Maryam Namazie with a piece from her own blog which was published on 23rd October 2012.
Someone always has some statistics about the West’s failings whenever I speak of Iran or Islam or sharia and wants to know what I’m doing about it…
Next time I meet someone protesting against the welfare cuts in Britain, I’ll be sure to ask what s/he is doing about the Iranian regime’s cut in subsidies or the brutal economic sanctions!? (Not.)
And this happens to me all the time and it’s usually from people who do – well – nothing.
Just recently, after my talk at the National Secular Society's Secularism Conference, someone came up to specifically advise me not to focus on Sharia law as it is discriminatory to do so (I guess they were sleeping during my speech). I asked the ‘well-meaning’ chap whether he would then go up to the brilliant Sue Cox at the adjoining Survivors Voice – Europe stall to ‘advise’ her to focus on something other than paedophilia and child rape in the church because it was so very discriminatory against Christianity. My point was that this is a demand solely made of us dissenters of Islam.
It never seems to be the right time or place to raise our issues…
I am now reminded of this because again today some dimwit, biasedfreethoughts, has spewed off statistics on US executions in a comment on my piece on the current killing spree by the Islamic regime of Iran and asked what I am doing against executions in the US!
That I am a long-term anti-death penalty campaigner or that this demand is never made of anti-DP campaigners in the US are side issues.
What angers me most about this sort of comparison (apart from being patronising) is that the reason behind it is not a real concern about the death penalty. Rather it is an attempt to promote a hierarchy of rights and wrongs – with the US always in the lead, thereby trivialising and dehumanising the lives of ‘the other’ and also their forms of resistance. If it’s not somehow holding the US culpable for everything, then it’s not the time and place.
Let me fill you all in on a secret.
The precious lives of the thirteen executed in the past 48 hours - whatever their ‘crimes’ - is just as important as the precious lives of those languishing on death row in the US – not more and not less.
And whilst I have often said that US-led militarism is the other side of the coin of Islamism, am I not allowed to focus on the executions in Iran if I so choose without someone telling me what is more important to condemn?
If not now, then when?
If not me, then who?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
I read this the other day. Like I said in another thread, people focus on something that is close to them and if they've any gumption they do something about it. Maryam Namazie is to be applauded for highlighting the crimes of Islamic extremists, no right thinking person could argue otherwise.
ReplyDeleteBut as I said earlier, if Maryam is truly interested in Arab women's rights and wants to stop the rapes, murders, torturing, then surely she should apply it equally to all women or in this case, all Arab women. But she is not doing so and for me this calls into question her reasons for doing what she does.
When someone points out how others challenge them on something I often feel it's an attempt to deter further challenging.
For example, zionists will say 'you are anti Semitic' in an attempt to deter people from challenging them on occupation, human rights and torture issues.
I feel that Maryam is doing that here; 'people always say
I never highlight the West's failings'. This tactic is used to make people feel uncomfortable and avoid asking embarrassing questions.
'two sides of the one coin' .. That's not the first time she has used this 'one is as bad as the other' assertion - she used it when referring to Palestinian resistance and the might of Israel.
Not only do I find her implausible and islamaphobic, but I find her boring and repetitive too.