Islamic hospitality
Post-invasion iraq - - Posted on December, 7 at 12:42 pm by Ken L
Many Australians, particularly but not exclusively those of a conservative bent, love to parade their moral superiority over the Muslim world. Just last week they worked themselves up into a righteous jig about the barbarity of those damn ragheads who put a sweet English teacher in gaol for more than a week just for letting her class name a teddy bear Mohammed. And as for that sheik al Hilali, well they used to get in a positive frenzy of indignation.
This assumption of moral superiority is not limited to a minority of eccentrics. It has been adopted by Australian governments of both political persuasions, keen as ever to mimic their heroes in Washington by lecturing the poor benighted non-English-speaking world about ‘Western values’ and how it’s about time everyone else got some.
I often think the people of Asia and the Middle East must be extremely patient and forgiving souls, otherwise they would have told us and the Americans to stick our values up our arse a long time ago. Dr Mahathir did just that of course; time will tell whether he was a harbinger of times to come. Hopefully they’ll just give us a pitying smile and overlook our incredible rudeness.
Needless to say our superior morality doesn’t ignore the practical side of things. There are no deontological Kantians in a capitalist society - nobody here but us utilitarians (except we modify it slightly to read ‘the greatest good for the greatest number of native Australians‘). It’s well-known, for example, that our fragile economy couldn’t possibly cope with an influx of refugees. We’d be a basket case in no time … taxes might even have to go up. It’s unthinkable. Therefore we regretfully have to lock wannabe refugees up or turn them away or just let them drown. It’s all very sad but we are too poor a country to help more than a few thousand a year. We have to leave the heavy lifing to the rich nations of the world.
Rich nations like those notorious members of the Axis of Evil, Iran and Syria.
Thanks in large part to a war of aggression in which Australia enthusiastically took part, Iran has had to cope with about one million refugees. Syria has even more. Moreover, despite all the happy happy talk about them all going home any day now to the new improved Baghdad, it’s clear this is pure bullshit; just more Bush Administration fairy dust intended to show what a stroke of genius Teh Surge was and how it’s solved all Iraq’s problems.
A million refugees … yet the Iranians and the Syrians haven’t built a fence and sent the army out to turn them back into Iraq. They haven’t shipped them all off to Mauritius or somewhere as an ‘Indian Ocean solution’. They haven’t locked them all in detention camps in the middle of the desert. They’ve allowed them into their communities, where they struggle to survive as best they can along with the locals.
If a superior Western nation did anything remotely like this it would rightly be held up as an act of staggering generosity and humanitarianism. Yet few people seem to feel such admiration or gratitude for the way the Iranians and Syrians have behaved. Imagine the chaos and bloodshed that would have occurred in Iraq under the CoW occupation if refugees had been turned back at the borders! Yet Bush and Howard and Blair just shrugged their shoulders and ignored it. Nothing to do with them, apparently.
So on one hand we have Islamic values that see nations uncomplainingly take in millions of refugees with disruptive consequences for their own communities that would be incomprehensible to most Australians, while the mere thousands who try to come here are incarcerated like criminals or turned away to drown. But on the other hand, we have Western values that let us name our teddy bears whatever we like.
I better stop lest I be accused of moral equivalence.
Posted in Post-invasion iraq |
December 7th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Very well said Ken.
I read yesterday’s SMH opinion piece about the teddy bear fiasco, which managed to acknowledge that such insanity is confined to a tiny minority and impugn the entire religion for it at the same time.
And, of course, fail entirely to acknowledge the media’s role in beating up such stories and positively encouraging the loonies.
If I were a Soros type I’d start an I-don’t-care-if-it-makes-a-profit paper a la some of Rupert’s, and have headlines like “Teddy Called Mohammed: Most Muslims Think It’s Cute”
December 7th, 2007 at 2:07 pm
Good point. But the point is constrained by either/or thinking. When we trumpet our own values and democratic successes we tend to leave out the tale of those oppressed by poverty that ‘free’ market capitalism leaves in its wake, or any number of minorities (such as genuine refugees) who ain’t living “the good life”.
Similarly the enourmous burden that is carried by many Islamic countries in the Middle East by refugees is commendable and should be trumpeted. Whilst we may exclusively focus on the perversity of sentencing a woman to prison and lashings for adultery after being gang raped by knifepoint other acts of generosity do not diminish the cruelty and misogynism that has been codified by law.
December 7th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
The other point to remember (and I don’t mean this to demean the efforts of Syria and Iran in any way) is that around 70% of the world’s refugees are Muslim.
People who are truly concerned about ‘winning’ the ‘GWOT’ (whatever those terms mean) might want to think about the corrosive effects of many millions of Muslim refugees, denied access to the West and, by their very presence in countries of the Islamic heartland like Syria and Iran, reminding others of their dispossession and loss.
We all know how well the constant reminder of the Palestinians in camps across the Middle East has worked to foster understanding and friendship…
December 7th, 2007 at 5:18 pm
I always thought that displacing a population by way of fostering violent conflict & persecution in a region was one (I emphasise “one”) reason for invading/attacking a State like Iraq.
Right-Wing governments in Capitalist societies get to feed on the fear & xenophobia that comes with the movement of refugees…which leads to undermining civil rights & promoting security and all those other areas that make a mint for the shareholders in these BIG BROTHER sectors…society, not just the refugees & migrants then becomes the whipping boy & exploited gals for these CONTROL NUTS & their Media Enablers.
These CONTROL NUTS (which even seem to come in Labor/Labour colors these days) can point to the violence in that conflict Region and point out earnestly that the settled migrants are possibly demonstrating the same immoral characteristics as their civil war infected brethren overseas & need to be immersed more in the host nation’s VALUES (like hazing a kid by dunking their head in a toilet & paddling their arse & saying “now you’re one of us”). Part of the process of constructing an obediant, compliant, sycophantic workforce & citizenry.
Then you get a few resistance incidents that can be used as a scare campaign to ramp up more support for the CONTROL NUTS.
Eventually, after treating the initial group of refugees like invading cane toads & denying them the basic Rights you would even give to your pet, the media & politicians start to ease off the pressure, begin demonstrating feigned regret and start introducing the maleable, cowed, grateful refugees into the community where they can be used for cheap labor, to do any crap job others won’t touch with a barge pole, to fill the gaps in Country communities that generally are about as appealing as sitting in a hot, empty room for a year…& some even use their skills to fill required vacancies in professional areas.
And said refugees generally become obsequious citizens w/ broad accents…and are even willing to point at the next group of displaced peoples and play the xenophobia game. The malleable Workforce born in fear & abuse exhibit the same characteristics as their abusers. Amazing. They’ve got it down pat these CONTROL NUTS.
And once the original abused refugees’ kids/grandkids come along…& wake up to the treatment of their families, and start flexing their vocal muscles…the CONTROL NUTS smile calmly & knowingly & get their Media Enablers to pump up the MORAL PANIC & FEAR again…& hey presto! More cops. “More reasons to vote us in AGAIN.”
Every displaced group has decades of potential benefit in them for the CONTROL NUTS…aka WAR-MONGERS.
Ain’t contemporary capitalism marvellous?
Says a great deal about our societies’ moral superiority.
Still, there are saner places like Sweden.
http://www.alertnet.org/db/blogs/36072/2007/09/10-142310-1.htm
Tho I’m sure there CONTROL NUTS will attempt to squeeze some benefits out of the Iraqi refugees soon enuff…sigh.
Good stuff Ken.
December 7th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
It\’s actually even more amazing given some quite recent history. In the 70s the Syrian government was nearly overthrown by an uprising led by newly arrived Palestinian refugees. And Iran had to absorb very large numbers of refugees with no help from the West in the Soviet-Afghan war, in the Afghan civil war and after the Iraqi Shia uprising.
December 7th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
“The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
~Samuel P Huntington (American political scientist)
It’s our altruism that that brings out our nasty side… apparently. Of course you could think of it as tough love.
December 7th, 2007 at 10:43 pm
Hey mars, it’s good to see your name back in a thread.
December 8th, 2007 at 10:23 am
Thanks Ken. It’s been a while. Just starting to get some fire back in my belly.
I’m amazed that the war-party can still get away with mumbling their contrived, retroactive justifications for the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Still pretending that “regime change” (forget WMD or terrorist training) was the sole reason for this war of aggression. It was neither the stated primary goal, nor was it the intent.
When the plasmodium parasite spreads malaria through the bloodstream, a symptom of the disease is weight loss. Clearly many people (myself included) would benefit from shedding a few pounds. This is of no concern to the parasite. It is indifferent to what benefits or harm it brings to the host, the parasite is only doing what is in it’s best interest.
In Iraq, the much-hyped liberation of the people is no more than a handy by-product of an illegal, idealogically-driven invasion.
December 9th, 2007 at 11:42 am
Bah! Enough of your mealy-mouthed moral relativism! What we’re doing is RIGHT because we are the good guys, we have everyone’s best interests at heart, and they are only jealous of our superiority. We are WHITE (and those of us who are not would be best advised to shut the hell up). White makes right, even when we’re wrong.
If these darker peoples would just stop struggling and let us get on with it, we could bring them prosperity and give them pride by making them an excellent source of cheap footwear. Think about it: if people would stop resisting the noble Empire, there would be no killing or bloodshed at all, would there? I mean, apart from collatorals and the odd overzealous waterboarding, but those aren’t intentional so they don’t count.
So it’s their own fault, really. Why won’t they let us civilise them???
Bloody moozzies.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Great article. Except, who says Iran and Syria want the refugees? They dont want them. The last thing they want are more people to control. These governments have enough difficulty controlling their own populations to attempt turning away invading refugees.
Once the refugees have arrived, they’re happy to keep them living in appalling conditions while broadcasting loudly “look how we accept our muslim brothers with open arms”.
December 10th, 2007 at 11:20 am
Well Roger if they are acting in such bad faith, the obvious remedy is for TEH West to \’walk the talk\’ on values, and offer refugee/immmigrant status to the over two million Iraqis who have split from their \’liberated land\’. Agree?
December 10th, 2007 at 12:56 pm
Except, who says Iran and Syria want the refugees? They dont want them. The last thing they want are more people to control. These governments have enough difficulty controlling their own populations to attempt turning away invading refugees.
Name one country that doesn’t control their populations.
Oh, and I love the Newspeak term invading refugees. A classic Howardism…
December 10th, 2007 at 6:09 pm
I was under the impression that refugees in those countries did sit in prison border camps for years on end, or is that just the Palestinians?
December 10th, 2007 at 9:44 pm
First day back in Strayer, I flicked on Newsradio while making brekkie and heard the tale of the school teacher in Sudan three times in half an hour. Nothing else had been happening in Sudan, it seems, nor elsewhere in Africa.
December 11th, 2007 at 8:39 am
The difference floopmeister is that in Iran and Syria, the government has less control over the population. They also have less resources to keep their population under control. They therefore must use their might keep themselves in power.
I for one am disgusted by our country’s treatment of refugees and our reluctance to accept them, however don’t assume for a moment that there is such a thing as a benevolent dictator.
The refugee camps are not held up in the media as an act of staggering generosity and humanitarianism by any side because the conditions are appalling.
I dont know about using a “classic Howardism”, I thought it was more “leader speak”.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:50 am
Point taken Roger - I think I misunderstood your point.
Apologies.
However, my point about the existence of the camps still stands - whether benevolent or not, and wehether promoted by those governments as an act of benevolence or not, the very existence of such numbers of displaced people is a constant reminder of current realities in the ME.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:30 am
In fact if you read some of the Iraqi blogs, refugees are not living in camps. They are renting houses and trying to get jobs in the community, at least in Syria and Jordan (not sure about Iran), while the money they managed to get out of Iraq slowly diiminishes.
December 11th, 2007 at 11:36 am
Oh and Roger of course no government welcomes refugees and I didn’t suggest they did. But it’s the nature of the response that’s been revealing. If (god forbid that it should happen) Indonesia broke down into civil unrest, what chance is there that Australia would allow a million refugees to come here and look for work? Somewhere between none and zero I suggest, even if it was known that the refugees faced a terrible fate and possible death if they stayed where they were.
I wasn’t my purpose to discuss the merits of refugee policies, but to point out how selective many people are in adopting an attitude of moral superiority to Muslims. My personal view is that most cultures have much to be proud of … and much to be ashamed of.
December 12th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Speaking of things to be proud of and ashamed of
http://hotair.com/archives/2007/12/11/larry-odonnell-admits-hes-afraid-to-criticize-islam-publicly/
December 12th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Observa, why should any of us care what a single one of the utterly unknown idiots writing or referred to in that post has to say on the price of fish? Larry O’Donnnel? WTF?
December 12th, 2007 at 3:55 pm
observa, your fear of Islamics demonstrates you are either a paranoid delusional Zionist (as oppossed to the more saner Zionists) or a war-mongering, xenophopic fruit cake who is afraid of their own shadow & expects government to protect you from your phantom enemies regardless of the cost…or perhaps all of the above. And i’m certain that asset acquisition & financial gain are also prime motivators for your constant demonstration of Islamophobia.
Noone on this blog supports or condones oppression, torture & abuse by individuals or groups of other individuals/groups…regardless of their culture/religion/gender.
Some support troops in Afghanistan, others prefer to resist extremism by other means.
Imho, if you feel so compelled to fart on about the dangers of Islamic Fundamentalists then perhaps you should head overseas & assist in some humanitarian organisation that is attempting to transform Islamic societies by dealing with the root causes of religious extremism.
Or perhaps you’d prefer go to Israel & shoot bullets at Palestinian children?…or cheer on the Dalek-like invasions of Gaza by Israeli tanks?
Frankly, i find your attempts to foster HATE & promote FEAR as tiresome as i did when they were part of the HOT AIR campaign by the Coalition. Yes, the TEAM that lost…as in LOST…the election.