It’s not a race, stupid

http://www.islam-online.net/English/News/2005-11/26/article05.shtml French NGOs Blast Writer for Racism Against Rioters

“Finkielkraut will be sued for inciting hatred,” vowed the chairman of Movement against Racism and for Friendship between People (MRAP), Mouloud Aounit.

“There will be no dialogue with racists,” he said in a statement, adding that Finkielkraut and his ilk should know their limits.

Finkielkraut said in an interview with Haaretz last week that the problem with rioters is that they are “blacks or Arabs, with a Muslim identity.”

“Look, in France there are also other immigrants whose situation is difficult – Chinese, Vietnamese, Portuguese – and they’re not taking part in the riots. Therefore, it is clear that this is a revolt with an ethno-religious character,” he said.

The common mistake that seems to come up again and again is the claim that islam represents a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race race. Islam is a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cult religion, and the predominant race within islam is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islam#The_demographics_of_Islam_today Malaysian, not black or Arabic.

The problem the folks over at Islam Online seem to have is finding a reason to condemn any remarks seen as “anti-islamic”. The easiest condemnation to make is to accuse someone of racism, so they ignorantly spew out the magic words without considering the ignorance of such a remark.

Sadly, most civilized Westerners understand the remarks as they are intended, and through an acquired attitude of “guilt-by-success”, assume we’ve done something terribly wrong in thinking muslims were a driving force behind the weeks of rioting in France and throughout Europe.

A vast majority of the rioters were in fact Arabic muslims. Whether their actions were the result of poor living conditions, class standing, or something more devious – that one fact remains. That a reporter had the balls to say so publicly is simply a statement that all is not lost with those of the “mainstream media”.

And lest we forget, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the actions of two young criminals running from police:

The rioting began on October 27 with the accidental electrocution of two youths fleeing police in Clichy-sous-Bois outside Paris.

The government has then come under increasing pressure to halt the riots, sparked by frustration among ethnic minorities over racism, unemployment and harsh treatment by police.