to think we all need to take responsibility for challenging islamophobia

[karbonfootprint]

It is so common and so hurtful to some of our fellow citizens. I don't think any of us should let it pass when we hear it, in private, but especially in public.

Our male neighbour totally ignores us when we say hello and pass him in stair.

He isn't Muslim. Just rude.

The people who are trying to jam Muslimophobia (wrong) and Islam-criticism into the same category and silence them all as bigotry are smuggling a thoroughly autocratic agenda under the cover of a supposed liberal pluralism.

OTheHuge one of the most succinct and true things I've read on this thread.

fanjo when you say 'us' do you mean you and your husband? (I'm assuming you're a woman with a male partner here) That does make him rude.
That's not quite the same as saying hello to your husband and ignoring you, is it? That would be rude and sexist.

He ignores me more

Inkanta just on Friday, when all the atrocities were happening and the usual 'it's not Islam, Islam is a religion of peace' nonsense was being trotted out, I said to dh that it felt like pre-war appeasement in the 30s.

It's a very nice convenient lie, but it's a lie. These people are Muslims, and they do what they do very clearly in the name of Islam. Their interpretation of the texts may be different from other people's but it's actually, bonkers and evil though it may be, a very seriously considered and detailed interpretation. Just because it differs from nicer, more peaceful strands only makes them 'un-Islamic' in the most subjective way. On a factual, practical level it's as much part of Islam as any other strand.

But why let facts get in the way when the non Islamic world can tell itself this lie and carry on in its fluffy liberal bubble without having to get its hands dirty with the messy business of anything as horrible as disagreeing with people, disapproving of them , let alone doing anything about it. And the Muslim world can tell itself this lie and avoid having to take any responsibility or action.

Then he's possibly being sexist. Of course there could be a personal reason for it.
No one is saying that only, or all, Muslims are sexist. Just that particular man mentioned was displaying rude/ sexist behaviour and it could be linked to his religious beliefs concerning interactions with the opposite sex.

He isn't Muslim. Just rude.

What's your point? That if he were Muslim, his behaviour wouldn't be rude?

Oh dear comparing isis to the nazis. Yes they are both barbaric but the nazis never went after fellow nazis! Isis are killing more Muslims than any other group. If anything it is the reverse situation where Muslims are becoming slowly demonised like the Jews were in the 1920s onwards.

Isis are essentially a political construct supported by Saudi and western factions.

Mistress are you Nigel farage? Your post on immigration reads just like a ukip leaflet I read before the election.

It is good to question/criticise/debate Islam. What is not good is to demonise all Muslims many of whom have nothing to do with isis.

nazis never went after fellow nazis!

Gregor Strasser and Ernst Rohm are on the phone. They'd like the back of their shirts repaired, please.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives_(1934)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victims_of_the_Night_of_the_Long_Knives

We shouldn't weep for Strasser and Rohm: they were murderous scum, and most of the people killed in 1934 would have been hung at Nuremburg had they survived the war. But the idea of the Nazis as a monolithic ideological front doesn't stand close examination. Speer was both delusional and self-serving, and his claims to have not known about the Holocaust (and in turn, the otherwise noble Gita Sereny's excessive concern about this non-question) can't be taken seriously. But there's a hint of truth in it: not all the Nazis were bestial mass murderers (in fact, in a way the ones that weren't are more morally troubling) and there was tension, manifest in a steady stream of purges and internal putsches, between various factions within the Nazi Party.

When David Cameron says that we in Britain should become more intolerant of intolerance, apart from contradicting himself, in practical terms, what is that going to mean?

I have to say I am both pleased to read so many people's sensible views on the very real threat Islam poses to our way of life and depressed by the utter lack of Muslims defending what we are told is a religion of peace.

30 Brits dead in the name of Islam on Friday. Where is the not in my name march? Where?

Remember 'I'll ride with you' in Sydney? Where's the equivalent here by British Muslims? They need to step up to the plate or they will lose all support they enjoy here.

Mistress your post makes sense to me, with larger families etc. Also it is very hard for Moslems to give up on their faith as it is woven into their culture as well and their whole being.

I am a christian but it doesn't take over my whole life.

The whole 'I'll ride with you' effort incensed me - Muslims weren't the bloody victims of the shooting.

For many people the fear of Islam isn't so much the atrocities committed by the fringe lunatics, it's the everyday stuff like cutting bits off babies, the denial of science, the misogyny etc.

Can we mention America here. All of the above being widely practised by Christians (and indeed non-Christians) there.

Oh. Wait. Convenient blind spot on the subject. Never let that get in the way of prejudice.

We are generally happy to ignore this because lots of other Americans are white, speak English and are part of our every day culture through tv and movies. Some how 'that's different'.

I agree Stinkers but my point was that there was empathy over there, but there seems to be none evident here since the attacks on Friday.

Until more Muslims stand up to say 'THIS is what I believe', and 'I reject what is being done in my name' how can they be surprised at the spread of Islamophobia?

Also, I think a little less complaining that the West is to blame would go down well, too.

Complaining that the West is to blame for what? War in Iraq, and all that, you mean? Of course the US embassy bombing and the USS Cole attack came before the war in Iraq. So, the West might not be initially to blame, no.

But, if it's fair to say that the war exacerbated extremism, then it's fair. I'm not sure if it was actually the Iraqi war or whether Kuwaiti, Qatari (and possible Saudi) financial support and ideological backing which is responsible for the spread of Sunni extremism. But, it has spread. That's for sure.

It is hypocrisy and double standards that have fuelled and provided 'evidence' for fundamentalism. Extremism is driven by political rhetoric, perceived injustice, lack of opportunity, poverty and inequality. So what are we doing internationally to address those issues? Or do we just believe that everyone will accept this around the world without questioning it?

As above, we criticise and label one group because they are Muslim and tar them all with the same brush. Yet the other group because they fit nicely with our world view and have more of a shared history we don't apply the same standards.

We need to acknowledge that we should be targeting issues universally and internationally, rather than only doing it in countries we see as 'soft targets' as such.

There are plenty of things going on in Russia and China and the US that are happening in the Middle East and North Africa and beyond that we are quite happy to ignore, because it comes down to economics and political influence.

We are tolerant of intolerance if it helps to line our pockets.

Complaining that the West is to blame for what?

There's a racism of low expectations in some of this. The allies toppled Nazi or Nazi-backed governments all over Europe in 1944 to 1945, and more dramatically toppled the Japanese government by dropping nuclear weapons on large cities. They didn't expect, and didn't get, civil wars: those countries which had been fascist dictatorships (West Germany, Italy) returned to democracy within a few years, occupied countries (France, Holland, Belgium, etc) rather faster, and it only required ten years before the Americans pulled out of Japan. Japan has not, to my knowledge, degenerated into lawless anarchy.

So in the case of the second Iraq war, no-one thought that Saddam was a good ruler, a lot of middle eastern peoples argued he was a murderous despot, and there were constant cries for better governance. Topple the bad ruler, install a democratic regime, job done. Now it's argued that Iraq and its surroundings are so inherently unstable that the best thing to do is to leave a genocidal madman in charge because that way the trains will run on time sorry, because that way unemployment will be kept down by building Autobahn, sorry shoot enough Shia to keep the Sunnis happy, and vice versa.

So America's failing was in not thinking badly enough of Muslims in the areas, and not realising that left to their own devices they'd rather fight protracted civil wars than develop their economy. Cynics may say they told us so, but it's a real case where optimism is being punished. We now know that Muslim countries in the middle east require violent strong men to stop them blowing each other up in mosques, but it's a lesson that had you argued it in 1980 the Guardian would have called you racist.

i.ytimg.com/vi/331aMjOmfr0/hqdefault.jpg

I find this picture sums up a lot to me.

One man's freedom fighter is another's terrorist.

Until we acknowledge that, I don't know where we go from here, except continue a cycle of violence. The trouble is, it needs both sides to want to do that acknowledging and I don't think anyone is anywhere near that.

If Bitterlake is still on iplayer its a thought provoking film.

I don't think that's quite right. The US invested heavily in Europe and Japan by way of the Marshall Plan(s), and all but ran their governments for them. That's precisely what it did not do in either Libya or Iraq. You could say, citing Marshall as the example, that the US has known for some 70 years, how to stabilise a bombed economy, and for some reason has chosen not to do it in either of these Arab cases. Why would the US do that? Perhaps Arab chaos is more palatable than Japanese or European chaos?

There are posts all over MN from Muslims expressing anger despair and sorrow over the terrorist attacks.

There is a march being organised here.

Perhaps Arab chaos is more palatable than Japanese or European chaos?

The US was more worried about the march of Communism that it is about the march of ISIS. Maybe that will change.

That's excellent.

The US invested heavily in Europe and Japan by way of the Marshall Plan

True, but Japan and Germany's economies were completely destroyed by years of war and the damage done in ending it. Iraq and Libya are huge oil exporters, and the oil production infrastructure was fixed. Europe and Japan needed aid because with very limited ability to export there was no money (Britain of course received a huge amount of Marshall Aid and then squandered it on post-imperial delusion, but that's another story). But there were massive flows of money to Libya and Iraq; the problem is that the governments (and I use the word loosely) weren't interested in spending it wisely.

If the Americans had imposed ten years of running the government plus a constitution written on yellow legal pads by some interns, as happened in Japan, you can imagine the howls of "colonialism".