"The Islam Factor in Western Popular Cultures: Beyond the Danish Cartoons."
This was the title of a talk given April 19, 2006 at UC Irvine by Cal State Stanislaus Political Scientist As'ad AbuKhalil, a.k.a Angry Arab, and aired Monday May 15 2006 in 'This Week on Subversity' on KUCI, 88.9 FM (US). The talk was part of the Ford Foundation-funded Difficult Dialogues series.
I listened to the talk yesterday night, enjoyed it very much, agreed with every bit of it and I encourage you to do so. Abu Khalil is an excellent speaker and a very knowledgeable scholar. He argues and entertains with witt to the point that you don't feel time passing as the hour long talk goes by.
In his conference, Abu Khalil, who is an avowed secularist and a religion basher, shows with clear examples and solid arguments that the west's attitude towards Islam stems from ignorance of the religion, refusal to treat this ignorance with adequate measures, highly discriminatory attitudes, dangerous prejudices, all rooted not only in popular western culture but in most of Western Academia, with the blessing of US leaders and the approval of official representatives of mainstream Muslim and Arab media.
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Since March 29th 2006
2 comments:
Sophia , forgive me for doing this again. Check out Trish Schuh"s recent article in counterpunch at http://www.counterpunch.org/schuch05062006.html . Is it misunderstanding or policy?
Issam
Issam,
In 10 minutes I will be gone for the day. I put the article in my favourites and will read it this evening. But clearly, in order to make Islamophobia as a policy it should create a misunderstanding among the people therefore justifying the policy. So it is both.
The title of AbuKhalil clearly alluded to the misunderstanding among people and not among government officials where there is no misunderstanding but clear intent to diabolize Islam.
Thanks again for the link.
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