The Forms of Anti-Arab Racism

While there is unquestionably some concern on Daily Kos about the degree, and extent, of possible anti-Semitism there, there is also concern, and rightly so, about anti-Arab and / or anti-Muslim racism. This has led me to wonder about the forms that anti-Arab racism tends to take. What are the common themes of anti-Arab racism?

Here we have some of it laid out:

Some common themes in Anti-Arabism are:

* Arabs are primitive dirty

* Arabs are sub-humansnon-humans

* Arabs are murderers and terrorists

* Arabs are brutal

* Arabs are untrustworthy and treacherous

* Arabs are fanatics uncompromising

* Arabs support terrorism

Unless we are to be hypocrites, it is imperative that we avoid anti-Arab racism. For us to do so, however, we must understand the typical forms that anti-Arab racism takes. AmbroseBurnside wrote a diary on Daily Kos (which I believe has since been deleted) in which he accused Hamas of holding a mass wedding with child brides; a diary that looks to have been shown to be false and one in which he was accused of anti-Arab racism.

In a comment elsewhere the Palestinian Professor said the following:

There is an old idea in anti-Arab racism and it has to do with the way Arabs treat their children. They are rapists, they love their children less than the normal human, they abuse their children, they hide behind their children...

While I do not necessarily doubt this, I have never heard of this before and there is nothing in the above list of "common themes" to confirm it. I have, therefore, asked unspeakable, a well-respected Palestinian Daily Kos member, whether he agrees with this idea and whether he can confirm it by pointing to source material?

It often happens that people will unwittingly repeat anti-Semitic themes because they do not realize that they are anti-Semitic themes. For example, we often see people making claims such as that AIPAC controls the US government. This idea is an updated version of the classic anti-Semitic trope that the Jews control foreign governments. It is an idea straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and it is one that can easily be sourced as an anti-Semitic theme in any number of places.

For example, in the European Union's working definition of anti-Semitism (pdf) we read the following:

Contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere could, taking into account the overall context, include, but are not limited to:

Making mendacious, dehumanizing, demonizing, or stereotypical allegations about Jews as such or the power of Jews as collective - such as, especially but not exclusively, the myth about a world Jewish conspiracy or of Jews controlling the media, economy, government or other societal institutions.

I honestly want to know if the charge of abusing children is, in fact, a common anti-Arab racist theme. I very much hope that unspeakable, if he agrees with the idea that it is, will point us to confirming source material.

UPDATE: unspeakable was kind enough to respond and has pointed to a Boston Globe article as evidence. I will look it over to see if it does, in fact, represent evidence suggesting the truthfulness of the professor's claim.

UPDATED AGAIN: After looking over the Boston Globe article, I think that we can conclude that unspeakable has presented a bit evidence suggesting the truthfulness of the professor's claim. The evidence is far from conclusive, but it does point to a book published in 1973 by Raphael Patai called The Arab Mind. According to the article, this book, which has been strongly criticized for painting the Arab world with far too broad a brush and in a highly negative fashion, "provided the intellectual backdrop for the torture and sexual abuse that took place at Abu Ghraib."

The article further notes, "In his book, Patai paints a lurid portrait of Arab family life and child-rearing practices..."

This is one of those instances in which I am at a loss to know what to conclude. Nowhere does the article suggest that child abuse is a common theme of anti-Arab racism, but it does give us one example of anti-Arab racism taking that form.

Without any further evidence, the case has not been demonstrated. This, however, does not mean that it is not demonstrable, nor without merit. At the very least we can certainly conclude that it is something that should be kept in mind as we continue to have these conversations. Whether or not the professor's claim is true, it is enough that a number of Arab Daily Kos members believe it to be true and they are in a far better position than am I to make that judgement.

Many thanks to unspeakable.

Posted by Karmafish