[lbo-talk] Islamophobogenic NY Times coverage

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

On 10/10/06, Carl Remick <carlremick at hotmail.com> wrote:
> [The NY Times article below is disturbing because of both its topic -- the
> mainstreaming of Islamophobia in Europe -- and its own undisguised
> anti-Islam POV.  The piece seems designed to encourage the very bigotry it
> purports to decry.  The world's wobbly feeling these days is definitely the
> wheels coming off western civ.]
>
> October 11, 2006
>
> Across Europe, Worries on Islam Spread to Center
>
> By DAN BILEFSKY and IAN FISHER
>
> BRUSSELS, Oct. 10 — Europe appears to be crossing an invisible line
> regarding its Muslim minorities: more people in the political mainstream are
> arguing that Islam cannot be reconciled with European values.
>
> "You saw what happened with the pope," said Patrick Gonman, 43, the owner of
> Raga, a funky wine bar in downtown Antwerp, 25 miles from here. "He said
> Islam is an aggressive religion. And the next day they kill a nun somewhere
> and make his point.
>
> "Rationality is gone."
>
> Mr. Gonman is hardly an extremist. In fact, he organized a protest last week
> in which 20 bars and restaurants closed on the night when a far-right party
> with an anti-Muslim message held a rally nearby.
>
> His worry is shared by centrists across Europe angry at terror attacks in
> the name of religion on a continent that has largely abandoned it, and
> disturbed that any criticism of Islam or Muslim immigration provokes threats
> of violence.
>
> For years those who raised their voices were mostly on the far right. Now
> those normally seen as moderates — ordinary people as well as politicians —
> are asking whether once unquestioned values of tolerance and
> multiculturalism should have limits.
<snip>
> "A lot of people, progressive ones — we are not talking about nationalists
> or the extreme right — are saying, 'Now we have this religion, it plays a
> role and it challenges our assumptions about what we learned in the 60's and
> 70's,' " said Joost Lagendik, a Dutch member of the European Parliament for
> the Green Left Party, who is active on Muslim issues.
>
> "So there is this fear," he said, "that we are being transported back in a
> time machine where we have to explain to our immigrants that there is
> equality between men and women, and gays should be treated properly. Now
> there is the idea we have to do it again."
>
> Now Europeans are discussing the limits of tolerance, the right with
> increasing stridency and the left with trepidation.

Europeans have clearly come up against the limits of political liberalism.

Generally, the principle of non-discrimination has come to be applied,
if unevenly, to conditions that are held to be beyond individual
choice: sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, disability, and so
forth.  But that is not the case with a matter of choice, and religion
is thought to be a matter of choice unlike the aforementioned
categories.

And there is nothing in political liberalism that negates the state's
right not to admit any newcomer.

On either point, native-born, non-Musilm European leftists are not all
reliable allies of European Muslims, native-born or immigrant.
Leftist opinions about Muslims aren't all that higher than centrist
opinions about them, and leftists can very well be job protectionists,
too.
-- 
Yoshie
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