...

Of course one could attribute such a quote to Massad, but that would be a pretty dumb conflation.  

I've linked to this before, but it's worth noting that Kirchick himself has, like Massad, offered his own criticisms of the idea that there exists some sort of specific, natural identity that one can call Queer (see here: www.indegayforum.org/.../27334.html).  

Massad does not argue that there are no Arabs who consistently and exclusively practice homosexual acts, he just argues, again like Kirchick, that such acts do not in themselves establish some sort of ineluctable identity.  

I'd love to see Kirchick actually quote something from Desiring Arabs, something that would show us all how Massad not only accepts but encourages violence against gays and lesbians. That, however, would require a little more research than Kirchick is willing to undertake, which is understandable given how much time he's already devoted to his illuminating theory on the "backwardness" of "Muslim culture." How incisive!

benberger, do you have anything to say about attacks on Gays in Europe by Muslims which is the main point of the post, or is your only concern the defense of an antisemitic Professor at Columbia U?

You sound like another apologist for Islamic hatred of non Muslims.

Kirchick lost me at "the tendency of Europeans to indulge the whims of Muslim immigrants." This is obviously a gross oversimplification of the problem of accommodating various cultures and religions and lifestyles in a modern, pluralist democracy. For every European who responds like Pavlov's dog to any crazy thing any Muslim public figure says (the mythical Euro who wants to indulge Muslim whims), there are countless others who are just trying to figure out how we all might get along with maximum space for individual conscience and religion balanced against the demands of national community This latter, non-whim, group will make mistakes. Sometimes they may allow too much space for religion, sometimes too little. Sometimes a real or purported spokesperson (or spokes-Imam) will say something stupid. The US has been struggling with this since the Constitution was ratified; we'll struggle with it until the sun explodes or some more local event puts us out of business. It's not easy - it's not as easy as simply ignoring the "whims" of minorities, nor is it as easy as accommodating the whims blindly. But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.

geoffgraham I understand what you are saying and you are right in the abstract.

However, you seem to miss the point when you say,

"For every European who responds like Pavlov's dog to any crazy thing any Muslim public figure says (the mythical Euro who wants to indulge Muslim whims), there are countless others who are just trying to figure out how we all might get along with maximum space for individual conscience and religion balanced against the demands of national community."

Aside from your snide and derogatory comment about "European who responds like Pavlov's dog " (and leaving aside the fact that dogs are considered unclean in Islam) the issue isn't solely about "figuring out" how best to get along. The issue is violence against homosexual people (and Jews and Women, etc) .

The issue in other words isn't something academic and abstract it's about the day to day violence being visited on people by Muslims whom they consider "beyond the pale."

Besides, you also say:

“It's not easy - it's not as easy as simply ignoring the "whims" of minorities, nor is it as easy as accommodating the whims blindly. But that doesn't mean it's not worth doing.”

Excuse me but whose “whims” are you talking about: the “whims” of people who don’t want to be attacked because they are gay, Jewish, etc., or the “whims” of the Muslims who attack them in the name of Islam?

One might also want to spend some time thinking about the half of anti-gay attacks perpetrated in Amsterdam by non-Muslims, and how in socioeconomic terms the perpetrators compare to those Muslims carrying out the attacks.

After all, in a blog posting with the theme 'Ragheads out of Europe!' (the counterpoint to Kirchick's 'Muslim fags don't exist'), it would be good to see some consideration of the role that Islam did play in those attacks, beyond simply assuming that Islam was the reason for them.

scottmaceachern, could you please give evidence about your assertion that

"half of anti-gay attacks perpetrated in Amsterdam by non-Muslims?"

I would like to know the source of you comments.

Anyone who posts,

"After all, in a blog posting with the theme 'Ragheads out of Europe!' (the counterpoint to Kirchick's 'Muslim fags don't exist'), "

is posting like a troll.

Did Kirchick ever use a phrase like "ragheads?"

I agree with Kirchick that there is some dissonance between many Europeans embrace of gay rights and their delicate aversion to offending European Muslims...

but this post is very scattered...how does it somehow end up with yet another attack on...Joseph Massad?  And I am sorry but referencing the over heated autodidact Mark Steyn hardly strengthens Kirchick's valid initial point.  Steyn's condemnation of "Europeans" has all the sincerity of those American conservatives who could give a rat's ass about women rights in America but seem to be incredibly excorcised about women's rights in Muslim countries...as if they really cared.  

" And I am sorry but referencing the over heated autodidact Mark Steyn hardly strengthens Kirchick's valid initial point."  thejauntyboulevardier said:

" over heated autodidact Mark Steyn"

Ha, ha, ha...

Thus speaks the overheated heterodidact.

You wish you would know as much, reason as well, and write as competently as this "autodidact."

btw:

"Steyn's condemnation of "Europeans" has all the sincerity of those American conservatives who could give a rat's ass about women rights in America but seem to be incredibly excorcised about women's rights in Muslim countries...as if they really cared. "

Where did Steyn say that he didn't care about the rights of women in America?

oh here goes the tough talker again...

jackson, you have always made such a stink about your fidelity to the "issues" and yet, here you go again, off the "issues" and right into off "issues" attacks.  It is now clear to me that you like to talk your talk and impose your self professed blogging standard on everyone else, but really, when it comes to your own posts, you do what you want, irrespective of what you profess.  You are every bit as undisciplined [in posting] as I am.  The difference is I know it and you will never admit it.

As for Steyn, I never said he didn't care about the rights of women in America.  I will say this slowly...

Steyn's condemnation of "Europeans" has all the sincerity of those American conservatives who could give a rat's ass about women rights in America but seem to be incredibly excorcised about women's rights in Muslim countries...as if they really cared.

That is, I am comparing his criticism of "European" dissonance on gay issues as they relate to Muslims to the criticism you hear from hard rightists like Ann Coulter (who advocates taking away women's right to vote) to her harping about women's rights in Muslim countries.  Pat Robertson does this, so does Sean Hannity, and many other hard right ideologues...

Your comparison doesn't hold water, Jaunty cookie!

You are throwing a lot of shit at the Steyn hoping that some of it sticks.

It's obvious that you are just here to attack Kirchik, Peretz, and people they quote.

Steyn isn't Pat Robertson any more than you are Chavez.

The uses of invidious comparisons is a sign of a lack of integrity.

Tread to answer Jaunty but the system ate my post.

Jaunt, Steyn isn’t Coulter nor is he Robertson.

Invidious comparisons are a sign of mental poverty.

It obvious to me, btw, that you are just here to attack Peretz, Kirchik, and anyone they quote.

Correction:

"Tread to answer Jaunty but the system ate my post."

Should read,

Tried to answer Jaunty but the system ate my post.

jackson,

please...you don't like my comparison, fine.  Throwing s--t at Kirchick?  attacking Peretz?  On this post?  You're really hallucinating....

James Kirchick’s connection of Joseph Massad’s views of homosexuality to those Muslims in Europe who attack gays is appropriate in as much as they each emanate from the a culture which views such sexual practices as immoral and tries to eliminate those practice them.

It's cookie-jaunty's modus operandi to agree with parts of anything that Kirchick or Peretz writes and the attack them personally.

Here he switched to attacking someone Kirchick quoted but the principle still holds.

jackson

Thanks for the your thoughts on the Massad connection. Personally, I think that is a huge stretch, perhaps more of a strained attempt on the part of Kirchick to find a [thin] connection in this post from European dissonance to an academic he doesn't like.  I will grant that it is not out of the question that Massad's views can, in a longer, free wheeling discursive forum, eventually find a place in this discussion but in my opinion, in a short blog, it seemed a big leap.

And what does Steyn's being an "autodidact" ("overheated" no less,) have to do with the quality of this thinking?

jackson,

for the sake of other posters, let us not monopolize this blog.  You didn't like my post.  I rarely like yours.  Now that that is settled, let others have their say.  At this point, I am more interested in reading what others think about this post than in getting into the usual back and forth wrangling with you, delightful that exchange may be...

From:

The Bill Muehlenberg Trophy: Joseph Massad

"Joseph Massad, Associate Professor of Modern Arab Politics and Intellectual History at Columbia University, has published a book in which he argues that

there are no homosexuals in the entire Arab world, except for a few who have been brainwashed into believing they have a homosexual identity by an aggressive Western homosexual missionizing movement he calls "Gay International." [. . .] According to the author, "It is the very discourse of the Gay International which produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist" (emphasis added).

The claim is advanced in the third chapter of Desiring Arabs, based upon an earlier paper of his (“Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World”).

TEH GAY AGENDA is a familiar Christian Right meme, and

the idea that gays and lesbians do not exist in the Middle East has most recently been put by one Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Massad simply presents the homophobic ravings of Christian and Muslim fundies and expresses them in the idiom of postcolonial studies. As former Guardian Middle East correspondent Brian Whitaker observes in a review of Desiring Arabs,

Massad talks of a “missionary” campaign orchestrated by what he calls the “Gay International”. Its inspiration, he says, came partly from “the white western women’s movement, which had sought to universalise its issues through imposing its own colonial feminism on the women’s movements in the non-western world”, but he also links its origins to the Carter administration’s use of human rights to “campaign against the Soviet Union and Third World enemies”."

blogs.tnr.com/.../muslim-fags-don-t-exist.aspx

Don't be a hypocrite Cookie:

" You didn't like my post.  I rarely like yours.  Now that that is settled, let others have their say."

Others can post here no matter how much I or you post. The forum won't run out of space.

Btw: for the most part I find your post both insipid and lacking in seriousness. I just want to be clear about that.

About Kirchick and Massad.

for those who want a more detailed description of Massad's work by Kirchick you can find it here:

www.tnr.com/.../story.html

the jackson cannonade is on...

for the most part, I find your posts tiring, obsessed, and rude.  Now we are both clear.  You are a real piece of work old man...

I have to go...

prattle on...

benberger, who started this thread, is simply correct. Period.

It would be helpful to distinguish between people doing bad things (e.g., killing gay people) and whether there are any "homosexuals" is Islamic countries. In fact, "homosexuality" is a western construct and there are no native homosexuals in Iran. (I'm not familiar with other countries in the area.)

There are certainly men who are erotically attracted to men in those countries. I had dinner with one a few weeks ago. But intense male friendships are traditional there, as any brief review of the art and literature will demonstrate. Such men are also expected to put away childish things and marry and have families. Their erotic preferences are irrelevant.

The idea of a culture defined by one's erotic preferences dates from the late 19th century and is entirely European. It is repugnant to a society in which family obligations are of tremendous importance. By conflating a form of eros with a form of politics, we have made the matter worse.

Obviously, this doesn't defend bad conduct. Live in our country, live by our rules. Live in your country, live by rules we despise, and don't expect us to be your friends. But let's be sure we're all talking about the same thing.

Alan K makes some interesting points, but his conclusion is simplistic.

“Obviously, this doesn't defend bad conduct. Live in our country, live by our rules. Live in your country, live by rules we despise, and don't expect us to be your friends. But let's be sure we're all talking about the same thing.”

The real question is who makes the rules.

In the Muslim word it is the Islamic authorities who make the rules which are reinforced throughout society by the bulk of believers.  Hence if a person there considers himself gay and he knows he will be killed then he will do his best to hide his sexual proclivities.

Now, my question to Alan K is” “do you believe in civil liberties for all citizens?”  If you deny them to one part of the population then you will be denying them to other parts as well. Is it any accident that in those same countries, women not to mention members of other faiths are also denied civil rights?

Finally there is no symmetry in Alan K’s formula: “lve in our country, live by our rules. Live in your country, live by rules we despise,…”

This is because the rules in your country say that gays can’t be gays while the rules in out country don’t say that non gays must be gays. All it says is that you have a right to be gay and you have a right not to be gay.  This is what it’s really about.

Alan K makes some interesting points, but his conclusion is simplistic.

“Obviously, this doesn't defend bad conduct. Live in our country, live by our rules. Live in your country, live by rules we despise, and don't expect us to be your friends. But let's be sure we're all talking about the same thing.”

The real question is who makes the rules.

In the Muslim word it is the Islamic authorities who make the rules which are reinforced throughout society by the bulk of believers.  Hence if a person there considers himself gay and he knows he will be killed then he will do his best to hide his sexual proclivities.

Now, my question to Alan K is” “do you believe in civil liberties for all citizens?”  If you deny them to one part of the population then you will be denying them to other parts as well. Is it any accident that in those same countries, women not to mention members of other faiths are also denied civil rights?

Finally there is no symmetry in Alan K’s formula: “lve in our country, live by our rules. Live in your country, live by rules we despise,…”

This is because the rules in your country say that gays can’t be gays while the rules in out country don’t say that non gays must be gays. All it says is that you have a right to be gay and you have a right not to be gay. This is what it’s really about.

Alan K makes some interesting points, but his conclusion is simplistic.

“Obviously, this doesn't defend bad conduct. Live in our country, live by our rules. Live in your country, live by rules we despise, and don't expect us to be your friends. But let's be sure we're all talking about the same thing.”

The real question is who makes the rules.

In the Muslim word it is the Islamic authorities who make the rules which are reinforced throughout society by the bulk of believers.  Hence if a person there considers himself gay and he knows he will be killed then he will do his best to hide his sexual proclivities.

Now, my question to Alan K is” “do you believe in civil liberties for all citizens?”  If you deny them to one part of the population then you will be denying them to other parts as well. Is it any accident that in those same countries, women not to mention members of other faiths are also denied civil rights?

Finally there is no symmetry in Alan K’s formula: “lve in our country, live by our rules. Live in your country, live by rules we despise,…”

This is because the rules in your country say that gays can’t be gays while the rules in out country don’t say that non gays must be gays. All it says is that you have a right to be gay and you have a right not to be gay. This is what it’s really about.

jacksondyer: "scottmaceachern, could you please give evidence about your assertion that "half of anti-gay attacks perpetrated in Amsterdam by non-Muslims?"

The source is the original Der Spiegel article that Kirchick links to, in his original post above.

And if I'm trolling, I'm no more doing so than is Kirchick himself, with his attempts to link Joseph Massad to that phrase 'Muslim fags don't exist'.

"The source is the original Der Spiegel article that Kirchick links to, in his original post above."

I thought so, Scott,

Here is what the article said:

 "Half of the crimes were committed by men of Moroccan origin and researchers believe they felt stigmatized by society and responded by attacking people they felt were lower on the social ladder. Another working theory is that the attackers may be struggling with their own sexual identity."

It never said that half the attacks came from non Muslims. It merely mentioned people of Moroccan origin. Other attackers could have been people of any religion including other Muslims.

"And if I'm trolling, I'm no more doing so than is Kirchick himself, with his attempts to link Joseph Massad to that phrase 'Muslim fags don't exist'. "

Why is that a sign of trolling? And what is the context of that statement. Could you link to that phrase?

Btw: Massad, who has accused gays of being imperialist, has also accused Zionists of being “racists,” do you agree with this comment too?

Jacksondyer - I'm not sure we disagree here. To the extent Kirchick is saying gay-bashing and violence against Jews and women is wrong, I wholeheartedly agree. I was more concerned with his reasoning. Defining the problem, as Kirchick seemed to, as the forces of light and reason on one side arrayed against the people who reflexively "indulge Muslim whims" on the other, belies its complexity. There are thougthful people on both sides. There are also extremists (right-wing nativists on one side, intolerant and hateful Muslims on the other) whose rantings discredit the work the thoughtful people are trying to do.

To get to specifics. Violence against gays, women and Jews can never be tolerated by any civil society. Thus, to the extent that any religion accepts or even requires violence against these groups (and any others) - and yes, some Islamic radicals do claim that this is a feature of their religion, just as many others claim such hatred has no place there -  this aspect of religion cannot be tolerated or accommodated. To say otherwise would be far worse than indulging the "whim" of some noisy imam or mullah.

So, why is Kirchick's reasoning troublesome to me? Mostly because it fits so easily into the nativist worldview (a worldview which is quite tolerant of anti-Semitism, homophobia and anti-feminism when it is practiced by the right people, meaning white Christian men). In that view,  politically-correct wussies are trying to force us to abandon our culture to the Muslim hordes. If Muslims have a "whim", let's indulge it, lest we be thought intolerant, a worse sin than infanticide to us wussies.

Well, I think that description of what the "tolerant" side believes is false -  the usual straw man constructed by conservatives to discredit any views  more nuanced or cognizant of complexity than theirs. Yes, there are crazy and dangerous radicals on the tolerant extreme (though tolerance is hardly their problem), and there are racists, xenophobes and homophobes on the other (Muslims get bashed too). Now that that's out of the way, let's see what the reasonable people have to say.

"The forum won't run out of space."

You're wrong on this one Jackson. As soon as discussions turn 100 something posts, the last do not show, at least in my computer. Not that anyone cares, least of all at the new TNR where they have, I already said it somewhere else, a strict policy on keeping costumers displeased.

And another thing. Sometimes discussions show less posts than the last time I visited them. It must be my computer... or if not, well, as I said somewhere at TNR must be really pleased with this new displeasement of mine.

geoffgraham:

You are right we don't disagree on principles; we do though disagree on tactics.

You are probably right that many ultra right wingers like Coulter use Islamic intolerance as a cover for their own.

However, it seems to me that the reason they can get away with it is that too few people on the left are willing to stand up and speak out against the Jihadists. Some are afraid that they are empowering the right, other frankly hate the West and what they consider its record of Imperialism.

As a Jews I can't afford not to fight back. There will be no better time than now. This is why I am not as concerned about the Coulters of this world as I am about the Jihadists and I would like to see people like you speak out now.

We can only fight one battle at the time. You fight the devil that is the most threatening first then you go after the other ones.

In any case the two campaigns, the one against Islamicism and the one against the ultra right wing have to be fought with different tactics anyway.

I agree Luis that the forum is annoying right now.

Hopefully they will fix it soon. I am tired of reposting everything I type here. Besides the web sites print on my computer is so small  that I am loosing my eyesight trying to make out what I type.

jack..

I agree with your last post about font size.  It is so small that I don't catch my spelling errors and I often hit it once, it appears like nothing happened then next thing I know, my post is on the blog multiple times.

I also agree that fighting the ultra right and the Jihadists require a flexible response, separate but equally committed.

I am glad we agree on something, boulevardier.

two hearts, beating as one, as they say jackson....

I  wouldn't go that far, boule.

More like to two minds looking into a subject and "seeing" the same thing.

hee, hee...yes, perhaps you are right....