Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Urban v's the Commentariat

xslavearcx said:
I think paternalistic reasons are often sought as pretexts for doing other things, but i don't think when it comes to issues like that that these motivations are always the case; whereas in that article LP seems to be making the inference that this is what underlies it at all times...
Click to expand...

Very few Westerrn men know enough about Islam to comment on its view of women with anything approaching authority.

Those that do possess the requisite knowledge invariably speak of the great respect which, in their opinion, Islam accords to women.

Naturally this does not prevent the ignorant from spouting their calumnies. But we can take comfort from the knowledge that their motives spring from bigotry, prejudice and--most of all--political calculation.
 
xslavearcx said:
absolutly, but i think politicians often like to sugercoat such ambitions with humanitarian pretexts to justify such actions.
Click to expand...

Oh aye.

And feminism is the perfect wedge strategy. Divides the opposition, fools useful idiots into temporary acquiesence in mass murder etc.

Same thing with Assange actually.
 
Our local hammer of the Muslims MoP Hollobone doesn't even pretend he's opposing the viel for feminism. He says its cos he wants to be able to see someones face when he talks to them. Or sometimes he says that, when he isn't scare mongering over being swamped by millions of turks/bulgarians/romanians and putting forth mental private members bills to parliament.
 
phildwyer said:
Very few Westerrn men know enough about Islam to comment on its view of women with anything approaching authority.

Those that do possess the requisite knowledge invariably speak of the great respect which, in their opinion, Islam accords to women.

Naturally this does not prevent the ignorant from spouting their calumnies. But we can take comfort from the knowledge that their motives spring from bigotry, prejudice and--most of all--political calculation.
Click to expand...

Obviously that is often the case, and it certainly shows in LPs article, and reasons for changing the article that there was a lack of knowledge concerning what she speaked her brains on..

And speaking as a western man that was a convert to islam for half my adult life, i am pretty aware of the respect that a lot of manifestations of islam accords to women. But i'm also pretty aware of the fact that islam - a set of ideas re/formed by people - can reflect the interests of those who wish to accord power to one group of people over another, and how others - such as muslim feminists and other forms of liberation theology (see farid essak for instance)- can construct notions of islam that reflects struggles against forms of oppression/exploitation that they are under in a particular situation...

The problem with LPs article is that it seems to assume a fixed notion of islam as this eternal non-changing thing, that has one singular standpoint on segregation - somethign that is, in fact, affirmed and contested by different groups, thinkers and so on within muslim discourse. And it is that notion of a fixed essense to a particular civilisation that underlies a lot of colonial thinking - the good old white mans burden - although in this case it is being articulated in patronising noble savage terms.
 
xslavearcx said:
Obviously that is often the case, and it certainly shows in LPs article, and reasons for changing the article that there was a lack of knowledge concerning what she speaked her brains on..

And speaking as a western man that was a convert to islam for half my adult life, i am pretty aware of the respect that a lot of manifestations of islam accords to women. But i'm also pretty aware of the fact that islam - a set of ideas formed by people - can reflect the interests of those who wish to accord power to one group of people over another, and how others - such as muslim feminists and other forms of liberation theology (see farid essak for instance)- can construct notions of islam that reflects struggles against forms of oppression/exploitation that they are under in a particular situation...

The problem with LPs article is that it seems to assume a fixed notion of islam as this eternal non-changing thing, that has one singular standpoint on segregation - somethign that is, in fact, affirmed and contested by different groups, thinkers and so on within muslim discourse. And it is that notion of a fixed essense to a particular civilisation that underlies a lot of colonial thinking - the good old white mans burden - although in this case it is being articulated in patronising noble savage terms.
Click to expand...

Of course what you say about the absurdity of referring to "Islam" as if it were one body of doctrine or practice is true.

However I thought Penny's article was less about "Islam" than about Western men's construction of Islam as anti-feminist.

As you know, that is a ridiculous and bigoted construction. It is nevertheless prevelant among the uneducated, and assiduously fostered by the Western media. Penny is to be applauded for pointing this out.
 
phildwyer said:
I liked it because it's true.

Western men do disguise their Islamophobia behind a flimsy facade of feminism.

It's been going on for ages. I well recall how we supposedly invaded Afghanistan because we were so worried that girls weren't going to school or something. Oldest trick in their book. Works too.
Click to expand...

That isn't what the article is about. If the article was about liberal interventionism justifying itself through phony feminist values then I would agree with it, but it isn't.
 
phildwyer said:
Of course what you say about the absurdity of referring to "Islam" as if it were one body of doctrine or practice is true.

However I thought Penny's article was less about "Islam" than about Western men's construction of Islam as anti-feminist.

As you know, that is a ridiculous and bigoted construction. It is nevertheless prvelant among the uneducated, and assiduously fostered by the Western media. Penny is to be applauded for pointing this out.
Click to expand...

But she hardly presented a nuanced account of 'islam' herself. She never really payed any emphasis upon the idea that gender segregation is something that is generally oppossed to by muslim feminists, and that it is something that is generally affirmed by apologists for 'orthodox' varities of islam. This is also testified to her later justification of the article on grounds that muslim women thanked her for what she said. There was nothing in that statement that could tell us whether this was coming from a women that affirmed a conservative variety of islam or a liberatory mode of islam. By doing that, she denied access to an audience maybe not aquainted with islam that these matters get contested within islamic discourse.

What was ironic in that whole speil also was that her quoting the other article, which showed how so called feminist paternalism can be used to justify colonialism, was that that articles arguements where derived from Leilah Ahmeds women and gender in islam a book itself that is a big part of debates within islamic feminist discourse, a book that generally sides on non-segregation - secular feminist arguments, despite the problematics outlined in that book concerning paternalist argments for colonialism and despite conceding that veiling did in some cases in egypt provide access to women into public arena that they hitherto did not have access to that. But with Pennys article one sees none of those nuances despite approaching plagerising Ahmeds book.
 
phildwyer said:
May I ask whether you reconverted?

As you know, it's very rare to convert from Islam.
Click to expand...

Short boring story was i read malcom Xs autobiography when i was about 19 and converted not long after reading that, and then stopped believing in God after the coating of apologetics that i had became very adept at started to unravel about 10 years later.
 
Last edited:
xslavearcx said:
Short boring story was i read malcom Xs autobiography when i was about 19 and converted not long after reading that, and then stopped believing in God after the coating of apologetics that i had became very adept at started to unravel about 10 years later.
Click to expand...

"Stopped believing in God."

I always wonder what that means to a monotheist.

For a polytheist, I suppose the issue is a simple one of empirical reality. Either Thor exists or he doesn't--like the Loch Ness Monster or the Yeti.

But obviously that's not the monotheist understanding of God, which is pretty much "that which makes experience possible."

Experience exists, therefore experience must be possible, therefore there must be something that makes experience possible, God is that which makes experience possible, ergo God exists.

I done a 200-page thread about this once.
 
If i had spent more time pondering the metaphysics and epistemology of it all, maybe id've been a better believer or maybe i wouldn't have believed in the first place, but moot point, my ruminations on islam was predicated on it as a political vision so it was pretty inevitable it would all fall apart!
 
phildwyer said:
"Stopped believing in God."

I always wonder what that means to a monotheist.

For a polytheist, I suppose the issue is a simple one of empirical reality. Either Thor exists or he doesn't--like the Loch Ness Monster or the Yeti.

But obviously that's not the monotheist understanding of God, which is pretty much "that which makes experience possible."

Experience exists, therefore experience must be possible, therefore there must be something that makes experience possible, God is that which makes experience possible, ergo God exists.

I done a 200-page thread about this once.
Click to expand...

that which makes experience possible is a grey mass of three distinct brains floating in an electrochemical mix dosed regularly hormones.What then if this intelligence and 'human' take on the world is nothing more than an advantageous quirk highly selected for?
 
phildwyer said:
<snip>it's very rare to convert from Islam.
Click to expand...
No, it's very rare to admit to converting from Islam (or making it public knowledge) because of the way that the Muslims you knew while you were one are likely to treat you once they regard you as an apostate.
 
Greebo said:
No, it's very rare to admit to converting from Islam (or making it public knowledge) because of the way that the Muslims you knew while you were one are likely to treat you once they regard you as an apostate.
Click to expand...

Yip. Not that im in fear of my life or anything like that, just that i'd prefer not to be in a position of admitting to 'the brothers' that i sold out as it were - after being so kindly let into the religious community :(
 
Greebo said:
No, it's very rare to admit to converting from Islam (or making it public knowledge) because of the way that the Muslims you knew while you were one are likely to treat you once they regard you as an apostate.
Click to expand...

No, it's very rare in reality.

Ask the missionaries of British India, who rapidly concluded that Muslims were unconvertable and concentrated on Hindus instead.

The reason is that Islam is a "supersessionist" religion, which includes and accounts for Christianity within itself.

The reasoning runs thus: the truth is monotheism. This was revealed to humanity in three stages, the first two of which contained fatal flaws. The flaw of Judaism was racial exclusivity; the flaw of Christianity was deifying the prophet.

Once someone is convinced of this, it's very difficult to get them back to Christianity-it feels like a regression.
 
phildwyer said:
No, it's very rare in reality.

<snip>The reason is that Islam is a "supersessionist" religion, which includes and accounts for Christianity within itself.

The reasoning runs thus: the truth is monotheism. This was revealed to humanity in three stages, the first two of which contained fatal flaws. The flaw of Judaism was racial exclusivity; the flaw of Christianity was deifying the prophet.

Once someone is convinced of this, it's very difficult to get them back to Christianity-it feels like a regression.
Click to expand...
The official penalty for apostacy is death. This might not be widely enforced but it's widely known. If everyone you know is Muslim, apart from a few people who seem nice enough but happen to have been raised in another faith (and seem to be proselytising), there's a lot of social pressure to keep quiet about any doubts you might have. You might not see many going public about being Muslim to Christian converts, but try googling Muslims who have become Atheists.
 
phildwyer said:
Once someone is convinced of this, it's very difficult to get them back to Christianity-it feels like a regression.
Click to expand...

Going back is indeed unlikely. "But only when the last minaret has fallen and the last mosque destroyed will our Holy work be done" - it is always possible to move forward beyond islam as many of its adherents argue (albeit fairly quietly).
 
I appreciate that it's certainly Bragg's personal landscape, but is this something in common use? Has Marx's analysis been finally found wanting?
 
killer b said:
  1. Laurie Penny ‏@PennyRed2h
    So is 4th wave feminism a thing now? What is the shape of the thing? I ask merely for information.

  2. Billy Bragg ‏@billybragg19m
    @PennyRed It sounds to me like women creating their own radical space in a post-Marxist landscape, seeking new ways to fight old struggles
Are we in a post marxist landscape? is that a thing, or is it just bragg's personal journey?
Click to expand...

The questions might be based on this truly awful article - http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/29/feminism-needs-new-intellectual-voice

Despite the authors oxbridge education, being assistant editor of the LRB and calling for a new intellectialism for the '4th wave', still has less of an understanding what 2nd and 3rd wave feminism means than a 5 minitue glance at wikipedia would teach.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Kaka Tim
The 2024 General Election prediction thread - Who is the Urban 75 Ballot Box Nostradamus?
2 3 4 5
Replies
125
Views
5K
MrsArcanum
MrsArcanum
savoloysam
The Urban 75 Political Party
Replies
14
Views
697
SpineyNorman
SpineyNorman
ice-is-forming
The urban party
2 3 4 5
Replies
133
Views
5K
ViolentPanda
ViolentPanda
WhyLikeThis
Urban, you are tasked to fix the Met Police force!
2 3 4
Replies
92
Views
4K
likesfish
likesfish
friedaweed
The urban index of unhinged nutjobs...
Replies
14
Views
1K
not a trot
not a trot
Back
Top Bottom