Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

Boris and the burka: taking cue from the EU

Another tweet read: “We are at war! The UK armed forces must go to the Islamic areas and should go to door to door and shoot them all." A record number of anti-Muslim attacks last year

“This is the supposed ‘natural condition’ of mankind, in which everyone is at war with everyone else, much as Thomas Hobbes described in his ‘Leviathan’, during the middle of the seventeenth century. But the state of nature is not in fact a ‘natural’ condition; it is a historical conjuncture”  Notes on Syria and the Coming Global Thanatocracy

Mothering a Muslim

Austria In my last holiday I met an Austrian woman who was spending 6 weeks in Thailand. She had replaced all of her teeth there. She is chauvinistic, but she claims she is not racist. She thinks that "there are too many Muslims in Austria!" "Muslim men taking welfare money and doing nothing all day long!" "A big damage is taking place". The woman herself is not working and gets 500 per month for her 18-month-old daughter. She has been in Mexico, Peru, Argentina and other countries. She didn't know that Londoners elected a Muslim as a Mayor. (Ko Samui, June 2017) Meanwhile, our close friend Saudi Arabia has been the main criminal behind a one million case of cholera in Yemen (a figure by the ICRC). This is not a bad thing in reality. Less Yemenis will make it to Europe. Therefore, Europeans shouldn't worry too much about the rise of nationalism and neofascism!

"The question that emerges clearly and forcefully is one of justice. What does justice for Muslims mean in the face of US [led] state violence?  The answer, as you can imagine, is complex, but it is certain that endless wars, militarism, and intervention will not bring justice." 16 years into "the war on terror" and institutionalized Islamophobia lives on

"[M]any of the arguments against Islamophobia in anti-racist circles turn out to replicate rather than subvert the underlying logics that attack, demonize and dehumanize Muslims. Challenging the Islamophobic far-right cannot simply be about upholding the same capitalist and imperialist — even if slightly less racist — stances that have destabilized much of the Global South in recent decades, furthering war and displacing Muslims who have travelled to Europe’s shores only to be met with an explosion of nativist hatred." The Problem with Liberal Opposition to Islamophobia Note: the 8% of the UK's Muslim population is inaccuarte. I have checked a few sources (BBC, wikipedia). In fact it ranges between 5% and 5.5% of the total population.

Qatar-Gulf stand off: Is it a crisis?

“The [Charlie Hebdo] cartoon simply fails as satire, because it is indistinguishable from straightforward racist graffiti.”  Charlie Hebdo , The Poverty of Satire " Whatever the variety of causes we could discuss, the fact is that the Muslim – from Mohammed to our own time – became  Charlie Hebdo ’s ‘bad object of desire’ . Mocking Muslims and making fun of their mannerisms became this declining ‘comedic’ magazine’s stock in trade, a bit like how a century ago  Bécassine  made fun of the poor (and at that time, Christian…) peasants who came from Brittany to wipe the arses of the children of the Parisian bourgeoisie."

" When Obama states that it is “the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization,” he is articulating a liberal version of Islamophobia, according to which Islam is culpable for violence committed by Muslims, even if most Muslims are “peaceful.” Thus, following every controversy, the range of debate remains restricted to right-wing and liberal variants of Islamophobia, although with an overall steady shift to the right. Hence, just as it is correct to point out that Republican denunciations of Trump’s rhetoric wring hollow, given their strong support for the logic that underpins it, the same applies to Democratic denunciations of Republicans, and for the same reasons. While the Right views all Muslims as a problem and as a fifth column in Western nations, the liberal establishment sounds more reasonable in that it differentiates between terrorists and the majority of Muslims. But it nevertheless holds an entire group of pe

" This is some deeply weird liberal saviour racism. All the agency in this representation is on the side of the intervening white person , while the Muslim woman is quiet, meek and passively grateful. The intervention doesn't challenge the racist politics of the abuser. Instead you're supposed to "ignore the attacker" and *talk about the weather*. The intervening white person doesn't allow that the Muslim woman might herself have something to say about the racism being directed  at her. The whole strategy of "building the safe space" depends on her being quiet. And through these means, the racist attacker is supposed to give up and go away, fuming in "irrelevance". What if he doesn't? What if he keeps it up? What if he escalates? What if you end up having to shout at the top of your lungs about the weather because now he's screaming about sending them back?  How useless is your solidarity then? Where is your safe space? And even