the illusion of hope
Via Razib, here is a study (pdf) which compares attitudes towards religious and cultural homogeneity:
Britons seem more bothered by notions of culture (‘customs and traditions’) than religion. Around 25% agreed with the need for shared religion while this number nearly doubled when the question was about shared customs and traditions. In France this difference was even more noticeable.
Humanists of the Renaissance period [...] often criticized scientists for adulterating Classical knowledge with Arabic/Islamic influences. Thus, the standard narrative of the Renaissance paints an erroneous picture that the Islamic interlude was merely a vessel for preserving and then passing out ancient Greeko-Roman science to the Europeans. Instead, there is no such thing as preserved Greek science. It had been thoroughly transformed during the intervening centuries and it was the new science that was of any use, not some preserved version of it. This may be common knowledge, but I think this distinction between humanists and scientists is really interesting.
Kosovo has declared independence from Serbia:
Serbia called the declaration illegal and its ally Russia denounced it, saying it threatened to touch off a new conflict in the Balkans. Russia and Serbia called for an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, which met later Sunday.
In the capital, Pristina, the mood was jubilant. Thousands of ethnic Albanians braved subfreezing temperatures to ride on the roofs of their cars, singing patriotic songs and chanting: “KLA! KLA!” the acronym for the now-disbanded rebel Kosovo Liberation Army. They waved American flags alongside the red Albanian banner imprinted with a black, double-headed eagle.
Unsurprisingly, Russia has attacked the move, backing Serbia’s complaint that Kosovo is a ‘false state’ and urging the UN clarify its position. Some analysts predict Russia will retaliate by declaring its support for breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia in Georgia. Russia must be worried for other reasons too, the most obvious being the long struggle for independence by the Chechen people. No surprise then that Chechen separatists have welcomed Kosovo’s declaration of independence.
Another step, then, to the return of the Cold War? Perhaps, but I will let other better placed people make that claim.
Europe, meanwhile, remains divided. Britain, France and Germany (the most powerful countries in the EU), are expected to give their full support for the deceleration of independence. Spain, Greece and Romania lead the move against giving any support. I am sure Spain must be most alarmed, given the long fight for independence by some of its provinces, most prominently the Basque region.
China must also be taking a look closely (given Tibet, Taiwan and its Muslim dominated western regions); it has already rejected Kosovo’s push for unilateral independence. I suspect India and Indonesia, struggling with their own separatist movements, must also be worried, together with numerous other states around the world. Some are talking of a so-called ‘domino affect’.
Then there is the inevitable ‘Muslim’ question. Kosovo has declared itself a ‘multiethnic’ state, and is wanting to model itself on secular and democratic lines, but I don’t think anyone can dismiss the problems it will face in terms of communal harmony. The usual suspects have expressed their ‘concerns’ over a Muslim state inside Europe and no doubt their heads may explode at the thought of the United States supporting the creation of a (nominally) Muslim nation carved out of a (nominally) Christian one. Serbs, meanwhile, will no doubt continue to portray themselves as defenders of Europe against a platform for Muslim extremism. Further (and this is to be expected in an election year in the US), concern has been expressed as to whether Kosovo’s independence is bad for Israel. Opinion in Israel, however, appears to be divided on Kosovo. Aqoul, however, have a different take on the Muslim-Kosovo connection:
Lastly, I wonder what affect any military intervention in Kosovo (if it comes to that) will have on the major anti-war movement in the UK? The left part of the Stop The War Coalition are long term critics of Anglo-American intervention in the Balkans, in some cases going right back to the earlier Bosnia-Serb conflict. Somehow I don’t see the Muslim segment of the Coalition being so vocal in calling for a halt to military action which may, ultimately, end up supporting a Muslim people.
The European states with large Muslim populations do exercise a modicum of care in their foreign policies towards Turkey, Algeria, and the other regions of the world from which their Muslim immigrants have come. They do not, however, allow it to determine their foreign policy, and they need not: Muslim opinion about “homeland” politics is, as we have shown, divided. Britain went to war in Iraq in 2003 despite its Muslim community; France did not, partly due to its earlier ties with Iraq and to the Muslim populations in France, but also due to its belief that war was not the way to resolve the Saddam question. Germany’s refusal to go to war in 2003 had more to do with the German population’s references than with those of its (largely disenfranchised) Muslim community. When considerations of power and threat come into play, the views of a divided, strategically weak community are not generally considered.
[...]Without attempting a thorough analysis of Europe’s relations with the Islamic states, a topic far beyond the confines and purposes of this
article, it should be noted that the European states have not made any effort to accommodate or accept the more extreme Islamist goals of certain international movements which claim Islam as the basis for their ideology and goals (e.g. al-Qa’ida), and therefore our primary point remains valid. Muslims also have other disadvantages to organizing: Islam cannot claim to be a “natural” resident and institution of Western and Central Europe; Muslims therefore face a substantial hurdle to attaining acceptance and legitimacy. Many Muslims arrived as guest workers, whom most in Europe (at least originally) thought would return to their countries of origin. Further, Muslims have often faced strident racism; their homes have been fire-bombed, individuals have been drowned in rivers by Neo-Nazis, and occasionally brutally murdered.110 Such factors obviously create barriers to organization. Yet the characteristics of the immigrants—the fact that they are immigrants from different countries practicing a decentralized religion with very different traditions—works against the creation of a unified Islamic movement in any Western European country.
The above can be contrasted to the rantings of pundits like The Failed Disc Jockey. Of course, unlike other ‘academic’ reports, such a measured report will not get front page coverage. This says a lot about how the news agenda is linked to certain political (and commercial) interests in our societies.
Related:
Free(d) speech
Sleep walking into class segregation
[T]he primary threat to democracy in Europe is not “Islamofascism”–that clunking, thuggish phrase that keeps lashing out in the hope that it will one day strike a meaning–but plain old fascism. The kind whereby mostly white Europeans take to the streets to terrorize minorities in the name of racial, cultural or religious superiority.
For fascism–and the xenophobic, racist and nationalistic elements that are its most vile manifestations–has returned as a mainstream ideology in Europe. Its advocates not only run in elections but win them. They control local councils and sit in parliaments. In Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France and Italy, hard-right nationalist and anti-immigrant parties regularly receive more than 10 percent of the vote. In Norway it is 22 percent; in Switzerland, 29 percent. In Italy and Austria they have been in government; in Switzerland, where the anti-immigrant Swiss People’s Party is the largest party, they still are.
This is not new. From Austria to Antwerp, Italy to France, fascists have been performing well at the polls for more than a decade. Nor are they shy about their bigotry. France’s Jean-Marie Le Pen has described the Nazi gas chambers as a “detail of history”; Austria’s Jörg Haider once thanked a group of Austrian World War II veterans, including former SS officers, for “stick[ing] to their convictions despite the greatest opposition.” But the attacks of 9/11, the bombings in Spain and Britain and the riots in France gave the hard right new traction. The polarizing effects of terrorism facilitated the journey of hard-right agendas from the margins to the mainstream. Islamophobia became de rigueur. Recently German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a Christian Democrat party congress that “we must take care that mosque cupolas are not built demonstratively higher than church steeples.”
In September 2006, British novelist Martin Amis told the Times of London: “There’s a definite urge–don’t you have it?–to say, ‘the Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order.’ What sort of suffering? Not letting them travel. Deportation–further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they’re from the Middle East or from Pakistan…. Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children.”
Related:
On the look out for an “intifada” in Europe
The myth of a pre-Muslim European utopia is nothing but the delusion of bigots
The loud wailing of racist bigots in Europe and their friends in North America (e.g. the failed disc-jockey Mark Steyn) would have you believe that before the Muslim hoard stepped foot inside their own hallowed lands, the native inhabitants were living in an egalitarian, just and harmonious utopia. Utter nonsense. Gary Younge explains:
It has become a Europe-wide habit to refer to Muslims in particular and migrants in general as though they are barbarians who must either be civilised or banished, before they pollute the egalitarian societies in which they were either born or now live. Lacking all sense of humility, self-awareness and historical literacy, Europe’s political class acts as though these communities not only manifest homophobia, sexism, antisemitism, political violence and social unrest, but also as though they invented them and introduced them to an otherwise utopian continent.
Take France. Following the recent riots there, Jacques Myard, a nationalist deputy, explained the disturbances thus. “The problem is not economic. The reality is not economic. The reality is that an anti-French ethno-cultural bias from a foreign society has taken root on French soil and it is feeding on basic anti-French racism even if the rioters have French nationality.”
The French may need to import many things – from trashy popular films to fast food – but the one thing they have long produced themselves is a culture of riotous assembly. I have seen farmers hurl livestock at police, and ducked as students converted street furniture into missiles. There is nothing foreign about rioting in France.
In Britain, the emergence of “home-grown bombers” is mentioned as though this is a new development, when in fact we have been growing our own bombers for years. We have a whole evening dedicated to burning one – it’s called Guy Fawkes night.
Interestingly, these people Younge criticises are similar to some Muslims who would have you believe there were no murderers, rapists, thugs or tyrants in Muslim societies before the advent of Western colonialism.
(Via Eteraz.)
Talk Islam
Recent Comments