Aaro gets is
Rather a good Tuesday Aaro in my opinion. Making the entirely sensible point that constantly having a go at the Muzzies is bound to be counterproductive. Michael Gove appears to believe that you can win the "Battle of Ideas" at the dispatch box of the Oxford Union, Nick Cohen apparently believes that John Humphreys is falling down on his appointed job as lead platoon in the "Greatest Intellectual Struggle Of Our Time", and Melanie Phillips appears to believe that you catch fewer flies with honey than with undiluted hydrochloric acid. At least Aaro is borderline sane on this issue (it is really quite likely that 1930s Munich contained one or two dishonest Jewish moneylenders and even a couple of Jewish butchers who put sawdust in the workers' sausage. But Der Sturmer was still a bad newspaper, and nor does it make any sense to drag up every single bit of Muslim badness that we can find).
Check out the reaction of Aaroblog's commenters by the way ...
Check out the reaction of Aaroblog's commenters by the way ...
posted by The Rioja Kid at 10/17/2006 02:57:00 PM
10 Comments:
This is the sort of issue which separates Aaro, who is essentially a New Labour hack and only a Decent as an extension of that - a 'moderate Decent' if you will - with the serious, ideological Decents, who if pushed would probably give a similar answer to Aaro to these questions but don't consider them issues of particular importance in comparison with the Global Islamist Threat.
I think you're giving the ideo-Decents too much credit, Simon. I don't think many of them would give the same answer as Aaro if pushed. A lot of them really do appear to believe that it is a virtuous and essential thing to do to pick random arguments with Muzzies over matters of the Islamic religion, because in this way we are carrying out "the battle of ideas". To have any accomodation with them is to "show weakness", which the Al-Qaedas will pounce on as evidence that we are weak and decadent and will give up after another couple of atrocities. This is the actual view of Michael Gove AFAICT and I think he is quite worryingly typical. Gove seems to think in Celsius 7/7 that the "battle of ideas" between us and Islam will be an actual battle, perhaps to be held at the Oxford Union. I have a canny idea who he sees as the shining myrmidon of Western Civilisation, wearing the crusader plate naturally.
"I have a canny idea who he sees as the shining myrmidon of Western Civilisation, wearing the crusader plate naturally"
Pollard? I don't fancy our chances.
I think I agree with you BB, but I'm not sure you could say Michael Gove was ever on the Decent Left. He's part of that H'S'JS, Nicholas Boles (nope, I have no idea who he is either), etc Tory Decent Right, if such a term needs to be invented.
I think Aaro has a bit of intellectual weight (unlike Cohen) and therefore can actually see where this could all lead.
Of course it would have been nice if he had seen it earlier, but thank heavens for small mercies.
One of Dave's commenters posted a link to Mad Mel's response to this piece:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/?p=1363
"Aaronovitch writes many things nowadays with which I tend to agree, but on this matter he could not be more wrong."
If Mel says he's wrong, maybe he is right this time...
I still found a lot of the asides in the article (niqab-wearing looking like "daleks", kebabs mentioned along with features of Muslim culture) slightly odd. Maybe not unientionally racist, but a sign that Aaronovitch doesn't come into contact with real-life Muslims too often and thus feels free to write anything about them he wants. Which is sort of the point, isn't it?
There's not much difference in the comments at Aaronvitch's blog and Comment is free.
In fact, they appear to be the same people.
There's an interesting line-up taking place as far as the liberal zionists are concerned. Aero (so light, so airy), Freedland and Norm have all been quite good on the Muslim question. It's as if they've read/remembered that Jews were given this sort of treatment in the 1880-1930 period and seen the obvious parallels. Jews in this period could, like Muslims today, be accused of breeding anarchist-terrorists (eg Sidney Street); bolsheviks (and therefore, after establishment of Soviet Union, fifth columnists); world conspiracies (therefore a threat to western civilisation)etc etc. And Jews dress(ed) funny as well. A lot of references in literature/journalism to beard-tugging and long cloaks, harbouring filth and grease; and of course conversing in strange tongues. The best eg of this is Thackeray's 'The Squall'. I think it's on the net somewhere.
Then all the fleas in Jewry
Jumped up and bit like fury;
And the progeny of Jacob
Did on the main-deck wake up
(I wot those greasy Rabbins
Would never pay for cabins);
And each man moaned and jabbered in
His filthy Jewish gaberdine,
In woe and lamentation,
And howling consternation.
And the splashing water drenches
Their dirty brats and wenches;
And they crawl from bales and ben
What's really important about the debate is not what 'Muslims' are actually like (v. tricky concept, 'truth'), but how decent, caring and deeply compassionate one's comments about them are. Actually 'knowing' or 'living' 'near' (also v. tricky concepts) them has no 'bearing' on the matter: we 'are' all the same under the 'skin', except where we're 'not'.
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