These have been the Dog Days of August, and thanks to Lars Vilks and his drawings, the last day of the month is the doggiest of them all.
Our Swedish correspondent LN points out the following comment (the original is in English) by one Arash Sedighi on Lars Vilks’ blog entry for today. All the emphasis in these passages was added by me:
I hope you read this Lars Vilk
the most intresting thing about this whole Mohammed issue is what it reveals about European psyche and mentality. Firstly, the way in which the classic: “This is a free country with freedom of speech so can all you protesters please shut up”-mentality has survived from colonial times amazes me. What does it mean when the Swedish Prime Minister comes out and says “We do not want to interfere politically in what is published”? And here comes the second issue which all of you Europeans seem so fond of. The whole Jewish-Muslim dichotomy which you have concurred up to legitimize your actions is creative but insulting. For Muslims the Jewish example is one way to illustrate the hypocracy in Western mentality. The way in which you allow certain things to be common sense, like perpetuating Jewish stereotypes and sometimes (but rarely) other racist material, but the way in which Mohammed and Islam has fallen under political correctness and therefore there to be challenged. Why do we not challenge our perceptions of the Holocaust or “the Jews” ?
Everything is political. And Politics is man’s relationship with Power. Some however are closer to power than others. Muslims, and really all non-white/non-male/non-heterosexual people in the world, have since the beginning of Western hegemony been represented, spoken for and rationalised by their subjects. The West divided state and church and began its quest to do so in other places, saw a mosque called it a church and has been dividing since. This form of ethnocentric criticism of the Other is most visisble in the western liberal feminism and it’s criticism of Third World countries (or rather non-Western countries). This ideology assumes the issues facing women as the same, shared experience of women is said to be represented by White heterosexual middle class women, i.e. boredom in the household, man as the enemy holding the woman down, keeping her in the house etc…What all forms of Western colonial mentality (and western liberal feminism is one part of it)ignores is the way in which They in fact are the enemy of many non-white women, western imperiailsm is the most common enemy, not male oppression (husbands are often allies in the struggle against imperialism).
So for you, Lars Vilks, to assume that you are acting rationally and according to the fundamentals of democracy and freedom of speech is something we (non-Westerners) have heard since the dawn of Western hegemony. Islam is not the same as Christianity, it is only in the West which the word Religion has clouded imperialist minds. Islam has been, and is still today one of the very few alternatives which exists on fields outside of Western hegemonic spheres. For you too challenge the way in which Muslims see their religion (or lack of sarcasm which you call it) is therefore not new to us. It is the good old ‘mission civilatrice’, as the spread of ‘modernism’, ‘secularism’, capitalism and other sisms which you, the West, once in a while decide needs to spread.
– – – – – – – – –
You right to do so is there, and our right to protest is here as well. But we are not fighting on equal terms, you have the Archers of the Empire and the Cavalry of Neo-Colonialism on your side guarded by the Assasins of Representation. We are the army of the Wretched, with pitch forks and daggers, larger in number but stand no chance. Please Lars Vilks, remember this. Read some Chandra Mohanty, Frantz Fanon, Albert Memmi, Ngugi Wa Thiong’o. Empatize with us, realise what you are doing. You Art itself might not mean what you think others misrepresent it as. But you Art is not empty, it does not exist in a vacuum but it is like slave ship which in itself in not racist, your Mohammed as a dog is loaded with the cargo which continues hundreds of years of oppression and misrepresentation.
thank you for your time
Arash
Unveristy of London
Now let’s look at the highlighted phrases:
- Everything is political
- relationship with Power
- Western hegemony
- ethnocentric criticism of the Other
- Western colonial mentality
- struggle against imperialism
- hundreds of years of oppression
Do these sound like they were drawn from the Koran?
One detects the discordant themes of PoMo deconstruction in these catchphrases. The post-colonialist theme music could be taken directly from Edward Said, and it’s no surprise to see Frantz Fanon’s name in there. The other authors mentioned — Chandra Mohanty, Albert Memmi, and Ngugi Wa Thiong’o — are singers in the same choir, the revolutionary/anti-imperialist/feminist/Marxist medley that has become all too familiar in West for the last forty years or so.
But nothing in particular about Islam. Interesting…
Arash Sedighi is almost certainly an Iranian. Arash is a famous figure out of Persian mythology, and is often used as a first name, and “Sedighi” is a common surname in Iran. A Google search on the name turns up a student representative in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, and, interestingly enough, there is more than one reference from the southern Swedish town of Malmö.
An SOAS connection would make sense, given the anti-colonialist jargon in Mr. Sedighi’s comment.
And it also makes sense that he is coming at Lars Vilks from a Leftist perspective. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Lars Vilks is a traditional Left-Socialist, who by his recent actions has betrayed his co-religionists in the Church of the Left.
Mr. Sedighi’s comment should be considered a call from a fellow Marxist to return to the fold. Just a friendly warning, man-to-man.
It’s not clear what part Islam plays in this. Maybe it’s the muscle; the designated enforcer of leftist orthodoxy, called in to help persuade an apostate to reconsider.
But it’s also another indication that the Left and the Islamists are good buddies, the closest of fellow travelers.
Previous posts on this topic:
The Swedes Narrowly Avert Their Own Motoon Crisis
Modoggie #2
The Prophet as an Obedient Retriever
That Doggone Mohammed
Swedish Muslims Will Exhibit the Modoggies
Lars Vilks Dogged by Death Threats
Modoggies Make it into the Swedish MSM, But…
Oh, No! It’s Happening Again!
Sweden Gets Sent to the Woodshed
An Ironic Rondellhund
Now We Know Who’s Behind the Modoggies
Swedish Muslims Form Anti-Free Speech Committee
Pakistan Objects to the Modoggies
The OIC is Barking Now
A New Modoggie Protest in Örebro
Swedish Flags are Burning