Sweet sandals of Allah! Someone is mocking Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens.

Will riots ensue? (Via Heathen TV.)

Michael Lind ponders America’s official, and rather peculiar, racial categories. 

I am a non-Hispanic white, according to the federal government. My niece, who has a black parent and a white parent, is black, according to the federal government. It is not clear what my godchildren, who are of European and Asian ancestry, are. They could be Asian and Pacific Islander, or non-Hispanic white, for all I know. Or maybe they are “multiracial”. The 2000 Census allowed Americans to identify themselves as such. But this should be recognised as what it is – a cop-out, a cynical attempt to shore up the crumbling, unpopular racial-classification system by creating a new, equally dubious “race” with an assigned place at the identity-politics table. Every human being is a unity. Ancestors from different ethnic groups do not make an individual “multi-ethnic” any more than ancestors of different religions make one “multi-religious” or ancestors from different regions make one “multi-territorial”. 

And, 

The way to combat racism… is to stop telling Americans that their most important characteristic, in the eyes of the US government, is their race.

This is published in, good lord, the Guardian. Gary Younge and Joseph Harker will, no doubt, be thrilled.

As I wrote a while ago,

Identity politics… can actually exacerbate suspicion and resentment. If some notional “communities” are being treated differently and being encouraged to cultivate difference for social or political leverage, then getting past a person’s skin colour or place or origin seems more difficult, not less. One is continually being reminded of how different a person is, or thinks he ought to be. A cynic might point out that the racial grievance industry – and the various commentators and lobbyists who benefit from it – depends on people being preoccupied by the colour of a person’s skin. And therefore, one might suppose, there’s an incentive to make sure lots of people are.

Related. And.

I’m guessing the curvature could lead to RSI or wrists the thickness of thighs, but this hedgehog cheese grater still looks mighty fine.

Right, I’m off shopping. Do try to keep the place tidy.

Cath Elliott, whose wisdom has previously been noted, today shares her insights regarding ethical consumerism. This, so far as I can make out, involves inordinate fretting over the morality of washing out empty peanut butter jars:

I usually just give up and throw it in the bin (as long as no one’s watching).

It also involves no end of bothersome contradiction and, of course, feelings of remorse.

I refuse to set foot through the door of Primark and yet I shop in Tesco. I make sure my vegetables are locally sourced, but then I eat mango like it’s going out of fashion. I cycle to keep fit and to minimise my carbon footprint, but I also smoke, not roll ups either, but cigarettes manufactured by a major tobacco company.

Oh, the humanity. I trust Ms Elliott is no less forgiving of others – say, people who shop at Primark.

No doubt some people would argue that I’m a textbook example of a hand-wringing liberal, making futile gestures so I can feel good about myself, and performing all sorts of intellectual contortions to try and rationalise any slip-ups.

Well…

After all, is my decision not to drink Coke realistically going to have an impact on a company that last year earned $5.98bn? Probably not; but just as I’m fairly sure my refusal to buy Cape fruit in the 1980s had no bearing whatsoever on the later dismantling of the apartheid regime, that’s not the point.

If not to have a discernible impact, directly or by example, what, then, is the point? What drives this level of anxiety over soft drinks and peanut butter residue? Unless much of this is indeed about seeking out pretentious guilt and then wringing one’s hands for public display and personal gratification?

I wasn’t going to comment on Geert Wilders’ short film, Fitna, largely because it’s been done to death elsewhere and because, despite the ridiculous fuss, it’s actually rather boring. Fitna’s content, such as it is, will be familiar to anyone who reads Robert Spencer, Andrew Bostom or the MEMRI media archive. Juxtaposing acts of terrorism with the sermons and Qur’anic verses that are used to justify them is old news, at least among those who pay attention. And while the texts cited certainly are used to mandate atrocity, and have been for centuries, there’s no attempt to explain the theological context or the lineage of these ideas, or how they’re propagated and rationalised. A much better film, which does provide some context and analysis, is Islam: What the West Needs to Know.

But while Wilders’ film is unoriginal and insubstantial, the reactions to it have been instructive. The company hosting Fitna online pulled it after receiving threats to its staff “of a very serious nature”, which confirms the dismal fact that Islamist thuggery – whose roots we must not speak of – all too often works. (However, such is the nature of the intartubes, the film can still be found on any number of sites.) And, as expected, the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, condemned the “offensively anti-Islamic film” and claimed, unconvincingly, that, “the right of free speech is not at stake here.”

In the Guardian, Ali Eteraz described Fitna as “an effort to turn the entirety of Islam into a demonic edifice” – which may or may not be Wilders’ personal view, but is a somewhat loaded reading of the film. Wilders may well be an objectionable self-regarding oaf, as Eteraz and others claim, but that doesn’t address the fundamental issues. It simply avoids them. Instead we get: “Most people familiar with the Qur’an… accept that you can have the Qur’an say pretty much whatever you want.” This is another variation of the “Oh, but all religions can be twisted to mean anything” evasion (discussed at length here) and is based on an idle assumption that Islam has no theological features and precedents that make it unusual among religions. Eteraz also bemoaned the “disgusting conflations of the Qur’an with acts of violence, murder, kidnapping and anti-Semitism” – a statement that reveals an ignorance of Islamic history and jurisprudence that is almost, but not quite, funny.

As usual, umbrage and disgust are directed at those who point to the sacralising of terror by others, rather than those who actually make terror a matter of pious obligation. Would such reactions have been very different if more elevated minds – say, Robert Spencer, Ibn Warraq or Andrew Bostom – had made a film, any film, on the subject? Somehow, I think not.

Update:

I’ve often heard it argued, or rather asserted, that “Islamophobia” makes it more difficult to combat jihadist ideology and those who propagate it. But there’s an obvious problem with this. What is very often deemed “Islamophobic” is any attempt to highlight the roots of jihadism within Islamic history and teaching, and ultimately in the purported revelations of Muhammad himself. Thus, efforts to provide essential theological and historical context, as for instance by Spencer, Warraq and Bostom, are routinely denounced as “inflammatory”, “Islamophobic”, even “racist”. To mention the unedifying aspects of Islam’s prophet – which are central to any credible understanding of the jihadist phenomenon – is therefore very difficult to do without being denounced as xenophobic, hateful or in some way nefarious. The irony of this should not need pointing out.