veiled4allah veiled4allah: not so fast, please

Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs Home
« the Saudi civil war | veiled4allah archives | Top Saudi cleric condemns terrorism »
Trackbacks (0 in, 1 out) | 

Email this link | Print this entry | RDF

Further Reading | Elsewhere | Search Options
Add this entry to your hotlist (View your hotlist)

not so fast, please

Date: December 09, 2004 | 26 Shawwal 1425 Hijriah
Blog: veiled4allah
Subjects: commentary, discrimination
Digby has a post about fundamentalism that's been getting a fair amount of attention in the lefty blogosphere. The basic point of the post is that fundamentalism is a phenomenon that transcends any one religion, and has characteristics that are common to all religions.

One of the best analyses of this is Karen Armstrong's The Battle for God, a book that I strongly recommend (see also here and reference here).

Digby then proposes a strategy that he describes as "pitt[ing] American liberalism against Islamic fundamentalism". The point of this strategy seems to be that Americans will "connect the dots" and realize that these same things are true of Christian fundamentalism.

Anna of Cairo in Digby's comments (also here) brings up the thought that immediately came to my mind as I read Digby's post:

I am way late to this post but it troubles me that the proposed solution is to attack exclusively Islamic fundamentalism and leave everyone to connect the dots and realize that it is a lot likd [sic] Christian fundamentalism. Muslims in the US already feel they are under seige and keep having to defend/explain their religion because it is diverse and we are not all fundamentalists. It seems that this will exacerbate the problems we face. There are upwards of 7 million Muslim americans. Many are liberal and would like to avoid being demonized by those who are supposed to be their friends. And when you attack Islamic fundamentalism most Americans who don't know much about Islam equate it with Islam as a whole. ...

I was not misreading Digby's intent. I don't have enough faith in Americans' ability to make the connection to make it worth the fact that a side effect of it would be that a lot of Americans would be just that much more convinced that Islam is a wicked evil religion and that "Nuke Mecca" is the ultimate answer. I know that is not the intended outcome but given the current state of understanding in the US re: the Islamic religion it is more likely than Digby's assumption that Americans would suddenly realize how evil ALL fundamentalism is and stop listening to or respecting Falwell and co.
As I said in my own comment there, Anna in Cairo, thanks for saying what I was thinking when I read this. I hope that everybody will read your comments and take them into account before jumping into this plan.

I think it would be better to speak up against Christian fundamentalism directly rather than using Islam as a proxy.

Also, given how many people in this country still believe that Iraq was behind 9/11 or had WMDs, I'm not all that confident about their ability to "connect the dots".

Update 3/11/05: Now Kos gets into the act. Only a couple voices of caution this time, and it seems more to do with not demonizing Republicans than any concern about Muslims, although a few made comments in that direction.
~ Posted by Al-Muhajabah, a member of the reality-based community, at 10:10 AM

Trackbacks

What is trackback?
You Pinged Me

Here's who's pinging me:

(no pings yet)
I Pinged You

My own entry was in reference to one or more posts elsewhere. If you'd like to add a link to your post there, add the following to the list of URLs that you ping:

Take a quick peek at the post(s) I pinged:



Further reading

Recent entries

The following is a list of the ten most recent entries in veiled4allah as of Mar 16, 2006:

View a list of all entries in veiled4allah

Related entries

This entry has been tagged as covering the following subjects: commentary discrimination. The following is a list of the ten most recent entries in Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs that share any of these tags:

A semantic analysis of this entry also suggests the following keywords to search for related content on: christian fundamentalism, islamic fundamentalism, connect dots, dots realize, anna cairo, fundamentalism, Digby, americans, digby, Americans, post, Islamic, islam, Islam, islamic, religion, christian, seems, dots, Christian, comments, here, realize, read, connect

What links here: View a list of other entries in this blog (if any) that link to this entry

To get a fuller sense of my opinions on current events, you should check out The Clipboard.

Learn more about Anti-Hijab Discrimination. We need to stand up for freedom of religion!

Or look generally for informational pages on my website tagged with commentary, discrimination

Results of Semantic Search

A semantic search of Al-Muhajabah's Islamic Blogs suggests the following as the ten entries most closely related to this entry:



Elsewhere

External resources

Check out other web pages (if any) that I've bookmarked via del.icio.us that share the same tags: commentary, discrimination

Explore reference materials from Answers.com about these subjects: commentary, discrimination

Read news stories at Common Times about these subjects: commentary, discrimination

View search results at gada.be metasearch service for these subjects: commentary, discrimination

Find books at Amazon.com on these subjects: commentary, discrimination

Other views

Check Waypath for blog entries generally related to this entry, or Technorati or Bloglines for blog entries that link to this entry.

Technorati tags: View blog entries, bookmarks and photos tagged by others with the same subjects as this entry:



Search options

     

For external resources on the topic of this entry, you can run a search for its title not so fast, please (Google, DayPop, Feedster) or keyword(s) commentary discrimination (Google, DayPop, Feedster). DayPop is a search engine similar to Google that focuses on searching news sources and blogs. Feedster searches blogs via RSS feeds.

Home
All materials in veiled4allah are written by Al-Muhajabah unless otherwise noted. You may copy, display, or distribute the materials in veiled4allah for non-commercial purposes as long as you give me proper attribution as the author.