Juan Cole: Top Five Myths About The Middle East Protests (Special Shout-Out To Bill Maher & Wingnuts

[Hissyspit]

http://www.juancole.com/2011/02/top-five-myths-about-the-middle-east-protests.html

Top Five Myths about the Middle East Protests

Posted on 02/20/2011 by Juan

5. Dear right wing blogosphere and also Bill Maher: You can’t generalize about women’s position in Muslim countries based on a reprehensible mob attack on CBS reporter Lara Logan.

Generalizing about a whole group of people based on a single incident is called “bigotry.” It is also a logical fallacy (for wingnuts challenged by six syllables in a row, that means, ‘when your brain doesn’t work right’) known as the ‘Hasty Generalization.’ Nobody seems to note that allegedly helpless Egyptian women were the ones who saved Logan, or that Anderson Cooper was also attacked.

- snip -

Note to Muslim-hater Bill Maher, who should know better: It is not true that women cannot vote in 20 Muslim countries, and please stop generalizing about 1.5 billion Muslims based on the 22 million people in Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, the only place where women cannot drive and where men can vote (in municipal elections) but women cannot. It would be like generalizing from the Amish in Pennsylvania to all people of Christian heritage and wondering what is with Christianity and its fascination with horses and buggies.

- snip -

2. Looking to the Tunisian and Egyptian futures, it is not true, as dreary anti-Muslim Israeli propagandist Barry Rubin alleged, that Muslim fundamentalist parties always win free and fair elections in Muslim-majority countries.

This frankly stupid allegation is disproved by the Pakistan elections of 2008, the Albanian elections of 2009, the Kurdistan elections in post-2003 Iraq, and all of the Indonesian elections.

MORE AT LINK

[Turborama]

1. k&R Thanks for posting this

It's about time a lot of people acquainted themselves with facts and got some perspective.

[tavalon]

6. I'll admit that I was not as aware of Middle Eastern issues

with the exception of the Israeli Palestine debacle before the Iranian and then the Egyptian uprising, but I've taken a crash course. You would think Bill Maher could do the same. What a surprise to find out that the Middle East is far more complicated and nuanced than American news has pretended it was all these years! Not.

[Turborama]

8. I think we've all had a steep learning curve about what's going on in those countries...

...at one point or another.

I've had a learning curve myself about Muslims, since moving to Indonesia 5 years ago.

I hope lots of Americans read this article by Cole and get themselves some sorely needed perspective about Muslims.

A simple to understand diagram is also useful, at times like these:



It can be shared by twitter etc here: http://twitpic.com/2idrld

:hi:

BTW We went for a 12 week scan on Friday, PM me an email address I can send a pic of it to if you'd like to see (I'm convinced he/she's smiling in it).

[tavalon]

11. Yay! On the scan, I mean.

Excellent! I'll do that and I promise not to spill the beans if I figure out what flavor you have (boy or girl). That is fantastic news.

That Venn diagram says an awful lot about why we as a nation are so clueless about Muslims. As an aside, my hubby and I happened to be at Magic Mountain on Muslim Appreciation Day. We didn't know about it before hand but we had a blast and got to meet lots of great people and admire their beautiful headdresses (I'm still really bad about knowing the names of the different kinds of head wraps), etc. We did notice that the young Muslims kind of let their hair down a bit when their parents went home for the night, but they were still the most polite teenagers I had ever met.

[CrawlingChaos]

2. K&R - thank you for this

[Cleita]

3. Bill Maher was out of line on this and Tavis Smiley

kept reminding him that our record on the treatment of women sucks too. We can't throw stones until we clean up our gender discrimination and treatment of women too.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

4. Maher can be right and can be funny. He also can sound just

like a shallow fray boy when he wants to.

[Rhiannon12866]

5. Thanks for this! K&R!

And bookmarking! :thumbsup:

[Blue_In_AK]

7. Most of the time I get a kick out of Bill Maher,

but I thought he went completely off the rails Friday night with his anti-Muslim tirade. As a lot of you know, one of my sons-in-law is Muslim and he treats my daughter like a queen, helping her with the housework, doing dishes, taking care of the baby. I mean, really, we couldn't ask for a better husband for our daughter.

If Maher wants to take exception with the women's rights records of certain governments, that's fine, but to demonize some 750 million or so Muslim men is just not cool. But I guess we all know that Bill has a very marked pro-Israel bias, so I guess this isn't surprising.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Turborama]

10. Saying someone is "just anti- xxxx" does not give them a free pass to be an ignorant nasty bigot

You know what the reaction would be if someone in Germany said, "Hitler is just anti-Jew, he hates all Jews equally. Of course he will make any Jew look bad the first chance he gets." during the early 1930s, don't you?

As for your "what positive things has Islam brought?" question, if it is a genuine and not rhetorical one, you should watch this and you'll find out: http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x9377046

More to watch and learn from here, too: http://demopedia.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=9377046&mesg_id=9388371

BTW, did you even read Juan Cole's article that was posted in the OP? http://www.juancole.com/2011/02/top-five-myths-about-the-middle-east-protests.html

(edited to fix typo)

[swilton]

12. Agree with his comments about Bill Maher

Cole's insights and straightening the record are very helpful...There is a void in cultural studies in this country - Cole's corrections mitigate our ethnocentric flaws...we need more like him.


I made the mistake of watching a Maher DVD - I was very offended by his condescending monologue with stereotypes of Muslim women. For whatever his satire is worth, I can find it in other places.