(no subject)
May. 31st, 2009 07:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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Click through my tags below, too. Read about Noel Noeson, whose right to conscience involved stealing prescriptions and refusing to answer telephones lest he be asked about birth control. Read about the Biting Beaver, who was shuttled from hospital to hospital attempting to find Plan B until it was too late - and then was given abortion "advice" that might have killed her. Read about the head of Health and Human Services calling it "an important statement" that women be denied birth control. Read, and do not wonder why women need abortion in a country that treats them like this.
Then keep reading. Read about the doctors who've performed abortions on people who picket them - and who then return to the picket lines, because the only moral abortion is theirs. Read about the woman whose fetus died late term in utero - unable to get a doctor to remove the corpse that was festering and sickening her because nobody did late term abortions. Not even to remove a CORPSE. Read about the pro-life girl all ready to do the right thing and adopt - only to discover that none of the prolife shelters she'd helped advertise wanted a biracial baby.
There has been a war for a long time. A war of shouting, of vandalism, of intimidation, of attempted murder, and real murder. Call it for what it is:
A war.
A hate crime.
Terrorism.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-01 10:37 pm (UTC)I do think that "jihad" is an entirely appropriate description for this particular campaign.
I have a friend who's a jihadi. His current jihad involves supplementing the donation of 10% of his income to charity, which is a requirement in most forms of Islam, with the ongoing donation of 10% of his leisure time to charity work. I have difficulty understanding why you might think he's like (possibly/probably Christianist) terrorists who murder doctors. In fact I'm currently giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you don't think that and are merely uninformed about the meanings of the word "jihad" beyond the inappropriately appropriative, islamophobic, and perjorative usage by USian right-wingers. I can't rly understand why you'd want to follow their linguistic lead and end up sounding indistinguishable from them but that's your decision.
There's a widespread myth in America that the only terrorists are the Muslim kind.
Which is ironic considering the US has been a net exporter of terrorism to other countries, including Britain, for decades. But, yes, I'm aware that the US, like Britain and many other countries, is reluctant to name some of its domestic terrorists an that way.
Using words from Islamic culture to describe our home-grown Christian religious terrorists serves to underline the similarities between the two groups.
I suspect you didn't mean that the way it appears but, interestingly, the way it appears is exactly why I'm objecting to the usage of "jihad" in the context of (Christianist) USian terrorists: because comparing "Islamic cultures" to terrorists is, frankly, so unbelievably wrongheaded that I don't have polite words to describe how appalling it is. It's the equivalent of implying, for example, all USians are murderous cannibals. It's a lie. And, even worse, it reinforces the same lying xenophobic propaganda spouted by USian right-wingers and used as an excuse fior everything from torture to war.
Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh have much the same kind of influence over their followers that Muslim religious leaders exercise over theirs
No, rly, no. You can't lump all Muslim religious leaders in together and expect to be taken seriously. Also, you're implying an equivalently undifferentiated detrimental effect which doesn't exist on one side of your equation. Clue: it's not, imo, the O'Reilly and Limbaugh side.
what they have been doing is very little different from issuing a fatwa, and should be recognized as such.
You don't appear to know what "fatwa" means either. You should probably stop using words from other languages that you don't understand because it's making you look extremely stupid and again I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you aren't as stupid as you appear.
For the record: a "fatwa" is a legal ruling based on the Quran. For example, one of my friends wanted to wear modest western-style clothes to college but her parents were trying to insist she should wear their traditional ethnic clothing so she went to a Quranic scholar and asked him for a ruling and, after reminding her that the Quran says she should respect her parents, he issued a fatwa backing up her right in Islamic law to wear any form of modest clothing she pleased. Oh, and Islamic scholars are only allowed to issue fatwas on subjects they're experts on... unlike O'Reilly and Limbaugh.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 12:34 am (UTC)In that context, fatwa would be a very good word to use. Just as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei insisted that what Rushdie wrote was so offensive he should be killed even if he repented, so Randall Terry and Bill O'Reilly have insisted that someone "do something" to stop Dr. Tiller from performing legal acts that offended them. The only major differences are that one leader was political and the others are charismatic - and thus one could outright call for an assassination, while the other two could only hint that it would be a very good idea.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 10:40 am (UTC)O_O
...
O_O
I hesitate to ask this but... has it ever occurred to you not to use extremists as a pattern for your behaviour?
no subject
Date: 2009-06-02 11:57 pm (UTC)your argument appears to be that it's fine and dandy to sound exactly like USian right wing nutjobs because an Iranian right wing nutjob said something which was translated into English in a way that might support the inappropriately appropriated USian usages.
My argument, mostly stung in response to the several times "ignorant" came up was to defend that I *have* been paying attention to current events, and see plainly that certain words have been used in certain contexts regardless of their original or inherent meaning. Jihad. Pro-life (to bring the conversation back to the fast-fading original point). Saying "those words don't remotely mean XYZ violent event" doesn't change that terms have been appropriated not just by other cultures, but by radical fringes within the original culture to *specifically cover* XYZ violent event. There are people here celebrating Dr. Tiller's assassination as a life-affirming event. Celebrating. A murder. As "pro-life."
So I think it isn't ignorance to point out that X word or phrase is starting to mean Y. It wasn't that long ago that "gay" meant happy on both sides of the Atlantic...
Not using extremists as a pattern for behavior is a different point, IMO. And a hell of a valid one; you have the most amazing knack of backing off and then making your point in a different direction with inescapable and undeniable logic. This isn't the first time you've stopped me in my tracks just as I'm getting settled to be bullish, although I haven't mentioned it before.
Bottom line. I won't use jihad or fatwah. I do think that the meanings are shifting - certainly tainted - by extremist use, just as pro-life and liberal and several other terms have been here. In regards to extremists here, I'm going to stop talking and start doing at the next escort class.
And you could out-logic Mr. Spock.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 11:26 pm (UTC)I'm not letting extremists take "feminist" away from me so I feel obliged to support other people who won't let extremists take their words/culture away from them either.
no subject
Date: 2009-06-03 11:40 pm (UTC)Here, I've already lost feminist, liberal, and I technically never had atheist. In some places, to some people, I might as well say "satanic bitch whore."