The really pernicious thing about Islamophobia is that it’s masked behind liberal & feminist values. Like it’s progressive & avant-garde, even radical, to disparage 1.6 billion people in the world. But behind the sophistic enlightenment rhetoric is approval & justification for the war on terror which is primarily directed at destroying progressive social movements among Arabs & Muslims for more democratic societies. So it turns out the haters are on the wrong side of justice & not the avant-garde of human progress. Go figure.

There’s a phenomenon played out over & over on Facebook where non-Muslims, male & female, go absolutely ballistic over the hijab. Their vituperations are so over the top that it can only be explained by misogyny combined with Islamophobia. Why the hell does anyone care what other women wear? In the early days of US feminism, there were some who thought feminists should wear boyish haircuts, combat boots, hate on lipstick, & go lesbian. I said hell no. Women can wear what the hell they want in this movement & love who they want. I was scornfully called “perfumed & powdered” & was once booed in a video interview for wearing mascara. So I take these condemnations of the hijab very personally. Feminism is about standing together against women’s oppression, not dictating to other women what they should wear. Now some rabid women Islamophobe from India tells me I’m trying to ‘atone for my colonial guilt by enabling the Islamic hijab patriarchy.’ It may appall her to learn I don’t have any colonial guilt. Am I supposed to? Guilt is a counterrevolutionary emotion that constipates you politically & makes you inert. What’s important about their rantings is that they have no cogency to their opposition, only rabidity. And when something that doesn’t affect them personally rouses them to such fury, it can only be explained by competition with or the need to control women & hatred for Muslims.

People feel free to say the damnedest things about Muslims even if they’ve never met one in their entire lives. Outright foolishness & crazy crap about people they don’t know the first thing about. I saw one comment yesterday that only Muslims massacre people & that Buddhists, Jews, & Christians never have. Does the Catholic Inquisition ring a bell? Do the massacres in Gaza, the Rohingya genocide, or the occupation of Kashmir? Muslims have become an acceptable scapegoat for expressing hatred, fear, racism, xenophobia. You really can’t argue with this crap because a haters gonna hate. The only response is building political power because nothing cows a hater more than power.

When someone compares the hijab to marital rape, genital mutilation, & forced marriage, you know you’re in a nest of Islamophobes & you beat a hasty retreat lest you require an exorcism soon after.

Kashmiri photojournalist Aasif Shafi won top awards in India for this photograph. We concur with the judges.

Perhaps an Assad propagandist or one of their guppies would like to answer this Syrian boy.

https://www.facebook.com/ajplusenglish/videos/969697773171730/?

http://kindlemag.in/the-state-of-statelessness/

This is quite a brilliant article by Ajachi Chakrabarti with an invaluable historic background to the Rohingya genocide. It’s long but definitely worth your read. He wrote it shortly after Suu Kyi’s election before the so-called civilian government showed itself to be a front for the military so his conclusion might differ today. But otherwise, this is a very valuable piece in which he discusses the issue of genocide.

The Irish human rights activist Micheal Clinton has asked me to see if any of my friends can help this Syrian family with a disabled child. They need all sorts of help, from contributions to leave Syria for medical treatment to calling human rights groups & politicians to intervene. Politicians are mostly useless but sometimes on an issue like this, they will actually do something so it’s worth a try. Please check this out & see if you can help.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yMffaS0NyaYPBksw52YeGUHtMZtprokufWIATHE0e_M/edit

In a French TV interview, Maung Zarni made the same point as Kashmiris have on the distinction between genocide & ethnic cleansing: it doesn’t matter how experts, politicians, policy makers define ethnic cleansing, genocide, crimes against humanity. What matters is how Rohingyas, Kashmiris, Palestinians, Uyghurs define it. If they say genocide is being committed against them, that alone carries the weight of authority.

Maung Zarni is an uncompromising champion of the Rohingyas who has a blunt-spoken, take no prisoners polemical style. Here again on French TV he takes on the dishonest Amnesty report on ARSA.

http://www.france24.com/en/20180531-perspective-maung-zarni-myanmar-rohingya-crisis-amnesty-international-report?ref=fb