Hello to the stereotypes at Harry's Place
I noticed a huge spike in my readership yesterday. Seems like Graham at Harry's place, has taken a shine to me, and the loyal subscribers are clicking through to see what a "young woman" like me has to say. Thanks for the compliment Graham ;-) You're certainly a charmer! But your comment that my views are "interesting" makes me think your thesaurus was looking for some other euphemism?
Paradoxically, I'm also intrigued by your question: "Are we frightened to communicate outside of what we know?"
One of the reasons I started writing my blog was to counter the idea that people - whatever angle they came from - knew who I was, and who I am. I pick up a lot of stereotypical labels, and in less serious moments it can be good fun to blow people's expectations. However, this is not a time for fun. But it certainly is a time for communication.
I've welcomed and published all the comments I've received so far, even though I disagree violently with them. My main observation is that they are pretty standard, nothing we ain't heard before. Come on guys, try a bit harder, and try something new. Don't be frightened to communicate outside of what you are comfortable with, try a different angle...
Paradoxically, I'm also intrigued by your question: "Are we frightened to communicate outside of what we know?"
One of the reasons I started writing my blog was to counter the idea that people - whatever angle they came from - knew who I was, and who I am. I pick up a lot of stereotypical labels, and in less serious moments it can be good fun to blow people's expectations. However, this is not a time for fun. But it certainly is a time for communication.
I've welcomed and published all the comments I've received so far, even though I disagree violently with them. My main observation is that they are pretty standard, nothing we ain't heard before. Come on guys, try a bit harder, and try something new. Don't be frightened to communicate outside of what you are comfortable with, try a different angle...
posted by Shelina Zahra Janmohamed at 15:30
20 Comments:
So why don't you tell us what you "violently" disagree with? I must say I haven't seen anything startlingly new from you either. "Israel thinks it can win by bombing", ho hum. "It doesn't understand that it's increasing support for Hezbollah", ho hum. I left a comment here hoping to start a dialog that might get somewhere, but I may have been mistaken. And if you don't approve this comment, I'll know I was.
What I violently disagree with is that there is no ceasefire. And that children have been killed for almost four weeks. On both sides.
Ha, you caught me, one of my things about Harry's place is that I think we do have a very stereotypical middle-aged white male audience and so that last paragraph (after the quotation from your post) was added hours after the first part when I thought nobody was bothering to "communicate." My bad calling you a "young woman" (put it down to me getting old and stupid.)and I am looking for no euphemisms, I really do think your views on Muslim communities are interesting (though I have my doubts whether the majority of our core readership actually see muslims as anything other than a monolithic block....)
Anyway apologies for giving you all the moderation work.
Graham (from Harry's Place)
When you say ceasefire, do you mean ceasefire like earlier where Hezbollah get to attack Israel and take hostages but Israel must cease to fire ?
If the whole of the Muslim world want a ceasefire and want peace then pressurize Hezbollah into releasing their hostages and laying down their arms. You've got more influence with them but there is of course NO CHANCE of them doing that because Hezbollah do not want peace (otherwise they wouldn't have started it in the first place and once started would have ended it by handing the hostages back pronto).
The fact that incredible political and even physical pressure is not being put on Hezbollah by the Muslim world is of course also proof that the Muslim world does not want peace with Israel. The ONLY actions that are being taken are the tired predictable laments about the West standing by as Israel oppresses yet more Muslims.
[Btw I have some questions about Islam I would like to put to a Muslim, this is not the right thread and presumably not even the right site, any suggestions (and I'll not being going down to the local mosque to ask in person...) ?]
And who are the commenters - from Harry's place or anywhere else - who support killing children?
Ceasefire !! we all know how peace loving a nation Israel is .. It's only d hamas or hezbollah's who r breaching the law to get wat is rightfully theirs rite??... let's forget the building of the wall (which is a clear breach of Int'l laws).. Let's forget the killings of 900 civilians in 3 weeks in lebanon currently... Let's forget what Mr.Sharon had done in shatila... Let's forget what the kids in our peace loving nation's sign on d missiles dat kills ppl on d other side of their border... Let's forget that Israel is not even rcognised as a nation in d UN... and let's also forget that Israel has one of d largest and only nuclear arsenal in d middle-east(they haven't signed the NPT!)... Let's also forget the killing of an innocent family in gaza beach b4 an israeli soldier was kidnapped , n for wat? in return of female and child prisoners...
PEACE i a word that is haunting in the mind of evry palestinian for the past 50 yrs.. Peace will only happen when it is based on justice and not on overpowering tactics of 'shock and awe' or muscle power. Now as for putting physical n political power on hezbollah.. for a change y doesn't the world community ask the Israeli war machine to put down then lets see what happens...
Muslim world does not want peace .. good point... wait a sec which is d country dat has devastated Afganistan, oh wat abt Iraq (with all dat WMD's n biological threat!!) .. yes i agree with the muslim world posing a threat to the world community given the amt of peace and security dat all these peace loving nations have done and r doing TQ for lebanon n palestine n Iraq n Afganistan!
Can I just say that clearly I am not the stereotypical HarrysPlace reader. I am a young woman who happens to be christian, jewish and muslim all at the same time (Yes such a thing is possible! And if you think hard about it I am sure you will realize how one can be all three at the same time without lying to anyone about anything)
So now to my comment on the Hezbollah-Israel situation: Hezbollah is firing just as many missiles at Israel as the other way round, except that less Israelis are dying since -due to etensive experience with wars- all houses have bomb shelters. So what exactly is disproportionate about this response if both sides throw the same amount of rockets at each other? The fact that Israelis have bomb shelters or the fact that the Lebanese don't? The fact that Israelis start leaving their houses when they feel threatened and move to safer areas with their children or the fact that the Lebanese (apparently) dont?
What I find disproportionate are the reactions to the crisis...While Israel is distributing flyers to warn the population to leave and apologizes for the civilians they kill, Hizbollah deliberately targets civilians and hides their weapons and fighters among the endangered population. So far, the only time they apologized was when they hit two Muslim boys in Nazareth, which they described as 'martyrs'. Sure, more Lebanese civilians have died in this war against Hizbollah and my heart bleeds for the poor children who died. I just wish that their parents (who should be capable of reading Arabic flyers) would have tried saving them when the leaflets were dropped. A ceasefire that still kills Israelis is no ceasefire and that is exactly what's been happening up to now, so I agree with Blair....what the crisis needs is a ceasefire that WORKS and LASTS on BOTH sides.
Ilan:
What was said was that the Muslim world did not really want peace with Israel or there would noticably have been extreme political pressure on Hezbollah from them.
Are you capable of dealing with that point without going into flagellation over Afghanistan (where the Muslim world seemed happy with the appauling human rights record of the Taliban and an ongoing civil war), or Iraq (oppressed under a brutal dictatorship) both regimes any balanced person, Muslim or not, should have been happy to have seen been removed ?
How is it that Egypt manages to prevent attacks into Israel, and is it purely coincidence that Israel manages not to attack Egypt in return ?
The fact is that Israel always say they want peace, and the other side says they want a "just peace" where by "just peace" they really mean "we won't attack you if you concede to all our demands, including the 'right of return' of well over 4 million people who have a rabid hatred of Israel, into a population of 6 million". So essentially one side wants peace and the other says give in to all our demands and we won't attack you, which is does not really mean they want peace at all.
Ms. Natalie ... admire ur ur religious ideology!
Now tell me If I come to ur house in England n tell u that u have to leave or I will kill u, cos my frnds want to live in ur house hereafter... wat wud u do? well this does not directly realte to the current issue... but When we look at the middle east crisis we have to take into consideration the history as well. Which aiam sure u have or if u haven't iam sure u will aftr reading this post... u will see that wen justice as the world community is partisan how can the ppl on the other side be happy??
Killing of civilians is bad whether it is jewish or christian or muslims... but again why is it that the world community is appaled only when 1000 ppl die in WTC or 50 oddd elsewhere but not wen these same ppl butcher in thousands in some other country based on some bunch of lies !! ??
What I fail to understand is why doesn't the world community not understand or evn listen to what the other side has to say??
anywyaz Iam sorry if I sounded rude or anything..
Hello Graham
Your very polite response and openness has enticed me to open a line of communication with you. Tell me more about HP's audience?
And what else is on your mind?
hello there 'anonymous'
Thanks for disagreeing so agreeably.
See I think we disagree about Israel's motives. While you seem to think (and please correct me if i am wrong on this) that Israel is really keen on (re-)occupying Lebanon, I would say that if that is their true intent they are going about it in an awfully clumsy way, since they haven't sent any settlers in so far and would be forced to rebuild all the destroyed houses, bridges and infrastructure....not to mention the neverending terrorism.
Lets face it, Hezbollah has now been sending rockets over the border for months. This did not start with Israel sending in troops. And, well...if someone would be doing that to England I would support the government (even Libdems) in any attempt to protect themselves.
Also, a brief look into Israeli history shows that they have been giving back territory recently. Sadly this has not improved the situation, since most people don't seem to have noticed and still live in the past. Nasrallah on the other hand has made it very clear that his ultimate goal is the destruction of Israel. So who really wants to occupy what?
To me it seems much more likely that Israel in this case are actually trying to destroy houses so that Hezbollah can no longer hide their activists and their weapons. They are destroying infrastructure to disable weapon supplies from Syria and Iran and are warning civilians to leave so that Nasrallah can't hide his fighters among civilians anymore, thus robbing him of most of his advantages. This is called warfare as far as I know, not occupation.
And last but not least, if someone was to threaten me and my family and tell me to get out because they will be throwing bombs and rockets, i would get my children out of there as fast as possible!. I guess I could have saved myself the rant and just said that ey? ;-)
A link that might shed some light on the topic being discussed..
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5245482.stm
P.s: No spam here ;-)
I am afraid 'anonymous' still doesn't get the concept of being attacked with rockets. So let me explain how I see the situation (not some random BBC journalist, since I could pick out a lot of anti-Palestinian news artciles that would convince you just as little).
1) Israel disengages from gaza and pulls its troops out
2) For a short time all hell breaks loose in gaza with Palestinians fighting each other due to hamas/Fatah clashes
3) Rockets are fired into southern Israel and terror does NOT stop, Israelis are still being attacked despite giving Gaza to the Palestinians
4) Since Israelis are still being killed, it warns that if terror and rockets do not stop they will move in again (NOT reoccupy)
5) Terror does NOT stop and soldier is kidnapped (I guess its easier to have a common enemy than to have to face the fact that palestinian society is internally split and violent)
6) israel moves in again on gaza, targeting rocket systems and terrorists (once again stored among 'innocent' civilians)
As far as I can tell this is normal war. Both sides attacking. If the BBC journalist was to be in northern israel right now she would hear the same sounds and experience the same 'missile-flying' tragedies.Dunno whether she would write quite as sympathetically but honestly, I make my own opinion rather than regurgitate others. Or would you like me to quote Richard Littlejohn to you?
Also, I thought we were talking about the Lebanon thingy? Since Hezbollah rockets have been falling in the West Bank too around Jenin and elsewhere and just yesterday 3 more Arab Israelis (yes they do exist) were killed by such a Hizbollah attack, will you finally condemn Hizbollah for their indiscriminate targeting of civilians or are you just lying when you say that its wrong when people are killed no matter whether Muslim, jewish or Christian?
Natalie, alas there is point 3a that you have missed. Even when Israel has "pulled out", it still controls what happens in Gaza. At any time, Israel closes the border to and from Gaza preventing people from getting to their jobs. It does not permit trade from the Mediterranean shore of Palestine, it can pull aside any Palestinian at any time and detain them as they wish. So whilst there may be an official cessation of attack, this is much more invidious and has the same effect.
Hello Shelina and thanks for your kind words.
I don't know if I can tell you much more about HP's audience (I am stereotyping them you know - there are a lot of people who are not white middle-class males.) I guess what I was trying to say on that is that working in adult education I meet many muslim students who have different views on various things and that constituency seems to me to be very much underepresented at Harry's Place so that those who would create a "monolithic straw man" and then proceed to demolish it often remain unchallenged.
But we are supposedly a "pro-war" website so I suspect that with the exception of occasional visitors such as Osama Saeed many of us will just have to remain in ignorance....
What is on my mind at the moment? Well very much NOT the middle-east (having spent 30 years listening to westerners talking about it I am very concious that it is mostly just talk. I will become interested again when there seems to be some chance of real changes leading to peace in the region. What is interesting me at the moment are the different communities of Britain and how they are portrayed by the press (which is why your post got my attention.) I'm not just thinking about muslim communities but how all must live under the gaze and moralising of metropolitan middle-class journalists and filmakers (I expect you can see one direction I am going in here.)
Anyway all undeveloped as yet. Thanks for your time (and please let me know if you don't want to be linked to again).
Graham
(From Harry's Place.)
Hey Graham - feel free to link again, its certainly got my readership up! I've published every comment I've received, even though a lot of them are the usual pro-Israel victim propaganda (there you go Natalie and Ilana, something else for you to write in about!)
There are certainly interesting moves in the media about representation of minorities. On the positive side these are a little more sophisticated than in the fifties and sixties, but still don't offer a huge improvement on caricaturing. The whole Monica Ali/Brick Lane discussion is a case in point. Germaine Greer is an interesting read on this front. It points to an underlying discussion that I think European modern thinking has yet to address honestly - can "Art" (I use quotation marks to refer to the widest meaning of all creativity) influence collective thinking. Whilst discourse likes to believe it doesn't ("violent films and computer games have nothing to do with crime on our streets or copycat crimes"), we have to address this much more fundamentally and hold "Artists" much more to account for the creative power they hold. We may find that they are right, but at the moment they feel they are exempt. It would be better to test the process and have them proved right, then to automatically give them this scope and let them off without reviewing the impact they had.
And yes, keep connecting me up to HP! :-)
Salaam, I've had a few links from HP in my time, and have also put some questions to them hoping to start a dialogue. Didn't get any response at all to this one -
http://www.osamasaeed.org/osama/2006/02/the_left_the_ri.html
Hello Osama,
I can't get into your link but have checked your February archives and can only find the post about Alia Izetbegovic which starts with "the left" and ends with a question to Harry's Place about the Muslim Brotherhood. Is this the question? If so you are probably best off putting it straight to David T. I am the "Livingstonian" one who has also put questions along those lines and have never been entirely convinced with the answers. (as here:)
http://hurryupharry.bloghouse.net/archives/2005/11/18/bunder_interviews_livingstone.php
I'm open to communication but can't answer that question.
Graham (Harry's Place.)
Right, I am off to Jerusalem today so last comment from me here....just wanted to say that after Israel pulled out of Gaza they DID actually leave the Gaza Palestinians alone for a while. Did rockets stop? No, Did terrorism stop? No (they are still catching suicide bombers every day trying to cross the border and even sometimes reaching Tel Aviv). All I can see from stereotypical 'Anti-War' people here is the sentiment of blaming someone else for the corruption and Islamic terrorism rampant in the palestinian territories. has the Hamas government decided to go back on its statetements about israel having a right to exist? No.
And you really want to carry on blaming Israel for absolutely everything thats going on over there? The way I see it is, if you don't agree with Israel defending itself you probably (like most religious Muslims I have met in my life....which is MANY)agree with the Hamas line which says they have no right to exist.
Clearly some people here (maybe even the author of this blog) believe that israel is only out for 'occupation', trying to acchieve some Greater israel plan... personally, when I take into account the fact that Israel is smaller than Wales and has been giving away territoy for so-called 'peace'I would say that is non-sense.
But hey, who cares about my opinion anyway? So, I will leave you all up to your own opinions and quabbles, knowing that if terrorism hit you over the head you would probably not be quite so tolerant of it anymore. Good luck to all of you, I am off to see the holy place of all three of my religions, hoping that I wont be killed in some random suicide attack ;-)
Graham, appreciate your reply. Unfortunately I think long links get chopped off on the comments page. And my browser collapsed when trying access Nov 2005 archives!
Shelina, forgot to say, keep up the good work.
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