martasfic | (no subject)

I read a news story today about the owner of a shooting range who declared the business Muslim-free. Her concern was that some Muslim patrons had been acting oddly, but also that she couldn't tell the difference between good Muslims and those that were ISIS connected and might practice retaliation or honor killings.

The reference to honor killings was just bizarre. It just wouldn't apply to someone whose actions would impinge your honor, like family. But setting that aside, and trying hard not to pull a Godwin here, but that wasn't even the weirdest part. The woman went on to say Islam wasn't a religion, it was a theocracy.

I get saying Islam is a philosophy or political movement. I mean, that's wring but it's at least coherent. But how exactly do you get a theocracy when you're dealing with dozens of governments with vastly different histories and political styles? And without having a religion to impose?

Also, that thing about being unable to tell good guys with guns from bad guys with guns?

I'd like to be upset over this idiocy, but it's so incoherent on so many different levels, I can't muster anything more than a weak eye roll. Time to step up your game, bigots.

(BTW, thanks to everyone who commented on the feminism post. I read your thoughts and mean to reply, as soon as I can find the time.)

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Man, that is weird. I hate hearing about stuff like this, especially the homogenizing of the diverse cultures and religious traditions within Islam, as you mention, and the division into "good" and "bad" Muslims.

Whenever I hear about stuff like this, I automatically think not only of my own friends and colleagues who are Muslim, but as a Jewish person, I also knee-jerk think, "What would this sound like if someone said X about Jews [Catholics, Jehovah's Witnesses, other religious minorities]"

I would say that someone like the owner was kooky enough to render her harmless, but then again, she almost certainly owns firearms?

Sigh.

I think that's the thing about being a minority (which, to be clear, as a mainline Protestant I hardly qualify here!): you have those experiences to pull on. They make you more empathetic I think. It's a good question to ask, no doubt.

I'd expect her to own guns. Firing range owners tend to be gun owners themselves (naturally enough) in my experience. And I think on some level I really should be upset. I don't use that word bigot lightly, but her willingness to make this jump to all Muslims... I don't know any other word for people that would make those assumptions against whole classes of people. It's damned insulting, actually, and I'm not the one being insulted, except to the extent that anti-Muslim bigotry in the wake of 9/11 hits a bit close to home as a New Yorker. But that's not the biggest insult by far in this story.

I almost wish that was my only reaction. It feels wrong that I'm almost amused by all this, at least at one level. (Hardly the only reaction I had, but still.) I keep hearing Inigo Montoya's line about "You keep using those words. I don't think they mean what you think they mean." (Or whatever the precise wording is.) And folks with these kinds of attitudes are scary, particularly when they have access to guns. But mostly it just seems bizarrely pitiful.