It is a shift. The topic of this hread is the treatment of Muslims in Western states.
If you want to discuss a separate series of topics regarding Islam, you need to open new threads for those topics.
Bias crimes are classified by the motivation of the attacker not the identity of the victim. Attacking a Sikh because someone thought they looked muslim would still by an anti-muslim crime.
In 2002 which had twelve months to contain a backlash had a 67% decline in anti-muslim hate crimes.
Balbir Singh Sodhi was clearly murdered because he was mistaken for a Muslim, but I think you’re really jumping the gun by making that assumption regarding the people murdered at the Wisconsin Sikh Temple.
It seems to me more likely that Wade Michael Page, the man who slaughtered them did so because he was a white supremacist looking for a group of minorities to murder and they happened to be two blocks from where he lived. Had an African-American Church or a Latino community center been closer by he probably would have gone there first.
He’d been a white supremacist well before 911, had his body covered with a number of Neo-Nazi tattoos and had written and performed a number of racist songs. I believe, though I’m not 100% sure, that he didn’t sing about hating “Muslims” but instead, in typical Neo-Nazi fashion, ranted against “N—ers” “Jews” and “mud people”.
You’ll notice there’s nothing in your link supporting the idea that he thought they Muslims or about him singling out Muslims, nor do any of the Sikhs in the article think they were being falsely identified as Muslims. For that matter, just before doing this, he was ranting about the oncoming “racial holy war” not about a clash between Muslims and Christians.
Not of course that being murdered because you’re the wrong skin tone is somehow less horrible than being murdered because you’re mistaken for Muslim.
Is this a serious comment? :dubious:
I ask because the answer is the whole world. Have you the slightest concept how popular American films, TV shows, music and other forms of entertainment are the world over?
There are vastly, vastly more Muslim kids in Africa, the Middle East and Asia who dream of being rock stars or movie stars than being suicide bombers.
Hell, go to England try and strike up a conversation among young Asian Muslim men about what is their favorite Sura or Hadith and you’ll get a lot of blank and/or embarrassed looks, but start talking about Manchester United, Arsenal, or one of the other football teams and I’m sure you’ll probably get a big conversation going. I’m sure some of our British posters could probably bring up plenty of other cultural touchstones as well.
I don’t really want to wade into this debate about anti-Muslim hate crimes, but I’ll just say that yes, I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as many people imagine and America has had plenty of their own versions of “I’ll Ride with you”, particularly after 911, but the FBI hate crimes stats for a whole bunch of reasons need to be taken with a grain of salt because their accuracy is less than one could wish.
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No they aren’t. The murdered Sikhs aren’t counted as anti-Muslim hate crimes in the FBI statistics, which note no murders in anti-Muslim hate crimes in 2001.
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Wrong, in 2012 we had 11 years to contain a backlash and still had an over 500% increase from the year 2000.
It’s one thing to look at the numbers and say that there were no anti-muslim crimes in a certain year but is this how we measure a society?
I am glad we don’t have many crimes of this nature in Australia but I am ever vigilant and if I hear someone being racist (or whatever you pendants want to call it) then I do speak up and I think the more people do then the better our society becomes. Some people try to dismiss by saying it is a liberal left wing thing and yes I am that but to label it as such is lazy and dangerous.
Have a look at the photos of the young Pakistani kids shot the other day and they look just like a kid in Australia going off to school. People are people and not labels.
I don’t see why not.
It is a rather common occurence for people who encounter unwelcome immigrant contacts to perceive them more harshly than an objective analysis would indicate. And in the case of Britain, there has been a trend in which the most recent Pakistani immigrants appear to have failed to assimilate as rapidly as other groups. (Of course, a number of politicians and tabloids have siezed on the more sensationalist examples of this failure in order to falsely claim that resistance to assimilation is both virulent and universal.)
While I would note that his view is erroneous, I see no reason to believe or suggest that his opinion is not genuine.
Just as anti-Muslim violence is rare so is muslim terrorism in the west. That is why if someone responded to the terrorist attack in Australia by offering to ride with me on public transportation to protect me against muslim terrorists I would think they were either touched in the head or just prejudiced against muslims in general.
In this case I would be correct as the originator of the hashtag, Tessa Kum, is someone who has both struggled with mental illness, and hates white Australians. From her blog
Since this is Australia, I must assume that they’ll “ride” on a kangaroo’s back, or maybe pulled by a team of dingoes. 
That seems like a pretty self-aware account of the pernicious effects of hatred. I assume that, like some other anti-anti-anti-Muslim social warriors right now, you’re highlighting this as the juiciest, ‘worst’ bit. But what precisely is wrong with it? Do you dispute that the racism of white people she enumerates goes on? Or do you just dislike her emotional reaction to it? She does too. It’s not exactly a celebration of anti-white sentiment.
It’s not anti-Muslim to call a self-righteous grandstand of your society’s tolerance an insult to the vast majority of Muslims who have assimilated willingly and effectively into society.
All it does is make the hash-tagger feel better about themselves while contributing to the awareness of our differences.
This. “I’ll Ride With You” further highlights the fact that Muslims are seen as a threat.
Whats wrong with it? Perhaps the fact that shes treating whites as a homogeneous group is whats wrong with it. Something she would likely be up in arms about had the same homogeneity been expressed about Muslims. Something you would probably be up in arms about too had it been said of Muslims.
Plus the fact that there’s an awful lot of hatred in her post. As with most people she is justifying her hatred by placing the initial blame on her opponents. There is nothing self aware about it. It’s your common variety self justification for her own hatreds and intolerances.
I don’t think she is. She doesn’t say “white people,” she says “white person,” as if to an individual, but then enumerates the sins of what is clearly an amorphous population, not any one real person. I take this to mean that she recognizes “white person” to be the construct that it is.
To explain is not necessarily to justify. She hates the dynamic of hate itself, in herself. I think that’s what it’s really about.
I could be wrong. I haven’t read the rest of her, but I doubt there’s anything more ‘incriminating,’ since this is the one piece everyone’s passing around. I think some people just find any expression of resentment against white people, specific or not, justified or not, to be so outrageous they can’t engage with it, can’t perceive any nuance. It’s presented as if it automatically discredits anything else a person might say.
For what it’s worth, following 911 while I never had anyone offer to “ride with me” I had large numbers of people offer me their sympathy and I found it quite touching and not remotely condescending or insulting.
In any case, no matter what that one woman really feels, it doesn’t have any great bearing on the meaning of the gesture which appeared to have been widely endorsed and appreciated by other Australians including Muslims.
Here is a link to her blog. You can read her entire piece on race, gamergate and a whole lot more:
http://silence-without.blogspot.com.au/2014/11/the-long-campaign-against-racism-bogged.html
“None of us can take a break from not being white. You, white person, with all your supposed good intentions, will never let us. Either because you’re actively racist, racist but with too delicate an ego to ever do anything about your racism except cry about the mean PoC, or willing to remain silent and let us carry on without support…You’ve already won. You won centuries ago when you left Europe and decided to crush the rest of the world. Conquer, colonise, crush. Centuries this has gone on. You have centuries of victory and triumph.”
This is as racist as you wish to make it. Sure, you can “nuance” it. However, I dont think it unreasonable of me to conclude she is a hate filled young lady with a large chip on her shoulder. If you wish disagree then fine. Again, I dont think im too far off when I say her worldview is “problematic”. Not only problematic, but also alien to the vast majority of Australians.
Of course you don’t. You benefit from those centuries of victory and triumph.
Do you have any evidence at all of a Muslim who’s actually offended by this? Or are you just being offended on their behalf?
Because, speaking as a liberal, that’s supposed to be our bag.