islamski ekstremizam

[fonTelefon]

A zar nije ovo manje zlo od prisilnog braka? Jeste odvratna holandska (i druga) islamofobija, ali to ne menja cinjenicu da su prisilni brakovi rasprostranjena praksa medju hardcore muslimanima.

Raspadnuto drustvo Olandija iz zavisti pokusava da nametne svoje propale institucije. Ovaj put na meti su muslimani. To su cinjenice. I fobije su zdrave uglavnom cuvaju glavu.

[Agni]

Europeans Against MulticulturalismPolitical Attacks Misread History, Target Muslims, and May Win Votes John R. BowenOne of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.Despite the shared rhetoric, it is difficult to discern a common target for these criticisms. Cameron aimed at an overly tolerant attitude toward extremist Islam, Merkel at the slow pace of Turkish integration, and Sarkozy at Muslims who pray in the street. But while it is hard to know what exactly the politicians of Europe mean when they talk about multiculturalism, one thing we do know is that the issues they raise—real or imagined—have complex historical roots that have little to do with ideologies of cultural difference. Blaming multiculturalism may be politically useful because of its populist appeal, but it is also politically dangerous because it attacks “an enemy within”: Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it misreads history. An intellectual corrective may help to diminish its malign impact.Political criticisms of multiculturalism confuse three objects. One is the changing cultural and religious landscape of Europe. Postwar France and Britain encouraged immigration of willing workers from former colonies; Germany drew on its longstanding ties with Turkey for the same purpose; somewhat later, new African and Asian immigrants, many of them Muslims, traveled throughout Western Europe to seek jobs or political refuge. As a result, one sees mosques where there once were only churches and hears Arabic and Turkish where once there were only dialects of German, Dutch, or Italian. The first object then is the social fact of cultural and religious diversity, of multicultural and multi-religious everyday life: the emergence in Western Europe of the kind of social diversity that has long been a matter of pride in the United States.The second object—suggested by Cameron’s phrase “state multiculturalism”—concerns the policies each of these countries have used to handle new residents. By the 1970s, Western European governments realized that the new workers and their families were there to stay, so the host countries tried out a number of strategies to integrate the immigrants into the host society. Policymakers all realized that they would need to find what later came to be called “reasonable accommodations” with the needs of the new communities: for mosques and schools, job training, instruction in the host-country language. These were pragmatic efforts; they did not aim at assimilation, nor did they aim to preserve spatial or cultural separation. Some of these policies eventually were termed “multicultural” because they involved recognizing ethnic community structures or allowing the use of Arabic or Turkish in schools. But these measures were all designed to encourage integration: to bring new groups in while acknowledging the obvious facts of linguistic, social, cultural, and religious difference.The third object that multiculturalism’s critics confuse is a set of normative theories of multiculturalism, each of which attempts to mark out a way to take account of cultural and religious diversity from a particular philosophical point of view. Although ideas of multiculturalism do shape public debates in Britain (as they do in North America), they do so much less in continental Europe, and even in Britain it would be difficult to find direct policy effects of these normative theories.Politicians err when they claim that normative ideas of multiculturalism shape the social fact of cultural and religious diversity: such diversity would be present with or without a theory to cope with it. Nor are state policies shaped by those ideas, which tend to be recent in origin. Quite to the contrary, each European country has followed well-traveled pathways for dealing with diversity. Methods designed to accommodate sub-national religious blocs are now being adapted and applied to Muslim immigrants. Far from newfangled, misguided policies of multiculturalism, these distinct strategies represent the continuation of long-standing, nation-specific ways of recognizing and managing diversity.Ostatak teksta u spoileru

Consider the case of Germany. Merkel’s claims were perhaps the least weighty, but her words point to a growing conviction among some Germans that Muslim immigrants are inassimilable. Merkel’s attack was as vague as it was opportunistic. She regretted that the German “tendency had been to say, ‘let’s adopt the multicultural concept and live happily side by side, and be happy to be living with each other’” and concluded that this attitude had not produced results, as if she had thereby identified policies that could be changed. Her real meaning was made clear by the presence of Horst Seehofer next to her on the podium. Seehofer, the Bavarian state premier and Merkel’s coalition partner, has called for curtailing immigration. Merkel’s speech followed a series of anti-Muslim public statements by high-placed German officials. In June 2010 then-Bundesbank member Thilo Sarrazin published a book in which he accused Muslim immigrants of lowering the intelligence of German society. Although he was censured for his views and dismissed from his central bank position, the book proved popular, and polls suggested that Germans were sympathetic with the thrust of his arguments. One poll showed a third of Germans believed the country was “overrun by foreigners.” A few months earlier, in March, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble waded in to say that Germany had been mistaken to let in so many Turkish workers in the 1960s because they had not integrated into society.At least the finance minister pointed to a real German policy, one that encouraged low-paid laborers to relocate to the country and rebuild it. But Merkel’s notion that the German government had promoted a multikulti society (as distinct from celebrating colorful Kreuzberg or a Turkish star on the German soccer team) ignores the brunt of German immigration policy, which, until 2000, denied citizenship to those workers, their children, and their grandchildren. In other words, the government and many, perhaps most, Germans had not hoped, as Merkel claimed, that everyone would live side by side. Rather, the hope was that “they” would just pack up and leave.In this sense Germany has largely followed its longer-term policies for dealing with diversity: German federal and state governments have historically denied that immigration could be of value and maintained a policy of limiting citizenship only to those who could demonstrate German descent. But Germany may also follow the public-corporation model it has arranged with Christian and Jewish groups. A proposed Islamic public corporation would have the legal status to obtain government funding for mosques and would serve as a legitimate overseer of materials selected for Islamic religious education. This promising policy goal, not yet achieved, would recognize and support Islam in accordance with long-standing German principles governing religious diversity, not on grounds of multiculturalism.• • •In contrast to Germany, Britain has promoted multiculturalism as an explicit policy, but not in those domains where Cameron denounced it. In his February 2011 speech, Cameron blamed multiculturalism for creating spatial divisions and fomenting terrorism. “Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism,” he claimed, “we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream.” Left apart, some have submitted to extremism, he argued, and some of those extremists have in turn carried bombs in the name of Islam. His solution was three-fold: ensure that any organization asking for public money subscribes to doctrines of universal rights and encourages integration, keep extremists from reaching students and prisoners, and ensure that everyone learns English.As a diagnosis of problems of homegrown terrorism, the speech fell short. The British bombers principally responsible for the 2005 attacks in London knew English and English people well. Mohammad Sidique Khan, believed to be the leader of the bombing plot, was recalled as a “highly Westernized” man who grew up in Leeds and attended university there. Shehzad Tanweer, another of the bombers, had a similar background. According to the official report on the bombings, both men had developed jihadist convictions in Pakistan.If these and other homegrown terrorists have problems feeling at home in Britain, it is because they do not remain in their “separate cultures” but instead become isolated individuals without a social or cultural base. In otherwise-distinct analyses of European jihadists, French political scientist Olivier Roy and American counterterrorism expert Marc Sageman each paint a picture of young men who suffer from a lack of ties with others in their communities. Roy calls them “deterritorialized”; Sageman describes a “bunch of guys” who find themselves without opportunities at home, who are considered foreigners despite being born in Europe, and who end up traveling abroad to seek out extremists. Hardly walled off in enclaves in Bradford (or Hamburg), they are free-floating, perfect speakers of English (or German) who feel themselves rejected by the people and institutions around them. Cameron used his speech to argue for his “Big Society”—policies of state divestment from welfare predicated on the belief that if people have to work together to survive they will gain a stronger sense of being British. But whatever the merits of this approach to British social ills, it has little to offer individuals who already consider themselves discarded by those around them.So Cameron got it wrong when it comes to homegrown terrorism. What did he have in mind when he spoke of “state multiculturalism”? Multicultural policies in Britain today mainly concern how state schools handle their diverse clientele: teaching cultural and religious studies curricula, offering halal meals to Muslim pupils. Behind these specific policies is the notion, generally accepted in Britain, that the cultural and religious traditions of each pupil should be positively recognized. These politics find one salient expression in a commissioned white paper by the political theorist Bhikhu Parekh, whose 2000 book, Rethinking Multiculturalism, asks: in a multicultural society, how should the state balance legitimate claims to diversity with the need to “foster a strong sense of unity and common belonging among its citizens”? This is precisely Cameron’s concern, but Parekh voices it as a justification for educational multiculturalism. Parekh argues that recognizing the traditions held by religious and ethnic communities through multicultural school curricula provides a psychologically sound basis on which to construct an inclusive national identity. (His view comes close to claims made by another political theorist, Will Kymlicka, who argues that maintaining cultural heritage is of psychosocial importance in the development of a liberal citizen.)There is controversy in Britain about schooling and the isolation of cultural minorities, but spatial segregation of immigrant communities was a product of South Asian settlement patterns in Britain in the 1960s and ’70s, not state multiculturalism. When men (and, later, families) moved from Pakistan and Bangladesh to Britain, they brought whole lineages and villages along with them, reproducing their old linguistic and religious networks in urban British neighborhoods. The result was a chasm separating Asian and white communities, and in some cities this absence of interaction and understanding spiraled into hatred and unrest. In the spring and summer of 2001, riots pitted Asians against whites in the northern cities of Oldham, Burnley, and Bradford. Today, these cities remain highly segregated. Their schools reflect, and exacerbate, the problem. Pupils remain sorted into largely white and largely Pakistani or Bangladeshi schools. As one head teacher at a 92 percent Pakistani primary school said in a report released on the tenth anniversary of the riots, “Some of our children could live their lives without meeting someone from another culture until they go to high school or even the workplace.” The combination of religion and schooling contributes to this segregation, but not in the way that Cameron’s speech suggests: it’s not just Muslims who’ve cut themselves off from the rest of society. Across Britain a large percentage of children go to schools that only admit students who regularly attend a Catholic or an Anglican church. In sharply segregated Oldham, 40 percent of secondary schools are of this type, and they draw from a largely white population. This religious divide is increasing, due to the addition to the school scene of state-supported “faith academies,” mainly Church of England and Catholic schools. Whereas in the United States government support for religiously exclusive schools would be judged as excessive entanglement of the state with religion, British ideas of public life start from the premise that religious communities are legitimate and socially important sources of citizen education, and thus deserving of state aid. Thus, if state multiculturalism exists in 2011, it would be found in broadly accepted principles about the role of state support in promoting diverse kinds of schools. These policies can have segregating effects, but they are also current Tory policies. Cameron and his Party don’t like to bring them up in other contexts, though; they are not in the business of attacking Christian schools.On the whole, then, it seems that accommodation of immigrants in Britain has taken the usual course for that nation. The methods applied to distinct religious groups that predate Islam on the Isles have been extended to the newest arrivals. Cameron’s policy proposals were on a wholly different topic: he paid special attention to reducing the degree of toleration afforded Islamic groups with extreme views. Here one might join with the prime minister in finding that certain Islamic groups ought to have their public activities curtailed. The most frequently cited example is the Hizb ut-Tahrir, who reject participation in British politics and urge British Muslims to prepare themselves for the coming of the Islamic state, to be created somewhere in the world in the not-too distant future. This, however, does not concern the validity of recognizing cultural diversity but rather the degree to which the state ought to allow extreme or intolerant public speech, the same issue that arose thanks to the Danish cartoons controversy and that regularly figures in laws against Holocaust denial.• • •Although French President Nicolas Sarkozy attacked le multiculturalisme, more often French politicians use the term “communalism” (communautarisme). This refers not to the North American philosophy of communitarianism, although that takes its lumps sometimes as well, but to everyday practices and attitudes that reject “living together” in favor of “living side by side.” Usually Britain is the negative example, though of late the French have been blaming themselves for this supposed deficiency as well.But communalism is no more precise an object of denunciation than is multiculturalism. In Le Monde on March 16 of this year, the new Interior Minister, Claude Guéant, said that high unemployment among those who come to France from outside the European Union proves “the failure of communalisms” because those immigrants tend to clump together by culture and doing so keeps them from getting jobs. He acknowledged that people chose where to live, that the state did not put them there, but argued, “We have gone too long in letting people group together in communities.” Guéant suggests that what has been going on is a state multiculturalism of inaction without specifying how the state could break up existing communities.A few pages later in the same issue, a columnist analyzed the American “Galleon affair,” a case of financial fraud involving financiers from India, as an instance of communalism because these men, who held degrees from Harvard and Wharton and worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, had common national origins. Now, these immigrants did get jobs, great ones. Apparently communalism of one sort is the key to success, albeit illicit success, while communalism of another sort explains high unemployment rates. A cynic might add that if working in small incestuous groups defines communalism, then France, with its unusually small set of industrialists serving on interlocking boards of major companies, its exclusive school system, and marriage practices designed to preserve the elite, is among the most communalist of nations.In any case France has never undertaken state multiculturalism. Although some officials have decried the politics of the “right to a difference” that marked several years at the beginning of François Mitterrand’s presidency in the 1980s, those politics could hardly be called “multicultural.” Some instruction in “languages of origin” was provided, but this was intended to facilitate the eventual “return” of immigrants and their children. Other sources of aid provided tutoring and training, and current policies direct additional money to school districts with large numbers of pupils “in difficulty.” At the same time, the French state has provided free language classes to immigrants, assistance to groups seeking to build mosques, and practical accommodations to allow the preparation of halal meat in abattoirs. State support for and control of religious groups is, despite the rhetoric of strict state-religion separation, a long-term feature of French policy. More than a century after France’s 1905 law of church-state separation, the state pays for the upkeep of older religious buildings, gives tax breaks to religious groups, and hires teachers for private religious schools (most of them Catholic).• • •Blaming multiculturalism for social ills is a Dutch national sport. Yet, as the University of Amsterdam sociologist Jan Willem Duyvendak has written, the Netherlands has never pursued state multiculturalism or the preservation of minority cultures. Instead it has pursued two sets of policies, one aimed at maintaining the long-standing commitment to the political peace, the other at achieving the integration of minorities.The long-standing Dutch preference for compromise is embodied in the polder model—a reference to working together to build dykes, a bit like Tocqueville’s American “barn-raising.” Historically this meant that people were loath to criticize unassimilated immigrants. Dutch cultural practices thereby favored the unofficial continuation of a multicultural social reality, where people were free to continue to speak their own languages, worship in their own ways, and so forth. This kind of “live and let live” social habit was the Dutch solution to religious conflicts during a period of relatively intense religious belief and practice in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It gave rise to a quasi-official model of “pillars”: religious networks and institutions within which each Dutch man or woman was presumed to remain. This social conception of keeping the religious and political peace by separating people according to religion subtended policies of creating and financing religious schools. Although the pillar structure had come apart before major Muslim immigration was underway in the 1970s and ’80s, a psychological residue persisted, dictating that each religious group should ignore the particularities of the other. Far from accepting or recognizing the other’s validity, this attitude promoted bare tolerance, civic acceptance of the right to the existence of Catholics, Protestants, and for that matter, gays and pot-smokers. Condemnation was constrained to the home or the pulpit. So while Dutch policies and norms favored a diverse society, they took no part of what is today thought of as multiculturalism, with its efforts to reach beyond toleration toward appreciation.At the same time, governments developed a series of policies aimed at promoting the advancement of minorities through provision of schoolteachers who spoke their languages (principally Arabic and Turkish), construction of local councils that would advise the government on how best to foster integration, and special funding to provide additional tutoring and support at schools heavily attended by the children of immigrants. By the end of the twentieth century these policies had been changed to focus more on skills training and teaching in Dutch, but the goal of state policy continued to be, as it had always been, that of promoting integration. In the Netherlands, as in France, financial aid was targeted to schools with many poor students, who happened to descend from recent immigrants.The attack on these policies and attitudes has focused on values attributed to Muslims or to Islamic doctrine. In 1991 parliamentary opposition leader Frits Bolkestein criticized the government for failing to defend Western values of free speech and equality against Islamic views. He used the case of Islam to launch a broader attack against the political elite and their way of papering over differences (the polder model) rather than standing up for Enlightenment values against the Islam of the Ayatollahs. A rising class of populist politicians seconded this critique, among them the right-wing and openly gay Pim Fortuyn—killed in 2002 by an activist concerned about scapegoating Muslims—and the anti-Islam campaigners Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders. Their attacks on Islam were also political appeals against the elites in order to curry favor with the forgotten working classes. Polder politics, elite domination, and Islam were the common enemy, and the refusal of the leading classes to denounce non-Dutch and anti-Enlightenment Islamic values was the major evidence that things had gone wrong. As in France this admonition has been heard on the left and the right, from Social Democrats as well as from Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom. It reflects a cultural nationalism that can appeal to the old-style populism of the right or to the universalism of the left.In life and in death, Fortuyn focused the attack on multiculturalism even more narrowly as an attack on Islamic intolerance of sexual diversity, and in particular, of gay lifestyles. Fortuyn personified a secularist, sexually open, and “tolerant” Dutch identity, against which Islam and Muslims could easily be targeted as the pre-Enlightenment other. In no other country has the issue of tolerating gays become so central and so salient a part of the critique of Islam. This line of attack was powerful because it also was a critique of older Dutch ways of doing politics and thinking about sexuality. Throughout most of the twentieth century, most Dutch people held religious views about homosexuality and women’s rights that were not too different from those now ascribed to Muslims by their opponents. Attacking Islam was thus also a psychologically useful way of reworking one’s own heritage.Ironically, the current focus on Islam per se—Wilders compared the Qur’an to Mein Kampf and seeks to have it banned in the Netherlands—has distracted the far right from policies about minority achievement and language learning. The focus now is on the acceptability in the Enlightenment West of the pre-Enlightenment Muslim. And yet the right continues to attack Dutch multiculturalism because it remains rhetorically useful to link the cultural critique of religion to a populist critique of past elites.• • •Blaming multiculturalism, then, is useful because it is both vague and misdirected. It would be much harder for Cameron to acknowledge that British racism, immigration trajectories, foreign policy, and faith-based schools have made major contributions toward minority isolation than it is to say: we got it wrong, now let’s get it right, let’s all be British. Islam provides a soft target for aspiring cultural nationalists. It is easier for Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen of the right-wing French National Front to decry Muslims praying in the street than it is to make room for adequate mosques. And across Europe, it is easier to point to the irresponsible statement of a foreign imam and say that Islam is the problem than to figure out how Muslims, like practicing Catholics and Jews before them, might best construct the cultural and religious institutions they need to be at ease in their new (and not so new) countries.One can, and should, refute these misdiagnoses and at the same time give due credit to policies promoting integration within each of these societies. Speaking the language of the country and gaining job skills are the keys to becoming a productive citizen. France made free French courses part of its “integration contract” in 2003; with its 2005 Immigration Act, Germany began providing free German lessons to people granted work visas. When most Islamic religious officials are recent immigrants, it makes good sense to offer them instruction in the language, law, and politics of their new country of residence. These are policies of integration rather than assimilation; they are perfectly consistent with the promotion of equal respect for all religions and cultures.Blaming multiculturalism ties the package together: it discredits a foreign element—Islam—and it identifies the fifth column that let it in, those past proponents of multiculturalism. That it misreads history is beside the point. It makes for effective, albeit irresponsible, populist politics.

[hazard]

Je l' ovo bese u originalu topik o velovima? Onda ovo ide ovde:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14135523

Austrian driver's religious headgear strains credulityDriving licence of Niko Alm Having received his driving licence, Niko Alm now wants to get pastafarianism officially recognisedAn Austrian atheist has won the right to be shown on his driving-licence photo wearing a pasta strainer as "religious headgear".Niko Alm first applied for the licence three years ago after reading that headgear was allowed in official pictures only for confessional reasons.Mr Alm said the sieve was a requirement of his religion, pastafarianism.The Austrian authorities required him to obtain a doctor's certificate that he was "psychologically fit" to drive.The idea came into Mr Alm's noodle three years ago as a way of making a serious, if ironic, point.A self-confessed atheist, Mr Alm says he belongs to the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, a light-hearted faith whose members call themselves pastafarians.The group's website states that "the only dogma allowed in the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster is the rejection of dogma".In response to pressure for American schools to teach the Christian theory known as intelligent design, as an alternative to natural selection, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster wrote to the Kansas School Board asking for the pastafarian version of intelligent design to be taught to schoolchildren, as an alternative to the Christian theory.Mental fitness checkIn the same spirit, Mr Alm's pastafarian-style application for a driving licence was a response to the Austrian recognition of confessional headgear in official photographs.The licence took three years to come through and, according to Mr Alm, he was asked to submit to a medical interview to check on his mental fitness to drive but - straining credulity - his efforts have finally paid off.It is the police who issue driving licences in Austria, and they have duly issued a laminated card showing Mr Alm in his unorthodox item of religious headgear.The next step, Mr Alm told the Austrian news agency APA, is to apply to the Austrian authorities for pastafarianism to become an officially recognised faith.

[Agni]

Je l' ovo bese u originalu topik o velovima? Onda ovo ide ovde:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14135523

[kim_philby]

meni ovo nije za mislim jeste totalni :kdp: i zabavno je ali je sustinski potpuni sublimirani rasizam. uredbe o fotografisanju sa pokrivalom za glavu postoje kako bi se zastitile dve manjine u predominantno katolickoj austriji: jevreji i muslimani. katolicanstvo potpuno prozima sve pore drustvenosti a na drzavi je da kroz svoju intervenciju osigura jednak polozaj manjinskih grupa.mislim austrija

Austria: far-right anti-Muslim parties would win 42% of the vote in general election, opinion poll findsDateSaturday, May 21, 2011Austria's far-right Freedom Party or FPÖ would win the most votes if there were a general election this weekend, according to the results of a new opinion poll released on Friday.The FPÖ would win 29 percent of the votes if there were a general election on Sunday, overtaking for the first time the Social Democrats with 28 pecent and the conservative People's Party or ÖVP with 23 percent, according to a poll by the OGM institute on behalf of the daily Kurier.The environmentalist Green party and another far-right party, the BZÖ, would each win 13 percent of the votes.The current coalition government under Social Democrat Chancellor Werner Faymann, which took power in December 2008, is made up of the Social Democrats and ÖVP parties in a power-sharing deal.AFP, 20 May 2011

&http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5zYZe8_cuo

FPÖ politician faces legal action over mosque 'game'DateWednesday, May 25, 2011Austrian authorities have filed incitement charges against a right-wing politician for commissioning a video game that required players to target and stop mosques, minarets and muezzins as they pop up on a screen.Prosecutors in the city of Graz accuse Gerhard Kurzmann of the far-right Freedom Party of commissioning the game as promotional material in the run-up to regional elections last year.The game – called "Moschee Baba," German for "See ya, mosque" – was posted online and sparked widespread condemnation.Prosecutors said Wednesday they also have filed charges against Alexander S., the head of an unnamed Swiss advertising company, who allegedly designed the game.A court date has yet to be set.Associated Press, 25 May 2011

[kim_philby]

Where Have All The Progressive Atheists Gone?By Jeff SparrowMelbourne is bracing for an influx of atheists next year - and that means oh so many right wing war-mongerers. It's getting hard to tell a New Atheist from a neo-fascist, writes Jeff SparrowNext year, two enormous rationalist conferences are scheduled for Melbourne. On 13 April, the Global Atheist Convention, "the biggest global event for atheism ever", according to its organisers; on 18 September, Think Inc, "a plethora (sic) of international speakers spanning science, rationalism, scepticism and secularism".Good news for progressives, surely? Evidence, you might think, of the growing acceptance of the Left and its core values.Except, of course, there’s the matter of so many of the key speakers being so very, very right wing.Consider the headline act for both events, Christopher Hitchens, a man who, without undue hyperbole, might be described as the preeminent war-monger in the intellectual world today.Let us recall how Hitchens wrote about the war in Afghanistan back in 2002: "It is … impossible to compromise with the stone-faced propagandists for Bronze Age morality: morons and philistines who hate Darwin and Einstein and managed, during their brief rule in Afghanistan, to ban and erase music and art while cultivating the skills of germ warfare. If they could do that to Afghans, what might they not have in mind for us? In confronting such people, the crucial thing is to be willing and able, if not in fact eager, to kill them without pity before they get started."Impossible to compromise … kill them without pity: the phrases read like a parody of a militarist demagogue or some ultra rightist general. But they are, alas, characteristic of Hitchens, who has championed — enthused over, even — every military conflict launched in the war on terror, as well as several (Iran, North Korea, Somalia) that have yet to get off the ground.For Hitchens, the achievements of the American agnostic community in spreading secularism are nothing compared to those of George Bush and the US armed forces. "I do not think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged," he explained on another occasion.What’s for progressives to celebrate in huge audiences listening to such a repellent figure?Ah, comes the response, don’t worry about Hitchens’ lust for blood. He’s coming to Australia to discuss atheism, and atheism is, we all know, inherently progressive. But that’s precisely the problem.The so-called New Atheist movement, in which Hitchens is a key figure, is not progressive in the slightest. On the contrary, it represents a rightwing appropriation of a once-radical tradition — and it’s well past time that so-called left-wingers, both in Australia and elsewhere, stepped up and said so.Yes, it’s true that the New Atheists do polemicise against the Christian establishment. You can find any number of YouTube clips of the various superstars of non-belief befuddling some hillbilly preacher or pompous cardinal with facts about evolution or knotty contradictions in the Bible.And for those of us who don’t believe in God, there’s a certain visceral satisfaction in reading a witty takedown of this or that Christian conservative. But, in reality, the Christian Right is increasingly irrelevant to real power in Australia in the 21st century.If we were living in the Spain of the 15th century, a proclamation of atheism would be politically radical in and of itself, a genuine challenge to the status quo. But in contemporary Australia, an indifference to Jesus is fairly widespread among the educated, inner-city populace, which is, after all, the main readership of the New Atheists.No-one’s going to burn you alive if you don’t believe in the Trinity; you are not going to lose your job if, like millions of other ordinary Australians, you’re unconvinced by Genesis.Despite what some atheists would have you think, really, it’s not all that brave to be unreligious in Australia.No doubt, Christians still exert a vestigial influence in the school curriculum, and, yes, various evangelists pop up from time to time in the culture wars. But overtly religious parties and political movements are marginal in mainstream politics, and have been so for years. Even the Cardinal Pells and the Wendy Francises make their arguments in secular terms rather than as an appeal to scripture. Tony Abbott might be a devout Catholic but he frames an opposition to gay marriage as an appeal to popular prejudice rather than Biblical injunction — just as the atheist Julia Gillard does.Which is not to say that religion doesn’t arise as a political issue for progressives. It’s just that the important debates for the Australian Left are not about attitudes to Christianity but rather about attitudes to Islam.I have argued before in New Matilda that there’s no structural difference between the prejudice against Judaism expressed in Australia in the early 20th century and the way that Muslims are discussed today. Anti-Semites denounced Jews for congregating in ghettoes and refusing to assimilate to Australian norms. The Jews, the racists said, wore peculiar clothes and headgear signaling their religious convictions. They ate peculiar foods. They were disproportionately involved in crime. They were the masterminds behind international terrorism. Why, everyone knew that both Bolshevism and anarchism were Jewish plots!Today, anyone who published such stuff would be ostracised as a racist bigot. And rightly so — but you can find almost identical rhetoric in your daily newspaper, albeit with the word "Muslim" replacing the word "Jew".And spare us the spluttering response about how Islamophobia isn’t racist because Islam isn’t a race. The concept of "race" — defined by skin colour or nose size or whatever mumbo jumbo you prefer — is itself a product of racism. Jews, Irish and Pakistanis are all victims of racism. Which race do they belong to?Today, all across the world, the parties of the far right are supplementing (or, in some cases, replacing) their traditional anti-Semitism with the much more popular anti-Muslim racism.Nothing surprising in that, of course. Fascism has always been entrepreneurial in that regard, content to exploit any prejudice that’s going. No, what’s really remarkable is the rhetorical convergence of the populist right with the "progressive" New Atheists.But don’t take my word for it. Sam Harris, another headliner at the Global Atheist Conference, puts it like this, in a passage quoted approvingly by Hitchens: "The […] failure of liberalism is evident in Western Europe, where the dogma of multiculturalism has left a secular Europe very slow to address the looming problem of religious extremism among its immigrants.The people who speak most sensibly about the threat that Islam poses to Europe are actually fascists."Harris and Hitchens are not advocating fascism. No, it’s just that they think that progressives should learn from the European fascist parties about how to relate to Muslims.To be fair, Sam Harris is a complete nut — a professional atheist who thinks there might be a scientific basis to reincarnation. If anything, he’s even more bloodthirsty than Hitchens, with his book The End of Faith pivoting from proselytising disbelief to explaining the morality of torture.But his enthusiasm for the rhetoric of the Islamophobic Right is entirely characteristic of the New Atheism.Let’s illustrate with a pop quiz, a little game we might call "fascists and conference goers". Some of the quotes below come from far right extremists. Others come from the keynote speakers due in Melbourne next year. The task, dear reader, is to distinguish one from the other.A) The connection between the doctrine of Islam and Islamist violence is simply not open to dispute.B) Not all Muslims are terrorists, but almost all terrorists are Muslims.C) I regard Islam as one of the great evils in the world, and I fear that we have a very difficult struggle there. […] I think in a way we are being too nice. I think that it’s possible to be naively overoptimistic, and if you reach out to people who have absolutely no intention of reaching back to you, then you may be disillusioned.D) Violence is inherent in Islam — it’s a destructive nihilist cult of death. It legitimates murder. The police may foil plots and freeze bank accounts in the short term, but the battle against terrorism will ultimately be lost unless we realise that it’s not just with extremist elements within Islam, but the ideology of Islam itself.E) The position of the Muslim community in the face of all provocations seems to be: Islam is a religion of peace, and if you say that it isn’t, we will kill you.F) Given that Islam is such an unmitigated evil, and looking at the map supplied by this Christian site, should we be supporting Christian missions in Africa?G) Wherever Islam has gone it has what historians have called bloody borders. You can’t have Islam and democracy, you can’t have Islam and women’s rights. We regard an Islamic bloc in this country as something that’s going to cause trouble. Your world (Islam) and ours really don’t mix.H) Let me ask a simple question to the pseudoliberals who take a soft line on the veil and the burqa. What about the Ku Klux Klan? Notorious for its hooded style and its reactionary history, this gang is and always was dedicated to upholding Protestant and Anglo-Saxon purity….I) The burqa is no longer simply the symbol of female repression and Islamic culture, it is now emerging as the preferred disguise of bandits and n’er do wells.J) The progressive Islamisation of our country and the increase in political-religious demands are calling into question the survival of our civilisation … We are fighting against Islamism, not Islam.If you can’t be bothered clicking the links, statements B, D and J come from neo-fascists, while statement I comes from Australia’s own Cory Bernardi (a kind of bonus, if you like). The others are all from atheist celebrities who will be holding forth in Melbourne next year.Now, none of this is to say that the Left shouldn’t combat superstition and promote free thought. But a progressive atheism, as I’ve argued elsewhere, begins from a recognition that religion is shaped, first and foremost, by the material world and that the key task for the Left is thus not to berate believers for their ignorance and stupidity but to build the kind of society in which God no longer seems necessary.By contrast, the characteristic method of the New Atheists is a crass philosophical idealism, in which religion consists exclusively of a set of silly ideas, and religious believers are therefore simply dim-witted and dangerous. Which means, of course, that those groups who take religion particularly seriously are, almost by definition, particularly idiotic and particularly threatening.Hence the tendency for the New Atheism to collapse into overt Islamophobia. What, then, do next year’s conferences mean for progressive politics in Australia?Consider one of the longest running campaigns championed by the Left — the struggle to ensure decent treatment for refugees.It’s surely not controversial to suggest that, lying behind the extraordinary hysteria about tiny numbers of boat arrivals, is a xenophobia traceable, in part, to Australia’s history as an outpost of white settlement in the midst of Asia. But since the War on Terror, the hostility to asylum seekers has also been fanned by hostility to Muslims. As has often been noted, a boatload of white, Christian refugees from Zimbabwe simply wouldn’t receive the same treatment dished out to Muslims fleeing from Afghanistan.In that context, what’s the likely impact on the struggle for refugee rights of a huge event addressed by international celebrities, who explain, in calm, educated tones, that Islam is an unmitigated evil fundamentally linked to terrorism?In Australia, the most prominent local atheists — people like Phillip Adams, Leslie Cannold, Catherine Deveny and others — are, to various degrees, associated with progressive politics. Presumably, they will be attending these events. Will they, take a stand against the right wing re-appropriation of atheism? Will they denounce the reactionaries who are dominating these events?It is, of course, perfectly possible to question the existence of God, to support intellectual freedom and to oppose dogmatism, without embracing an Islamophobia that is the functional equivalent of 20th century anti-Semitism. But that’s not what the New Atheists are doing. Which is why the Left needs to call them out.

[hazard]

Naravno da je za i da nije nikakav sublimirani rasizam, jer je po sredi ismevanje religije kao takve. Ne postoje te odredbe u zakonu zbog zastite manjina, vec zbog politicke korektnosti. I ne odnosi se na nekoga ko nosi jamaku, vec je tu da ismeva nekoga ko se potpuno zamotan slika za dozvolu (bila na forumu jedna takva iz Hrvatske, ne?) Totalni nonsens je slikanje za dozvolu a da se ne vidi nista osim ociju. Dakle ili propisati da niko ne sme da nosi nista (ni na faci, ni na glavi) ili propisati koji delovi lica moraju tacno da se vide, pa je onda nebitno da li neko nosi kacket naopacke, jamaku, ili maramu da pokrije kosu. Mislim po tom austrijskom zakonu i casna sestra moze da se slika u svojoj "uniformi", ne? Dakle nije nesto sto se iskljucivo odnosi na jevreje i muslimane.Inace Pastafarijanci najvise ismevaju hriscane, ne muslimane ili jevreje ili sta vec, i ceo "pokret" je nastao kao odgovor na ludilo oko kreacionizma u SAD.Mislim, pomalo mi se pegla od tih tendencija da se vecinska religija moze ismevati (sto u Zapadnim drzavama znaci dominantni oblik hriscanstva u datoj drzavi) ali zato kada ismevamo manjinske religije onda je to rasizam. E pa nije. Zadrzavam pravo da se smejem u lice svim pustinjskim religijama, a ponajvise onoj "izvornoj" (judaizmu), jer je u sustini stari zavet najzahvalniji za pronalazenje rupa, nelogicnosti, i totalno retrogradnih "vrednosti", a ako neko kaze da sam zbog toga antisemita, onda jede govna.

[kim_philby]

Naravno da je za i da nije nikakav sublimirani rasizam, jer je po sredi ismevanje religije kao takve. Ne postoje te odredbe u zakonu zbog zastite manjina, vec zbog politicke korektnosti. I ne odnosi se na nekoga ko nosi jamaku, vec je tu da ismeva nekoga ko se potpuno zamotan slika za dozvolu (bila na forumu jedna takva iz Hrvatske, ne?) Totalni nonsens je slikanje za dozvolu a da se ne vidi nista osim ociju. Dakle ili propisati da niko ne sme da nosi nista (ni na faci, ni na glavi) ili propisati koji delovi lica moraju tacno da se vide, pa je onda nebitno da li neko nosi kacket naopacke, jamaku, ili maramu da pokrije kosu. Mislim po tom austrijskom zakonu i casna sestra moze da se slika u svojoj "uniformi", ne? Dakle nije nesto sto se iskljucivo odnosi na jevreje i muslimane.Inace Pastafarijanci najvise ismevaju hriscane, ne muslimane ili jevreje ili sta vec, i ceo "pokret" je nastao kao odgovor na ludilo oko kreacionizma u SAD.Mislim, pomalo mi se pegla od tih tendencija da se vecinska religija moze ismevati (sto u Zapadnim drzavama znaci dominantni oblik hriscanstva u datoj drzavi) ali zato kada ismevamo manjinske religije onda je to rasizam. E pa nije. Zadrzavam pravo da se smejem u lice svim pustinjskim religijama, a ponajvise onoj "izvornoj" (judaizmu), jer je u sustini stari zavet najzahvalniji za pronalazenje rupa, nelogicnosti, i totalno retrogradnih "vrednosti", a ako neko kaze da sam zbog toga antisemita, onda jede govna.

smej se ti. kapiram da je bilo i smesno kada se nacisti smeju sajloku i sprdali se sa obrezivanjem. i naravno da taj pokret znaci jedno u americi a jedno u uslovima predstojece pobede slobodarske partije u austriji. za pocetak niko nije predlagao bombardovanje oklahome ili segregaciju born again hriscana kao nacin da se izadje na kraj s tom 'opasnoscu' dok se u austriji prave video igrice u kojima unistavas dzamije ko ratko mladic. mislim moras biti moran pa ne videti gde ti je pravi problem. hint: nije u plaestinskom falavel kiosku.i drugo kritiku judaiazma i anti-semitizma je lako razdvojiti zato sto usled delovanja izvesnog beckog sobo-slikara vise nema bas toliko budala koje naokolo jurcaju tvrdeci da jevreji predstavljaju opasnost za evropu. docim kada su muslimai u pitanju to cini osnov delovanja svih desnicarskih partija u evropi danas koje se btw kriju iza europskog laicitet (sto im ne smeta svake godine da slave bozic).drugim recima sta tog austrijanca boli pastafarijanska patka za to kako se neko slika za vozacku dozvolu? da li mu je fizicki lose kao dawkinsu kada vidi zenu pod burkom? da li kao sam harris veruje 'da danas u evropi samo fasisti se bave problemom islama' pa je na nama da napravimo neke umerene skinse? na ovaj njegov potez ce sutra da se nakaci milijun budala koje veruju 'da je isalm najvece zlo danas' i slicne bedastoce.mislim tebi se riga od starog zaveta a meni od ovolike gluposti tzv. novih ateista koji su puni manje - vise prikrivenih fasisoidnih ispada. mislim tamo niko ne radi svoj posao. to su bre neki biolozi i geneteciri. neka rade na leku za rak i sidu ili tako nesto posto nista ne razumeju o drustvenosti i njenim relacijama. Edited July 15, 2011 by kim_philby

[hazard]

pazi kime ja se sa tobom skroz slazem kada su "novi ateisti" u pitanju, dokins mi npr. narocito ide na q.samo mislim da si u ovom slucaju promasio poentu - pastafarijanci su zajebanti, nisam nikada naleteo na njihovo militantno ponasanje. mislim da nepravedno generalizujes austrijance kada je u pitanju ovaj tip - neko ko je pastafarijanac je pre glasac nekih socijaldemokrata ili nekih klasicnih liberala nego sto je pristalica slobodarske partije, koja, btw, propagira konzervativni katolicizam koji bi se takodje nasao vrlo lako na meti pastafarijanaca (ako vec nije)? a koliko sam primetio iza laiciteta se kriju u principu samo francuzi, svi ostali naglasavaju (judeo-)hriscanske osnove evrope i kako se to mora ocuvati, itd. bla bla bla.to da ce na ovaj potez da se nakaci milion budala - jebiga, verovatno je tako, ali isto se moze reci za milion drugih stvari. ovaj tip je obican gradjanin, nije nikakav politicar ili javna licnost koja ima nekakvu odgovornost, napravio je dobru foru i zeznuo je birokratiju i popisao se politickoj korektnosti, a to je za mene uvek +. sve ostalo je tvoje ucitavanje drugih stvari i okolnosti u sam cin.a sto se tice toga "sta njega boli patka kako ce neko da se slika za svoju dozvolu" - pa boli ga, jer princip jednakosti u pitanju. neko ne moze da se slika sa maramom na glavi jer misli da ce mu tako slika izgledati bolje (dakle kao cist modni detalj), ali moze ako se pravda da je to tako propisano nekom knjigom napisanom pre 2 soma godina cije instrukcije on postuje. drugo, kao sto vidis, oni su odma krenuli da proveravaju da li je normalan, nisu hteli da mu daju dozvolu godinu dana. Znaci neko uleti da se slika i kaze ja sam casna sestra, musliman, jevrejin, onda je to ok, odma moze, ali ako ja udjem i kazem "ja sam clan almabungadzumbalumba religije iz drevnog Kraplakistana, i nosim na glavi sarene krpice sa sljokicama ukrasene suvim sljivama", oni ce da me posalju na psihijatrijsku evaluaciju ili ce da traze da im ja dokazujem da je to zaista tako? zasto? znaci opet nejednakost. ako imamo slobodu veroispovesti, onda se ona ne dovodi u pitanje, i veruje se ljudima na rec, pa da li ja rekao da se molim Alahu ili Drvenoj Komodi, to se postuje bez komentarisanja.a izgleda da ti je u politickokoretknopravednickom gnevu promakao drugi deo clanka gde tip kaze da hoce da se pastafarijanizam proglasi za "priznatu" religiju u Austriji, dakle opet ukazivanje na nedoslednost i to da su neke religije jednakije od drugih, a od tog "zvanicnog" statusa profitira najvise u Austriji koja religija? pa katolicka. dakle mislim da si skroz promasio

[kim_philby]

pazi kime ja se sa tobom skroz slazem kada su "novi ateisti" u pitanju, dokins mi npr. narocito ide na q.samo mislim da si u ovom slucaju promasio poentu - pastafarijanci su zajebanti, nisam nikada naleteo na njihovo militantno ponasanje. mislim da nepravedno generalizujes austrijance kada je u pitanju ovaj tip - neko ko je pastafarijanac je pre glasac nekih socijaldemokrata ili nekih klasicnih liberala nego sto je pristalica slobodarske partije, koja, btw, propagira konzervativni katolicizam koji bi se takodje nasao vrlo lako na meti pastafarijanaca (ako vec nije)? a koliko sam primetio iza laiciteta se kriju u principu samo francuzi, svi ostali naglasavaju (judeo-)hriscanske osnove evrope i kako se to mora ocuvati, itd. bla bla bla.to da ce na ovaj potez da se nakaci milion budala - jebiga, verovatno je tako, ali isto se moze reci za milion drugih stvari. ovaj tip je obican gradjanin, nije nikakav politicar ili javna licnost koja ima nekakvu odgovornost, napravio je dobru foru i zeznuo je birokratiju i popisao se politickoj korektnosti, a to je za mene uvek +. sve ostalo je tvoje ucitavanje drugih stvari i okolnosti u sam cin.a sto se tice toga "sta njega boli patka kako ce neko da se slika za svoju dozvolu" - pa boli ga, jer princip jednakosti u pitanju. neko ne moze da se slika sa maramom na glavi jer misli da ce mu tako slika izgledati bolje (dakle kao cist modni detalj), ali moze ako se pravda da je to tako propisano nekom knjigom napisanom pre 2 soma godina cije instrukcije on postuje. drugo, kao sto vidis, oni su odma krenuli da proveravaju da li je normalan, nisu hteli da mu daju dozvolu godinu dana. Znaci neko uleti da se slika i kaze ja sam casna sestra, musliman, jevrejin, onda je to ok, odma moze, ali ako ja udjem i kazem "ja sam clan almabungadzumbalumba religije iz drevnog Kraplakistana, i nosim na glavi sarene krpice sa sljokicama ukrasene suvim sljivama", oni ce da me posalju na psihijatrijsku evaluaciju ili ce da traze da im ja dokazujem da je to zaista tako? zasto? znaci opet nejednakost. ako imamo slobodu veroispovesti, onda se ona ne dovodi u pitanje, i veruje se ljudima na rec, pa da li ja rekao da se molim Alahu ili Drvenoj Komodi, to se postuje bez komentarisanja.a izgleda da ti je u politickokoretknopravednickom gnevu promakao drugi deo clanka gde tip kaze da hoce da se pastafarijanizam proglasi za "priznatu" religiju u Austriji, dakle opet ukazivanje na nedoslednost i to da su neke religije jednakije od drugih, a od tog "zvanicnog" statusa profitira najvise u Austriji koja religija? pa katolicka. dakle mislim da si skroz promasio

mislimm da gresis. odnosno nisam u politickokorektnom zanosu vec samo primecujem da i ovakva bahtinovska karnevalizacija polja ratova u kulturi moze ici na vodenicu najcrnjim reakcionarima. stavise austrijska drzava je tu pokazala da je ona najveci zajebant u celoj prici posto je od ateiste napravila sumanutog vernika.sto se jednakosti tice moze se tvrditi da bi ona bas i bila narusena zabranom pokrivanja lica na licnim ispravama.

[kim_philby]

evo ga jos jedan tekst koji moze biti zanimljiv

Debate: Michael Brull versus Tad Tietze, ′That political Islam is not a friend of the Left′Negative: Tad TietzeThe wave of revolutions sweeping the Arab world represents a sharp break from almost a decade of defensive struggle against triumphant neoliberalism and neo–conservatism. Philosopher Peter Hallward calls it an opportunity to break the pattern of TINA (the notion that ‘there is no alternative’ to the relentless assault by ruling elites on their peoples), while Slavoj Žižek celebrates the revolution’s appeal to the ‘eternal idea of freedom, justice and dignity’.34Yet some are anxious that the revolts will be hijacked by Islamist political currents bent on imposing sharia law, oppressing women and homosexuals, and crushing hopes for freedom under theocratic rule. The spectre of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) has been raised not only by Western leaders but by some sympathetic to the uprisings.I was recently taken to task for suggesting the Egyptian Left should enter into tactical alliances with the MB to take the revolution forward.35 My interlocutor in the present debate, Michael Brull, argued via Twitter that such a suggestion is ‘right wing’. ‘There’s nothing progressive about them in any sense,’ he said. ‘They’re not even anti-imperialist.’A passionate supporter of Palestinian rights and the struggle for democracy, Brull calls himself a ‘principled secularist’ and has written approvingly of the ‘new atheism’ spearheaded by Richard Dawkins. 36In my view, building united fronts with Islamist currents around specific issues is an inescapable part of any potentially successful Left politics in the Middle East. Refusing to do so, out of principled objection to the sometimes reactionary, religious-based policies of such organisations, cuts the Left off from serious participation in the struggle against local regimes and imperialism. Not working alongside Islamists represents a lack of understanding of their contradictory nature, and a naïve adherence to secularism as a progressive force in the modern world.Islamism (aka political Islam or Islamic fundamentalism) is highly influential in most Muslim countries. In general, it promotes a ‘return to the Koran’ as the foundation for social change, utilising religious precepts to drive economic, political and cultural renovation. It is a modern movement, emerging in the late nineteenth century in response to capitalist development’s disruption of traditional societies and the livelihoods of people within them. While Islamism may argue for the revival of specific, religiously derived practices (some of them backward-looking) as part of creating an ideal society, no serious Islamist currently seeks the destruction of modernity to restore the medieval society of Islam’s birth.Furthermore, Islamism is no more a monolithic entity than the religion which it draws inspiration from. The Islamism of the very modern (and very brutal) pro-Western Saudi royalty is different to that of the clerics who rule Iran with an iron fist while demonising the United States.37 And both are very different to the reformist, populist Islamism of the economically dislocated, educated, urban lower-middle classes who form the core membership of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood.Much of the Egyptian Left has refused to work with the MB, seeing it as uncomplicatedly reactionary, even a type of fascism. It is easy enough to point to its terrible positions on a range of issues. Yet its history is not an unbroken chain of reactionary policies. Instead, the organisation has made multiple twists and turns, and contains sharp internal divisions – especially between its conservative, gradualist elders and younger activists seeking direct confrontation with the regime. As an Egyptian socialist argued in 2007:It shifts from trying to appease the regime to entering into confrontation with it. It takes strong anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist positions, spearheading the solidarity movements with the resistance, but does so inconsistently […] It rhetorically defends social justice and a fair distribution of wealth, but fails to take any concrete position against neoliberalism and privatisation (although there are signs of pressure to change its position). It defends full legal equality between all citizens yet clings to reactionary views on women, religious minorities and other oppressed groups.38The regime saw the MB as a threat, repressing and jailing not only its more radical activists but also leaders who espoused incremental work towards becoming an official opposition. It is no wonder that many working-class militants came to see it as a serious vehicle for change. Despite its lack of engagement with workers’ issues, the MB won majorities in working-class districts in the limited elections of 2005.When the revolution erupted on 25 January, the MB was by far the largest and best-organised opposition party, with more than a million members and control over an extensive network of social welfare organisations. Its leaders were slow to enter the fray, fearful that backing protests could lead to further repression. Nevertheless, its organised activists have been cited as vital to mounting a disciplined defence against Mubarak’s thugs in Tahrir Square on 2 February.39 The constituent parts of the MB may now be pulling in a variety of directions,40 but the widespread hold of Islam in Egyptian society – a key underpinning of Islamist politics – remains a central fact for the revolutionary movement.Marx and Engels famously argued that, while the fight to prove the irrationality of religious ideas had been won through cultural advances underpinned by capitalism, it was the suffering caused by a system of exploitation, oppression and alienation that explained the continuing hold of those ideas, despite the existence of anti-religious proofs. Attempts to undermine religion simply through rational argument or state repression were doomed to failure. Rather, the Left’s task was to fight to transform the social conditions in which those ideas were rooted. Most predominantly, Muslim nations are racked by poverty, and this poverty remains an important reason for the weakness of purely secular ideologies within such countries.Political Islam has also been strengthened by the historic failure of secular nationalist and communist currents to resolve the Middle East’s deep social contradictions, let alone defeat Western imperialism and its Israeli watchdog. In this vacuum, Islamism has been able to pose as a viable alternative, acting, as Marx wrote of religion, as both ‘the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering’.41 It is in that contradiction that its reformist character emerges.To envisage a progressive struggle for democracy and social change in Muslim countries that is free of religious colouration is thus a category error, in which the defeat of backward ideas is imagined as preceding the struggle for social transformation. An analogy would be if the Australian Left, when organising protests against the Iraq War in 2003, refused to work with ALP politicians, members and supporters until such people first renounced their party’s general support for the War on Terror.The Left can only win the mass of people to its cause, and away from more conservative oppositional forces, by showing in the course of united struggle that it offers better strategies and policies in practice.This strategy has been pursued by some leftists in Egypt over the past fifteen years, creating important new relationships between the Left and activists drawn to the MB, and opening opportunities to attract the latter to a distinctly different type of politics. This story, detailed in an excellent 2007 article in Middle East Report, sounds strikingly similar to the relationships developed between parts of the radical Left and sections of social democracy in Western countries.42Secularism also has severe limitations as a left-wing political strategy today. Many on the Left now seem unable to judge the progressive content of movements and parties on the basis of the social interests they represent and the contexts in which they operate, instead looking to their stated ideas as the main measure. The ‘new atheism’, for instance, encourages a view of the secular ideology of Western imperialism as more progressive than the religiously based ideology of resistance of those it oppresses. Such logic can lead Richard Dawkins (who, to his credit, opposed the US war on Iraq) to recently state that ‘it is well arguable that Islam is the greatest man-made force for evil in the world today’.43 The dominant Islamophobic discourse which deliberately blurs distinctions between Muslims, reformist Islamists and suicide terrorists has contributed to this the idea that Islam is uniquely oppressive.None of this is to suggest that the Left should withhold its critique of the reactionary aspects of Islamism, any more than it should refuse to criticise parties like the ALP and Greens when they act in an objectively right-wing way. But in the Middle East – as well as Western nations with Muslim populations – the struggle against imperialism, state repression and racism will inevitably bring the Left into direct contact with Islamist currents. We could do worse than to adopt the shorthand developed by the British Marxist Chris Harman: ‘With the Islamists sometimes, with the state never.’44 To rule out alliances in advance can only strengthen our common enemies, as well as abandoning the field to reactionary elements within Islamism itself.

@hazard: sta smo mi ovde to postali waldorf & statler liberalno leve i liberalno desne misli na ovom forumu

[hazard]

ali koja je poenta licnih isprava ako je lice pokriveno? mislim koja je poenta slike? i ako je pokrivanje lica dozvoljeno, onda treba da bude dozvoljeno svima, inace je to po meni diskriminacija na osnovu veroispovesti. ti se tako stavljas u poziciju da neki drzavni sluzbenik procenjuje da li je tvoja vera "prava" tj. ono sto tvrdis da jeste. npr. zena dodje i kazes da mora da pokrije kosu/lice - religija? - hriscanstvo (neka sekta, nebitno). i sad se ti dokazuj da sa sluzbenikom (koji je verovatno katolik ili protestant ili takvog "porekla") da li je u hriscanstvu tvoje vrste to obavezno. jer ako cemo da teramo mak na konac ni u kuranu nigde ne pise da zena mora biti pokrivene kose i lice, vec samo da se mora oblaciti pristojno (sve ostalo je stvar interpretacije i tradicije).mislim, ako je verska sloboda u pitanju, sta mene ima ko da pita zasto ja nosim krpu/maramu/kapu na glavi? moja stvar. jer ako me drzavni sluzbenik tera da mu objasnjavam, makar samo rekao "to je iz verskih razloga", onda je mene vec naterao da se verski izjasnim pred drzavom, a drzava to ne bi trebalo da radi.e sad, ima ona skola razmisljanja koja kaze da je samo teranje ljudi zakonom da imaju nekakvu identifikacionu ispravu sa slikom (ili jos biometrijskim podacima) krsenje njihovih osnovnih prava ali to je vec liberterijanizam.

[hazard]

@hazard: sta smo mi ovde to postali waldorf & statler liberalno leve i liberalno desne misli na ovom forumu

jebiga mora neko. zamisli zaluta neko nevino celjade na ovaj forum i doceka ga samo hellina propaganda, apstinenska rezignacija, jednolinijske doskocice i raznorazne "povraca mi se od ovog foruma" diskusije? da ne spominjemo "desanku" i kdp?ovako bar ima neki sadrzaj da se cita, i to u nastavcima :D

[kim_philby]

ali koja je poenta licnih isprava ako je lice pokriveno? mislim koja je poenta slike? i ako je pokrivanje lica dozvoljeno, onda treba da bude dozvoljeno svima, inace je to po meni diskriminacija na osnovu veroispovesti. ti se tako stavljas u poziciju da neki drzavni sluzbenik procenjuje da li je tvoja vera "prava" tj. ono sto tvrdis da jeste. npr. zena dodje i kazes da mora da pokrije kosu/lice - religija? - hriscanstvo (neka sekta, nebitno). i sad se ti dokazuj da sa sluzbenikom (koji je verovatno katolik ili protestant ili takvog "porekla") da li je u hriscanstvu tvoje vrste to obavezno. jer ako cemo da teramo mak na konac ni u kuranu nigde ne pise da zena mora biti pokrivene kose i lice, vec samo da se mora oblaciti pristojno (sve ostalo je stvar interpretacije i tradicije).

tacno. i mislim da ce pitanje zenskog pokrivanja verovatno resiti u samom islamu. sto su pritisci spolja zesci to ce i otpori biti jaci. pri tome mnoge drzave imaju nacine kako da mimo lica identifikuju pokrivene osobe. vecina islamskih zemalja je fakticki to specijalizovala. a otkrivanje lica zarad fotografisanja ima prizvuk nekog 'nadzirati i kaznjavati' imperijalnog sentimenta (pre no sto je to postalo tema u francuskoj bilo je u alziru)

mislim, ako je verska sloboda u pitanju, sta mene ima ko da pita zasto ja nosim krpu/maramu/kapu na glavi? moja stvar. jer ako me drzavni sluzbenik tera da mu objasnjavam, makar samo rekao "to je iz verskih razloga", onda je mene vec naterao da se verski izjasnim pred drzavom, a drzava to ne bi trebalo da radi.

ako je tvoj argument da svako moze da na glavi nosi sta hoce onda se slazem s tobom. osim naravno nacistickih oznaka :D

e sad, ima ona skola razmisljanja koja kaze da je samo teranje ljudi zakonom da imaju nekakvu identifikacionu ispravu sa slikom (ili jos biometrijskim podacima) krsenje njihovih osnovnih prava ali to je vec liberterijanizam.

opet. zanemarujes kontekst ovog akta. austrija, slobodarska partija (koja katolicanstvu prilazi na isti nacin kao i na primer le pen kao kulturnoj i nacionalnoj vrednosti a ne kao religiji), debata oko emigracije... taj tip je verovatno blago autistican ako to oko sebe ne primecuje.e da sledeca stvar je talk show! Edited July 15, 2011 by kim_philby

[kim_philby]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipbit1VrNX4&feature=player_embedded#at=133geneza zabrane vela. Edited July 15, 2011 by kim_philby