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Antisemitism and contemporary politics

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    #26
    Originally posted by Defensive minded
    But the difference is I don't call myself a Christian. And I don't see myself as having any Christian ethnicity.
    Yeah, but some do because I reckon it's an easy and convenient and comforting way to maintain your ancestry and is a large part of your culture. Bosnia is one example where you could ask a bunch of people what they are and they could answer Bosnian, which usually means that they are Bosnian Muslims. A Croatian or Serbian from Bosnia would probably answer that they are Croatian or Serbian, the Bosnian Muslim sometimes Bosniak.
    Sometimes, though, you would also hear them answer Catholic Bosnian, Orthodox Bosnian and Bosnian Muslim, which is more of a cultural distinction than a religious one since the majority of people down there don't go to church or to the mosque, especially not the young.
    I know, it's a mess.

    My parents can sometimes sit at home and watch a show with folklore, mixed dance groups from any old former Yugoslavian province and comment "that's an orthodox folklore outfit", "that's a Muslim outfit from this and that specific region"

    Cultural [insert religion] are to be found in many parts of the world and I believe it is stronger amongst minorities and/or where there's been a rather recent conflict.
    Another example of ethnoreligious groups is Sikhs, they're not all wearing a turban. Or Thai Muslims where I'm sure you remember the conflict in southern Thailand only a few years ago. But most of Thailand's Muslims live further up north, Bangkok, as well as throughout the country. Some of them are religious, for some it's more of a cultural identity, which most likely grew stronger during the conflict in the south. Same with Burma when several thousand Rohingya Muslims were killed in one month only and even monks participated in the murders. That kind of thing strengthens the inclination to call yourself and identify as a Muslim, even though you might not go to the mosque and have Friday off instead of Sunday.
    It's an identifier many use not that different from when we follow a World cup and say that we want [country] to win because we are [nationality].

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      #27
      Bordeaux - a historical example as you suspected there might be:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Ma%CA%BFarri

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        #28
        A secular approach to Islam was one of the dominant trends of the 20th Century, from Attaturk through Nasser and the Ba'athists.

        "Secular" or "Cultural" Catholics out-number Jews very substantially in the US, and one of them, when President, was subject to the worst identity-based abuse of anyone in that office before Obama.

        In my experience, establishment Protestants are the outliers in this respect, rather than the rule.

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          #29
          That’s a pretty good example - -from the Wikipedia page you link to.”In 2013, a statue of al-Maʿarri located in his Syrian home town was beheaded by jihadists from the al-Nusra Front.”

          So even 1000 years after his death others saw him as a symbol of something, regardless of what he might have professed.

          Jews were /are seen as having variously ethnic religious and cultural identities- they could be contradictory ( capitalist and Marxist- libertine & very strict) often those were formed in opposition to the dominant cultures in which they lived. Or didn’t live. Ideas of the Jew as other often exist in places where Jews themselves are very rare. Jewish people like other groups both are interested in their cultural and family heritage and are also not in control of what people project on to them

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            #30
            Albanians tend to be secular Muslims, don't they? Or non-practicing cultural Muslims if that describes it better?

            In real life, in the era of my schooldays, if someone was a bit tight with money, they might get called 'a Jew', but equally likely 'a Jock' or 'a Yorkie/woollyback'. I can't think of the last time I heard the former, but you still hear the latter two from time to time, certainly the sentiment.

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              #31
              Similar to Bulgarian Muslims

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                #32
                Basically there is Islamic/Christian/Jewish religion and there are Islamic/Christian/Jewish customs.
                Lot's of people marry in a church or fast during Ramadan to a certain degree, without being religious, and the same people would never enter a confession booth or do the Hajj.

                Our family will do Catholic lent where during Easter eve and Christmas eve no meat is served before midnight. Typically Christmas Eve fish is served and some minor dishes, then Midnight mass for those who still go to church, then right after mass to someone's home where the gluttony and drinking rakija begins until early morning. The lent is not so much a religious thing, more of keeping some Croatian traditions alive where certain food is only served during these days and the culinary is very much a cultural thing which happens to be tied to a religious thing.

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                  #33
                  Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                  A secular approach to Islam was one of the dominant trends of the 20th Century, from Attaturk through Nasser and the Ba'athists.
                  Bloody hell, of course. D'oh!

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                    #34
                    Unsurprisingly PPV who has recent experience of an environment where people might be murdered from an assumed religious/ethnic identity that has far more to do with ideological differences about events that happened far in the past than what had been the lived reality in the present gets this. Imagine suddenly that people lost their jobs their homes and ultimately got killed for being assumed to be a Jock a woollyback- or a Jew.


                    PS thanks for changing the header...
                    Last edited by Nefertiti2; 30-07-2018, 16:43.

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                      #35
                      Originally posted by Flynnie View Post
                      Yeah, funny thing that, antisemites don't really care what religion you follow, if you have Jewish blood then you're a Jew to them.

                      Are you also confuddled that mixed race people often identify as black?
                      Mixed race people are black Flynnie.

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                        #36
                        Originally posted by Tactical Genius View Post
                        Mixed race people are black Flynnie.
                        That's my point!

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                          #37
                          My son - who is mixed race but with the same skin tone as me - came down the stairs while on the phone to one of his mates saying, "I am! I bloody am! Hold on, I'll ask my Dad",

                          "Dad" proffering phone in my direction.

                          "What?"

                          "Tell him"

                          "Tell him what?"

                          "I'm black, aren't I?"

                          There was also the time when, for some reason, the Welsh football players were arguing about who was the best looking black player in the team. They were completely surprised when Giggs piped up it was him. He was wrong, it was Nathan Blake but it says something about self-identification.

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                            #38
                            Originally posted by sw2borshch View Post
                            Albanians tend to be secular Muslims, don't they? Or non-practicing cultural Muslims if that describes it better?
                            'Bad' Muslims, as my Albanian friends said while drinking raki and eating pork. There were attempts by Saudis at increasing Wahabi influence with big religious and educational projects, but there wasn't much interest. The religious mix until recently was 70% Muslim (mostly in the centre and the mountains); 20% Catholic (Shkodra and thereabouts) and 10% Orthodox (on the Albania/Greece border). Religion never seemed to cause to much of an issue.

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                              #39
                              Enver Hoxha was born to a rich Muslim businessman but introduced state-atheism and banned all religions including Islam.

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                                #40
                                Originally posted by Pietro Paolo Virdis View Post
                                Enver Hoxha [...] introduced state-atheism
                                If that's what he called it, he missed a cracking portmanteau.

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                                  #41
                                  https://jewishvoiceforpeace.org/30jewishgroupsbds/

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                                    #42
                                    https://twitter.com/adepstein1/status/1024049195001372672

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                                      #43
                                      By the standards of many in this debate, I am antisemitic. Somehow this makes me feel simultaneously ashamed and proud. This fact is not, I suggest, a good thing.

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                                        #44
                                        It's perfectly rational in my book to piss on a religion, and still be able to respect followers of it. I detest religion, doesn't mean I detest people of a certain faith. And it's within my right to think religion is utter crap without being labelled worse than what I am.
                                        Edit: What I mean is not that it's my right to not be labelled. You know what I mean.

                                        I hate Juventus with a passion, but never the players and never the fans. Not much different with how I feel about religion.
                                        Last edited by Pietro Paolo Virdis; 31-07-2018, 18:59.

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                                          #45
                                          Originally posted by Defensive minded
                                          Please explain, ad hoc.
                                          By this debate I mean the one being carried out in the mainstream media (not on OTF). And in this debate it seems to me that anyone who campaigns for Palestinian human rights (and especially those who, like me, support non violent resistance to the occupation) is by definition anti semitic. Thus in the terms of this debate I am anti semitic. I believe that anti semitism is a serious and very much live problem (more than a problem, an evil . Yet by the terms that many use, I must be guilty of it. I am ashamed to be so perceived, and yet proud of my opposition to the racism that is acted upon the Palestinians. The fact of this paradox is, I strongly suspect, a massive problem because anti semitism is being turned into something mainstream and actually valid. Does that help?

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                                            #46
                                            https://twitter.com/michaeljswalker/status/1024259926590480384

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                                              #47
                                              That

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                                                #48
                                                This is enormously upsetting for me. Good on you for standing up for the rights of Palestinians, ad hoc. I have no doubt that you would stand up for Jews who you felt were unjustly treated or whose lives were threatened.\

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                                                  #49
                                                  ad hoc, you have to keep standing your ground and pointing out the simple fact that you can be pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel - inasmuch as you are against its governments' practices - and, even, anti-Israel inasmuch as you can think that Israel should never have occupied any Palestinian territories - but still not only be not anti-Semitic and wanting Israel wiped off the map but staunchly against such opinions, thoughts and actions that result form this mindset. Indeed, when people are trying to conflate these terms for their own ends and make them interchangeable, it is even more important to state the distinctions and if and how they relate to you.

                                                  I keep on stating the F Scott Fitzgerald line here - The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function - except with the qualifier that we aren't really talking about opposing ideas here per se aside from how they are perceived by others.

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                                                    #50
                                                    Originally posted by Bordeaux Education View Post
                                                    ad hoc, you have to keep standing your ground and pointing out the simple fact that you can be pro-Palestine, anti-Zionist and anti-Israel - inasmuch as you are against its governments' practices - and, even, anti-Israel inasmuch as you can think that Israel should never have occupied any Palestinian territories - but still not only be not anti-Semitic and wanting Israel wiped off the map but staunchly against such opinions, thoughts and actions that result form this mindset. Indeed, when people are trying to conflate these terms for their own ends and make them interchangeable, it is even more important to state the distinctions and if and how they relate to you.

                                                    I keep on stating the F Scott Fitzgerald line here - The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function - except with the qualifier that we aren't really talking about opposing ideas here per se aside from how they are perceived by others.
                                                    There do seem to be quite a lot of leftists who centre almost-hyperbolic criticism of Israel (and of "Zionism") in their internationalist politics to a much greater extent than they do opposition to other states that have institutionalised violence against indigenous people. I'm not saying it's necessarily antisemitic but it points towards a Manichean worldview that almost always descends into conspiracy theorising.

                                                    I think non-Palestinian leftists would be far better off amplifying the voices and demands of Palestinians in Palestine rather than on themselves criticising the badness of the Israeli state. In fact the latter often stands in the way of the former as organising around concrete demands takes a back seat to tedious arguments about whether denying Israel's right to exist is antisemitic or not.

                                                    For example there seem to be loads of people far more invested in their right to call the Israeli government Nazis than in opposing the raft of measures introduced in Western countries criminalising BDS activism or prohibiting institutional boycotts of Israel. It sets me on edge tbh.

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