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I think this is a very good discussion, actually, and very important.
Growing up in Northern Ireland, I remember many people who actually thought (and many still think) that it has something to do with being a Catholic or a Protestant. In fact, it's a political problem of oppression of Catholics by the occupying British forces. Most ordinary Protestants (like me) don't benefit from this oppression, even though we're encouraged to believe we do.
Similarly, I used to know people who really thought Palestine was about Muslims against Jews who for some reason couldn't get on (never mind the Christians in Palestine), and it's not an uncommon thought. I had to argue that in fact the problem is a political movement called Zionism, which has always imbricated itself with imperial powers who supported it for their own reasons, and which has occupied Palestine and driven out many of the residents and kept the remainder under a barbaric state of militarised oppression for decades. Many people don't even know this, and simply think that it's about religious intransigence.
Actually, many supporters of Zionism have been rabid antisemites. Winston Churchill despised what he called the "International Jew", yet was a huge supporter of the founding of a Jewish State in Palestine. Similarly, the biggest pro-Israel lobby in the US is the Christian Right, and their motive is that it will bring about Rapture, in which they believe the Jews will either convert or die and go to hell - hardly a philosemitic sentiment.
There is one issue, however: antisemitic images are still used today by the far right to legitimise their racist political programmes. The traditional demonology involved showing Jews as shadowy Orientals, devils with hook-noses and green-skin, or snakes emerging from their beards - monsters, in other words.
I don't think it's a good idea to use these images with respect to Zionism, because of the associations involved - but also because the same imagery is now being used against Muslims. The absurd accusations against Muslims, the demands that they tackle the 'evil' within, the so-called document 'discovered' implicating the Muslim Brothers in a 'plot' to conquer Europe which is a modern version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion - all of this is designed to whip up hatred and externalise all the internal antagonisms and problems of this society onto a scapegoat, precisely as antisemitism has been used in the past.
You end up bolstering the imagery and ideas that are used against you. Not only that, but you allow people to say that you are antisemitic, thus giving a huge and unnecessary propaganda coup to those whose sole effort is to say that any Muslims who stand up for themselves are somehow reactionary. For all these reasons, it's best to steer clear of that kind of imagery.
Source: Comment Submission
Blog Address: http://leninology.blogspot.com
Readers have left 3 comments.
awesome article bros
so proud tae have non muslim brothers like yourself who tell it the way it is and i luv your blog, very good :)
So convenient to have simple solutions, isn't it? So the Northern Ireland problem is all about oppression of Catholics, is it? Nothing to do with the wish of Irish Republicans to set up an oppressive theocratic state covering the whole of Ireland, the northern Protestants' wish to avoid that, and the Republican refusal to accept partition?
Can't you see the similarities with Palestine, where Hamas wants to establish an Islamic state in which Jews would have at best the rights of dhimmis?
Neither side, in Ireland nor in Palestine, is prepared to accept a secular, multicultural state, so the next best solution, two essentially monocultural states, is the inevitable result. But there will still be those, on both sides, who refuse to accept that either, and conflict is the result. In Ireland most people have tired of conflict, not so in Palestine.
I never knew of the blog, but will visit it now. thanks to the non muslims here for supporting the Muslims!
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