Boris Johnson's Burkha Comments

TheBigBean

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I did specialise the study into it, so I'll back my knowledge on the matter.

Do you think that calling someone or something racist aids reasoned debate? I really don't think it does as evidenced by the recent pages of this thread.

So if they are I should pretend they are not?

I think people generally are often unaware of their own racism.

We all are to a bigger or lesser degree. It’s importsnt that we understand when we are, where possible.

I think it’s absolutely vital to know so that we don’t blindly tolerate what ought to be intolerable opinions.

You should put forward an argument against the prejudice that enables the other person to challenge their own opinion, and see their own prejudice.

In a similar way, you may consider someone else's opinion to be idiotic, but calling them an idiot or their opinion idiotic is likely to go down less well than producing a reasoned argument.

Vino'sGhost

Rick Chasey wrote:

I did specialise the study into it, so I'll back my knowledge on the matter.

In which case, your earlier comments disguise your mastery of the subject.

In particular, you have taken an academic liberal viewpoint that extends racism away from its actual meaning and broadens it in order to enable the demonisation of large parts of the community and to support minority groups. Islam is not a minority group, not least because islam does not recognise national boundaries. in those terms Muslims are not in a minority, they're the majority.

Racism then becomes a rallying call, a serious issue reduced to a means to close down opinions alternative to yours.

History then needs to be re written to purge universities of the names and images of historical figures who don't meet the perceived norms of this time, speakers are "no platformed" and critical thought is forced out.

Another example of liberal minds becoming closed minds is the diversity mantra which now sees white hetrosexual men being discriminated against in favour of minority group interests. Diversity hiring is frequently discriminatory despite the best intentions. I have a phd thesis which I can share with you that explores these themes.

DeVlaeminck

Rick Chasey wrote:

I did specialise the study into it, so I'll back my knowledge on the matter.

Great let's all list our qualifications and the highest ranked wins - anyone got a sociology PhD speak now and we may as well go home? I can weigh in with an MA in Political Behaviour (Distinction).

You don't actually make any arguments, just assertions and then fall back on insults. You call people racist yet haven't been able to back it up at all - either you have no argument or you lack the ability to articulate it.

Someone said above that Boris Johnson's jokes were punching down and I agree. That's why I disagree with what Boris said - because he's making fun of women who are oppressed by that culture. His target is wrong in that sense but the culture itself that dictates women should wear these things and importantly the rationale for that is fully deserving of criticism.

My take is that some on here are treating the niqab and the burqa like a choice of choosing between jeans or chinos, as if there was nothing more significant to it than that. You may as well argue that wearing a swastika is akin to wearing paisley - they are both patterns after all. Rick when you ask above what assumptions I was making I think it's clear I'm assuming that wearing these garments is not a free choice, I've already said this and referred you to Lukes' theory of power - it's a very short book and somewhat more respected than a random PhD thesis.

shirley_basso

I'm with DeV on this one.

I agree people should wear exactly what they want unless grossly offensive BUT I think, as DeV has said, we should also consider the circumstances under which that 'free choice' was made.

veronese68

Jez mon wrote:

Does it not come back to the golden rule of comedy, that you should broadly punch up, not down, and an Eton and Oxbridge educated MP picking on potentially oppressed women who are denied most opportunities, isn't exactly punching anywhere but down?

Agree with this, but would also add that a politician (especially one with ambitions such as his) should be held to higher standards than a comedian on such things.

Vino'sGhost

Shirley Basso wrote:

I'm with DeV on this one.

I agree people should wear exactly what they want unless grossly offensive BUT I think, as DeV has said, we should also consider the circumstances under which that 'free choice' was made.

Me too. Nothing exists in a vacuum.

rick_chasey

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

TheBigBean wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I did specialise the study into it, so I'll back my knowledge on the matter.

Do you think that calling someone or something racist aids reasoned debate? I really don't think it does as evidenced by the recent pages of this thread.

So if they are I should pretend they are not?

I think people generally are often unaware of their own racism.

We all are to a bigger or lesser degree. It’s importsnt that we understand when we are, where possible.

I think it’s absolutely vital to know so that we don’t blindly tolerate what ought to be intolerable opinions.

You should put forward an argument against the prejudice that enables the other person to challenge their own opinion, and see their own prejudice.

In a similar way, you may consider someone else's opinion to be idiotic, but calling them an idiot or their opinion idiotic is likely to go down less well than producing a reasoned argument.

In fairness, you had 8 pages of that.

You've got people here who are working on assumptions which correlate almost exactly to racial stereotypes of the middle east that go back centuries.

The burka/niqab or any number of Islamic dress that sets out to conceal part or all of a woman’s physical features has been part of the orientalist/western dichotomy for the half a century at least.

It is a binary construct that creates a difference between the modern west with modernity and progress and the medieval, sexist east.

You’ve got assumptions on here that likely ‘any woman who wears it is likely in a submissive and oppressive relationship’ which ties in neatly with that idea. There is no effort to break down the stereotype and to see through the social construct around the garment and actually consider the prson within as someone who may or may not have their own agency. Instead, the hijab wearer is treated like a caricature which serves to preserve the western superiority over the east.

When I say it’s a vehicle for islamophobia, that’s why. It’s a social shorthand to refer to all the negative stereotypes that help create an epystemolgical difference between us, the white westerners and them, the Islamic easterners. The way bojo and others on here have spoken about it only reinforce that attitude.

When I talk about not knowing what people’s motives are for wearing what they want to wear, I’m trying to invite people to tear away the cultural baggage associated with the garment and see it for what it is, which is a mere piece of clothing which someone could wear for any number of reasons. That way we remove them from the binary construct and consider them as individual people, thus extracating them from the possibility of discrimination on the basis of the us and them.

It's classic othering.

Johnson is using the shorthand of the burka and niqab, with all the associated cultural baggage that comes with it, to further pursue end solidify that orientalist binary us-and-them construct.

If he said it about racing drivers eyes looking like post-boxes, no-one would even notice.

that's because there isn't the social baggage that is associated with it. And we all understand that innately.

rjsterry

Vino'sGhost wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

I did specialise the study into it, so I'll back my knowledge on the matter.

In which case, your earlier comments disguise your mastery of the subject.

In particular, you have taken an academic liberal viewpoint that extends racism away from its actual meaning and broadens it in order to enable the demonisation of large parts of the community and to support minority groups. Islam is not a minority group, not least because islam does not recognise national boundaries. in those terms Muslims are not in a minority, they're the majority.

Racism then becomes a rallying call, a serious issue reduced to a means to close down opinions alternative to yours.

History then needs to be re written to purge universities of the names and images of historical figures who don't meet the perceived norms of this time, speakers are "no platformed" and critical thought is forced out.

Another example of liberal minds becoming closed minds is the diversity mantra which now sees white hetrosexual men being discriminated against in favour of minority group interests. Diversity hiring is frequently discriminatory despite the best intentions. I have a phd thesis which I can share with you that explores these themes.

Some pretty questionable statements there. For a start Islam isn't some monolithic organisation and the idea of it respecting or disrespecting national borders is pretty meaningless. If you mean individual Muslims place a loyalty to their faith over that to their nationality then I think you need to back that up with something more than the utterances of one or other figurehead.

The idea that Muslims in Britain aren't a minority because they share their faith with other Muslims in other countries makes no practical sense. Do Catholics form a majority as well, because there are lots of them around the world?

Lastly, you're right, it's so tough being a white male.

rolf_f

Rick Chasey wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

people are asked to remove helmets and balaclavas because there is a history of people using them to hide their identity when robbing the premises. He clearly stated that he wanted to stop muslim women covering up in his shop for the safety and security of his staff.

er

Yes the point is religious belief and religious based culture shouldn't be put on a pedastal above other beliefs and cultures. As with the Boris Johnson jokes, they were flippant but the furore they've caused is because he's made a little fun of Islamic dress, if it were just some new youth fashion nobody would have batted an eyelid. When you make an ideology above criticism, by stuff like screaming racism whenever someone does criticise it, that's dangerous.

But it inevitably is racist.

It's not screaming. It's a factual description.

Understand that.

What sort of argument is that, "computer says no....".

So your view is that criticising religion, in this case Islam, inevitably that is racist?

All about the context of the criticism.

In this context and indeed in yours, yes it is.

So is it "inevitably racist" or is it "racist dependent on the context of the criticism"? Surely it can't be both? Do you have examples of racist and non racist contexts? (I think in this case we are still talking about Bojos remarks which made fun of an item of clothing which, by Western standards, can rationally be argued to look slightly ridiculous (albeit no more so than the clobber of nuns, high fashion etc)).

No, jokes at minorities which can be considered racially and or culturally different, expense are going to be racist. It;s up to people to decide how acceptable or not that is.

You can have a legit criticism of specific aspects of anything, if it's drawn in a wider, non-racist, context.

So for example, if you're examining all types of religious anxieties about showing different parts of their body or shape in the context of male hegemony, that's fairly cool. Inevitably there will be variants in the conclusions, and they may well end up being drawn along racial or cultural lines. But as long as there's a decent attempt to show that it's not setting it up to be drawn on cultural differences per se, then what's wrong with that?

But just focusing on one type which, not coincidentally, has become a vehicle for racists to attack certain minority, plainly is.

But that still isn't racism - clothes aren't race amazingly enough (and, obviously I think, you are mistaken, by definition, in including cultural differences as the same as race differences). Unless you are arguing that as long as you slag of, or laugh at the expense of, the Irish, the Italians, the Asians, the Chinese all at the same time and equally then it's OK? Do we need a comprehensive list to ensure that nobody is missed out? Or can we just be mature about this and make sure that, over the course of a lifetime, we don't pick on anybody in particular.

As you say, maybe it is up to people to decide but by saying, in the same sentence, that any joke at the expense of cultural differences is racist you're already denying people that right to decide.

Ultimately, what you seem to be after is a very tepid form of humour that is entirely inoffensive to everyone no matter how sensitive they might be. Most humour pokes holes at cultural differences and in the end what you want will end up with people not allowed to make fun of other peoples different use of condiments.

You're probably a bit overconfident in the absolute, unarguable rightness of your opinions given that your arguments aren't as clear or rational as they could be. You should at least acknowledge the possibility that you might be wrong some of the time; you'd probably win more people over that way. I think maybe you are more stressed lately than you have been in the past!

drlodge

BoJo said something ill-advised. Some other people were offended by what he said. So what.

No one is saying anything about the elephant in the room - that these women are the ones oppressed under a medieval patriarchal tyranny in the name of a barbaric religion.

rick_chasey

drlodge wrote:

BoJo said something ill-advised. Some other people were offended by what he said. So what.

No one is saying anything about the elephant in the room - that these women are the ones oppressed under a medieval patriarchal tyranny in the name of a barbaric religion.

You see, do you really know that sweeping statement to be fact?

Could it be instead a vehicle to help differentiate the West with the East? I mean, the words you use are precisely the words people associate with the garments, which in turn fall into that binary Orientalist construct of the modern progressive west and the backward medieval east.

Perhaps you would consider the individual reasons for wearing the garment?

hamish_mctavish

Veronese68 wrote:

Hamish McTavish wrote:

Veronese68 wrote:

Telling these people to man up isn't helpful, how do you know if they have a weapon or not?

What kind of weapon would they hide under a veil? Or do you mean under their long dress...in which case we are back to nuns.

Not many wear the veil without the long dress. Yes, you could include nuns and I probably should have done. Although you can see a nun's face so you can usually tell if it's a bloke.

Ahhh...so is it men in long dresses that you object to? No Kaftans?

drlodge

Rick Chasey wrote:

drlodge wrote:

BoJo said something ill-advised. Some other people were offended by what he said. So what.

No one is saying anything about the elephant in the room - that these women are the ones oppressed under a medieval patriarchal tyranny in the name of a barbaric religion.

You see, do you really know that sweeping statement to be fact?

Could it be instead a vehicle to help differentiate the West with the East? I mean, the words you use are precisely the words people associate with the garments, which in turn fall into that binary Orientalist construct of the modern progressive west and the backward medieval east.

Perhaps you would consider the individual reasons for wearing the garment?

You only have to look at Muslim majority countries to see the attitude by *Governments* to women to know that my sweeping statement is true. What is the punishment in Saudi Arabia for example, if women don't cover themselves in the appropriate way? You really think they're all doing out of free will :roll:

robert88

drlodge wrote:

BoJo said something ill-advised. Some other people were offended by what he said. So what.

No one is saying anything about the elephant in the room - that these women are the ones oppressed under a medieval patriarchal tyranny in the name of a barbaric religion.

Islam is not a barbaric religion.

Barbaric people use religion, among other means, to obtain and retain power.

Here we have Boris Johnson using religion as a means of boosting his own profile and eligibility to gain power. He knows there are people who support his rather puerile remarks.

mfin

Also remember there will be a lot of women who will say they wear it because they "want to". There will be be some who do it purely because they "want to" and others who "want to, because it their god x..." and this can bring all the weight of partners expecting them to, their religious teachers they are close to expecting them to.

It's all too easy to hear people say they "want to" and interpret that as completely free will born out of free thinking.

Anyway... I am NOT inferring anything by this, nothing along the lines of 'all the women who say they want to don't want to really' but there will be a significant amount that would fall into this category.

These small soundbites are all open to interpretation and can be expanded upon.

Luckily IMO, we don't have laws dictating what people can't wear in this country, we're better off embracing multi-culturalism too.

dstev55

Rick do you think I am racist, based on what I have wrote on here?

cooldad

drlodge wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

drlodge wrote:

BoJo said something ill-advised. Some other people were offended by what he said. So what.

No one is saying anything about the elephant in the room - that these women are the ones oppressed under a medieval patriarchal tyranny in the name of a barbaric religion.

You see, do you really know that sweeping statement to be fact?

Could it be instead a vehicle to help differentiate the West with the East? I mean, the words you use are precisely the words people associate with the garments, which in turn fall into that binary Orientalist construct of the modern progressive west and the backward medieval east.

Perhaps you would consider the individual reasons for wearing the garment?

You only have to look at Muslim majority countries to see the attitude by *Governments* to women to know that my sweeping statement is true. What is the punishment in Saudi Arabia for example, if women don't cover themselves in the appropriate way? You really think they're all doing out of free will :roll:

The burqa is not worn or required in the majority of Muslim countries. The Arab states where it is common probably make up less than 5% of the world's Muslims.

drlodge

Robert88 wrote:

Islam is not a barbaric religion.

Oh really? Plenty in the Quran that is truly barbaric and is lived by those who believe in it. Just look at ISIS - what they do is a plausible interpretation of the Quran.

Take a look in the holy texts to see how minorities should be treated - women, adulterers, gays, apostates. Thrown off buildings, stoned to death or otherwise killed. That is barbaric.

cooldad

drlodge wrote:

Robert88 wrote:

Islam is not a barbaric religion.

Oh really? Plenty in the Quran that is truly barbaric and is lived by those who believe in it. Just look at ISIS - what they do is a plausible interpretation of the Quran.

Take a look in the holy texts to see how minorities should be treated - women, adulterers, gays, apostates. Thrown off buildings, stoned to death or otherwise killed. That is barbaric.

You ever read the bible? Same sh1t.

rick_chasey

dstev55 wrote:

Rick do you think I am racist, based on what I have wrote on here?

Probably, but I have a pretty low bar, and we all qualify in one way or other.

It’s more about recognising it and checking it in ourselves.

So, my mocking aside, next time you encounter a niqab at work you may check yourself before thinking they are automatically a safety risk to your staff because of their religious attire and instead look for the clues you’d use if they were white women to assess them.

drlodge

cooldad wrote:

drlodge wrote:

Robert88 wrote:

Islam is not a barbaric religion.

Oh really? Plenty in the Quran that is truly barbaric and is lived by those who believe in it. Just look at ISIS - what they do is a plausible interpretation of the Quran.

Take a look in the holy texts to see how minorities should be treated - women, adulterers, gays, apostates. Thrown off buildings, stoned to death or otherwise killed. That is barbaric.

You ever read the bible? Same sh1t.

Well it is similar sh1t, but the big difference is, is that it is not lived today. Islam has not gone through an enlightenment so practices are still verbatim from the holy texts.

rick_chasey

drlodge wrote:

cooldad wrote:

drlodge wrote:

Robert88 wrote:

Islam is not a barbaric religion.

Oh really? Plenty in the Quran that is truly barbaric and is lived by those who believe in it. Just look at ISIS - what they do is a plausible interpretation of the Quran.

Take a look in the holy texts to see how minorities should be treated - women, adulterers, gays, apostates. Thrown off buildings, stoned to death or otherwise killed. That is barbaric.

You ever read the bible? Same sh1t.

Well it is similar sh1t, but the big difference is, is that it is not lived today. Islam has not gone through an enlightenment so practices are still verbatim from the holy texts.

Are you familiar with Indonesia, out of interest? How does that reconcile with your worldview of islam?

rjsterry

drlodge wrote:

BoJo said something ill-advised. Some other people were offended by what he said. So what.

No one is saying anything about the elephant in the room - that these women are the ones oppressed under a medieval patriarchal tyranny in the name of a barbaric religion.

What an absolute crock. Firstly, yes that has been discussed, at length, in this thread. Secondly, "these women"? They're all exactly the same are they? And you can tell they are living a "patriarchal tyranny" from across the street, can you? I'm sure lazy stereotypes will really help those women who really are under the thumb of spouses or male relatives. Some of them don't wear any form of headcovering and some (most in this country at least) aren't even Muslim.

dstev55

Rick Chasey wrote:

dstev55 wrote:

Rick do you think I am racist, based on what I have wrote on here?

Probably, but I have a pretty low bar, and we all qualify in one way or other.

It’s more about recognising it and checking it in ourselves.

So, my mocking aside, next time you encounter a niqab at work you may check yourself before thinking they are automatically a safety risk to your staff because of their religious attire and instead look for the clues you’d use if they were white women to assess them.

Ok then.

Your comments will be the first thing that comes in to my mind when I next encounter a Niqab at work.... :roll:

As for your racist point, if you knew me in person you'd feel as much of an idiot as you are making yourself already sound.

shirley_basso

Why? Are you Asian?

dstev55

Shirley Basso wrote:

Why? Are you Asian?

No. I'm as English as they come.

But my partner is Filipino, her son a mix of 3 races and my daughter a quarter Polish.

Not the family of a racist I would have thought.

coopster_the_1st

Rolf F wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

Rolf F wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

DeVlaeminck wrote:

Surrey Commuter wrote:

people are asked to remove helmets and balaclavas because there is a history of people using them to hide their identity when robbing the premises. He clearly stated that he wanted to stop muslim women covering up in his shop for the safety and security of his staff.

er

Yes the point is religious belief and religious based culture shouldn't be put on a pedastal above other beliefs and cultures. As with the Boris Johnson jokes, they were flippant but the furore they've caused is because he's made a little fun of Islamic dress, if it were just some new youth fashion nobody would have batted an eyelid. When you make an ideology above criticism, by stuff like screaming racism whenever someone does criticise it, that's dangerous.

But it inevitably is racist.

It's not screaming. It's a factual description.

Understand that.

What sort of argument is that, "computer says no....".

So your view is that criticising religion, in this case Islam, inevitably that is racist?

All about the context of the criticism.

In this context and indeed in yours, yes it is.

So is it "inevitably racist" or is it "racist dependent on the context of the criticism"? Surely it can't be both? Do you have examples of racist and non racist contexts? (I think in this case we are still talking about Bojos remarks which made fun of an item of clothing which, by Western standards, can rationally be argued to look slightly ridiculous (albeit no more so than the clobber of nuns, high fashion etc)).

No, jokes at minorities which can be considered racially and or culturally different, expense are going to be racist. It;s up to people to decide how acceptable or not that is.

You can have a legit criticism of specific aspects of anything, if it's drawn in a wider, non-racist, context.

So for example, if you're examining all types of religious anxieties about showing different parts of their body or shape in the context of male hegemony, that's fairly cool. Inevitably there will be variants in the conclusions, and they may well end up being drawn along racial or cultural lines. But as long as there's a decent attempt to show that it's not setting it up to be drawn on cultural differences per se, then what's wrong with that?

But just focusing on one type which, not coincidentally, has become a vehicle for racists to attack certain minority, plainly is.

But that still isn't racism - clothes aren't race amazingly enough (and, obviously I think, you are mistaken, by definition, in including cultural differences as the same as race differences). Unless you are arguing that as long as you slag of, or laugh at the expense of, the Irish, the Italians, the Asians, the Chinese all at the same time and equally then it's OK? Do we need a comprehensive list to ensure that nobody is missed out? Or can we just be mature about this and make sure that, over the course of a lifetime, we don't pick on anybody in particular.

As you say, maybe it is up to people to decide but by saying, in the same sentence, that any joke at the expense of cultural differences is racist you're already denying people that right to decide.

Ultimately, what you seem to be after is a very tepid form of humour that is entirely inoffensive to everyone no matter how sensitive they might be. Most humour pokes holes at cultural differences and in the end what you want will end up with people not allowed to make fun of other peoples different use of condiments.

You're probably a bit overconfident in the absolute, unarguable rightness of your opinions given that your arguments aren't as clear or rational as they could be. You should at least acknowledge the possibility that you might be wrong some of the time; you'd probably win more people over that way. I think maybe you are more stressed lately than you have been in the past!

Don't finish your post in trying to make excuses for RC. He has been called out on this for over 2 years now.

He was as wrong then as he is now, just that more people are seeing him and his attitude for what it really is!

Vino'sGhost

Rick Chasey wrote:

dstev55 wrote:

Rick do you think I am racist, based on what I have wrote on here?

Probably, but I have a pretty low bar, and we all qualify in one way or other.

It’s more about recognising it and checking it in ourselves.

So, my mocking aside, next time you encounter a niqab at work you may check yourself before thinking they are automatically a safety risk to your staff because of their religious attire and instead look for the clues you’d use if they were white women to assess them.

It’s not religious attire though is it also don’t be racist Rick. White women can be Muslim too sally jones the white widow was one.

Please stop being racist Rick

Vino'sGhost

Look Rick means well, he just hasn’t thought it through.

coopster_the_1st

Vino'sGhost wrote:

Rick Chasey wrote:

dstev55 wrote:

Rick do you think I am racist, based on what I have wrote on here?

Probably, but I have a pretty low bar, and we all qualify in one way or other.

It’s more about recognising it and checking it in ourselves.

So, my mocking aside, next time you encounter a niqab at work you may check yourself before thinking they are automatically a safety risk to your staff because of their religious attire and instead look for the clues you’d use if they were white women to assess them.

It’s not religious attire though is it also don’t be racist Rick. White women can be Muslim too sally jones the white widow was one.

Please stop being racist Rick

Rick, a racist? Who didn't know that already?