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talkpoliticsI became intrigued the other day when I was reading about the recent outbreaks of religious violence in places like Orissa.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/08/27/india-world-leaders-urged-condemn-violence-orissa
I've noticed that the violence in Orissa aimed at Christians got a great deal of coverage in Western media, where it took a site like *this* to find an article about the contemporary massacres of Muslims going on at the same time: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout&cid=1248187896567.
I look at this double-standard and I've come to ponder an issue as regards the contemporary geopolitical scene and its reflections in today's religious world. Today, people like Peter Akinola stir up violence against Muslims in one of the largest countries in Europe, yet all the coverage reflects violence by Muslims against Christians. The irony is that while at least some of it is unprovoked evil, others of it is very much not. Yet Akinola gets away with it because he is an Episcopal religious leader. Were he a leader in any Muslim sect it would not be half as bad.
For that matter, Christian leaders as seen here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html have been deeply involved with pushing the bill in Uganda that would establish anti-gay Concentration camps. Now, these are Western Protestant religious readers, yet the involvement of these men received minimal attention in its own right. The House of Saud is the nastiest bunch of bastards in a region full of them, and no doubt tries to spread as much influence in American mosques as it can. Yet it's *Westerners* who are directly encouraging outbreaks of violence with a religious rationale here.
And in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are of course the acts of provocation by the fundamentalists in the military which attract attention, yet little attention gets paid to things like this: http://dogemperor.newsvine.com/_news/2008/06/03/1536421-prosyletization-in-iraq-a-threat-to-national-security where Western proselytization threatens as much the Native *Christian* communities in the chaos from the fall of Saddam Hussein as the unleashing of Muslim extremism does.
This is, of course, not to mention as well the double-standard applied to domestic Right-Wing as opposed to Left-Wing terror movements, while![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
paft has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer she's done a good job of pointing out the problem not only exists is real. So this is what's going on. Why is it that things like this occur but no attention is paid to them, or if it is it's not enough nor effective enough?
I believe that the simplest answer to this that the United States/American Empire, which is the current hegemonic imperial power, is a Protestant Christian nation like the old British Empire was. The current "War on Terror" should more accurately be called "War on Islamic Terrorisms", and yes, the plural is deliberate. But since the USA is majority-Christian (whatever the political extremist movement that terms itself Evangelicalism wishes to think 70% of the USA still identifies as Christian and that *does* influence its politics) it turns a blind eye to atrocities done by Christian movements and/or would use them as proxies to project its power.
I believe a more complex answer is in the reality that Western interests in the early 21st Century are in steep conflict with interest of Muslim societies in the Middle East, and that the conflict between say, the United States and the various forms of Muslim extremism prevalent throughout the Middle East has as much to do with conflicting hegemonic interests in a variety of factions as it does with Christianity *or* Islam. Yet due to the intersection of US imperial interests with Christianity and the resistance movements of the Middle East with Islam, the tension leads to the complete silence on massacres of Muslims by members of other religions both now and in instances like say, the Greek attempt to kill off all the Turks in the 1920s.
What say you?
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2008/08/27/india-world-leaders-urged-condemn-violence-orissa
I've noticed that the violence in Orissa aimed at Christians got a great deal of coverage in Western media, where it took a site like *this* to find an article about the contemporary massacres of Muslims going on at the same time: http://www.islamonline.net/servlet/Satellite?c=Article_C&pagename=Zone-English-News/NWELayout&cid=1248187896567.
I look at this double-standard and I've come to ponder an issue as regards the contemporary geopolitical scene and its reflections in today's religious world. Today, people like Peter Akinola stir up violence against Muslims in one of the largest countries in Europe, yet all the coverage reflects violence by Muslims against Christians. The irony is that while at least some of it is unprovoked evil, others of it is very much not. Yet Akinola gets away with it because he is an Episcopal religious leader. Were he a leader in any Muslim sect it would not be half as bad.
For that matter, Christian leaders as seen here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/world/africa/04uganda.html have been deeply involved with pushing the bill in Uganda that would establish anti-gay Concentration camps. Now, these are Western Protestant religious readers, yet the involvement of these men received minimal attention in its own right. The House of Saud is the nastiest bunch of bastards in a region full of them, and no doubt tries to spread as much influence in American mosques as it can. Yet it's *Westerners* who are directly encouraging outbreaks of violence with a religious rationale here.
And in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are of course the acts of provocation by the fundamentalists in the military which attract attention, yet little attention gets paid to things like this: http://dogemperor.newsvine.com/_news/2008/06/03/1536421-prosyletization-in-iraq-a-threat-to-national-security where Western proselytization threatens as much the Native *Christian* communities in the chaos from the fall of Saddam Hussein as the unleashing of Muslim extremism does.
This is, of course, not to mention as well the double-standard applied to domestic Right-Wing as opposed to Left-Wing terror movements, while
paft has all the subtlety of a sledgehammer she's done a good job of pointing out the problem not only exists is real. So this is what's going on. Why is it that things like this occur but no attention is paid to them, or if it is it's not enough nor effective enough? I believe that the simplest answer to this that the United States/American Empire, which is the current hegemonic imperial power, is a Protestant Christian nation like the old British Empire was. The current "War on Terror" should more accurately be called "War on Islamic Terrorisms", and yes, the plural is deliberate. But since the USA is majority-Christian (whatever the political extremist movement that terms itself Evangelicalism wishes to think 70% of the USA still identifies as Christian and that *does* influence its politics) it turns a blind eye to atrocities done by Christian movements and/or would use them as proxies to project its power.
I believe a more complex answer is in the reality that Western interests in the early 21st Century are in steep conflict with interest of Muslim societies in the Middle East, and that the conflict between say, the United States and the various forms of Muslim extremism prevalent throughout the Middle East has as much to do with conflicting hegemonic interests in a variety of factions as it does with Christianity *or* Islam. Yet due to the intersection of US imperial interests with Christianity and the resistance movements of the Middle East with Islam, the tension leads to the complete silence on massacres of Muslims by members of other religions both now and in instances like say, the Greek attempt to kill off all the Turks in the 1920s.
What say you?
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 16:57 (UTC)I know this is satire, but....
Date: 22/4/10 16:59 (UTC)Re: I know this is satire, but....
Date: 22/4/10 17:00 (UTC)Re: I know this is satire, but....
Date: 22/4/10 17:01 (UTC)Re: I know this is satire, but....
Date: 22/4/10 17:13 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 17:25 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:54 (UTC)"I'm expecting those responses, which will be interesting if someone is stupid enough to try that line of reasoning...."
Isn't that a bit of a straw man in advance?
*If* nobody was going to make such a case you score a victory because the perception is that you scared the "stupid" people away with your prediction and advance criticism.
similarly...
*If* anyone had intended to make such a case they are unlikely to now, but of course we will never know that what you "expected" wasn't going to happen.
Either way you come out on top with that one. Well done. ;)
For the record, I don't think Christian or Muslim violence is "mainstream".
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 20:01 (UTC)And I agree with you.
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 17:47 (UTC)Just an obsevation on a meme that's developed here. I'm glad you paid Paft a rather left-handed compliment in your original post. While people here may disagree with her opinions and comments (me included), Paft is hardly in the same league as Steve (aka pornstache) or Kharmmi, or any of the one sentence snarkists that thrive here. Paft gives pretty lucid and extended explanations for her positions, and does it in a polite manner.
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:01 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:08 (UTC)sentenceparagraph.(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:44 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:56 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:32 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:39 (UTC)Paft isn't a sockpuppet. Steve is meant to parody and satirize the right-wing. It's not a compliment to say she's not as dumb as someone intentionally being dumb.
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:58 (UTC)And he's nowhere near Colbert in making himself a mockery of the right-wing. Btw could we say Colbert is the media equivalent of a sockpuppet?
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 20:34 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 23/4/10 07:37 (UTC)Seriously, I didn't know if we really knew that either way?
I thought he had his own business and stuff.
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 21:40 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 18:58 (UTC)A nuclear Iran would be disasterous, but it takes two to tango. As long as Israel's nuclear capability officially remains behind a shroud, any weapons development by Iran is going to be claimed as a defensive measure against Israel.
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:05 (UTC)I do, however, believe that while religion had nothing to do with the Afghanistan invasion at first, I think that nowadays missionaries are using the chaos as an excuse to spread their brands of Christianity at the expense of the locals which makes life worse for everyone involved....
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:27 (UTC)Remember, Israel appealed to Bush to get permission to cross Iraq to bomb Iran and requested bunker busters from us as well. While this seems defensive, it still falls into the preemptive strike category.
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:30 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:04 (UTC)As much as I hate to play devil's advocate on this issue, this is NOT accurate. The speakers were horrible but never "directly encouraged" violence. I don't believe that they intended to get the death penalty for homosexuals. The situation in a country with so much poverty, HIV, low life expectancy, lack of literacy among women etc. as Uganda is that people feel the dire situation and some people in government are quick to jump at any possible scapegoat. I am NOT defending what the speaks have done, but you cannot really blame them for what happened because those kind of speeches go on in other parts of the world and do not results in similar legislation.
The situation in Uganda should be spreading awareness of how immediate the situation still is for homosexuals in some parts of the world (which it seems to be doing). It should also be spreading awareness about how barbaric and awful the death penalty is (which it does not seem to be doing).
(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:07 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:10 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:20 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 22/4/10 19:12 (UTC)Noam is an island
Date: 22/4/10 23:09 (UTC)Re: Noam is an island
Date: 23/4/10 00:02 (UTC)Re: Noam is an island
Date: 23/4/10 07:41 (UTC)Re: Noam is an island
Date: 23/4/10 12:04 (UTC)Re: Noam is an island
Date: 25/4/10 13:44 (UTC)In fact, that's one of the things Chomsky constantly harps upon, the fact that most Americans never get to hear the evidence, when it's concerning what their own country has done. And when they do, it's typically presented in a way that is astounding hypocritical.
I expect that the people of the U.S. would be utterly outraged if only they were allowed to know of what has and is being perpetrated in their name, or where they do know of it, if they only wanted to understand what it really meant.
Re: Noam is an island
Date: 23/4/10 23:29 (UTC)