#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]

 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.

[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.

[maddy-ferguson]

there's a post going around that says "“We need to strive to be more accepting of POC” you guys can’t even handle religion." and like. that's genuinely offensive to me lmao

[kardilier]

As an arab woman I'm so tired of Western people coming up with new words.

What the fuck is islamophobia? People being called terrorists? Guess what ALL arab people face that. I'm literally half white and my family is christian, have these two factors ever stop anyone from calling me or my arab father terrorists? or pakis? (that's a slur for pakistani people) or other slurs? no! (that's a small part of what we face)

How some people don't understand that the world isn't black and white, Arab people and people from the Middle East face racism and xenophobia. No matter what their believes are.

I acknowledge that muslim people are mistreated, but would a white muslim ever be stopped at an airport? or called any racial slurs in general? no? I wonder why.

[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.

[scarz-xo]

23 years ago 9/11 happened, I wasn't even half a year old at that time, yet it affected me in several ways, I'm brown, middle eastern, Muslim, Arabic speaker & so on, I think you get the picture.

After 9/11 happened, Muslims & Arabs/middle easterns were viewed as terrorists, hate crimes increased too, Muslims were viewed as barbaric people, savages, couldn't integrate & so on.

How did that affect us?

You can't wear hijab in France for example, you can't speak in Arabic on the bus in England without someone calling you out for being a terrorist cause now you're on English lands, you better speak their language, you could get killed in the US cause there's no gun control whatsoever.

Hate spreads like wildfire & so it did against Arabs, middle easterns, Muslims & the Arabic language.

Why am I saying all that?

Because the IDF & Israel today tried to use the buried fear of the Arabic language & the ignorance of the west about it to their own appeal:

This is a freaking calendar but to some who are already scared of the language, that's enough terrorism.

People all over social media here in the East are making fun of that stupid little stunt but for me it depends inherently on the racism, islamophobia & fear of Arabic that has been fed to the west for decades. It's literally another racist move against Arabic speakers but it's Israel so I'm not surprised.

[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. 

[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.

[noneedforbloodpressure]

Hey if I see anyone using the actions of Israel and it’s government as an excuse to be an antisemite it’s on sight - supporting Palestinians and supporting Jewish folks is not mutually exclusive. Supporting Jewish folks and supporting Muslim folks is not mutually exclusive.

[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.

[radfemsiren]

(This is about racist TikTok drama, just a heads up if you don’t care about gossip topics lol )

Y’know , I talk a lot about how white-guilt ridden liberals shut down valid criticism of any non white patriarchal society, esp middle eastern, but it’s not just them.

So many people sabotage these conversations, and it’s always racism against Arab people that I find at the root of this problem. It’s esp bad with non middle eastern Muslims that will go to the ends of the world to defend a culture they are not a part of. It’s pure entitlement to speak over members of a race or ethnicity about their own culture. This specific tiktoker is a prime example: layloqasim

There was an Egyptian tiktoker with a small account that spoke about his experience visiting rural Egyptian communities. He didn’t like how these rural folks would refer to women not by their name, but only by their fathers or husbands name (daughter of, wife of). He found it clearly misogynistic, which it was. He was also a tiny account, less than 50k followers.

Here comes Laylo, a Somali woman, not Arab, not Egyptian, not even North African, who attacked him. She got him cancelled and he had to issue out an apology for “Islamophobia” and “racism”. She canceled him for critiquing his own culture.

The entitlement is insane, I can’t stand when people conflate race and religion, esp. because it breeds entitled and ignorant people like her to speak over us. And get this, this was the same time she was getting mad at TikTok for not sending her as much influencer shit as white influencers, saying TikTok was racist and white creators were benefitting from racism. Girl! You’re benefiting from racism too, it’s just people are so ignorant they can’t tell the difference between a Muslim and an Arab so you can treat us however you like 😭

She’s so annoying lol, shes like the poster child of toxic Muslim TikTok