---
layout: post
title: Islamophobia and the freedom of oppression
date: 2019-08-07 14:54:14
categories: misc
---

"Suppose you see a woman in niqab on a hot summer street. Do you experience any
negative feelings?"

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There are a lot of people who consider it their moral duty to answer "no" to
such question, because surely any negative feelings would be a sign of
intolerance and islamophobia. And they are right about that, of course (depends
on islamophobia definition, to be precise). The argument shouldn't be about
application of these words, but rather: "is it bad?"

"Intolerance" is a word that is often being assumed to have negative
connotations, but it shouldn't be. "Lactose intolerance" might be bad, but not
in moral sense, "intolerance to evil" seems to be rather good thing. So instead
of blindly thinking "that's intolerance, intolerance is bad, hence that is bad",
we should inspect each case of intolerance separately.

And as you might've guessed, you shouldn't have a knee-jerk reaction to
"islamophobia" either. If someone is blindly hating anything relating to islam,
that's one thing (which i wouldn't discuss in this post), but if the object of
negative emotions is one specific thing, tagging it as islamophobia just to
dismiss it makes little sense. So, done with words, lets dig into the source of
negative itself.

There are a few aspects to it. Negative reaction towards people hiding
themselves, empathy towards being hot, gender-based segregation, the coercion
perceivably involved.

Reaction towards hiding and empathy are both pretty natural, but the same can be
said about many negative feelings: towards fat and ugly people, people with
disabilities, people with strange tastes in clothing or behaviour, etc
etc. There is a reason why we tend to not judge people by their appearance, so
maybe the same can be said about niqab and such?

Well, not quite. We still have gender-dividing aspect and coercion. Here we come
to the central issue. If those women would all be wearing such garments
unwillingly, it will be all quite simple. Whoever forces them is "the bad guy"
and should be stopped. "Everyone is free to wear what they want". But.. there is
a little problem with such straightforward approach. Some of women may very
convincingly claim they are hiding on their own accord. So saying "everyone is
free..." would seem to justify their right to wear niqab.

And yet, how can we ever judge whether such self-isolating, androphobic action
is voluntary? Does a person who was raised in a culture where that is the only
option, have capability to make a different decision? Aren't their actions
predetermined by their culture? Even if that's true, does that give us any right
to treat them badly for that reason? To forbid doing what they feel right, even
if without any choice?

No, don't look at me expectantly like that. I don't have convincing answers to
share with you. But there still is another thing i want to discuss.

The source of this behaviour. The oppression system. The religious culture which
creates barriers between people, programs people to live in fear from the early
age. Does it have the right to exist? Can we idly watch as millions kids are
being conditioned like that, and do nothing about it? Perhaps we should go and
ask our governments to put the end to these malicious practices and allow only
moderate islam at best? Take kids away from their fundamentalist parents if
necessary and educate them, make them understand the evil of oppression?..

In case you haven't sensed sarcasm in the last few sentences, now's about the
time. Suppose we forbid preaching islam (or christianity for that matter, or
perhaps virtually any religion, most of them are built on some oppression), and
spread the words of freedom, what's the difference between our oppression
towards religion and theirs towards kids? Ah, that's right, they're targeting
kids!! That can't be good, can it? We gotta make sure kids are *properly
educated* and given all the best opportunities! We can't let them go on a stray
path of being oppressed and propagandized. We can't..

Now i must stop my rambling. Make your conclusions.
