Saudi Arabia not observing the silence

[DannyInvincible]

Saudi Arabia's scumbaggery against Australia has been well documented; thankfully, they lost in the end, but are still second with two games to go, and they host Japan in what may be a winner-takes-all last round match.

I think it's worth trying to understand their motive rather than just dismissing it as simple "scumbaggery", as if the Saudi players were brazenly sympathising with ISIS or the London attackers. As far as I understand, honouring deaths in the manner of observing a minute's silence is considered to constitute a "bid'ah" (or heretical innovation) within Wahhabi doctrine.

Here's what was supposed to have happened:

The Australian association proposed the minute of silence for the two Australian victims of the London Bridge attack, and Saudi soccer officials agreed it should go forward. However, they added that their players would not take part as it is against Saudi custom.

FOXSPORTS was informed of the decision, presumably so they could keep their cameras on the Australian players and supporters, avoiding controversy. They did not.

The Saudis' reluctance to participate also got me thinking about how it must feel for those from the Arab world to encounter or observe such displays of remembrance in the Western world. Considering civilians are killed en masse on a near daily basis in the Arab world due to Western interference/bombings or attacks by local militias - many indeed propped up by Western governments - and such incidents are generally ignored without exception before Western sporting events, moments of selective solemnity and remembrance - such as that which occurred before this match in Australia for the victims of the London attacks - must appear to Arabs as profound displays of Western hypocrisy.

I suppose this affair just goes to demonstrate how even something as seemingly harmless and non-controversial as a minute's silence before a football game can carry so much political baggage.

[pineapple stu]

The Guardian noted that Saudi sporting teams have observed a minute's silence plenty of times before though. So it's not a cultural misunderstanding.

The article also says it was explained in advance to the Saudi officials, who flat out refused. There's an awful lot of stuff spouted about how we should respect middle-eastern culture, even the more backward elements of it, but that really needs to start being a two-way street.

A cynical me says that the fact the two Australians were female could have made it all the more unpalatable for the Saudis.

Anyways, in other news, Iceland beat Croatia with an 89th minute goal and go joint top of their group, with Turkey and Ukraine both just two points behind. Iceland have, in theory anyway, got the hardest match of the second series of games out of the way first though (as I guess have Croatia)

Montenegro are the second-placed team to miss out on the play-offs at present; we're second bottom, two points ahead. So we need to be careful of finishing second and not even making the play-offs.

[DannyInvincible]

The Guardian noted that Saudi sporting teams have observed a minute's silence plenty of times before though. So it's not a cultural misunderstanding.

The article also says it was explained in advance to the Saudi officials, who flat out refused. There's an awful lot of stuff spouted about how we should respect middle-eastern culture, even the more backward elements of it, but that really needs to start being a two-way street.

A cynical me says that the fact the two Australians were female could have made it all the more unpalatable for the Saudis.

The Guardian's reporting is misleading, according to Aaron Gordon of Vice Sports: https://sports.vice.com/en_us/articl...nce-for-london

Several websites, including the Guardian, have tried to demonstrate the Saudi's act as hypocritical by pointing out that moments of silence were in fact held for the death of former Saudi King Abdullah. However, those examples are misleading. Two were held in other countries—Qatar and the UAE, to be precise—which have different prevailing interpretations of Islam that allow for such silences. Also, none of those instances actually involved Saudis.

Another potential counterexample circulating is from a match between Saudi club Al Ahli Saudi and Barcelona last year in Doha. A moment of silence was held there as well. But, again, this is misleading. The image the Guardian published is from just prior to the moment of silence being announced. Once it was, many of the Saudi players unhooked their arms, although they didn't disperse and kick the ball around as they did in Australia.

Here's video footage of the minute's silence before the game between Al-Ahli and Barcelona:

Notice that many of the Al-Ahli players don't actually stand still. Some are chatting and others are stretching or warming up on the spot. Those standing still observing the silence are non-Saudi players, according to Wael Jabir.

There's an awful lot of stuff spouted about how we should respect middle-eastern culture, even the more backward elements of it, but that really needs to start being a two-way street.

Out of interest, which backward elements are you referring to and who is saying those elements should be respected? Do you perceive people of Middle Eastern origin to be disrespecting you and/or the West as some sort of general front or collective group? They're not a homogenous monolith, but, if you do feel people of Middle Eastern origin are disrespecting you and/or the West as some sort of collective, in what ways do you feel they're being disrespectful or in what ways do you feel that you and/or the West have been disrespected? And couldn't someone from the Middle East very easily retort to your implicit accusation and request for "a two-way street of respect" that decades of interference, plundering and bloodshed in the Middle East at the hands of entire Western states is hardly very respectful?

[pineapple stu]

The Guardian's reporting is misleading, according to Aaron Gordon of Vice Sports: https://sports.vice.com/en_us/articl...nce-for-london



Here's video footage of the minute's silence before the game between Al-Ahli and Barcelona:



Notice that many of the Al-Ahli players don't actually stand still. Some are chatting and others are stretching or warming up on the spot. Those standing still observing the silence are non-Saudi players, according to Wael Jabir.



Out of interest, which backward elements are you referring to and who is saying those elements should be respected? Do you perceive people of Middle Eastern origin to be disrespecting you and/or the West as some sort of general front or collective group? They're not a homogenous monolith, but, if you do feel people of Middle Eastern origin are disrespecting you and/or the West as some sort of collective, in what ways do you feel they're being disrespectful or in what ways do you feel that you and/or the West have been disrespected? And couldn't someone from the Middle East very easily retort to your implicit accusation and request for "a two-way street of respect" that decades of interference, plundering and bloodshed in the Middle East at the hands of entire Western states is hardly very respectful?

Interesting on the Guardian riposte bit. But it still doesn't really explain why they refused - and the Guardian is suggesting they did refuse, which they should at least be more correct on as it happened at the game.

There is no excuse whatsoever for refusing to a minute's silence. You've travelled to another country; it won't kill you to respect their culture for one minute. I still think it's scumbaggery.

The latter part of your post is going rather off topic, but - yes, I know the Middle East isn't one homogenous blob. In terms of backward elements, the obvious ones are the misogyny, the freedom of speech issues, the issues surrounding certain groups of people (apostates and homosexuals in particular), and the view of sharia law as being above national law. Imams here have been saying Irish schools should have Muslim-friendly facilities - strictly gender-segregated facilities and teachers, or for example - or that they are prepared to sue blasphemers of Mohammed, or that the question of the death penalty for homosexuals "is a difficult one" - all of which disrespects our culture. (Having a daft blasphemy law does not override our culture of free speech) All a bit hypocritical given that you're expected to very strictly adhere to their culture when you go over there (in, for example, dress, hotel room bookings, admission to certain buildings/areas)

I agree entirely on your point on western action in the Middle East, but it's not really relevant here. And, before it comes in, I also think the minute's silence is way overdone these days - but the bottom line is you're playing a match in Australia, the hosts ask for a minute's silence for two Australians who died in a terrorist attack, it's not too much to ask that you respect that request. And I'd expect Australia to respect a show of support for a similar incident in Saudi Arabia. This "We didn't know" stuff is nonsense.

Anyways, not saying any more on that as it's not the thread for it at all.

The US picked up a point last night against Mexico, and with their nearest two rivals at home, they should go through, much and all as it would be quite fun to see them at home.

[geysir]

Interesting on the Guardian riposte bit. But it still doesn't really explain why they refused - and the Guardian is suggesting they did refuse, which they should at least be more correct on as it happened at the game.

There is no excuse whatsoever for refusing to a minute's silence. You've travelled to another country; it won't kill you to respect their culture for one minute. I still think it's scumbaggery.
.

To label it scumbaggery is quite frankly ignorant, disrespectful and disingenuous, as you could have made an effort to find out why.
The Saudis might have made an error of judgement which the Saudi FA freely and unreservedly apologise for, but the action of the players was not due to reasons of a scumbag nature.

[DannyInvincible]

Interesting on the Guardian riposte bit. But it still doesn't really explain why they refused - and the Guardian is suggesting they did refuse, which they should at least be more correct on as it happened at the game.

There is no excuse whatsoever for refusing to a minute's silence. You've travelled to another country; it won't kill you to respect their culture for one minute. I still think it's scumbaggery.

...

And, before it comes in, I also think the minute's silence is way overdone these days - but the bottom line is you're playing a match in Australia, the hosts ask for a minute's silence for two Australians who died in a terrorist attack, it's not too much to ask that you respect that request. And I'd expect Australia to respect a show of support for a similar incident in Saudi Arabia. This "We didn't know" stuff is nonsense.

Are you applying the standards you evidently expect of others to yourself? I'm not so sure you are. For someone so keen on demanding respect for your own culture, you seem very unwilling to try and understand the culture and customs of others. And whilst you profess to be keen on upholding and safeguarding "Western values" or notions of liberty and free expression, in reality, you sound surprisingly dictatorial, illiberal and intolerant, for isn't free expression the freedom to opt out of a minute's silence if one wishes to do so? Does your version of "free speech" not apply to Saudis or what?

As Noam Chomsky once said:

"Goebbels was in favour of free speech for views he liked. So was Stalin. If you're really in favour of free speech, then you’re in favour of freedom of speech for precisely the views you despise. Otherwise, you're not in favour of free speech."

Nobody claimed "[they] didn't know". I'm not sure if you've missed it or are wilfully ignoring it, but the explanation for the Saudis' non-participation was outlined above in post #89.

It had been made known to the Saudi association by the Australian association that the Australian association wished to hold a minute's silence before the game. The Saudi association agreed that the minute's silence could go ahead (thus, they were respecting the Australians' declared wishes), but the Saudi association also made it known that their players could not participate in the observance as it would be against Saudi custom to do so.

More specifically, it would have been contrary to Saudi custom because honouring the dead in the manner of a minute's silence is considered to constitute what is known as a "bid'ah" or a heretical innovation within Wahhabism, the doctrine of Islam that is dominant in Saudi Arabia. The performance of anything deemed a heretical innovation is regarded as impermissible by scholars and adherents of Wahhabism. That's the explanation/reason/"excuse" for the Saudis' reluctance to participate; it had nothing to do with "scumbaggery" or a desire to offend Australians or Westerners.

Furthermore, the television channel broadcasting the game was informed that the Saudi players would not be taking part in the minute's silence before the game, presumably in the hope that they would keep their cameras focused on the Australian players and avoid needless controversy, but they didn't do so for whatever reason. As a result of them broadcasting images of the Saudi players in their own-half positions awaiting kick-off whilst the Australian players observed a minute's silence, people got outraged without attempting to understand or inform themselves of what had actually happened. Dubbing it "scumbaggery" is just cultural insensitivity grounded in total ignorance. You can hardly denounce alleged cultural insensitivity on the part of others whilst being guilty of that very thing yourself. That's just hypocrisy. Would you expect a Protestant, Muslim or Jew to say a decade of the Rosary at a Catholic funeral, for example? Would you call them a "scumbag" if they opted out of it?

The latter part of your post is going rather off topic, but - yes, I know the Middle East isn't one homogenous blob. In terms of backward elements, the obvious ones are the misogyny, the freedom of speech issues, the issues surrounding certain groups of people (apostates and homosexuals in particular), and the view of sharia law as being above national law. Imams here have been saying Irish schools should have Muslim-friendly facilities - strictly gender-segregated facilities and teachers, or for example - or that they are prepared to sue blasphemers of Mohammed, or that the question of the death penalty for homosexuals "is a difficult one" - all of which disrespects our culture. (Having a daft blasphemy law does not override our culture of free speech) All a bit hypocritical given that you're expected to very strictly adhere to their culture when you go over there (in, for example, dress, hotel room bookings, admission to certain buildings/areas)

You decided, on account of apparent ignorance of the facts and in spite of being provided an explanation in a post above, to accuse Saudi Arabian footballers of "scumbaggery" due to their non-participation in a minute's silence and then decided to cast further crude aspersions upon people from the Middle East (by implying that they're generally not paying us Westerners the same level of respect that we supposedly afford them). I'm just pulling you up on something you chose to introduce to the discussion. Why you chose to mention it, I have no idea, but I didn't steer things off-topic.

I think your position relies on rather sweeping generalisations and some convenient selectivity. As I've said, we're not two homogeneous monoliths, but we in the West have social taboos; they in the Middle East have social taboos. We have laws to which people are expected to adhere when here; they have laws to which people are expected to adhere when there. The Middle East is a diverse place and the people from it are a diverse set of people. The same applies to the West. Disrespect is something of which all humans are capable; it is not a trait exclusive to those from the Middle East when they encounter or engage with Western culture. People from the Middle East can be guilty of disrespect and people from the West can be equally guilty of disrespect. Islamophobia, racism and religious intolerance are rife in the West, for example. It's hardly as if all Westerners adhere to the laws, customs and social norms of the West when in the West, nor is it even as if all norms and laws in the West are what we might regard as progressive in nature either. And millions of people from the Middle East are entirely respectful and tolerant of Western culture. Indeed, millions participate in it, contribute to it and add richness to it.

Would you say our blasphemy law disrespects our own culture? In your opinion, what does that say for the constitution that demands it or what does that say for those who legislated for it? What does their legislating for it say for the Irish electorate who elected them?

I agree entirely on your point on western action in the Middle East, but it's not really relevant here.

People of the Middle East would beg to differ. They see another side of "Western values"; a much darker side. Why wouldn't that be relevant? It isn't happening in isolation. It's conduct perpetrated by Westerners in the Middle East and it's very real for those at the suffering end of it. You feel fully entitled to accuse people from the Middle East of disrespecting your culture and cite the desire of unspecified imams for Muslim-friendly facilities in Irish schools as an example of that, but if someone from the Middle East was to complain of Western bombs wiping out entire families and communities in the Middle East, you'd tell them their grievance had no place in a discussion about inter-cultural disrespect, seemingly because it doesn't suit your specious and biased narrative of "disrespect being one-way traffic"? You can't be serious. That's just mind-boggling. You think disrespect is only relevant if you're the one who perceives or experiences it? Why should those from the Middle East be denied that very basic privilege you take for granted yourself; to simply be able to say what makes them feel disrespected?

[pineapple stu]

Danny, I know you're foot.ie's verbiage king, but there's times when less is more. Seriously. You've so many tangents in that it'd take me all day to reply to everything. Which I'm not going to do obviously.

To pick some of the main points -

Yes, the west's actions in the Middle East is of no relevance to this situation. There's not that many bombs being dropped by Australia, or on Saudi Arabia, so in the context of a match between Australia and Saudi Arabia, your point is irrelevant. Unless you're conflating Australia with West and Saudi Arabia as the Middle East? Your entire last paragraph has all the focus and relevance to the immediate point of a college student who's just discovered anarchy (And as a side note, incidentally, Saudi Arabia are dropping plenty of bombs in the Middle East themselves lately, but you seem happy to make out that the west are the sole aggressors)

Your series of questions on blasphemy are daft. What's the point you're trying to make there, seriously? Look at the reaction to Stephen Fry's charge of blasphemy - mirth, embarrassment, charges quietly dropped - and tell me it's in any way in our culture.

You didn't ask for the name of the imam, incidentally, but I was referring to Ali Selim.

Getting more towards the point though, a decade of the rosary is in no way comparable to a minute's silence; it's an overtly religious act. A minute's silence is not; it's a cross-cultural gesture. Indeed, the article you quote actually hints at this difference, when suggesting that actually the Saudi players were disrespectful, and that they could easily have compromised by offering a generic prayer themselves. By kicking a ball around instead, they were being actively, if discreetly, disrespectful. It obviously isn't the first time the Saudi federation have come across a minute's silence before, and a Plan B surely has to have been considered. If Plan B was "**** them; not our culture", when there's other potential options, then yes, that is disrespecful. This idea that "not in our culture" can be a valid reason for disrespect is a particularly dangerous one too. (And let's be honest, neither Wahhabi Islam nor Saudi culture, if there is even much of a difference, are not cultures that anyone should want to see spread. If that's against free speech, then so be it. But it's a simple truth)

As a point of clarification, I didn't accuse the footballers themselves of scumbaggery. In a lot of instances like this, it's more likely to be the officials calling the shots, and it can be very hard for a player to make a stand against a federation official and keep his career intact.

I get the feeling I could construct a liberal "Bull**** bingo" card from your post tbh.

[DannyInvincible]

Yes, the west's actions in the Middle East is of no relevance to this situation. There's not that many bombs being dropped by Australia, or on Saudi Arabia, so in the context of a match between Australia and Saudi Arabia, your point is irrelevant.

I think you'll find that it was yourself - and not me - who introduced to the discussion this "West-Middle East" dichotomy that you're now, for whatever reason, trying to dismiss as "irrelevant" (presumably so as to conveniently avoid dealing with my counter-points). You'd complained that there was an "awful lot of stuff spouted about how we should respect middle-eastern culture, even the more backward elements of it, but that really needs to start being a two-way street"? I assumed by "we" that you meant Westerners (seeing as we're not Australians). Was my assumption incorrect?

I picked up on your statement to challenge it as I thought it was a pretty rash, ill-considered and disparaging generalisation worthy of closer scrutiny. Why did you bring it up in the first place if you were only going to then dismiss it as "irrelevant" when later confronted on it?

For what it's worth, Operation Okra is Australia's contribution to airborne Western military intervention in the Middle East. Here's a list of other military operations in which Australia is or has been involved in the Middle East (and elsewhere).

Anyway, even if you wished to limit discussion to Saudi Arabia alone (although that evidently wasn't the case judging by your words), of course historical and contemporary Western foreign policy in the Middle East would still be relevant. To suggest otherwise is simply to display further ignorance on the matter. John Pilger's brief summary of Western foreign policy in the Middle East in a recent piece on the Manchester Arena attack for Counter Punch provides some wider contextual framework for the discussion you decided to initiate.

The Manchester atrocity lifts the rock of British foreign policy to reveal its Faustian alliance with extreme Islam, especially the sect known as Wahhabism or Salafism, whose principal custodian and banker is the oil kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Britain’s biggest weapons customer.

This imperial marriage reaches back to the Second World War and the early days of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The aim of British policy was to stop pan-Arabism: Arab states developing a modern [socialist-influenced] secularism, asserting their independence from the imperial west and controlling their resources. The creation of a rapacious Israel was meant to expedite this. Pan-Arabism has since been crushed; the goal now is division and conquest.

Extremist Islamism is a modern construct springing from a history of brutal colonialism and military adventurism by the West in the Middle East. Who overthrew secular governments in Iran and Iraq? Answer: the US and Britain. Contrast the rigid and zealous versions of Islam exhibited by Saudi Arabia and ISIS with the much greater degrees of tolerance for diversity and secular or moderate thought found in majority-Muslim countries (or regions) like Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina, Kosovo, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Senegal, Gabon, Sierra Leone, Gambia, Comoros, Turkey, northern Cyprus, Kurdistan, Morocco, Tunisia and even Palestine or Lebanon at the Levant's Mediterranean edge. The rise of draconian forms of Islamism in the Middle East is actually a very modern (post-colonial) phenomenon even though, as Hasan Azad says, it tends to strike us as the very antithesis of modernity.

First of all, it is crucial to ask ourselves what it is that we understand by modernity. We assume that modernity means "reason", "science", "freedom", "justice", "racial, gender, and sexual equality". These are the assumptions. They are the ideals that are projected by a strident Western discourse, where the West is seen as their progenitor and purveyor.

Perhaps it will strike the reader as a little odd if I say that these ideals are far from being realised within the West. That there are massive inequalities of sexualities, of genders and of races in the West. That Western freedom, whether political, economic or consumerist, comes at the expense of the freedom of people living in non-Western countries.

And this lack of freedom runs far and deep, reaching into the history of how non-European people were made to think during colonial times.

This is another piece of relevance on the uneasy relationship between "free speech" and Islam.

In his 2003 book, “Al Qaeda and What It Means to Be Modern,” English political philosopher John Gray claimed that Islamic extremism is a modern phenomenon, a modern illness. It is unfair and dishonest to view a religion with such a vast population, one that has existed for more than 1,500 years, as an unstable component that has not been affected by the sociopolitical circumstances surrounding the rise of extremism or Western interventionism in the Muslim world.

Conducting a long-term war in the Middle East to supposedly end terrorism — while killing Muslims, many of them civilians — only legitimizes the defense of the people being pillaged. It’s a privilege to disregard this key sociopolitical context. Figures such as Maher, Murray and Hirsi Ali are obsessed with facts, and yet they somehow very conveniently ignore the effects of colonialism and imperialism in the Islamic world and the extremism that has come as a direct result of it. They are new atheists, new polemicists, with bullying bravado who have theorized their hatred by decontextualizing information to make a case against a mythology that we are now accepting. This is not scholarship; this is a war of attrition on a religion, based on half-truths to justify U.S. interventionism. Pundits such as Maher and Hirsi Ali openly incite violence, claiming freedom of speech, but Muslims are held to a different standard. This effort to normalize racism and Islamophobia is Orientalism at its finest.

Mehdi Hasan's piece on Western hypocrisy when it comes to "free speech" - written in the aftermath of the Charlie Hebdo attack - is also pertinent.

And why have you been so silent on the glaring double standards? Did you not know that Charlie Hebdo sacked the veteran French cartoonist Maurice Sinet in 2008 for making an allegedly anti-Semitic remark? Were you not aware that Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that published caricatures of the Prophet in 2005, reportedly rejected cartoons mocking Christ because they would “provoke an outcry” and proudly declared it would “in no circumstances... publish Holocaust cartoons”? Muslims, I guess, are expected to have thicker skins than their Christian and Jewish brethren. Context matters, too. You ask us to laugh at a cartoon of the Prophet while ignoring the vilification of Islam across the continent (have you visited Germany lately?) and the widespread discrimination against Muslims in education, employment and public life - especially in France. You ask Muslims to denounce a handful of extremists as an existential threat to free speech while turning a blind eye to the much bigger threat to it posed by our elected leaders.

Does it not bother you to see Barack Obama - who demanded that Yemen keep the anti-drone journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye behind bars, after he was convicted on “terrorism-related charges” in a kangaroo court - jump on the free speech ban wagon? Weren’t you sickened to see Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of a country that was responsible for the killing of seven journalists in Gaza in 2014, attend the “unity rally” in Paris? Bibi was joined by Angela Merkel, chancellor of a country where Holocaust denial is punishable by up to five years in prison, and David Cameron, who wants to ban non-violent “extremists” committed to the “overthrow of democracy” from appearing on television.

Then there are your readers. Will you have a word with them, please? According to a 2011 YouGov poll, 82% of voters backed the prosecution of protesters who set fire to poppies. Apparently, it isn’t just Muslims who get offended.

There's some further information to chew on in this piece; it discusses landmark research which has found that, since 1990, Western military intervention in the Middle East has led to the deaths of four million Muslims. I don't know about you, but that, to me, demonstrates a rather disturbing and sociopathic lack of respect for the region and its people on the part of Western powers. You don't think that impacts negatively upon general relations, attitudes and mutual feelings of appreciation, consideration or regard?

[DannyInvincible]

And as a side note, incidentally, Saudi Arabia are dropping plenty of bombs in the Middle East themselves lately, but you seem happy to make out that the west are the sole aggressors

Not at all. I'm well aware of Saudi's belligerent activities in Yemen, but we also both know who's been happily arming them to the teeth (and the historical context is outlined in my previous post). Anyway, I was simply disputing your insinuation that inter-cultural disrespect between the Middle East and the West was one-way traffic emanating from the Middle East. The reality is a lot more complex.

Getting more towards the point though, a decade of the rosary is in no way comparable to a minute's silence; it's an overtly religious act. A minute's silence is not; it's a cross-cultural gesture. Indeed, the article you quote actually hints at this difference, when suggesting that actually the Saudi players were disrespectful, and that they could easily have compromised by offering a generic prayer themselves. By kicking a ball around instead, they were being actively, if discreetly, disrespectful. It obviously isn't the first time the Saudi federation have come across a minute's silence before, and a Plan B surely has to have been considered. If Plan B was "**** them; not our culture", when there's other potential options, then yes, that is disrespecful. This idea that "not in our culture" can be a valid reason for disrespect is a particularly dangerous one too. (And let's be honest, neither Wahhabi Islam nor Saudi culture, if there is even much of a difference, are not cultures that anyone should want to see spread. If that's against free speech, then so be it. But it's a simple truth)

I still think it's rather absurd to be (purportedly) championing free expression one minute but then the next minute saying it shouldn't actually apply to the Saudi team in this instance and that they should have done this or that instead. That's dictation; not free speech.

For the Saudi players, a minute's silence obviously wasn't a cross-cultural gesture and had connotations that are explicitly frowned upon within their faith, so it might as well have been an overtly religious act, as far as they were concerned.

This idea that "not in our culture" can be a valid reason for disrespect is a particularly dangerous one too.

That's a heavily loaded statement. You've simply assumed that they were intent on causing disrespect. Why do you assume they were intent on offending? If they were to engage in something regarded within the reading of Islam to which they adhere as a "reprehensible act", they'd have been disrespecting themselves and their own faith. Can you not even begin to comprehend that? You seem to be demanding respect from them on your terms but have no intention whatsoever of respecting their personal and cultural hang-ups or of considering their terms of engagement. That just seems like outright hypocrisy on your part.

And don't you effectively retort with "not in our culture" to the likes of Ali Selim? Maybe Ali Selim would feel disrespected if you told him that accommodations, allowances or rights he might desire for Irish Muslims and Muslims in Ireland, but with which you possibly take issue, were "not in our culture" (as you indeed suggested up above). How do you reconcile that with refusing the Saudi players such an appeal when they (or their association) opted not to participate in a minute's silence? At least try and be consistent.

You claim to acknowledge that respect is a two-way thing, but that entails an effort to understand on your part too. I'm afraid you appear to be showing very little of it in this instance. You spoke (rather generally) of potential hypocrisy on the part of Muslims, such as Ali Selim presumably, in terms of how they allegedly expect Westerners to behave etiquette-wise in majority-Muslim countries (not that all majority-Muslim countries are strictly dogmatic or theological anyway); I'm not sure what his feelings on that are specifically, but if he or others are indeed guilty of hypocrisy, does that justify hypocrisy or intolerance on our part in the West? I don't think it does. Two wrongs don't make a right and all that.

Just out of interest, do you support France's ban on the wearing of the niqab and burqa in public places under the premise that it's supposedly "not in keeping with French or Western culture"? Would you advocate such a ban in Ireland?

[pineapple stu]

Jesus tapdancing Christ Danny. Brevity! Seriously.

I'm not going to go into all the above; if you want to think that means you win the internet, that's fine.

I'll allow my comments on "Not in our culture" need a bit of clarification. If the match had been in Saudi Arabia and Australia had requested a minute's silence, then Saudi Arabia would be entitled to refuse it on cultural grounds. But the match was made in Australia, and so the least I would expect is for Saudi Arabia to respect the request, which they clearly didn't do.

Similarly, Ali Selim has no right to come to Ireland and call for Irish schools to impose foreign cultural norms, especially ones so out of keeping with Irish culture. And similarly, I have no right to go to, say, Saudi Arabia and demand mixed schools and grace before lunch.

Respecting your host is the key in my view. I don't see that that's a particularly big deal. And I don't see anything inconsistent in the above.

On your last point, because it stands out as not stuck in the middle of your essay, yes, I support the French bans (and other countries have banned them too). They're a significant barrier to integration, and the misogyny which they indicate (let's not start pretending it's about modesty; it's about gender control, pure and simple) has no place in any modern western culture. Those who want to move to France, for example, should be prepared to respect its culture. If they're not prepared to do that, then they shouldn't move there in the first place.

[DannyInvincible]

I had meant to reply to this before now, but haven't been on the forum a huge deal over the past few weeks, so just getting a proper chance now.

But the match was made in Australia, and so the least I would expect is for Saudi Arabia to respect the request, which they clearly didn't do.

So you keep saying, but you clearly misinterpreted the incident/situation, perhaps wilfully so on account of your evident hostility and antagonism when it comes to your view of the Middle East, its people and their customs. To re-clarify, the following was part of the statement made by the Australian association after the incident caught the attention of the wider media and public:

"The FFA sought agreement from the Asian Football Confederation and the Saudi national team to hold a minute’s silence in memory of those lost in Saturday night’s terror attacks in London and in particular the two Australian women.

Both the AFC and the Saudi team agreed that the minute of silence could be held.

The FFA was further advised by Saudi team officials that this tradition was not in keeping with Saudi culture and they would move to their side of the field and respect our custom whilst taking their own positions on the field."

The FFA were evidently satisfied then that their intentions had been respected. They explicitly stated that the request and custom were respected after having consulted with both the AFC and Saudi association. That the minute's silence went ahead after the FFA sought and received the approval of the Saudi association is proof in itself of this fact.

Similarly, Ali Selim has no right to come to Ireland and call for Irish schools to impose foreign cultural norms, especially ones so out of keeping with Irish culture. And similarly, I have no right to go to, say, Saudi Arabia and demand mixed schools and grace before lunch.

Respecting your host is the key in my view. I don't see that that's a particularly big deal. And I don't see anything inconsistent in the above.

You're very prone to crudely othering Muslims and constructing a dubious demarcation between conceptions of "us" and "them". I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that this is down to a failure on your part to think a bit more seriously about the logical conclusion of what you're actually saying rather than any desire to actually insult an entire swathe of your fellow Irish citizens and residents of Ireland. If you think what you're saying isn't that big a deal, I'd genuinely encourage you to think a bit deeper about it beyond your over-simplistic narrative.

Ali Selim doesn't represent "foreign" interests. He represents both Muslim Irish nationals and Muslims resident in Ireland who regard Ireland as home; these people have a stake in Irish society and are contributing to Irish society and the economy in their thousands. Ireland is their home. We share this country with them. It's their country too. (Selim may even be an Irish national himself?)

Are you saying then that Muslims can't be properly Irish or can't contribute to Irishness and Irish culture in their own particular way? Plenty of Muslim Irish nationals will even be converts to the faith who've been born in Ireland to parents born in Ireland with no roots whatsoever in the Middle East. How does what you say about "respecting your host" apply to them? Muslims have been participating in and contributing to Irish society and life since before you were born. Aren't Muslim Irish nationals entitled to expect the Irish state to look out for and consider their interests and concerns (just as you'd expect it to look out for you), considering they are Irish citizens (just like yourself), after all?

What you may or may not have the right to do in certain parts of the Middle East is a red herring, although, as we've covered, it's not as if Westerners haven't been interfering with and imposing their will upon the Middle East over the last century on a much grander scale to supposed Islamic or Middle Eastern influence in the West.

Besides, hasn't Selim simply been asking for an accommodation of the sensitivities of Muslim pupils and their parents? To portray it as if he's demanding that certain Islamic cultural norms be imposed upon Irish non-Muslim children is a grossly misleading straw man and a rather unfair characterisation of the man. It's scaremongering really and it's the sort of disingenuous moral-panic-style nonsense in which you'd find the likes of the BNP, EDL or Britain First engaging in the UK in order to unfairly portray Muslims generally as unreasonable, disrespectful and threatening to the dominant culture or the culture of (purportedly Christian) white Britons.

How do you reconcile your purported advocacy of free speech up-thread with your immediate comments that seemingly seek to deny Selim and other Irish Muslims their voice here? You purported belief in free speech is, yet again, exposed to be rather hollow. Ireland is a democracy. They're entitled to make appeals in accordance with their interests (so long as they don't break the law), just like anyone else.

Can you elaborate a bit more on the characteristics that would be in keeping with the Irish culture that you purportedly seek to preserve against the "imposition of foreign cultural norms"? Is it white and Catholic or what? You're aware that Christianity originated in the Middle East too, right? Does it include rituals like grace before lunch? There are plenty of non-Muslim Irish citizens who would have no time for the idea of a universal grace before lunch. I'd be one of them.

[DannyInvincible]

On your last point, because it stands out as not stuck in the middle of your essay, yes, I support the French bans (and other countries have banned them too). They're a significant barrier to integration, and the misogyny which they indicate (let's not start pretending it's about modesty; it's about gender control, pure and simple) has no place in any modern western culture.

That just comes across as more paternalistic ignorance, to be honest, and I get the sense that you're confusing the concept of integration, which is actually a bilateral process, with the concept of assimilation, which is a one-way process and which appears to be what you really desire of Muslims. In what ways specifically do the niqab or burqa pose a "significant barrier to integration"? Having lived in Manchester for a few years, the veil was a frequent sight in the city centre streets and shops and those women who wear it get on with their daily business without a problem (and without a man by their side, I might add).

This on the broader concept of integration is insightful: http://idealmuslimah.com/rss-feed-ne...tegration.html

"Integration is a two-way process: it requires adaptation on the part of the newcomer but also by the host society. Successful integration can only take place if the host society provides access to jobs and services, and acceptance of the immigrants in social interaction. Above all, integration in a democracy presupposes acquisition of legal and political rights by the new members of society, so that they can become equal partners. Indeed, it is possible to argue that, in a multicultural society, integration may be understood as a process through which the whole population acquires civil, social, political, human and cultural rights, which creates the conditions for greater equality. In this approach, integration can also mean that minority groups should be supported in maintaining their cultural and social identities, since the right to cultural choices is intrinsic to democracy."

This too:

"Castles et al helpfully contribute to the discourse by setting out a list of criteria against which the degree of integration can be measured – a sort of checklist of indicators that determine the extent of integration with indicators of education, training and employment; social integration; health, legal , political and overall integration. The irony is that there may be women wearing the veil who may tick all the boxes by being educated, working in the public and services sector, voting and being good neighbours, yet be considered not to have integrated because of the niqab. Furthermore, if the veil is an obstacle to integration, the implied meaning by those who use this word loosely is that they will not be able to integrate at all, whilst in the academic sense of the word they may be more integrated into the workings of British society than many thousands of young white working class English (the so-called ‘Chavs’) whose integration may never been questioned on the basis of their appearance. For a politician to assert that Muslim women are not integrated because they wear the niqab and do not converse with male strangers on a street is somewhat of an over-simplification to say the least."

Numerous Muslim women choose to wear such dress of their own volition because they believe it to be Allah's injunction (rather than their husband's or any man's). They're not necessarily under any duress to do so. Are they also excluded from enjoying the benefits of your frankly farcical and hypocritical conception of "free speech/expression"? Why not let them express themselves, speak for themselves and stop assuming their intentions?

Here are the words of niqab-wearer Sahar Al Faifi: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/...f-8824243.html

"I started wearing the niqab at a the age of 14, although my parents discouraged me. I was motivated by a deep belief that this was the right decision for me and that hasn't changed in the intervening years since.

The common impression that many people have about those that wear the niqab is that we are oppressed, uneducated, passive, kept behind closed doors and not integrated within British society. The terms used in the press often reflect this, as do some politicians statements. Jeremy Browne MP is a case in point with his call for a national debate about whether the state should step in to “protect” young women from having the veil “imposed” on them. Sarah Wollaston MP finds the niqab “deeply offensive”. Enter the Prime Minister and commentators across the political spectrum ready to discuss us.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a proud Welsh and British citizen, a molecular geneticist by profession and an activist in my spare time. I have formerly been elected as the Wales Chairperson of a national Muslim student organisation and held other leadership roles including working with bodies such as the National Union of Students. I wear the niqab as a personal act of worship, and I deeply believe that it brings me closer to God, the Creator. I find the niqab liberating and dignifying; it gives me a sense of strength. People I engage with judge me for my intellect and action; not necessarily for the way I look or dress. Niqab enables me to be, simply, human."

Hamza Yusuf's words are also worthy of consideration: https://sandala.org/pourquoi-no-burqa/

"While I am personally opposed to the face veil, it is a legitimate, if minority opinion, in the Islamic legal tradition for a woman to wear one. Most women who wear it believe they are following God’s injunction and not their husband’s. French laicism seems as fundamentalist as the very religious fanatics it wants to keep out. On a trip to France a few years ago, I was shocked to see pornography openly displayed on the streets in large advertisements. How odd that to unveil a woman for all to gape at is civilized, but for her to cover up to ward off gazes is a crime... While the French Prime Minister sees no problem with exposing in public places a woman’s glorious nakedness, he is oddly and quite rabidly disturbed by allowing others to cover it up. The sooner secular nations learn to allow people of faith to live their lives in peace, the sooner peace will flourish."

It's odd to hear you complain about and denounce alleged misogyny and gender control whilst at the same time engaging in that very thing yourself by attempting to speak for Muslim women, denying them their voice and dictating to them or insisting on what they should or shouldn't wear. It's totally hypocritical. Why do you feel entitled to view parts of their body they don't want you to see?

Do you feel similarly about non-Muslim women; that they should uncover or dress themselves to suit your preferences? If not, why are they exempt from your curious and intrusive obsession?

In case you haven't noticed, dress-codes aren't unique to the Muslim world either. Islamic veils don't necessarily indicate misogyny or gender control any more than Western dress-codes indicate misogyny or gender control. Do you apply the same argument to Western clothing etiquette for women? Do you feel Western conventions also indicate misogyny or gender control? It wouldn't be regarded as appropriate for a Western woman to walk around in public in the nude - she might even face arrest - so let's not get too smug and pretend Western women here are at liberty to dress or undress however they wish without being shamed, disparaged or criminalised.

In your opinion, does the attire of nuns have a place in modern Western culture? If so, why do you treat such dress differently?

Those who want to move to France, for example, should be prepared to respect its culture. If they're not prepared to do that, then they shouldn't move there in the first place.

Not all migrants and refugees enjoy the luxury many of us in the EU or the West may have to just get up and decide to move wherever they want with relative practical and political ease. Most abandon their homeland out of economic necessity (much harsher than most contemporary Westerners will ever have experienced) or in desperation to avoid conflict and political upheaval (often brought upon them by Western warmongering and military interference in the first place).

Anyway, why would wearing a veil have to be seen as "disrespecting French culture"? And what about French nationals who've been born in France yet decide to wear a veil? They didn't decide to "move there". France has been their home since the moment of their birth. Perhaps they're already "integrated" yet decide to wear the veil. There's genuinely something rather absurd and self-entitled - obscene with a whiff of racist supremacism even - about a non-Muslim Irishman assuming the right and attempting to dictate to a specific subset of French nationals who are Muslim what is and isn't their national culture. It's been a genuine surprise to me to see you engaging in it.

I posted this before in the Brexit thread, but, as I said there, it's a powerful and thought-provoking article by Dina Nayeri, a former asylum seeker (who left Iran aged eight and who, on top of holding both US and EU citizenship, is now a teacher of American literature in London) on the nativist disdain for the "ungrateful refugee", the nativist compulsion to control immigrants and the suspicious notion that immigrants should shed their old identities or owe some eternal and unconditional duty or gratitude to their native hosts: https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...ateful-refugee

I'd appeal to you to read it. It might provide some food for thought.

[DannyInvincible]

And just to add a bit more to what I was discussing in post #8 up-thread in relation to Western military intervention in the Middle East, how it has led to the deaths of four million Muslims and how it has impacted negatively upon mutual relations...

Western military adventurism and conquest in the Middle East - which has enforced poverty, bred great social upheaval and stunted material, economic and intellectual development - generates extreme resentment and socio-political grievances in the region. Such conditions are ideal breeding ground for Islamist ideologies. It's simple cause and effect. There has been a polarisation and subsequent entrenchment of conflicting politics and two different cultures which feeds into this sense of a clash of civilisations.

Jonathan Cook described the impasse in the following terms in an article about the London attacks back in June:

The Islamic terrorists of our time believe in a violent, zero-sum clash of civilisations. That should not be surprising, as their ideology mirrors the dominant ideology – neo-conservatism – of western foreign policy establishments. Both sides are locked in a terrifying dance of death. Both believe that two “civilisations” exist and are incompatible, that they are in a fight to the death, and that any measures are justified to achieve victory because the struggle is existential. We use drones and “humanitarian intervention” to destabilise their societies; they use cars, guns, knives and bombs to destabilise ours.

The dance chiefly takes place because both sides continue it. And it will not be easy to break free of it. Our meddling in the Middle East dates back more than a century – and especially since the region became a giant oil spigot for us. The tentacles of western interference did not emerge in 2003, whatever we may choose to believe. Conversely, a globalised world inevitably entails one where a century-long colonial battlefield can easily come back to haunt us on our doorsteps.

The solution, complex as it will need to be, certainly cannot include the use by us of similarly indiscriminate violence, more “intervention” in the Middle East, or more scapegoating of Muslims. It will require taking a step back and considering how and why we too are addicted to this dance of death.

Your own posts also promote that sense of a civilisation clash and suggest an unwillingness for dialogue, understanding or compromise, which will be the only way to resolve present divergence and division. There'll be no military solution to the mess we're in. There rarely is.

If you read anything of worth on the rise of militant and reactionary Islamism in the Middle East, you'll know that a huge part of its emergence has to do with Western military interference.

If a particular subject (say, someone from the Middle East) has this sense of another civilisation (say, Western civilisation) militarily and politically trampling all over their own way of life (Middle Eastern civilisation), they'll naturally be less inclined to tolerate those they associate with the oppressing civilisation (Westerners) in all walks of life, be that culturally, socially or whatever.

Much closer to home, the north of Ireland is a perfect example of how socio-economic and political grievances or disagreement led to military conflict and a polarisation into "tribal" identity-based camps where individuals' stances on particular issues, policies or people in many ways became strictly defined by their identification with a particular political party or ideology. Sectarian and cultural differences were also stoked with tensions exacerbated as a result of this. The so-called "moderate" voices of the UUP and SDLP in the middle-ground lost power and influence and, with republicanism claiming and flying the flag of progressivism, you can see a hardening of opinions on the side of unionists, for example, which now translates into the LGBT community, women and Irish language activists still being denied rights that they enjoy elsewhere on these islands. Social conservatism and suspicion or hostility towards socio-cultural markers of Irishness are now, for many, seen as part and parcel of Ulster unionist identity; an identity that had once embraced the Irish language and regarded it as every bit its own as nationalists do in the modern day.

In Egypt and the rest of the Muslim world during the '60s and '70s, the word "secular" was "a label proudly worn", but it is now "shunned". Caryle Murphy has written that, "[i]n the Islamist lexicon, ["secular"] is [now] a pejorative code-word for "Western" or "American" that is used to besmirch their foes". This lurch towards religious fundamentalism in the Middle East is a very modern phenomenon and is a direct consequence of Western interference in the region.

[Closed Account 2]

If you read anything of worth on the rise of militant and reactionary Islamism in the Middle East, you'll know that a huge part of its emergence has to do with Western military interference.

I think it's a factor, but you are oversimplifiying the causes of militancy. There are large scale Islamic insurgencies in Western China (vs the Chinese government), in Southern Russia (vs the Russian state), in the Southern Philippines (vs the Philippean Army, commanded by Rodrigo Duterte), in Myanmar (vs the ethnically Bhuddist state) and most of all in Syria (vs Assad's secular / Alawite government). In every one of these wars militants who originate from outside the theatre of conflict are involved and there is a mountain of evidence of external funding too.

Look at the states the Islamists are fighting, you have a wide range of types of states - Communist China, Authoritarian Philippines, non pro-Western Russia, ex military dictatorship but now democratic Myanmar. I think this dilutes the argument that western intervention is the predominant cause. In fact in the Syrian conflict the radicals have worked with western Governments to try and overthrow Assad.

I would say there is more of a case of Saudi influence (money, sponsored religious doctrine) being a factor than western intervention. Additionally the west has intervened in many regions in recent history (eg Latin America, Indochina) and there has never been the same level (or prolonged intensity) of counter reaction in those places.

[pineapple stu]

Danny - remember in school how they said that writing down everything you know was never the answer?

Seriously - I'm not reading all that. But to pick on two particularly outrageous - almost offensive, in fact - claims.

The first is -

In your opinion, does the attire of nuns have a place in modern Western culture?

Are you honestly comparing a nun's habit to a burqa? I assume you are, given that you're asking the same question about both garments.

Let's leave the really obvious difference to last. You choose to be a nun; if you want to enter the sisterhood, you choose to wear the habit. If you don't want to wear the habit, you're free not to become a nun. It's no more than a uniform; an identifier - no different really to a priest's dog-collar or a policeman's hat.

Compare that to a burqa which, despite your protestations, is not really a choice. If you're born into a culture where it's prevalent, you will have to wear it from puberty. If you don't like that - tough. The only way out is to leave Islam, but that's an automatic death penalty.

Comparable? Hardly.

And the really obvious difference is that a burqa dehumanises its wearer in a way a habit simply cannot do. It is completely linked to gender control - but you instead choose to make an altogether more bizarre suggestion -

Why do you feel entitled to view parts of their body they don't want you to see?

Do you feel similarly about non-Muslim women; that they should uncover or dress themselves to suit your preferences?

That's a ****ing disgusting suggestion, if you'll pardon my French. It is a particularly nasty example of the dangerous liberalist thinking prevalent of late; the idea that everything must be the west's fault, and other cultures can only be understood from the point of view that the west is inherently wrong.

Just to clarify - you are suggesting that my opposition to the burqa is somehow pervy; that I want to see these women strip off so I can get a titillating view of their hot Middle-Eastern jaw line? Is that seriously what you're saying here? If so, I find it particularly objectionable; a nasty, snide, judgemental opinion.

Let's turn the tables here, as you seem to like asking leading questions. Do you think that female genital mutilation - another form of gender control - should be allowed in Ireland, or do you think that my objection to this nasty practice is just a sense of entitlement on my part that I should be able to give proper oral sex to them?

Do you think adult-child marriage should be allowed in Ireland, or do you think that my objection to this particularly nasty practice is just me feeling entitled to not have them despoiled by the time I choose myself a nice teenager?

"Men are in charge of women, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other", says the Quran - yet you bizarrely seem to believe that wearing the burqa is a choice for most women. It clearly isn't. It is the choice of the men. This misogynistic sort of attitude feeds into other undesirable aspects of Islam - domestic abuse, for one, which is quite prevalent in Islamic culture because of some interpretations of the Quran saying it's ok to beat your wife ("So good women are the obedient, guarding in secret that which Allah hath guarded. As for those from whom ye fear rebellion, admonish them and banish them to beds apart, and beat them")

I make no apology for not wanting this sort of attitude spreading through Europe.

You seem quite happy to make excuses for it.