“Self Haters”
by Laura Stuart
Tuesday, February 21st, 2012
Being involved in activism for Human Rights and Palestinian Rights in particular, I have met many very active Jewish campaigners. These people are branded as “self-haters” by Jewish Zionists and anti-Zionists alike.
Evidently we also have “self-hating Muslims”, and it is these I would like to write about, and one in particular – namely Hasan Afzal.
There is a difference between a self-hating Jew and a self-hating Muslim. The former in my opinion, does not want to be associated with human rights abuses perpretrated by Israel in the name of Jews, and is more critical of Jewish culture and Zionism. Muslim self-haters appear to be more haters of Islam itself. Most of the Muslim self-haters that I have read about are at war with Allah s.w.t., His word – The Quran and the scholars who teach it. They are happy to “coin it in” and make a living from the lie that Islam is an evil ideology.
I am certain that being a Muslim self-hater can be very lucrative. Writing books about radical Islam and being employed by the government to work in groups who claim to be experts on Islamic extremism, can be a very profitable enterprise.
A few years ago, the British government was floundering around trying to be seen to be doing something to prove that it was taking Islamic extremism seriously. Suddenly we were taking counter-terrorism advice from the Israelis – self proclaimed experts on “how to deal with Muslims”. This didn’t work out too well for the Met after they discovered that the shoot-first-ask-questions-later method didn’t work here. The killing with impunity by police of civilians, just because they look a bit dark skinned (Jean Charles de Menezes), is still disapproved of in the U.K. by the general public, even if legally, the Met managed to get away with it. So the government had to find a different way to tackle the “problem”.
Persistently denying the obvious parallel between British foreign policy on Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan and the fact that over 2 million U.K. Muslims were angry and upset about Muslim lands being “bombed b ack to the Stone Ages” by Israel with British support, the U.K. government came to the very dodgy conclusion that British mosques were radicalising Muslims. The Quran became a book that promotes killing innocents and anyone who spoke out about the Jews killing Muslims in Palestine or calling Bush’s Iraq invasion a crusade (which God told him to do), became a hate- preacher or an extremist.
More than happy to play a leading role in oppressing Islam and Muslims, were many pro-Israel lobby groups and think tanks who have now become rather powerful. With a twofold initiative: Firstly to convince the government that all Jews, particularly children, are in danger and that the government should pay money to protect them and secondly, that Islam is an evil ideology unable to accept Western values, and that Muslims are intent on taking over the world. Creating an environment of fear is intrinsic to the war on Muslims and on Islam and the so-called “War on Terror”. Promoting Israel as the tiny Jewish state, precariously hanging on whilst surrounded by those intent on its demise, has kept millions of American tax dollars in military aid flooding into Israel, while many Americans face poverty.
Perpetuating fear and threat of annihilation are clearly very profitable for those involved. The security business is huge and growing. But what about our Muslim self hating brothers, where do they fit in?
Muslims willing to profit from a government needing to be seen doing something to tacke extremism include The Quilliam Foundation, C.E.N.T.R.I., to name just two, and blogs such as Spittoon and the most hilarious of all, “British Muslims for Israel“. About a year ago the name British Muslims for Israel suddenly came up, of course we all collapsed in incredulity and hilarity as we wondered who they were. It transpired that they were just one young man, Hasan Afzal. I am sure Israel feels reassured that one British Muslim out of 2 and a half million is on its side.
Here is a gem from the website
Groups such as the Palestinian Solidarity Movement, Viva Palestina, Stop the War do NOT speak for us
Who is “us” that he refers to? No-one else has ever joined Hasan Azfal in this initiative.
Finding no-one wanted to be his friend on British Muslims for Israel, and having, no doubt, been regarded as a spy by his local Islamic Students Society for his insane and misguided views on Palestine and Muslims in general, Hasan Afzal set up a new website called “Stand for Peace“. Describing itself as a Muslim/Jewish initiative and claims:
StandforPeace avoids the emotional appropriation that plagues other organisation, because we encourage the very persons – who might usually disrupt such events – to get involved and to come listen and debate with speakers, topics, literature and ideas from a number of differing viewpoints.
At the same time as claiming the above he writes with no trace of irony . . .
I challenge Nabil Ahmed, the president of FOSIS, and FOSIS London to explain why they are inviting such a nightmarish individual to their ‘religious gathering’? What good can this man do to the minds of young Muslims?
Yet again, we have this schizophrenic stance on Free Speech displayed so often by Harry’s Place and other Zionists.
According to Wikipedia
For instance, “ethnic self-hatred” is the extreme dislike of one’s ethnic group or cultural classification
Birmingham’s Islamic society recently hosted a speaker, Jalal Ibn Saeed, who gave a presentation on “a day in the life of a Gazan child”.
“It was [about] Gazan children waking, being shot by Israeli soldiers. This isn’t the peace-loving religion I was brought up with,” says Afzal.
One thing is for sure, any Muslim willing to speak out against Muslims, no matter how confused their own understanding of Islam is, will be considered as an expert by the government. There is a huge market for books, talks and advice from any Muslim willing to join forces with the Zionists in creating and perpetuating Islamophobia.
In conclusion it is clear for anyone to see, that Muslims living in the U.K. and the West are very tolerant towards self-hating Muslims. People such as Hasan Afzal are largely ignored by Muslims in stark contrast to the campaigns of harrassment by Jews, both Zionist and anti-Zionist, which are waged against self-hating Jews. I therefore conclude that Muslims are in reality much more tolerant of freedom speech and far from the image that the Islamophobes would like to portray.
I think this video of Hasan Afzal would be hilarious viewing if it wasn’t so sad and worrying to wonder about his psychological state.
Posted by Laura Stuart
on February 21, 2012. Filed under Ideology.
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7 Responses to “Self Haters”
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lassewilhelmson
February 21, 2012 at 8:35 pm
Well, it is very simple. Jewish selfhatred is just a stage on the travel from tribalism to humanism, because jewishness is incluvistic. Muslim selfhatred is, I think, the oposite, because Islam is incluvistic (like christianity).
Generally speaking:)
ariadna
February 22, 2012 at 1:32 am
The descriptor “self-hating jews,” naturally, does not belong in the same discourse as “self-hating muslims” (if that indeed is ever used by muslims).
In the discourse that uses the term ‘self-hating jews’ the muslims you described are called “moderate muslims,” or, if Arabs, “moderate Arab voices.”
Admittedly four years is a long time in this fast-changing world but the last time I looked at this category:
http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=13621
they seemed to fare less well in the US than in Europe. Not so lucrative here.
Perhaps we are less trusting than you are and for us a muslim is a muslim is a muslim.
Laura Stuart
February 22, 2012 at 8:06 am
Many of the Muslims who work for the think tanks on combatting extremism are extremists in the real meaning of the word in so much as they started off following what some would term an extreme form of Islam in one direction then decide to change 180 degrees and go to the other extreme of the scale as government lackeys.
Hasan Afzal yesterday was championing the zionist cause with a hasbara piece on a well known zionist blog about how the Israelis were really upset about the deaths of the Palestinian children in that bus crash and that the stories about them celebrating on F.B. were made up.
Roy Bard
February 22, 2012 at 8:34 am
One of the most successful of the bunch must be Walid Shoebat whose website proudly describes him thus: “Former PLO Terrorist Now Speaks Out For USA and Israel.
His mother he claims is American and his father a “Palestinian Arab” – he swung from “radicalized Muslim” to Christian in 1994, and has been the darling of extremist Zionists ever since.
Chris Hedges pulls no punches in descibing Walid along with Kamal Saleem and Zachariah Anani as “the three stooges of the Christian right”:
ariadna
February 23, 2012 at 12:52 am
Chris Hedges pulls no punches, you say? I’d say he pulls a very large one in the paragraph you quoted:
“in the moment of another catastrophic terrorist attack on American soil, would make it acceptable to target and persecute all Muslims.”
Even if you have bought the official conspiracy theory on 9/11 you must be aware that many other people refuse to do so.
I find it hard to believe that Chris Hedges was a gullible man.
So then I must consider that statement a repulsive, dishonest act of ill faith on his part because it manages to pretend to recommend tolerance to muslims while reinforcing the most nefarious lie and slander against them in recent history.
Yes, yes, let’s be tolerant, even if another catastrophic terrorist attack will be perpetrated by them again because only some of them will do it… Repugnant.
Roy Bard
February 23, 2012 at 10:43 am
Hi ariadna
I did mean that he pulled no punches in calling them “the three stooges of the Christian right”.
He does appear to believe that 9/11 was the work of Bin Laden:
but somehow still finds himself on the wrong side when it comes to the Americans:
Personally I tend towards the ‘Let it happen on purpose’ stance re 9/11, as I doubt that such an operation could have been planned without security services knowing about it (or even infiltrating it) – and have never believed the ‘official conspiracy story’ – neither have I seen any evidence that it was a false flag….
At the end of the day, I really don’t know who was REALLY responsible.
Thanks for the comments
ariadna
February 23, 2012 at 11:21 am
Got it. “let it happen on purpose”…. the way one fails to repair a broken hinge and one day the door falls off… “knowing about” or “even infiltrating” the incredibly sophisticated “catastrophic attack” planned by the “Mastermind of 9/11″ dwelling in a cave and deciding to stand down and watch…
Never fails to amaze me.
Never mind, this was not about what YOU believe but about Hitchens who interestingly enough applies –one could say fairly– his own kind of logic to explain and partly excuse both the real nakbahization of Palestine by Israel and the manufactured narrative of 9/11: both perpetrators, Israel in the first case, and the imaginary 19 muslims in the latter, had been traumatized by prior suffering.