Boris and the burka

stockhausen said:
Are you suggesting that Bonker Boris is not a racist Tory?
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Toryism like Islam is an ideology.

Toryism like Islam does have a relatively wide range of internal diversity of opinion and has been known to have internal schisms over these differences

Tory party members are mostly, but not exclusively, from a small selection of ethnic groups (principally 'white' Britons) . Islam is is also likewise mostly comprised of adherents from a few ethnic groups in the middle east, North Africa and Indonesia. So broadly there is a distinction that most Muslims (but not all) are 'people of colour' where as most Tory members (but not all) are 'white'

Some people claims criticism of Islam and its associated practices is racism but can't seem explain why the same would not be true of anti tory bigotry or criticism.
 
ubersonic said:
/sigh

He never compared them to bank robbers.
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"If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct."

That seems like a reference to the same item of clothing he's talking about in the article in general - he made a letterbox comparison, then talked about people coming in with their face obscured and then referred to female (not students in general) coming to a lecture looking like a bank robber... I'd take that to mean he's still referring to the same female item of clothing and hasn't switched to talking about the issues of students turning up in fact dress as literal bank robbers... ergo that is a comparison to bank robbers.
 
Caracus2k said:
Toryism like Islam is an ideology.

Toryism like Islam does have a relatively wide range of internal diversity of opinion and has been known to have internal schisms over these differences

Tory party members are mostly, but not exclusively, from a small selection of ethnic groups (principally 'white' Britons) . Islam is is also likewise mostly comprised of adherents from a few ethnic groups in the middle east, North Africa and Indonesia. So broadly there is a distinction that most Muslims (but not all) are 'people of colour' where as most Tory members (but not all) are 'white'

Some people claims criticism of Islam and its associated practices is racism but can't seem explain why the same would not be true of anti tory bigotry or criticism.
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Academic experts have presented why Islamophobia is a form of racism in peer reviewed journals.

You are the one making the claim that discrimination against the Tories is racism, therefore it is up to you to provide evidence why.
 
And even then a bunch of lefty social science/gender studies types agreeing with each other that "Islamophobia is racism" doesn't make it so.
 
D.P. said:
Academic experts have presented why Islamophobia is a form of racism in peer reviewed journals.

You are the one making the claim that discrimination against the Tories is racism, therefore it is up to you to provide evidence why.
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Are your 'academic' experts again. What's wrong d.p can't make you own arguments (or at least cite any apparent authorities you are relying on) ?

I have provided some reasons why Islam and toryism could be considered in the same light when we consider criticism of them. Care to point out where I might be wrong in making this comparison?
 
dowie said:
"If a constituent came to my MP’s surgery with her face obscured, I should feel fully entitled – like Jack Straw – to ask her to remove it so that I could talk to her properly. If a female student turned up at school or at a university lecture looking like a bank robber then ditto: those in authority should be allowed to converse openly with those that they are being asked to instruct."

That seems like a reference to the same item of clothing he's talking about in the article in general - he made a letterbox comparison, then talked about people coming in with their face obscured and then referred to female (not students in general) coming to a lecture looking like a bank robber... I'd take that to mean he's still referring to the same female item of clothing and hasn't switched to talking about the issues of students turning up in fact dress as literal bank robbers... ergo that is a comparison to bank robbers.
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Firstly, I'd like to commend you as you're the only other person I've seen in this thread thus far who has apparently read the actual article being discussed lol.

But no the bank robber analogy wasn't being used to compare women in burkas to bank robbers, or to say they look like bank robbers. It was used to compared the act of an MP asking a female constituent in a one on one setting to remove their face mask so they could better converse, and the act of a tutor asking a student in fancy dress to remove their mask so they could better converse. The actual masks in question are irrelevant it was the acts being compared.
 
dowie said:
I don't think he's racist. Mocking a clothing choice isn't racist... perhaps he'd have been better to compare them to ninjas than letter boxes - bank robbers wasn't too far off though.
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So now you seem to be suggesting that Bonker Boris was "not too far off" in comparing women wearing a burqa or a niqab to bank robbers and that this was not in any way racist - it seems also that you share his point of view.
 
stockhausen said:
So now you seem to be suggesting that Bonker Boris was "not too far off" in comparing women wearing a burqa or a niqab to bank robbers and that this was not in any way racist - it seems also that you share his point of view.
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How is it? If I wore a orange gimp suite with a green hat and he said "if someone walked in as a Kinky =carrot I would sad them to remove the head pieces" would he be racist against me then? as a white straight male or a S&M lover?

Insensitive sure, racist hardly.

Where is the line between being critical of someones dress, being insensitive and being racist in this case?
 
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D.P. said:
Academic experts have presented why Islamophobia is a form of racism in peer reviewed journals.

You are the one making the claim that discrimination against the Tories is racism, therefore it is up to you to provide evidence why.
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Would be interested to read, have you got a link to this?
 
So let's look at d. p's 'academic experts'...
He previously cited the following 'study' to another poster. ....

D.P. said:
I am not presenting an argument that Islamophobia is racism, I don't need to. It is already accepted by academic experts that it is:
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1440783307073935
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The quoted article is behind a pay wall but the abstract is accessible ...

Abstract

This article compares the rise of anti-Muslim racism in Britain and Australia, from 1989 to 2001, as a foundation for assessing the extent to which the upsurge of Islamophobia after 11 September was a development of existing patterns of racism in these two countries. The respective histories of immigration and settlement by Muslim populations are outlined, along with the relevant immigration and ‘ethnic affairs’ policies and the resulting demographics. The article traces the ideologies of xenophobia that developed in Britain and Australia over this period. It records a transition from anti-Asian and anti-Arab racism to anti-Muslim racism, reflected in and responding to changes in the identities and cultural politics of the minority communities. It outlines instances of the racial and ethnic targeting by the state of the ethnic and religious minorities concerned, and postulates a causal relationship between this and the shifting patterns of acts of racial hatred, vilification and discrimination.
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So it doesn't appear that the citited source does actually establish that all anti Muslim views are racism at all now does it?

It just starts with the assumption of 'anti Muslim racism' and works on from there.

Typical of the lack of rigour of arguments often made here?

Point to some vague apparent authority and claim it proves something it doesn't actually prove?

(in this case that all anti Islamic sentiment is racism)

Now of course I, like I suspect most here, are not so stupid to not realise that there is a considerable overlap between actual racism (based on perceived ethnicity) and opposition to Islam, due to Islam predominately having adherents from visible ethnic minorities in the west. The same is likely true to a degree for ethnic minority adherents of Christianity in Islamic countries.

But to claim that criticism or opposition to Islamic practices and associated cultural norms is automatically 'racist' ..... Well I think Christopher Hitchens nailed that viewpoint with his views on the word 'islamophobia' itself.

“a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
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Caracus2k said:
So let's look at d. p's 'academic experts'...
He previously cited the following 'study' to another poster. ....



The quoted article is behind a pay wall but the abstract is accessible ...



So it doesn't appear that the citited source does actually establish that all anti Muslim views are racism at all now does it?

It just starts with the assumption of 'anti Muslim racism' and works on from there.

Typical of the lack of rigour of arguments often made here?

Point to some vague apparent authority and claim it proves something it doesn't actually prove?

(in this case that all anti Islamic sentiment is racism)

Now of course I, like I suspect most here, are not so stupid to not realise that there is a considerable overlap between actual racism (based on perceived ethnicity) and opposition to Islam, due to Islam predominately having adherents from visible ethnic minorities in the west. The same is likely true to a degree for ethnic minority adherents of Christianity in Islamic countries.

But to claim that criticism or opposition to Islamic practices and associated cultural norms is automatically 'racist' ..... Well I think Christopher Hitchens nailed that viewpoint with his views on the word 'islamophobia' itself.
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You need to be a bit more careful. D.P. isn't saying that all criticism and opposition to Islamic practices is racist, nor that this paper 'proves' that. Just that Islamophobia (which is fear or irrational dislike as opposed to criticism) IS racist.
 
Conclusion: Here we have presented an account of everyday racism, institutional racism and upsurges of media and popular racist attacks against Muslim Britons and Australians in these two countries, which should be sufficient to demonstrate that, in this respect, the much-clichéd ‘Day that Changed the World’ in September 2001 did not actually see the world reinvented anew. We have demonstrated that the upsurge of anti-Arab racism and Islamophobia in the UK and Australia after 11 September 2001 arose, as did similar episodes during the 1991 Gulf War, from the exacerbation of existing tendencies, which have been manifest in everyday racism, both before 1991 and in the intervening period. It is true that, after 11 September 2001, the representation of the Asian ‘Other’ in the UK increasingly undergoes a transformation from Asian or ‘Pakistani’ to Muslim, but this was already under way since the Rushdie affair in 1989, and arguably since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. In Australia, the analogous transition is from the Arab Other, or ‘Leb’, to Muslim Other. This was also well under way before 11 September, as evidenced in the ideological elements displayed in the moral panics over purported ‘ethnic gang rape’ and over ‘boat people’, culminating in the Tampa crisis in August 2001. It is arguable that the ‘othering’ set out in this article, up to 10 September 2001, receives what Noble and Poynting (2003) call its ‘ideological payout’ after 9/11, both in the UK and Australia. Thus the opponents of cultural diversity call upon a sort of ideological ‘I told you so’ effect to legitimate their attacks on multiculturalism, especially with regard to non-Christian, non-Western cultures which they have represented as barbaric, uncivilized and incompatible with mainstream British and Australian culture. Finally, we see before 11 September, and most saliently during the 1990–1 Gulf War, that upsurges in anti-Muslim racism in the media and in populist political rhetoric are accompanied by, and arguably encouraging of, outbreaks of anti-Muslim racism in everyday life in public spaces and institutions. That this pattern is repeated a fortiori after 9/11, strongly suggests that the empire’s new clothes are being cut from existing cloth. It is important for sociologists to contextualize and to record these processes, and not to leave the story solely with the common sense emanating from the political and cultural spokespeople of the empire
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Evolving terms to hide racism, is still racism, it may just be more accurate and more polite racism however. It's rather strange that the thing that libertarians/right-wing/Anti-SJW/whatever grouping you feel fits, is doing exactly what the SJW's are doing in redefining terms... just oppositely.

One is hiding racism under blankets and the other is pointing it out everywhere regardless of context (which is in itself, racist), it's hilarious.

In my eyes, violent and/or abusive attacks on your supposed enemy in ideological terms simply makes them invulnerable, as they turtle it out. All the while we supported the biggest sponsor terror around the world with huge political leverage, of course they weren't entirely dumb and used said leverage and wealth to amass a huge liquid fortune, with which they are buying the West's indebted assets out for a pittance. We also waste a huge fortune on defending ourselves from mainly Saudi terror which eats into social programs, which destroy's us as a society as we delve back into perennial hatred and misinformation (ala today).

You keep being played, it's as simple as that.
 
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So we're now down to arguing about what's 'islamophobia' and what's not 'islamophobia' but is legitimate critism of Islam or its associated practices?

Perhaps D. P. has some 'academic experts' who can who can help here?
 
Well I'd argue that although saying burkas look like letterboxes doesn't count as 'criticism' per se, it's certainly not irrational hatred or fear, it's a comedic observation, and therefore not Islamophobic. I would also argue that lines are blurry regarding Islamophobia and racism. It's not at all black and white. Wikipedia defines it as

the fear, hatred of, or prejudice against, the Islamic religion or Muslims generally
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I would say fear of the Islamic religion is 100% not racist.

But I would say hatred or prejudice against muslims generally, while not strictly racism as Islam isn't a race, is basically just as bad because you are actively hating and being prejudice towards a group of people.

So it totally depends on which part of he definition of Islamophobia you look at.

But in either case, what Boris said, was categorically nothing like racism. Nothing like it.
 
dl8860 said:
Well I'd argue that although saying burkas look like letterboxes doesn't count as irrational hatred of fear, it's a comedic observation, and therefore not Islamophobic. I would also argue that lines are blurry regarding Islamophobia and racism. It's not at all black and white. Wikipedia defines it as



I would say fear of the Islamic religion is 100% not racist.

But I would say hatred or prejudice against muslims generally, while not strictly racism as Islam isn't a race, is basically just as bad because you are actively hating and being prejudice towards a group of people.

So it totally depends on which part of he definition of Islamophobia you look at.

But in either case, what Boris said, was categorically nothing like racism. Nothing like it.
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Yet his comment provoked attacks on Muslim women almost immediately after the fact, please stop hiding white-nationalism under the guise of a bloody joke.

He's a SITTING MP, and a major character at the front-line of news, his words regardless of frivolousness and joviality are powerful stressors for idiots who hate everything that isn't "local".
 
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