#islamophobia ≠ racism against arabs

[jewelleria]

friendly reminder that the term “islamophobia” was popularized by iranian fundamentalists who intended it to be used as a tool of manipulation. those who flippantly throw around the term as an accusation of racism against muslims forget that there is no such thing as a muslim race—just like there is no such thing as a christian race. christianity and islam are both belief systems, and those belief systems are practiced by people across every ethnicity.

unlike judaism, christianity and islam are religions that rely on proselytism (the practice of converting others) to survive. criticism of christianity, and of its ideas that have the potential to be dangerous to free and democratic societies, is never labeled as racism. the idea that critiquing a system of beliefs is somehow racist or xenophobic is preposterous.

so why is it deemed okay to slap an accusation of “islamophobia” onto anyone who dares question the morality of concepts like jihad (‘holy war’ against non-believers)?

criticizing islam is not criticizing the entire arab race—it’s questioning a system of ideas. it’s asking whether free and open societies can afford to accept and promote religious ideals that allow for violent, oppressive, and imperialist interpretations.

and, in case it wasn’t clear, if you read this post and immediately jump to accuse me of being anti-muslim or islamophobic, you’re part of the problem.

“for muslims,” says sam harris, “muhammad is the greatest person who has ever lived. unfortunately, he did not behave like jesus or buddha—at all. it sort of matters that he tortured people and cut their heads off and took sex slaves, because his example is meant to inspire his followers for all time.”

just some food for thought.

[socialistsephardi]

[documenting-apartheid]

JUNE 21 2024- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) is calling on law enforcement authorities to investigate the attempted murder of a Palestinian mother and her two young children as a hate crime.

On May 19th, a Texas woman attempted to drown two Palestinian children and their mother in a pool. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-Texas) is calling on law enforcement authorities to investigate the incident as a hate crime.

"The alleged attack (Euless PD report 24-00022036) reportedly occurred on Sunday, May 19th, at the family’s apartment complex swimming pool area.  Mrs. H, the mother, who wears hijab (Islamic head scarf) and modest swimwear, was watching her children in the shallow end of the pool when a White American woman entered the swimming pool area." "The alleged attacker reportedly approached the mother with racist interrogations then jumped into the swimming pool and grabbed the children to the deep end of the pool to allegedly drown them." "The mother reported jumping into the pool to save her children. According to the mother, her 6-year-old-son was able to escape, but her petite 3-year-old daughter was unable. The alleged attacker snatched off the mother’s head scarf and used it to beat the mother as well as kicking her to keep her away while forcing her daughter’s head underwater." "Mrs. H stated that an African American man helped rescue her daughter from the attacker and more people gathered and witnessed. Cuffed and taken away by the police officer, the attacker reportedly shouted to a bystander woman who was calming the mother down “Tell her I will kill her, and I will kill her whole family.”

"A recent CAIR report says it received more than 8,000 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian in 2023 – a 56% increase over previous year - and the highest the number has been in 28 years"

[noneedforbloodpressure]

Community organizing and solidarity would have been a requirement regardless of the outcome of the US 2024 election, but in the wake of the turnout we got, it is ESPECIALLY important.

More than anything else we have to stand together to protect each other, especially the most vulnerable members of our societies. When you are at a loss for what to do, know that you can always look out for one another.

This is your responsibility: stand with your Jewish and Muslim neighbors, with your Black neighbors and other neighbors of color, your LGBTQ+ neighbors, your disabled neighbors, your immigrant neighbors, your poor neighbors, your neighbors who are women. Stand with these groups even when they are not your neighbors - even if they live halfway across the world. We are citizens of the greater world, not just our hometowns and countries, remember that. Defend the rights of marginalized people and protect them from bigotry even when you disagree with them; even when you may condemn an individual marginalized person’s actions for one reason or another. Understand that human rights are unconditional, even if you hate someone or they hate you.

Seek to treat people with compassion. Look internally and put in the work to unlearn your biases and to shift from an individualist to community oriented mindset. Refuse to see people as monoliths, and if you have done harm, work to netter yourself so you will not do so again. The people you hurt may not trust or like you, but put in the work anyways - stand with them anyways - because not only is this the right thing to do, but it is a matter of survival. And in all of that, treat yourself with compassion too. It is easy to despair. It is easy to rage at nothing and everything. It is hard to keep moving, to keep your heart open, to keep caring. It takes work. (And, for the record that work does not mean ignoring or suppressing your anger, grief, or despair. It does not mean your anger, grief, or despair is invalid or unreasonable. That work means learning to deal with them in healthy ways so that you are not controlled by them).

So grieve, reach out, stand together. Be better than what you were. Keep putting one foot in front of the other. The future comes, and we cannot weather it alone. We are stronger together.

[cairamelcoffee]

An Arab undergrad at Stanford was injured in a hit & run earlier today. The driver, a zionist who previously harassed SJP members at their campus protests, told the student, "fuck you and your people."

The student is in a local hospital being treated for his injuries. I has been over six hours since the attack, and Stanford still hasn't sent an alert to the campus to notify students of this dangerous hate crime.

via

[orchidvioletindigo]

I was reading up on different definitions of genocide and how they could be applied to Israel's actions against the Palestinians in Gaza, and basically as long as Israeli leadership keeps claiming that they're only intending to attack Hamas and no evidence can be dug up to prove otherwise, they can't legally be charged with genocide.

The rest of us can easily infer that that's what they're doing because the aim of the state of Israel has always been to take as much of Palestine as possible with as few Palestinians in it as possible, but the International Criminal Court may not be able to nail them on charges of genocide if they're ever dragged before it unless someone slips up.

[noneedforbloodpressure]

The screenshots attached are from this NPR article, not the CNN one attached - both are worth reading!

After the White House cancelled the annual Iftar due to Arab and Muslim Americans collectively rejecting the invitations, the WH turned it into a small ‘meeting’ with six Muslim Americans including an Imam. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, a physician from Chicago who had traveled to Gaza earlier this year with a delegation of doctors, showed up and handed Biden a letter from an 8 year old girl in Gaza. He then walked out, saying “I wanted a chance to stand up and walk away from the people making decisions the way they are walking from my people.”

[boreal-sea]

So a common argument I see is that Jews use antisemitism as a bludgeon to shut down conversations and to avoid being called out for their own bigotry.

Anyone can be a bigot. Being from a marginalized identity does not insulate you from this. So can Jews be bigoted? Yep! Ben Shapiro exists, after all.

But the things I see people "calling Jews out" for, particularly claims of fascism, racism, and Islamophobia, just aren't.

Things that are not fascism, racism or Islamophobia:

Being Jewish

Being Israeli

Living in Israel

Calling out people's antisemitism in their pro-Palestine posts

Saying Jews are indigenous to the Levant

Supporting Jewish self-determination in their homeland

Calling Hamas a terrorist organization

Calling out Hamas for the atrocities it has committed for the past several decades against both Israelis and Palestinians

Calling Oct 7th an act of terrorism

Pointing out that the history of the Levant is complicated

Calling out the governments of surrounding Arab countries for their long history of antisemitism

Asking for safety on college campuses

[rotzaprachim]

I’m going to disagree with a little thing. I don’t think it’s easy to be pro-Palestine and against antisemitism, because we are all enmeshed in cultures that have Islamophobia, anti Arab racism, imperialism, AND antisemitism at their core. It’s a constant learning process and because anti-arab racism and antisemitism are embedded into these cultural contexts infinitely older than the modern state of Israel, we cannot automatically assume that any stances we hold on these issues are automatically “moral” or “pure.” I think I’m on a journey of unlearning that will go on for a long, long time. It doesn’t “cost zero dollars not to be antisemitic” because antisemitism is an extremely delicious, useful conspiracy to explain just how the world works and is central to the operational logics of conspiratorial thinking about how the world works. It will cost you a lot of dollars, just like it will cost you a lot of dollars to stand up for any other oppressed group. I don’t assume myself to be morally pure either- I have so many of my own biases, including racism, Islamophobia, and a continued fight with internalized antisemitism, and we Won’t get anywhere until we can face these issues head on and interrogate the nuances. I’m so burned out on people claiming fighting any of this is easy. It’s not. Do it anyway.

[noneedforbloodpressure]

 When I say “Free Palestine” – I want it to be explicit that I want a free Palestine for everyone there, regardless of race, ethnicity, or religion. I want a free Palestine for Jewish people, Muslims, Arabs, and every other indigenous group alike. I haven’t done a good enough job at expressing that and I want to do better.

I don’t want to make this a big long post, but I would like to issue a reminder to not let blind emotion and desperation to help drive your actions. This goes especially for my fellow activists who are neither Palestinian, Jewish, Muslim, nor Arab. Remember to vet sources, learn dogwhistles, and keep an eye out for propaganda. Failing to do so can not only get innocent people killed or make the situation worse, but relying on anger/fear/guilt instead of compassion and care for others is a surefire way to lead to activist burnout. If we really want to build a world where there is peace instead of genocide and ethnic cleansing, this is our responsibility.

[noneedforbloodpressure]

An extended note on "Why do Christians support Israel then" point no. 2: The weird fundamentalist ideology mentioned above is deeply antisemitic. Fundamentalist Christians want all Jewish people to go to Israel so that when the second coming of Christ happens, they all die.

More importantly, I think it's important to watch this video in which holocaust survivor Gabor Maté explains why, exactly, "Don't Jewish people deserve a homeland to be safe" does not justify the suffering of the Palestinian people: https://twitter.com/Resist_05/status/1712402483115614498

No justice, no peace.

This post is for the anon who sent me that video asking me to debunk it's claims so they can be better equipped against accusations of antisemitism.

Sorry, I won't post the video since I refuse to have that man on my blog but I can give you common Zionist talking points and the illogicality behind it.

To preface: most of the questions Zionists will ask you are a trap, and will make you fall into a "rabbit hole" (as I was once told when I was younger), as we try to apply their reasoning. My advice is to ALWAYS center the humanity of Palestinians. For example, when a Zionist says:

"Don't Jews deserve a homeland to be safe?"

It fundamentally ignores the core issue: Palestinians are being raped, murdered, and expelled from their homes so that the establishment of this so called "homeland" may exist. When people ask this to you, I personally advise saying something like:

Why must Palestinians suffer for the establishment of this homeland?

Always recenter to the issue at hand—the inhumane removal and treatment of Palestinians.

"Palestine belongs to the Jews and Not Muslims"

The whole premise of this claim is flawed—there is a weird tendency to equate Arab/Palestinian=Muslim when it just is like. Completely untrue. There are Palestinian Christians, Bethlehem is famously a Christian city, who have been there for centuries. There are Palestinian Jews, who have been there for centuries. There are Palestinian Muslims, who have been there for centuries. My grandpa told me stories of how he would turn on lamps for his Jewish neighbors in Al-Khalil (or Hebron) during Shabbat.

To claim that Palestine is EITHER Islamic or Jewish doesn't make any sense and completely neglects the fact that dissemination of culture has occurred for centuries, as well as the intermingling of people throughout generations. To somehow assert that for some reason, Jews and Muslims did not have ANYTHING to do with each other—did not create together, did not build families together, did not build culture together, all while being PALESTINIAN—is incredibly racist and nonsensical. "Palestinian" is not a religious identity—it's a cultural and ethnic one.

Also, it does not negate the core issue—Palestinians are being killed, removed, and tortured so that others can live on that land.

"Well what about [something about partitioning land]?"

Honestly like, who cares about the partitioning throughout the 1900 and early 2000s. Sorry, I'm not going to list the whole "partitioning" history nonsense. The whole reason "Israel" exists is because of a Mass Exodus, murder, and rape of Palestinians. Everything after that is rendered obsolete.

"Well, I heard Palestinians allied with Hitler"

I don't know how to tell you this but Palestine was under British Control. No they didn't.

"Israel withdrew from the Gaza and left them to themselves and they put Hammas in charge"

Oh yeah, Israel totally left Gaza, that's why Gazans' water, electricity, internet, and food is completely controlled by Israel (this is sarcasm, Israel still controls basic life in Gaza).

Go back to centering the idea that no human deserves to be shoved into an open-air prison, starved, and controlled. Did you know that the Zionist Entity controls the amount of water Gazans receive, as well as counting their calories to ensure they don't have enough energy on a day to day basis?

"I heard Israel asked Arabs to stay"

Show them these papers and videos when they say this:

If you can't show them these videos, check in the next point what to say.

"Well the Palestinians left of their own will in 1948"

Palestinians in 1948 didn't "leave." They had heard of how the Zionist Entity was slaughtering Palestinians en masse. Women especially heard stories of rape and sexual violence. They fled from *violence*. Again, from an earlier post, that this was a calculated effort on the Zionist Entity's part to try and get them to "leave" on their own and "abandon" their houses so that they can come in and say "hey, they left on their own so, we can come in and take their houses now."

Anyways, the idea that once you leave your house you can't ever come back to it is incredibly odd to me as an argument on Zionists' part. Like if you leave your house right now to go to the grocery store and you come back and see someone in your house and they're like "sorry dude, this is my house now, you left so that means you can't come back," you'd be like, "what the hell!" It would be even weirder if everyone agreed with the guy who took your house, which is what happened to Palestinians.

In Al-Khalil, or Hebron, Palestinians always have to have someone stay in their house or else a Settler will come in and take it from them. So it still goes on today as well.

This is not a point, but when that one person in the video said "Arabs lived under Israeli rule" and showed a clip of a bustling city with mountains, I'm pretty sure that was Amman, Jordan, not Palestine lol. Those buildings in the mountains look like how downtown Amman builds the residential areas. Could be wrong tho.

"There are no Jews living under Palestinian rule in Palestine"

What is this, some sort of gotcha argument? What are they trying to prove, the racist (obviously false) notion that Palestinians hate Jews as a whole? How do they know no Palestinian Jew lives in Gaza? Also, Settlers in Palestinian Territory exist??? I had never heard this claim before, its incredibly stupid lol. You're automatically a citizen of "Israel" if you're Jewish, whether or not you live in or outside of Palestinian Territories. So of course technically they don't live under Palestinian rule, they're granted full rights as an "Israeli" citizen automatically!

Go back to talking about the inhumane treatment of Palestinians, I wouldn't bring up the above counterpoint unless they really won't let it go since the main point is mistreatment.

"Why are Christians supporting Israel then, if it's a secular issue rather than a religious one?"

Well actually for a couple reasons:

Oil interests and regional control of goods (White People Supporting White People).

Weird fundamentalist ideology where they want to enact the second coming of Christ.

And finally because they are racist and don't think Arab Christians deserve to live. They literally bombed a 1500+ year church the other day. Why would (White) Christians cosign that.

Anyways, its a stupid argument again, because it forgets the core issue of Palestinians dying and being displaced.

In summary, always go back to the point of centering the Palestinians being displaced, tortured, and murdered, no matter the argument a Zionist gives you.

[xclowniex]

Okay so, there has been misinformation spread, which I myself had done with one post which I've since revoked and turned off reblogs, so I want to get some facts straight about the Amsterdam pogrom.

The "fuck arabs" chant

Some, including myself, were assuming it was a football chant to support the Israeli soccer team. The video mainly shared was one with the start cut off and background music which to a lot of different Hebrew speakers, did sound like the chant, and to many others sounded nothing like it.

A video from a different perspective of the chant, as well as longer and without background music was shared, and they are saying "[something] and we'll win, we will fuck the arabs" - The Hebrew word used Nezayen has two meanings "fuck" and "defeat". So far there has been no additional context to say which meaning it is. Link for the new video

At best, the chant was in reference to winning the war against hamas, which still deranged to do that outside of Israel and honestly not super out of character for drunk football fans. Still not good, but also not the worst case.

At worst, it was racist chanting, which is even more fucking deranged.

This does not mean an attack was at all warranted.

Firstly, looking at the sheer number of people attacked, it was more than just those who chanted, meaning people who did not participate who were jewish or Israeli were harmed.

Secondly, there have been reported of jewish owned businesses being broken into.

Two things can be true at the same time. What the chanters did was fucked up, and the attacks were not warranted, and the attacks have gone much further than just those who chanted. A much more proportional reponsed would've been to chant back, not escalate and attacks jews and Israelis in general.

Jews in Amsterdam are being told to stay inside and not wear any visible symbols of Jewishness if they have to go out. This shows that it extends far past just retaliation against the chanters.

What we are not going to do is A) assume a group of people, which is a super small amount of jews worldwide and Israelis, represent the opinions of jews and Israelis world wide and B) Assume that every arab and muslim want to attack and harm all jews

You can and should, criticize both the Israeli and Jewish chanters and the Arab and Muslim attackers.

You should not veer into antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti arab racism.

[violexides]

9/11 [handshake] holy fucking bingle: 

people (especially white queer people) diverting a conversation about America’s Islamophobia and racism to instead make jokes & center their own struggles in a dialogue that is distinctly not about them. 

like i have found the sheer comedy of “holy fucking bingle” and “i stay silly :3″ extremely funny, and i think there is a lot of conversation to be had about exclusionist discourse, 

but i think there is a strong LACK of conversation about the Islamophobia and the racism that is prevalent in the TSA. with 9/11 people tend to joke about it in a way to be like a “gotcha nationalists!” but the people making those jokes are majority non-Arab, non-Muslim, non-Middle-Eastern, just unrelated people making light out of an event that has killed and harmed and affected millions of people. me included. 

it shouldn’t feel like a constant fight to get people to fucking listen to Muslims Arabs & Middle-Easterners when we talk about our struggles in this country. however I feel like especially in the queer community, a lot of people would rather talk about their experiences with homophobia than address any of the biases and stigma they uphold against us. 

look i am not going to shame people for laughing at holy fucking bingle, i don’t think that’s the point here. but i need people to care about the Islamophobia of this country. I need people who aren’t Muslims to think about why they feel as if Islamophobic policies hurt them more than actual Muslims, why they hide behind their own marginalized identity to shield the fact that they have Islamophobic and racist beliefs, etc. 

i’m tired of knowing that literal children are on the No Fly List and people are ignoring it to talk about exclusionism. honestly. 

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Maya Yang at The Guardian:

Rashida Tlaib, the Palestinian American congresswoman, has accused a political cartoonist of racism after he depicted her next to a pager exploding days after such devices blew up across Lebanon in what the Arab country has said was an attack by Israel. A statement from the Democratic US House representative also expressed concern that the cartoon by Henry Payne would “incite more hate and violence against Arab and Muslim communities”. “And it makes everyone less safe,” Tlaib said of the cartoon – published by the Republican-friendly National Review – which also showed her thinking how “odd” it was for the nearby pager to explode. Pagers had been a preferred method of Hezbollah members in conflict with Israel, before such devices exploded across Lebanon recently. “It’s disgraceful that the media continues to normalize this racism against our communities,” she said.

The congresswoman’s statement about the publication of the cartoon “Tlaib Pager Hamas” came after many users on the social media platform X had condemned it as anti-Arab as well as Islamophobic. Among them was the mayor of Dearborn, Michigan, Abdullah Hammoud, who wrote on X: “Absolutely disgusting. Anti-Arab bigotry & Islamophobia have become normalized in our media.” The mayor added: “At what point will people call this out?” Other users condemned Payne’s cartoon directly on his own X profile. One wrote: “You should be ashamed,” and another user said: “What the fuck does she have to do with the war crimes of Israel terrorizing the [Lebanese] people? It’s because she’s Arab you thought it was okay to draw this shit?”

Payne is a political cartoonist for the Detroit News, one of two major daily newspapers in the city, which is Tlaib’s hometown. The Guardian sent him a request for comment on Friday. The slew of pager and walkie-talkie explosions to which the cartoon alludes have killed dozens of people while wounding thousands more, including children. The Lebanese government and Hezbollah have blamed Israel for the attacks. Israel has stopped short of claiming responsibility for the deadly attacks. However, in their wake, its defense minister complimented the Mossad – the Israeli intelligence agency – for its “great achievements”.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) fearlessly calls out Detroit News cartoonist Henry Payne’s racist and Islamophobic cartoon depicting her with an exploding pager.

[cluelessbees]

I just wanna say it’s really important that when you talk about the prejudice against Palestinians. It’s so important that you don’t just say islamophobia.

It’s also anti-Arabism/racism.

In America specifically Arabs have been erased as a racial group and people tend to forget that a lot of the Islamophobic stereotypes at its core is based on anti-Arabism. This erasure is partly why people don’t realise their own racism towards Arabs.

Also,

Not all Palestinians are Muslims too.

Because this isn’t about religion. No matter how much Zionists want to push that narrative. It’s not a religious thing of Muslims vs Jewish people. It’s Isra*l attacking and genociding Palestinians.

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

trying to talk to zionists is like trying to explain the Cold War to infants.

The Holocaust wasn’t bad specifically because the people dying were largely jewish, it was bad because it was genocide.

Being Jewish does not mean you’re incapable of committing genocide any more than it means you’re incapable of committing murder, but that is the claim being made. The idea that it’s antisemitic to compare the genocide of Palestinians to the genocide of the Jewish people during the Holocaust is dependent on you believing that the Holocaust only occurred because the primary target was the Jews.

In an essence it is depicting the Jewish people as weak and innocent, incapable of committing crimes against humanity based solely on their ethnicity and/or religion. That is antisemitic for the same reason it’s misogynistic to portray women as demure and fragile and pure.

When people say “never again” it is not intended to simply mean we won’t let Germany turn to nazism again. It is intended to mean that we will stand up to genocide, if nothing else when we are made aware of it.

It isn’t “complicated” simply because the ethnostate is made up largely of ethnic Jews (hm how did it get to be that way). It isn’t “complicated” simply because the victims are primarily Arabs.

It’s simple.

It’s genocide.

If you only stand up for antisemitism and endorse islamophobia and racism, don’t try to pick a moral high ground.