Exhalted Subjects;Racializing the Enemy-S. Tobani

I liked her argument. Racializing the enemy has indeed gone on, even though there have been ritual references to the need not to demonize "all Muslims".

Ken, I agree with jeff's assessment. Particularly since the qualities of "the good Muslim" have been completely defined and enforced by the West.

From the excerpt (bold added):

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If gender has been a key signifier of the civilizational superiority of the west, the threat to the nation said to be posed by this religio-racial enemy was also imagined as gendered. It was not only fanatic and hypermasculine Muslim men who were constituted as terrorizing the nation with their inborn propensity to blow up buildings and planes, and indeed, even their own bodies, Muslim women were also constituted as posing a very particular kind of threat. As Mamdani, and others, have noted, Muslims in the post–9/11 period have been defined as being either good or bad Muslims: After an unguarded reference to pursuing a 'crusade,' President Bush moved to distinguish between 'good Muslims' and 'bad Muslims.'

[b]From this point of view, 'bad Muslims' were clearly responsible for terrorism.[/b] At the same time, the president seemed to assure Americans that good Muslims' were anxious to clear their names and consciences of this horrible crime and would undoubtedly support 'us' in a war against 'them.' But this could not hide the central message of such discourse: [b]unless proved to be 'good,' every Muslim was presumed to be bad. All Muslims were now under obligation to prove their credentials by joining in a war against 'bad Muslims.' Gender relations have been central to the drawing of this distinction.[/b]

The good Muslims are the assimilated ones; they berate other Muslims for their cultural backwardness and, most particularly, they berate the women for revealing such backwardness by wearing the headscarf, the chador, or the veil. These good Muslims are styled (and style themselves) as the anti-hijabis. They acquiesce to American imperial interests, vociferously defend these, and know their proper place as supplicants to the west. They are appropriately grateful for having been allowed to partake in its civilizational project, and they want to aid the west in its quest to liberate their co-religionists, especially the women, around the world.

However, significant media coverage was also given to the bad Muslim woman, the one who dares to defy western gender norms, who refuses to condemn her religion and its adherents. This is the woman who is not imperilled, but who imperils the west by her embrace of Islam, or by her resistance to occupation and imperialist aggression. She is the 'Black widow' of Chechnya , the suicide bomber of Palestine, the 'Doctor Germ' and 'Mrs Anthrax' of Iraq.

This Muslim woman is not to be rescued: she is unrepentent.

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Well, I hear what BCG is saying, but I never took calls to not demonize all Muslims as an attempt to paint some Muslims as lapdogs of the West. I thought it just meant pointing out that the vast majority of them(like a slight majority of Christians)as more or less decent human beings, like anybody else.

Excellent point.

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
[b]OK...I guess the idea is to find another way to object to group condemnation of Muslims.[/b]

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How about just calling such group condemnation for what it is - xenophobia, racism, dehumanization, serving the agenda of western imperialism, take your pick.

Even the Pope didn't speak up for the Jews by saying: "It's important to remember that not all Jews are Christ-killers." There are better ways to object to group condemnation of Jews.

I think the point has been made by now, but I'm a longtime fan of overkill.

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
[b] Stop always trying to turn me into the bad guy, willya? I actually agree with you on most things.[/b]

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I know you do. Was I attacking you? Didn't mean to.