The Race Factor: Reality, and political reality.

 

In commenting upon a recent story in which non-Muslim employees of a beef-and-pork processing plant in Colorado are complaining about preferential treatment for Muslim employees, Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch observes:

Although this article frames the controversy in racial terms, it isn’t really a racial issue at all. It is a question of to what extent American institutions and organizations are going to change their practices and inconvenience non-Muslims in order to assuage Muslim demands.

Earlier this month, in commenting upon another story from Germany where three Muslims were arrested for planning terrorist attack—two of whom were white Germans (the third a Turk)—Spencer wrote:

Why would homegrown German converts to Islam, who never suffered from “racism,” want to join the jihad? This case overturns many politically correct assumptions.

In wording his commentaries these ways, Spencer is effectively confusing reality with political reality. The more accurate way to express the issue is that, given the fact that Islam is not a race and that Muslims can belong to any and every race, the racist factor should be irrelevant.

However, just because it should be irrelevant, doesn’t mean everybody agrees. In fact, in the context of our sociopolitical reality, in which politically correct multi-culturalism (PC MC) is dominant and mainstream, the majority disagrees. This majority can plainly see a twin fact that, although superficial, is massively evident:

1) the vast majority of Muslims are non-white and non-Western

and

2) the vast majority of Western whites are non-Muslims.

These two sides of the coin of the twin fact effectively make any issue involving criticism of Muslims and of Islam a racial issue, irregardless of whether the mantra of the anti-Islamic movement—that “Islam is not a race”—is true. Because of the twin fact above, any time there is a criticism of Muslims and or Islam, it takes on the appearance of a racial criticism. That is the political reality of a society dominated by PC MC.  And the reason for this is that the PC MC majority evidently is thinking of Muslims when they defend Islam -- they are really defending all those poor, defenseless Muslims they think of in ethnic, racialized terms.  And in so doing, they are protecting Muslims from "racism".  Perhaps more important than that, and deeper psychologically, they are protecting themselves from being "racist" -- perhaps the worst thought crime that haunts the modern PC MC Westerner.

Indeed, in the case of the two white German converts to Islam noted above: while it is evidently true that they themselves never suffered racism, nevertheless, they have chosen to join a trans-national organization that in their eyes, pathologically deformed by PC MC, is a world-wide family of ethnic peoples who have been throughout history, and continue to be today, “oppressed” by the evil white West. Those white German converts are so ashamed of their own Western heritage of racism and injustice, they have switched sides to assuage the inner psychic turmoil of self-hatred. By joining Islam and fighting with their new brown Muslim brothers as Che-Guevaresque guerillas for the Islamic cause, those white German converts have effectively become “Honorary Browns”—and by virtue of that, have found salvation from their Western damnation.

And since the PC MC paradigm is centrally formulated around the dogma of Reverse Racism, the importance of such appearances becomes paramount—indeed it is the main explanation for why the entire West is behaving so irrationally with regard to the problem of Islam. For us to simply assert the contrary, by repeating the “Islam is not a race” mantra in various permutations, is not going to make the political reality go away.

If the problem of Islam cannot be adequately tackled without the PC MC paradigm becoming dismantled; and if the PC MC paradigm will not become dismantled without its central dogma of Reverse Racism coming unglued, then sooner or later the racial factor will have to be faced and dealt with. Trying to put it off indefinitely with the “Islam is not a race” mantra is simply the vain attempt to stall the inevitable. In fact, persisting with the mantra may serve to help sustain the PC MC paradigm longer: for, by repeating that mantra, we implicitly agree that we want to avoid “racism”—and the anxiety to avoid “racism” (as opposed to actual racism, which all enlightened people should indeed eschew) is precisely what fuels and energizes the dogma of Reverse Racism.

Beyond that, it would serve the Counter-Jihad well to recognize the focus of the PC MC -- Muslims (the anxiety to avoid "tarring all Muslims with a broad brush"), and shift our focus accordingly from Islam to the Muslims who enable Islam.

Further Reading:

Reverse Racism and Islam

The Crypto-Racism of PC Multiculturalism

Racial Profiling and the Problem of Islam

PC Multiculturalism and Non-Western Cultures