I’ll pay to go see it.
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011 … on-just-b/
AHA isn’t a hero; wealthy cis white hetero male film star Matt Damon is.
Also relevant to the discussion:
PZ’s smears against Ayaan Hirsi Ali have alienated Atheism Ireland. Read more about this here: http://www.michaelnugent.com/2015/04/07/atheist-ireland-dissociates-from-pz-myers/
realityhurts
I’m sorry that those pieces of reality will hurt you:
1. The latest post you cite is 20fucking11. Has it ever occurred to you that people’s opinions change?
2. We’ve all heard more than enough from M. Nugent. And if you’d had the curtesy to read the thread (only 110 comments without yours!) you’d know.
realityhurts @111: Look Professor Myers wrote something that is different from other things he wrote 4 years ago (or more). Checkmate!
RealityHurts, it’s always nice for the MRA fuckwits to show up with their own brand of hypocrisy. We can read with context. You can’t. You lose as always. Run along before you embarrass yourself more.
Realityhurts apparently avoids reality and linguistic affectations.
My mom is my hero, but I do not blindly defend her when she does or says something hurtful.
The people treating AHA as a hero are blindly defending her even when she says and believes stupid or harmful things. Those are the sorts of heroes we do not need; heroes that are treated like infallible gods.
The people treating AHA as a hero are blindly defending her even when she says and believes stupid or harmful things. Those are the sorts of heroes we do not need; heroes that are treated like infallible gods.
Speaking of not treating people (including PZ Myers) as infallible, has anyone of you read Hirsi Ali’s actual interview? In case you haven’t, here it is (providing the context that you claim to be so good to read to the quotes that Mr. Myers defined “fatwah envy”):
“If you happen to be a member of the LGBT community, you are even talking about laws being passed not to serve you a cake. There is a gentleman, I want you to look him up. His name is Shelby Steele. He inspired me in many ways through his books, and one of the statements he made says:
‘During the civil rights movement, if you were black and showed up at any place they wouldn’t serve you or take your money because you were black. And he says that one of the biggest achievements of the civil rights movement is that, after the racists and bigots were defeated, what stood between a black man and whatever he wanted to consume was his wallet.’
I think the LGBT community today is at a place where you can afford to say to he or she who doesn’t want to serve you that I am going to take my money somewhere else. And it took a long time to get there and we are not yet there.
In Christian America, when women fight for their reproductive rights, the right to work, the right to own their own bodies, and it is a long history, of maybe about two hundred years, as a woman living in America I can celebrate and say to the sexists, go F yourselves.
I understand, I empathise, and you have my support in fighting religious bigotry, and in Christian America there is probably a lot to do.
But I want to draw your attention to a different kind of religion. If you become a Christian apostate the highest price that you will pay is that your family, your neighbours, your community will disown you. Trust me, I understand that pain. Nothing has hurt me more than my father and mother telling me that we cannot accept you unless you continue to, what, deny my conscience?
So I understand, if you are ex-Christian, the kind of pain that you have to go through, and what a big battle it is we have to fight. Yet, given the limited resources we have, the limited time we have, and the potential energy and force and magnitude and resources of the Islamic threat, I want to draw your attention to the religion that threatens us the most in 2015.
As an ex-Muslim, I have come to terms with the fact that my family will not accept my conscience. If only they would leave it at that. But I will never come to terms with the fact that all kinds of strangers out there, who happen to have been raised in the same religion I was, want to kill me, and not only me. Every single individual who was raised within Islam and who doubts the truth of Mohammed, and the truth of the Quran, today runs the risk of being killed.
At lunch I ran into two ex-Muslims. One said my name is Mohammed and I am an ex-Muslim. I said ‘What are you going to do about the name Mohammed?’ And he said ‘I am Mohammed the Atheist.’ And that is heartening, It is so delightful.
But less delightful is when I ran into the next ex-Muslim, who is from Bangladesh. And he said: ‘I don’t know how much of the news you follow, but in two months in Dakar, Bangladesh, Muslim fanatics too meat cleavers to kill individuals – we don’t even know if they were ex-Muslims, we know that they were secular, we know that they were thinking, we know that they were writing their thoughts by blogging about it. And because the zealots found them online, they followed them, and took meat cleavers to them, and killed them.
As an ex-Muslim, as an apostate of Islam, that is what you are up against. And it is not only Dakar, Bangladesh. It is right here. Do you think I want to be around these gentlemen twenty four hours a day? (gestures to her security protection team) Hey guys, I love you, and I am grateful to you, but we go on and on in America about privacy, and I have to live in that bubble and think ‘what privacy do I have?’ That is what it is to be an ex-Muslim and speak out.
But what if you are an ex-Muslim and you want to get out of the closet? Maybe it is something much more narrow, much smaller. It is a small box. Your conscience is narrowed down. All day long you spend time lying and lying and lying. To your parents, pretending that you are praying love times a day when you don’t want to pray five times a day. Given our lifestyle, if you come from a Muslim family, somebody is going to notice. You’re not reading the Quran. You’re not fasting. You are associating with infidels. And ‘infidel’ in islam is very broad. It covers everyone who doesn’t worship in that narrow way.
And so that is my first point. I wanted to highlight the difference between the religions. If you are gay today in the United States of America, the worst thing the Christian community can do to gay people is to not serve them cake when they want to get married. I tweeted Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, who I think is very brave by going out there and describing what it is that the LGBT community faces in predominantly homophobic communities. The discrimination is subtle, and it lurks in the shadows.
But I just want you to think about being Muslim and gay today. In the worst case scenario – you have seen it on television, on YouTube – to be accused, you don’t even have to be gay, if you are accused of being gay, you are marched to the tallest building in town and bullies throw you off that building. And there is a crowd of people waiting there to stone you with glee. And as they do that, they scream ‘Allahu Akbar’. And they cite that that is how the punishment is for gays in the Quran and in the Hadith. This is 2015.
In the best case scenario, if one finds out that you are gay, and in Islam stories about lesbians are not told that much, but if you are a gay guy and you think I don’t like girls, what will your family do? They will force you into marriage. I know that over the years I have spoken out about forced marriages of girls and women, but there is also the forced marriage of the gay community. And can you imagine the kind of family that you establish in that sort of frame?
If you are a woman living in the United States of America, and you face people who in the name of Christianity will challenge your reproductive rights, you will get to a point where you are going to have a debate about whether the State is willing to dispense contraceptives or not. The big fight is not with the American Government. The big fight is with your own family, your siblings, your own community, your own neighbourhood, the church you used to belong to. That is where you seek and demand acceptance, and you find that you are not accepted, so that is where the battle is.
But in the world of Islam, whether it is a Muslim community in Dearborn, Michigan, or whether it is in Saudi Arabia, quite the other extreme, what you are facing is a stultified, frozen, moral system from the seventh century, that demands that you be covered from head to toe before you leave the house, that you need a male guardian, that you are for ever a slave. If you are raped, it is your fault. The burden of proof lies with you. If your father dies, and leaves anything behind, then half of it will not go to you, only half of half will go to you.
It is such a blatant discrimination in the name of religion. Segregation, the worst kind of segregation we have ever seen, because in many of those radical Muslim homes, there is a space for woman and a space for men, and it is a very unhealthy arrangement, I can tell you. And this takes me back to the gays, because a lot of Muslim men will have sex with little boys, they will have sex with men, but they will erupt in joy when they see a gay man put to death. It is that kind of hypocrisy, it is that the of sickness, that we are up against.
And it is not only atheists. I want you to take note of the plight of religious minorities in Muslim countries and within Muslim communities. If you want to be a Christian, and you are in a Muslim community, or a Muslim family, you know what? Please read Richard Dawkins. That’s about the worst I can do to you. I can introduce you to Sam Harris. But I will never threaten to disown you, to kill you, or anything. Today, if you are Christian, or Jewish, or even any of the myriad minorities within Islam, you cannot practice your religion freely.
And as atheists, our job is not only to defend our own narrow path to reason. I think that our efforts should also be about defending the freedom of conscience in general. Voltaire: I do not agree with what you say, I despise it, but I will fight to the death for your right to say it. If you want to be superstitious, go for it. I don’t like it, but I will put my life on the line to defend your right to say it. That is the soul of a free society and an open society.”
Wow, realityhurts, that was the longest rendition of Dear Muslima I have ever read.
Was that supposed to convince us that Ayaan Hirsi Ali said something else? Because she didn’t. She just used a lot more words to say it.
So I guess that murder and rape sanctioned by the State on POCs are less important than the wedding cakes or the family drama of the Mighty Whitey.
realityhurts, are you implying there is no such thing as non-white LGBT people?
realityhurts
Wow, you are an idiot. Reality wouldn’t hurt you so much if you didn’t constantly tried to head-but it in the face.
Breaking news! Micheal Nugent does not like PZ Myers!
Thank you for the shocking details, realityhurts.
So sorry that I remain unimpressed that Ayaan Hirsi Ali used the plight of LGBT people in the US as a dismissive laugh line.
Also, I apologize for not being very verbose.
Thank you RealityHurts for you blatant Islamophobia, warmongering, and providing with prima facie evidence, you don’t get what social justice mean. Good for you. You showed us how bad you and your heroes are. Thank you for the object lesson.
I think at this stage, the only question is which banned asshole realityhurts is. Not that I really care. They all sound the same.
Oh. sweet mercy no!!! Atheist Ireland has disassociated itself from PZ Myers!!!!
All 4 members!!!!!!
You do realize that it is not just white people who are LGBT, realityhurts.
Also, if you are that concerned about this, why not bring up with Nugent the fact that he pulled out a picture of a sign that states NO IRISH NO BLACKS NO DOGS. Oh, right, as a haven for SJWs, those liberal fascists, this site has to be condemned as racist.
The fucking neocons at Atheist Ireland can fuck off, and fuck off with their neocon buddies.
It is very revealing that those defending neocons such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz are fucking Islamophobes all creeping out the woodwork.
Salafism is to Islam what New Atheism (anti-theism) is to atheism.
Oh, realityhurts – fuck off, and when you have completed that task, fuck off all over again.
Look, regardless of any of the other hemming and hawing and handwaving that Ali does here, this is flat-out bullshit. If you are gay today in the United States of America, the Christian community can (in 28 states) fire you from your job for no other reason with no recourse. Even putting aside all the homophobia, all the states where gay people cannot legally marry or adopt or visit each other in the hospital, even putting aside all the legal protections afforded LGB but not T, what she’s saying here is flat-out wrong and dismissive. Acting like the only thing standing between gay people and equality is a few Christian bakeries is as insulting and inaccurate as suggesting that Muslim women would be free if they’d just take off their hijabs.
realityhurts,
As a mostly closeted ex-Muslim myself, I sympathize with your personal experience with Muslims completely. I know exactly what you’re talking about.
But the issue I have with AHA’s stance on this is that she’s addressing her comparison to gay people in America. Why? Why would you say that to an oppressed class (no matter to what degree they’re oppressed)?
Why not instead say this to the anti-gay American politicians? Tell them look what you guys are acting like. You’re sharing the same principles that ISIL and dozens of Muslim countries act on to oppress gay people. That would be a proper use of the comparison. But to say if you are gay in America, you only have to put up with a lack of cake, IS a silencing technique. It’s trying to make American gay people feel guilty for wanting equality.
@Jafafa Hots #90
In common British parlance, “racism” is used to denote prejudice against another due to their race, ethnicity, nationality, or religion. This is how the vast majority of us Brits use the word, except for irritating arseholes who try to excuse their Islamophobia by pointing out that Islam is not a race (so clever!), and sociologically clued-up progressives who use it in the sense of the systematic oppression of a specific racial or ethnic group.