A French Official Is Assailed Over Remarks About Muslims
By Reuters
PARIS (Reuters) — A junior French minister has told young Muslims living in France that they should dress properly, find a job and stop speaking slang. The remarks by the minister for families, Nadine Morano, were condemned by opposition politicians from the left, who called the comments racist.
There are few charges that carry the weight of calling someone a racist. Right wing nuts tried it here in the US after President Obama's election, and even during the campaign
Ms. Morano, who is often outspoken, is a member of President Nicolas Sarkozy’s inner circle. She made the remarks on Monday evening in a small town in eastern France during a government-inspired debate on national identity. “We are not putting young Muslims on trial,” she said in a recording of the debate that was played on French radio. “I respect their situation. What I want is for them to feel French because they are French.”
The melting pot myth is charged with explosiveness.
Ms. Morano added, “I want them to love France when they live here, to find work and not to speak in slang. They shouldn’t put their caps on back to front.”
Try that here in America: I could tell whom was from the US on Mexican beaches easily, the cap backwards making it easier.
The comments tapped into stereotypical perceptions of youths from tough suburbs on the fringes of France’s big cities, many of whom are from immigrant backgrounds. On the other hand, wearing baggy trousers and caps backward and speaking a distinctive form of slang known as “verlan,” while once associated with young people from the French suburbs, have long since spread to high schools throughout the country and to youths of all backgrounds.
How interesting: it started in the suburbs (inherited from the US hip hop scene, and videos, I'm quite sure.
Socialist politicians and groups that combat racism accused Ms. Morano of stoking racial tensions. They also said that the government should abandon its series of national identity debates, out of concern that they could incite a violent backlash.
“This is a political operation designed to pit French people against each another and to create a war of culture and identity,” said Arnaud Montebourg, a Socialist member of Parliament.
What a bunch of mérde.
Ms. Morano’s office said her words had been taken out of context. About five million Muslims live in France, with many people having come from former French colonies in North and West Africa. Mr. Sarkozy’s government has tightly linked the issues of immigration and integration and began a national identity debate last month, playing on a theme that had served him well when he ran for president in 2007.
Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Muslim. Show all posts
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Obama Walks Religious Tightrope
In the early days of his administration, President Barack Obama has developed an unusual pattern as he talks about religion: He regularly puts nonbelievers on the same footing as religious Americans.
It is a rare gesture for a U.S. political leader. But what makes Mr. Obama's outreach especially remarkable is that it is accompanied by public displays of faith that sometimes go beyond even those of his religiously oriented predecessor in the White House.
The outreach toward both ends of the religious spectrum makes for a complicated balancing act, one that runs the risk of alienating one group, the other, or possibly both.
They just can't figure him out. They keep using the same metrics, the same methods, as usual, and the results they get confuse them.
White House events, even those without a religious theme, often begin with a prayer. And the president said he would expand President George W. Bush's outreach to faith-based organizations.
At the same time, he has taken a series of policy steps that are troubling to religious conservatives, and pledged that decisions in his administration would be governed by science. He reversed Bush policies on funding for international family-planning groups and stem-cell research, and he has moved to rescind regulations that allow health-care workers to opt out of duties that offend their beliefs.
But even when taking these stands, which would be expected of a Democratic president, he often makes a point to say that he understands the other side.
Some don't understand that there is another side.
Bishop E.W. Jackson Sr. of Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va., a nondenominational church, finds Mr. Obama's acceptance of nonbelievers offensive. "I believe every American should worship however they wish," he said, "however to deny that the country is fundamentally Christian in its culture and its heritage is just not true."
Boo to you.
But Mr. Obama's frequent mentions of nonbelievers stand out, said Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who studies religion and culture. In some ways, says Mr. Lindsay, it represents the continuation of a pattern in American public discourse. "The last 50 years has been a gradual evolving notion of what constitutes religious diversity," he said. First, he said, Jews were included. Later, after immigration increased from Asia in the 1960s, politicians began mentioning Buddhism and Hinduism. But rarely have atheists been included, he said.
It is a rare gesture for a U.S. political leader. But what makes Mr. Obama's outreach especially remarkable is that it is accompanied by public displays of faith that sometimes go beyond even those of his religiously oriented predecessor in the White House.
The outreach toward both ends of the religious spectrum makes for a complicated balancing act, one that runs the risk of alienating one group, the other, or possibly both.
They just can't figure him out. They keep using the same metrics, the same methods, as usual, and the results they get confuse them.
White House events, even those without a religious theme, often begin with a prayer. And the president said he would expand President George W. Bush's outreach to faith-based organizations.
At the same time, he has taken a series of policy steps that are troubling to religious conservatives, and pledged that decisions in his administration would be governed by science. He reversed Bush policies on funding for international family-planning groups and stem-cell research, and he has moved to rescind regulations that allow health-care workers to opt out of duties that offend their beliefs.
But even when taking these stands, which would be expected of a Democratic president, he often makes a point to say that he understands the other side.
Some don't understand that there is another side.
Bishop E.W. Jackson Sr. of Exodus Faith Ministries in Chesapeake, Va., a nondenominational church, finds Mr. Obama's acceptance of nonbelievers offensive. "I believe every American should worship however they wish," he said, "however to deny that the country is fundamentally Christian in its culture and its heritage is just not true."
Boo to you.
But Mr. Obama's frequent mentions of nonbelievers stand out, said Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who studies religion and culture. In some ways, says Mr. Lindsay, it represents the continuation of a pattern in American public discourse. "The last 50 years has been a gradual evolving notion of what constitutes religious diversity," he said. First, he said, Jews were included. Later, after immigration increased from Asia in the 1960s, politicians began mentioning Buddhism and Hinduism. But rarely have atheists been included, he said.
Saturday, November 1, 2008
Echoes of a Distant Time
The more things change, the more they remain the same.
During the presidential campaign of 1928, a photograph began circulating in rural areas of the Southwest showing Alfred E. Smith shaking hands with a fellow politician on the roadway of a tunnel. The image depicted Smith as he was officially opening the Holland Tunnel, which had been built during his tenure as governor of New York. The people thousands of miles away who received copies of the picture were given a decidedly different explanation: Smith planned to extend the tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Vatican, so he could take secret orders from the pope. As just about any informed voter that year already knew, Smith was the first Roman Catholic ever to win a major party’s presidential nomination.
A tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean is not feasible even today, 80 years later.
At the remove of 80 years, it is tempting to laugh off such a crude attempt at fearmongering and character assassination. With Catholics unquestionably part of the American mainstream — one of the most coveted swing groups of voters in the current race for the White House — the misrepresentation of the photo might seem the artifact of a benighted past.
As for the second point, scholars of Smith’s career and of American Catholicism say nothing in presidential history since 1928 more closely resembles the smearing of Al Smith than the aura of anti-Muslim agitation that has swirled around Barack Obama these past two years.
In the Times today there is a picture of a 50ish white man wearing a t-shirt that says Vote McCain Not Hussein. The implication is clear: Obama is a Muslim. Which he isn't.
The biggest single difference may be the postmodern aspect of the attacks against Mr. Obama. He is vilified not for the religion he follows but for the one he doesn’t, and much of his campaign’s energy has gone into reiterating that he is a Christian. Either way, the underlying premise of the rumors remains that a Muslim is unfit to be president.
As Colin Powell said, what is wrong with being a Muslim? Well, many people simply associate Islam with terror, and refuse to believe a Muslim can be a loyal American.
“What is similar in Smith’s time is that there was a widespread belief there was something dangerous about electing a Catholic as president,” said Allan J. Lichtman, an American University historian who is the author of “Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928.” “You couldn’t be a good American and serve American interests if you were a Catholic, because you were beholden to a foreign potentate called the pope and Catholicism held autocratic tenets.
In the blogosphere and through mass e-mail, however, and even on Fox News and in Insight magazine, the disinformation has proliferated that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim, educated in a madrassa, influenced by an Islamist stepfather and sworn into the Senate holding a Koran.
Ah, Fox News, fair and balanced. Insight magazine? Conservative current events online magazine published by the Unification Church states its website description. Right. Two peas in a pod, this pair.
Robert A. Slayton, author of the Smith biography “Empire Statesman,” suggested in a recent interview that the religious bias against Smith and Mr. Obama served in part as a proxy for nativist resistance to an increasingly diverse nation. The United States in both the 1920s and the 2000s has been bitterly divided over mass immigration — by Jews and Catholics then, Hispanics and Muslims now.
The prejudice is virulent, though couched in homilies.
The most remarkable parallel to 1928 has to do with the idea that Smith was one of ‘those people,’ that the people he represented weren’t real Americans,” said Mr. Slayton, a professor of American history at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. “And when Sarah Palin talks about the ‘real America’ now, I hear an echo of that.”
Real Americans: heartland, small town folk, not Eastern elites, New York Times readers, and, by implication, Muslims, those of color.
During the presidential campaign of 1928, a photograph began circulating in rural areas of the Southwest showing Alfred E. Smith shaking hands with a fellow politician on the roadway of a tunnel. The image depicted Smith as he was officially opening the Holland Tunnel, which had been built during his tenure as governor of New York. The people thousands of miles away who received copies of the picture were given a decidedly different explanation: Smith planned to extend the tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean all the way to the Vatican, so he could take secret orders from the pope. As just about any informed voter that year already knew, Smith was the first Roman Catholic ever to win a major party’s presidential nomination.
A tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean is not feasible even today, 80 years later.
At the remove of 80 years, it is tempting to laugh off such a crude attempt at fearmongering and character assassination. With Catholics unquestionably part of the American mainstream — one of the most coveted swing groups of voters in the current race for the White House — the misrepresentation of the photo might seem the artifact of a benighted past.
Except for two things.
It took another 40 years before a Catholic got a presidential nomination (a Democrat, at that). And the anti-Muslim smear of this year.As for the second point, scholars of Smith’s career and of American Catholicism say nothing in presidential history since 1928 more closely resembles the smearing of Al Smith than the aura of anti-Muslim agitation that has swirled around Barack Obama these past two years.
In the Times today there is a picture of a 50ish white man wearing a t-shirt that says Vote McCain Not Hussein. The implication is clear: Obama is a Muslim. Which he isn't.
The biggest single difference may be the postmodern aspect of the attacks against Mr. Obama. He is vilified not for the religion he follows but for the one he doesn’t, and much of his campaign’s energy has gone into reiterating that he is a Christian. Either way, the underlying premise of the rumors remains that a Muslim is unfit to be president.
As Colin Powell said, what is wrong with being a Muslim? Well, many people simply associate Islam with terror, and refuse to believe a Muslim can be a loyal American.
“What is similar in Smith’s time is that there was a widespread belief there was something dangerous about electing a Catholic as president,” said Allan J. Lichtman, an American University historian who is the author of “Prejudice and the Old Politics: The Presidential Election of 1928.” “You couldn’t be a good American and serve American interests if you were a Catholic, because you were beholden to a foreign potentate called the pope and Catholicism held autocratic tenets.
“Likewise today, there is a widespread belief that somehow you cannot be a good American and be a Muslim at the same time, that being a Muslim means you have loyalties outside the United States — and, like Catholics in the 1920s, they are dangerous loyalties to militant groups seeking to do harm. There’s no truth to the allegations, then or now, but they are tenaciously held.”
So who are those who believe this nonsense? Yahoos and assorted right wing nuts, surely. But anyone else? As the governor of Alaska would say, youbetcha.In the blogosphere and through mass e-mail, however, and even on Fox News and in Insight magazine, the disinformation has proliferated that Mr. Obama was raised as a Muslim, educated in a madrassa, influenced by an Islamist stepfather and sworn into the Senate holding a Koran.
Ah, Fox News, fair and balanced. Insight magazine? Conservative current events online magazine published by the Unification Church states its website description. Right. Two peas in a pod, this pair.
Robert A. Slayton, author of the Smith biography “Empire Statesman,” suggested in a recent interview that the religious bias against Smith and Mr. Obama served in part as a proxy for nativist resistance to an increasingly diverse nation. The United States in both the 1920s and the 2000s has been bitterly divided over mass immigration — by Jews and Catholics then, Hispanics and Muslims now.
The prejudice is virulent, though couched in homilies.
The most remarkable parallel to 1928 has to do with the idea that Smith was one of ‘those people,’ that the people he represented weren’t real Americans,” said Mr. Slayton, a professor of American history at Chapman University in Orange, Calif. “And when Sarah Palin talks about the ‘real America’ now, I hear an echo of that.”
Real Americans: heartland, small town folk, not Eastern elites, New York Times readers, and, by implication, Muslims, those of color.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Moved by a Crescent
Colin Powell talked about this picture during his endorsement of Barack Obama for President.
In the issue of the New Yorker magazine, which I saw online, the picture appeared under athis paragraph:
This summer, the photographer Platon took pictures of hundreds of men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He followed them on their journey through training and deployment, after demobilization and in hospitals, to compile a portrait of the dedication of the armed services today. Sergeant Tim Johannsen, who lost both legs when he drove over an I.E.D. on his second tour of duty in Iraq, made a point of buying an Army T-shirt to wear in his photograph. Of his sacrifice, he said, “It’s just part of the job. You know what you signed up for.” Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, a military reporter who has become a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, says that he and others like him “take our activism as a continuation of our oath of service.” Like many who enlist, Johannsen and Chiroux come from military families. Sergeant John McKay, a marine whose uncle and grandfather were marines, and whose three-year-old son posed in uniform at the wedding of a cousin, also a marine, said, “He’s just waiting till he’s eighteen.” He went on, “I’m scared for him, but if he wants to do it I’ll support him.”
General Powell:
Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.
In the issue of the New Yorker magazine, which I saw online, the picture appeared under athis paragraph:
This summer, the photographer Platon took pictures of hundreds of men and women who volunteered to serve in the military and were sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. He followed them on their journey through training and deployment, after demobilization and in hospitals, to compile a portrait of the dedication of the armed services today. Sergeant Tim Johannsen, who lost both legs when he drove over an I.E.D. on his second tour of duty in Iraq, made a point of buying an Army T-shirt to wear in his photograph. Of his sacrifice, he said, “It’s just part of the job. You know what you signed up for.” Sergeant Matthis Chiroux, a military reporter who has become a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, says that he and others like him “take our activism as a continuation of our oath of service.” Like many who enlist, Johannsen and Chiroux come from military families. Sergeant John McKay, a marine whose uncle and grandfather were marines, and whose three-year-old son posed in uniform at the wedding of a cousin, also a marine, said, “He’s just waiting till he’s eighteen.” He went on, “I’m scared for him, but if he wants to do it I’ll support him.”
General Powell:
On “Meet the Press” this morning, former Secretary of State Colin Powell endorsed Barack Obama for President. (Watch it; read the transcript.) In his endorsement, Powell said he was troubled that some Republicans have been spreading rumors that Obama is a Muslim.
Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards—Purple Heart, Bronze Star—showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.
Now, we have got to stop polarizing ourself in this way. And John McCain is as nondiscriminatory as anyone I know. But I’m troubled about the fact that, within the party, we have these kinds of expressions.
Elsheba Khan at the grave of her son, Specialist Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan.
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