The race-card

Submitted by Octavio Johanson (Italy), Mar 15, 2006 at 12:27

Islamists come from all sorts of backgrounds: you have got white Islamists from Chechnya and black Islamists from Somalia.

However, Islamists always claim racial discrimination. As a child, I was taught that racism was discrimination against people on the grounds of colour or ethnicity. For example, discrimination against blacks and Jews is racist. Now, Islamists form a very broad group of people who come from different countries, speak different languages and only share a common religion and Islamist ideology.

Their constant appeal to anti-racism is out of place. These people are an ideological or religious group: they are not a race. Another example of the use of the race-card is the equation between Zionism and racism. Now, I am not Jewish, but how can anybody argue that Israel is an "apartheid" regime and that it is like South Africa? There are 9 Arab MPs in the Israeli Parliament and 1.5 million Arab-Muslims have got an Israeli passport. They live and work in Israel. Yet, Hamas claim that Israel is a racist nation. Again, Hamas is an Islamist group, and they play the race-card.

Then, Daniel Pipes is accused of being "Islamophobic" and "racist" and, yet, he speaks Arabic, studied in Egypt, declares to respect those who believe in Islam and goes out of his way to avoid offences against the Islamic religion. Islamists use the race-card whenever it suits them.

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