Pickled Politics’ blogger earwigca has posted an article which contains this passage:
The problem with feminism is feminists. [...]
Feminists like Dr. Aisha Gill, friend of Gita Sahgal, who worked tirelessly on the pr in support of the islamophobic attack on Amnesty International.
The wording is inexact but the unscrupulous motivation is obvious. Is the writer suggesting that Gita Sahgal and Aisha Gill are “islamophobic” [sic] or is she making that accusation of the “attack” on Amnesty International? Either way, how does she come to this conclusion and what is her evidence?
Of all the accusations and smears made of Gita Sahgal by her many detractors after she took the matter of Amnesty International’s partnership with the jihadist pressure group Cageprisoners to the public, the charge of “Islamophobia” has been the most baseless. Unfortunately, it also is the most pernicious since it requires little or no evidence for the smear to stick.
By accusing Sahgal or Gill of being “Islamophobes”, earwigca is suggesting that there is no political or cultural distinction between mainstream Muslims and Islamist jihadists such as Moazzam Begg. This could easily lead to the incorrect conclusion that all Muslims are jihadists in one form or another. In fact this conclusion is happily drawn, for totally divergent reasons, by both the far-right and the Islamists. Finally, there is also a third camp who fail to make this distinction, and that is the regressive left. Nevertheless, whatever the political motivation, this kind of reductionism is anti-Muslim bigotry, pure and simple.
With these accusations earwigca places herself squarely in one of these camps or is at least symptomatic of anti-Muslim bigotry.
Now I am quite sure earwigca’s personal grievances against feminism could have been made without including this irresponsible and incorrect slur. But now that she has made it, her accusations would be much more credible if she would elaborate how and in what way Sahgal’s or Gill’s motivations were “Islamophobic”.
I personally know many Muslims who supported Gita Sahgal in her dispute with Amnesty. Some of them include Sara Hossain, Ansar Ahmed Ullah, Dr Ghayasuddin Siddiqui, Tehmina Kazi, Sandra M Kabir, Tahmima Anam, Amina Ali, Aisha Shaheed, Dr Ahmed Zaman, Rayhan Rashid, Waliur Rahman, Syeda Nazneen Sultana, Dr Irfan Al Alawi, Dr Rafikul Hasan Khan amongst many others, including myself, many of whom worked with Gita and supported her cause.
The question to now direct at Pickled Politics is this – are all these Muslims Islamophobic? If so, this would be akin to calling them “Uncle Toms”, the racist provenance of which needs no explanation.
Personal decency dictates that earwigca publish a clarification. Failing that, a retraction and an apology would be in order from Pickled Politics to Aisha Gill and to Gita Sahgal’s many Muslim supporters.
11 Comments
The earwicga logic kind of works like this. Some people who are Islamophobic may have jumped on the Gita Sahgal bandwagon. Therefore the entire issue was just about Islamophobia and therefore anyone connected to it like Aisha Gill can be trashed as Islamophobic. From someone who rails against McCarthyism a little ironic.
I watched that video and yes it included some vacuous comments but also some genuine common sense. Aisha Gill said nothing silly and mentioned having various death threats due to her work and the attack on her was snide and nasty but par for the course I guess.
Also just had three comments disappeared over there:
One pointing out spittoon didn’t actually seem to have any comments from Terry Fitz after his charging which Sunny had charged. Deleted. Another showing another Sunny innaccuracy went too.
Then a bit of friendly advice from Sunny:
Why can’t the two fuckwit readers from Spittoon just stay there? I know that blog is fucking boring but there’s no need to pollute this space with your drivel.
The earwicga logic kind of works like this. Some people who are Islamophobic may have jumped on the Gita Sahgal bandwagon. Therefore the entire issue was just about Islamophobia and therefore anyone connected to it like Aisha Gill can be trashed as Islamophobic. From someone who rails against McCarthyism a little ironic.
You’re absolutely right.
What cannot be ignored is the concept that Islamophobic elements who might have supported Gita, because they happened to possibly have been white or Jewish, are somehow more significant than the support of Muslims. This suggests that Sunny Hundal and his friends have developed a certain notional hierarchy of Gita Sahgal’s supporters, wherein certain particular kinds of supporters are somehow more significant than Muslim supporters. And this is completely and blatantly racist, if nothing else.
Funny how the regressive left, which steeps itself in the ideas of post-colonial guilt, are never troubled by any such guilt whenever they want to reinforce inequalities and assign lower importance to ‘non-white narratives’!
“Funny how the regressive left, which steeps itself in the ideas of post-colonial guilt, are never troubled by any such guilt whenever they want to reinforce inequalities and assign lower importance to ‘non-white narratives’!”
Oh yes! But they are never, never, never RACIST when they do.
Who is this ‘earwigca’? They sound deluded.
By these rules of definition, any Muslim feminist who is opposed to Islamic extremism is not a feminist.
It’s a shem Zaf – and she is deeply deluded – as well as highly censorious.
How little earwicga knows or cares about the world outside Britain.
I would love to see the amazing Sara Hossain giving earwicga a piece of her mind on the subject of feminism.
But then Sara has far more important things to be getting on with.
Earwigca is a truly clueless and disrespectful idiot. Sunny Hundal is an over-rated, under-achieving egomaniac, and most of his acolytes are there to stroke his oversized ego. Commenters who criticise Hundal are either attacked by the group of PP regulars or they are deleted by Hundal and/or earwigca.
Pickled Politics is political correctness gawn mad!
Early this morning – 9/8 @ 02:53 AM – I added a post to that thread on PP politely asking FlyingRodent to clarify two of his/her comments…
‘I don’t like Moazzam Begg’s politics at all’
‘…let’s not let that blind us to the fact that Begg is a bit of a giant shithead whose politics would damn us all, if he had the chance.’
By 02:55 AM my post had been deleted, the next comment being:
29. earwicga — on 9th August, 2010 at 2:55 am
Spot on persephone! Thanks.
I was genuinely interested in FlyingRodent’s take on Mozzam Beggs politics, how Begg would “damn us all” if he got the chance and exactly who this “us” are.
Perhaps if FlyingRodent reads this he could respond here
I gave up on Pickled Politics some time ago, largely because reading earwax was inducing vomiting fits that were starting to take their toll on my teeth enamel.
Whenever I’ve challenged her Sunny just jumped in with a ‘Why don’t you fuck off and talk to your friends Christopher Hitchens/Nick Cohen/Salman Rushdie (the list goes on) (none of whom I’ve ever met and as far as I know none of whom know of my existance) followed by a link Sunny says proves Hitchens/Cohen/Rushdie ‘support’ torture (they do no such thing).
Quite why Rumbold, who is wrong on many things but usually wrong for comprehensible reasons, wastes his time with PP I don’t know.
i just read something really, really appalling over there, which is earwicga’s comment about the mutilated afghan woman who was put on the cover of time:
i’m sure afghans nip over the border into pakistan and thence to india all the time for surgery. from the piece she linked to from reader’s digest:
you’re right, i really can’t see why she had to be flown to evil old america rather than having it done by the local ayurvedic doctor, even assuming that a (presumably) devout-ish muslim would hold with such things.
this is supposed to be feminism? it’s not hard to see from stuff like this why this sort of people is able to nitpick over political messaging and at the same time happily assent to the most appalling practices by their anti-imperialist chums. it’s “cultural”, innit? or is it simply morally bankrupt?
pheuwwww.
b’shalom
bananabrain