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| Owen Jones - The Independent |
Artigo escrito no jornal inglês "The Independent" por Owen Jones sobre a questão da islamofobia. Talvez o melhor artigo sobre o assunto que tenho lido. A lógica é simples: pegue-se no que é dito diariamente por figuras públicas, líderes de opinião e meros mortais como qualquer de um nós e imagine-se o que aconteceria se substituíssemos a palavra Islão por Judaísmo e muçulmano por judeu. Felizmente o anti-semitismo hoje em dia é residual (para além do insulto fácil utilizado regularmente para quem critica alguma política do governo israelita) mas a islamofobia está viva e de boa saúde. E é assim que líderes populistas e sem escrúpulos conseguem - se tiverem o contexto certo - levar povos inteiros a apoiar e cometer os mais aboníveis crimes, como aconteceu há sete décadas atrás.
Owen Jones: Islamophobia - for Muslims, read Jews. And be
shocked
Imagine our alarm if nearly half the UK population said they believed that
'there are too many Jews'
To be a prominent Muslim means suffering a daily diet of bigotry and even
outright hatred. This week, Mehdi Hasan – who, other than my colleague Yasmin
Alibhai-Brown, is Britain's only prominent Muslim journalist – wrote of how,
every day, he is attacked as a "jihadist" and a "terrorist". He has been
described as a "dangerous Muslim shithead", a "moderate cockroach", and worse.
The message from his critics is clear: Muslims have no legitimate place in
public life.
Mehdi Hasan was right to speak out, but it must not be left to
Muslims alone to take on this bigotry. A tide of Islamophobia has swept Europe
for many years, and – shamefully – all too few have taken a stand. Even many who regard themselves as "progressives"
have either remained silent or even indulged anti-Muslim prejudice. It's time
for Muslims and non-Muslims alike to join forces against the most widespread –
and most acceptable – form of bigotry of our times.
Think I'm exaggerating? Consider that the far-right's main
target of choice is no longer Jews or black people: it's Muslims. The BNP
portrays itself as a crusade against the "Islamification" of Britain; in the
2010 election, it launched a "Campaign Against Islam". Its leader, Nick Griffin,
describes Islam as "wicked" and a "cancer", and has blamed Muslims for problems
such as drugs and rape. The English Defence League stages frequent – and often
intimidating – street rallies protesting against Muslims.
But anti-Muslim prejudice isn't simply confined to the
far-right fringes. I attended a Stockport sixth form with a large Muslim student
population. The reality of their lives is all but airbrushed out of existence.
When they appear at all, it's generally as fanatics, extremists or a community
somehow "harbouring" dangerous extremists. (When do Britain's whites face the
absurdity of being called on to crack down on far-right fanatics supposedly in
their ranks?) One study took a selection of newspapers in a single week: 91 per
cent of reports featuring Muslims were negative.
One of my Muslim fellow students was Dr Leon Moosavi, fast
becoming a national authority on Islamophobia. He battles against the widespread
denial that anti-Muslim prejudice is a problem. But consider that, in one poll
conducted by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, 45 per cent of Britons agreed that
"there are too many Muslims" in Britain. Imagine if nearly half the population
admitted to believing that "there are too many Jews" in Britain: how loud would
our alarm be?
Of course, it is not just a British problem: the poison of
Islamophobia has infected Europe's political mainstream. According to a Pew
Research Center survey, nearly six out of 10 Europeans believe that Muslims were
"fanatical", and half believed they were "violent". As here, the European
far-right aims fire at Muslims above all other groups. In the Netherlands, an
anti-Muslim party led by Geert Wilders is the third largest in parliament.
Wilders compares the Koran to Mein Kampf, calls Islam a "Trojan Horse" in Europe
and demands that the country's 850,000 Muslims be paid to leave the country.
Wilders doesn't languish on the fringes: the current Dutch cabinet depended for
two years on his party's support.
Or take sleepy Switzerland, where the Swiss People's Party
(SVP) is the biggest party in the country's Federal Assembly. The SVP won a
referendum on the banning of minarets, which the party's general secretary
described as "symbols of Islamic power". During the vote, Geneva's mosque was
repeatedly vandalised. Farhad Afshar, the president of the Coordination of
Islamic Organisations, had no doubt what signal was sent by this vote: "that
Muslims do not feel accepted as a religious community". But it gets even darker
than that. In June, the Zurich-based SVP politician Alexander Müller was forced
to stand down after tweeting: "Maybe we need another Kristallnacht… this time
for mosques." The parallels with anti-Semitism could not be more overt.
In France – where recently 42 per cent polled for Le Monde
believed that the presence of Muslims was a "threat" to their national identity
– a record number voted for the anti-Muslim National Front in April's
presidential elections. Denmark's third largest party is the People's Party,
which rails against "Islamisation" and demands the end of all non-Western
immigration. The anti-Muslim Vlaams Belang flourishes in Flemish Belgium. But
those who take a stand against Islamophobia are often demanded to qualify it
with a condemnation of extremism. When is this ever asked of other stands
against prejudice? When we condemn anti-Semitic hate, must we criticise
repressive Israeli policies in the same breath? It would be absurd – they are
completely separate issues, and indeed millions of Jews across the world oppose
the actions of Israel's government.
Anti-Muslim hate is a European pandemic. I'm proud to stand
with Mehdi Hasan and other Muslims facing Islamophobia. But – I implore, I beg
fellow non-Muslims – stand with them too, before this hatred spirals further out
of control.
(fonte: theindependent)
