Racial Misappropriation: The Rights of Objectivity - A Critique of Neo-liberal Politics
As will be evident to some of you, I have borrowed my title from Thomas Paine's Rights of Man. Not only to remind us all of the fairness and correctitude to which every honest person is entitled, but to preserve the sanctity of political equity and to ensure that the free press maintains some sense of ethics in its dissemination of knowledge.
In one of my recent city escapades, I found myself falling prey to the efforts of the advertising campaigns that I have repeatedly scorned. Written on a poster hoisted just above the median of the subway tracks read the following: "What do you call a Muslim woman who flies an airplane? - A pilot." This boring and cliched attempt at anti-joke solemnity and righteousness were enough to disappoint me, yet the worst had yet to come. Written somewhat stolidly and aridly underneath in fine print was "Racism stops here." Simultaneously, I felt one of the most potent mixtures of contempt, nausea, and disbelief that I have ever experienced. Bear in mind, comrades, that I own and have read the Book of Mormon.
I am sorry if the following salad of letters sounds like I am spelling this out for you, but since it is so obviously and readily taken for granted, I feel compelled to not only scrutinize what has been deemed to be inscrutable, but to sneer at it. For the last time, Islam is not characterized by race; it is not a religion of the brown-skinned oppressed, let alone a liberation theology for those who are politically and morally subjugated. Albania, Bosnia Herzegovina, Turkey and Lebanon are just a few examples that come to mind to subvert the idea of a complexion-based faith. In addition, seeing as the left is so concerned with respecting the religion of peace, they ought to know, that any effort to make sects and denominate the faith by tribe contradict its fundamental tenets. The chapter and verse currently escape me, but a quote not unlike the following reads in the Qur'an: "behold, we have made you in different likenesses and appearances that you may recognize each other". Consequently, to separate Muslims as a part of one ethnicity undermines Islam's claims to universality. As such, sectarianism (which is palpably and ironically ignored by the schools of Sunni, Shia, and Sufi) is by definition profane. If you are so encumbered with the task of protecting this alleged cringing and defenseless Western minority, it may be an aid to familiarize yourself with its dogma. Although, intellectual dishonesty seems to be a newly confected virtue among neo-liberals; not unlike the tawdry appeal of faith ipso facto.
Aside from how the mullahs in Iran treat the people and how the youth (who comprise nigh 50% of the population) hate them, languishing in their desires to simply be able to hold someone's hand in public who isn't an immediate relative, there remains the necessity for investigation of politically and historically Islamic depravity and crime against the Americas. If you think Shia Islam mistreats its own faith-based adherents, imagine what it has in store for you.
Between the decades of 1750 to 1820, it is estimated by historians that upward of 1.5 million European and American slaves were captured by members of the vulgarly labelled "barbary states" - today known as Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya. When Thomas Jefferson and James Madison visited the shores of Tripoli in 1788, seeking an ounce of rationality or justification for North Africa's behavior, the clerics' chilling response declared "because the Qur'an says we can. You are infidels, fit to be treated as cattle and beasts of burden." A flotilla was deployed in retaliation to this wickedness, and the Muslims fleets were attacked. It also worth mentioning, that prior to these events the nascent United States of America had had no quarrel with the Islamic world. A sentiment that cannot be echoed today.
Ordinary reason and sincerity are repulsed by the intellectual laziness, mendacity, and hysteria fueled by mob opinion and the media at large. Do not be dissuaded by repeated appeals to pathos and pseudo-intellectual movie-theatre commercials in social discourse. This is a mental surrender, and a surrogate for the illogical values that have depredated our planet since time immemorial, ad nauseam. Don't be a hypocrite, my fellow skeptics and disbelievers. See through the thin veil of benevolence that emotional politics purport to offer, and demand truth ubiquitously.
Thanks,
A disgruntled adeist
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