Antisemitism
Semites are the people belonging to the Semitic race, mainly Jews and Arabs.During the 20th century, an antisemitic movement was spread and applied against the Jews. This event left a deep scar on modern human history that the world is still recovering from.
Surprisingly, the popular memory is short. A new antisemitic sentiment is quickly spreading across Europe. Muslim and Arab immigrants are discriminated based on their race and religion. Just like Adolf Hitler, the queen of Denmark publicly stated: "Islam poses a threat and is a cause of concern".
In France and Spain, my Moroccan friends and I have stories of our own experiences of racist acts.
The big scholar Mehdi Mandjra predicted this on his book: "The 1st Civilization War", and later the same idea was reiterated by Samuel Huntington in his famous "The Clash of Civilizations".
Arabs should probably seek advice from their cousins, the Jews, and learn from their experiences to avoid the worst.
posted by Tarik @ 6:46 PM
4 Comments:
It seems Denmark have many problems with arabs/muslims.
I have recently read about some caricatures of the muslim prophet(drawn as a terrorist, kamikaze, misogyn...) published by a dannish newspaper.
Muslims, who see their prophet as a messenger of love and peace, considered them as insulting and offending and are currently pressuring the dannish government in order to publicly apologize and punish this newspaper . This is leading to an interesting debate in Europe concerning freedom of expression VS respect of beliefs...
Should the dannish government and more generaly the medias fear arab reaction and sensitivity when writing about islam or is the freedom of press above that?
As far as I am concerned, I think this wouldn't happen if arabs had strong lobbies. As you said, arabs should learn from their cousins. Jews have very important lobbies all over the world that protect their interest (say economical, political, cultural...)
But the major problem for the Arab lobby is inter-Arab disunity. This disunity is reinforced by the general discord of the Arab world, which has many states with competing interests. The Arab lobby is thus precluded from representing "the Arabs."
I don't know why is there such a discrimination between people of different skin color, belonging or religion. I am kinda sick of it, coz every time I travel with my parents, my father is looked at differently than my mother. The reason is very simple. It is becoz my mom looks a 100% European, however, my dad looks a 100% Algerian. So, we most of the time are late for our flight just because of the security stuff that my dad has to go through.
In our days we say that racism doesn't exist anymore, but in my opinion, I think it is more than it used to be, "It is implicit", which is the most dangerous aspect of racism...
I by no means want to make any arguments in favor of racism, and I am as shocked about Queen of Denmark's remarks as anybody, but - speaking as a European (not Danish though) - it seems that pretty much only times the Arab world or Islam makes it to the news or receives other media coverage back home is in conjunction with some terrorist attack. This obviously has its consequences. I would dare to guess that the general opinion in your own Muslim/Arab country about Danish people (or, say, Scandinavians to allow for also lumping nationalities together) and their religion would probably be different from what it is now if every time people heard about them it was in conjunction with something blowing up in the neighbourhood.
The little other bits and pieces that make it to media about Muslim/Arab world, is often not really fostering warm feelings either. See for example a relatively recent article in Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/14/AR2005071401030.html
talking about the poll results in selected Muslim contries regarding support for Bin Laden, al Qaeda and suicide bombings. While the percentage of people supporting violence has dropped compared to 2003 polls, I still struggle understanding the statistics: for example, the proportion that expressed confidence in the al Qaeda leader ("do you believe that bin Laden would do the right thing regarding world affairs") dropped from almost half (!) to about a quarter (!) in Morocco, and from 58 percent to 37 percent in Indonesia. Bin Laden's standing went up slightly in Pakistan, to 51 percent, and in Jordan, to 60 percent. The reason for the decline of support in some countries is arguably exactly because things started blowing up in their back yard (Indonesia for example). Jordan is now the only country where the majority surveyed - 57 percent (!) - still support terrorist acts in defense of Islam. I still find it completely puzzling, and the numbers mind-boggling, as I am sure is the case with fellow Europeans (Danish included). Maybe we are polling for different things. I don't know.
Or looking at explicit support for suicide bombings, then for example in Morocco and Indonesia 13% (!) and 15% (!!) of those surveyed said that violence against civilians is often/sometimes justified. I do not even begin to understand that, although I'd very much like to. (The poll did not ask the same question from the Europeans. Also, they did not poll Muslims in European countries - to learn what is the percentage of those supporting violence against civilians in Denmark for example)
The same poll also inquired about people's views on religion, you can look up the results at
http://pewglobal.org
Most of those surveyed in nine Western countries (United States, Britain, Canada, France, Russia, etc) said they have favorable views of Muslims, although the non-Muslims surveyed were more likely to say Islam is more violent than Christianity, Judaism or Hinduism.
The Muslims surveyed had mixed views on Christians, and anti-Jewish sentiment seems to be over-whelming - for example, the percentage of people replying that they have "favorable" or "somewhat favorable" views of Jews was 8% (sic!) in Morocco, and 13% in Indonesia. China and India rock with 28% of people having favorable or somewhat favorable views of Jews.
I'm trying to make a case here in favor of a violent Muslim world. Very far from it. My argument is that from a simple news reader's point of view, there is more supporting the fear of the Muslim world than the attacks by a few extremist groups. It's not so much maybe fear of the Muslim world as fear of the incomrehensible - and that for me is the general reported attitude of the Muslim world itself against the violence. And I'd like to understand, I really would, but all I hear on this topic from Arabs I know in the US for example does not typically go beyond constant naive wonderings and complaints about why they are singled out at the airport.
Sorry, I was *not* trying to make a case in favor of a violent Muslim world, obviously (beginning of last paragraph).
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