yorick’s yearnings

The last couple of days, I have been busy. Not with my work, unfortunately, but with discussions in Germany’s facebook, studiVZ. The whole thing was triggered because I got an invitation to join a forum, entitled: Islam is submission. Its founder has a certain renown for islamophobia on the platform and is linked to another forum: Politically Incorrect (PI). Politically Incorrect describes itself as a blog “explicitly directed against mainstream, pro-American and Israel-friendly.” While his style of debating is startling, it is very typical for the new, petit bourgeois and seemingly philosemitic right in Germany.

The basic statement would be that “Islam is an anti-Semitic ideology”, a few quotes from quran (Sura 4.38b [34b] or Sura 2.186-189), enriched with a couple of theses from popular books by Peter Scholl-Latour then paint a picture that ultimately questions the legitimacy of Islam as a religion and a culture completely.

The main idea is that Islam threatens our secular and liberal foundations, and therefore Islam (and Muslims) must be pushed back. Of course there are aspects, especially in political Islam, that are extremely dangerous and hostile towards everything representing “the great satan”, vulgo: the Western world. Of course it is correct that these sects have partisans in Germany as well.

But first: Islam never has been a uniform religion. This means that the vast majority of Muslims does not share the same ideas, even when it comes down to how to interpret quranic verses the correct way. The picture of a monolithic ideology threatening our values simply is incorrect, not only politically.

Second – and this is the unsavoury bit: the whole issue is not about Islam at all. While it is always said that Islam is totalitarian, against women’s rights and aggressively intolerant, the structure of the argument is different and very old. One standard line is directed against slaughtering animals according to Islamic law, because this method is regarded as a violation of animal’s rights. Not that these people would care much about animal’s rights, because they obviously do not care whether the usual European methods are any better. In fact, the discussion goes very much alongside the arguments we had in Europe a hundred years ago about the shehitah. The only difference is that this time it is not about Jews, but about Muslims.

I doubt that religious rights or religious freedom are the problem here. There is far more at stake. The structure only leads in one direction: to prove that Muslims cannot be integrated into our society – and not only Muslims. The same arguments can and have been used against Jews already. But the claim to be philosemitic! I am convinced that this is nothing more than a pretext – it gives them an argument against everybody who could accuse them of disliking Jews or Israel: “The danger that anti-Semitism is spread in our country in the form of migrants is imminent. It is our responsibility towards Jews to cut anti-Semitism in Germany.” Well, yes – and what about Jews? Sometimes they are seen as an integral part of our tradition: “the authors of the New Testament were Jews and defined themselves as such” because “they made references to the Old Testament all the time and regarded Jesus as the promised Messiah”. It is obvious that this is a very crude construct – and being this, it doesn’t last very long; when it is said that Jews slaughter in a way, similar to Muslims, then the whole thing immediately is turned against Jews, too. The same goes for the headscarf – Richard C. Schneider has written an interesting article about this already four years ago. Finally, the requests are extended: “Then, the shehitah has to be forbidden for Jews as well. The same rights for everybody!” (all quotes can be found in this discussion). In this manner, it will always be easy to prove that someone is not able and willing to integrate. It is easy to see what lurks behind this attempt to save the West – the same old structure of religious and cultural hatred, an anti-Semitism, clad in new clothes.

Interestingly enough, this sometimes is even too much for those who should share these racist ideologies: Andreas Molau, Head of the modern German Nazi party (NPD) in Lower Saxonia, recently wrote in a statement, Politically Incorrect “tries desperately to dissociate itself from the NPD” and characterises “the hate-sally” of “PI-authors, who regard Muslims as some kind of new subhumans” as “chauvinistc” – probably because they turn their eyes off the main, Jewish (or Hindu or whatever) enemy. For the moment.