Ridley: Islamophobia in the West
Aug. 30th, 2006 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatarperegrineI was going to write about Yvonne Ridley's talk on Islamophobia, but I don't feel I have much to say. I agree with a colleague who said Ridley just didn't add much to the dialogue. Her speech consisted largely of outrageously unsubstantiated claims that most of the audience agreed with anyway, and that was about that. It didn't really fuel intellectual discussion.
There's not much to refute when everything she said was couched in vague sentiments like "we should develop a zero-tolerance approach to anyone who'd try to dilute our faith" without specifying who is diluting the faith or (more importantly) exactly what a zero-tolerance approach would mean.
Much of the talk was actually from her recent article Beware the Happy Clappies, so if you did not hear her speak, reading that will give you a gist of her rhetoric.
The only major section of her speech not appearing in the article was on the Mohammed cartoon controversy. Specifically, she lifted up the Muslim world's response to that incident as an ideal display of Muslim values and solidarity. She said that the Muslim response sent the message "We can be strong; you can only push us so far." As proof of this she said gleefully that "You'd have to have an editor with suicidal tendencies to publish a cartoon [like those] again." I found this rather stunning. I don't know any Westerners who feel they have a more positive understanding of Islam as a result of the Mohammed cartoon controversy.
Harking back to my blog entry about about pacifism in Islam, she also said, "Muslims are not pacifists. We're peace-loving people, but we're not pacifists."
There's not much to refute when everything she said was couched in vague sentiments like "we should develop a zero-tolerance approach to anyone who'd try to dilute our faith" without specifying who is diluting the faith or (more importantly) exactly what a zero-tolerance approach would mean.
Much of the talk was actually from her recent article Beware the Happy Clappies, so if you did not hear her speak, reading that will give you a gist of her rhetoric.
The only major section of her speech not appearing in the article was on the Mohammed cartoon controversy. Specifically, she lifted up the Muslim world's response to that incident as an ideal display of Muslim values and solidarity. She said that the Muslim response sent the message "We can be strong; you can only push us so far." As proof of this she said gleefully that "You'd have to have an editor with suicidal tendencies to publish a cartoon [like those] again." I found this rather stunning. I don't know any Westerners who feel they have a more positive understanding of Islam as a result of the Mohammed cartoon controversy.
Harking back to my blog entry about about pacifism in Islam, she also said, "Muslims are not pacifists. We're peace-loving people, but we're not pacifists."
Re: Hi again
Date: 2006-09-01 07:41 pm (UTC)QC