This video is part two of two. In part one
we talked about the work of Falguni Sheth
and how race is used as a technology
for political goals. I strongly advise you
watch part one first: otherwise you may not be able to understand or participate
today. In this video we'll be talking about the work of Sherene Razack and the tacialization of Muslims
in Western liberal societies. Content
warning for racism and gendered violence.
The work of both Sheth and Razack fits into
what's called "postcolonial academia." That's
where we say, "OK, white European nations
have a history of colonialism, genocide, slavery,
and that has shaped the way the world is today.
So let's do some philosophy, history, literature
studies, whatever, and see if bearing
that legacy in mind helps us discover anything
interesting both about that period of history and about now." Postcolonial philosophy is super interesting
and super important right now because a lot of people are beginning to examine the legacy
of colonialism in their own lives, from students
in the #Rhodesmustfall campaign, and challenging
the predominance of white authors on reading lists, to the #blacklivesmatter movement,
and despite some people saying this is, "Millennials
being oversensitive, Generation Snowflake, Regressive left, victim
culture!" there is actually a significant and legitimate academic backdrop to this. So this is
super relevant, super important, cutting-edge philosophy.
Central to Sherene Razack's thesis is the
idea of 'camps'. Camps are zones in which
it has been legally designated that normal
law does not apply. Camps are sometimes literally
camps, but they can also be prisons, or Guantanamo
Bay, or a shipping container - in the history
of slavery, black skin functioned like a camp - and camps can sometimes be designated officially by the law
or by an unwritten rule that we just don't
ask what goes on there. It's best to think
of camps not in terms of a binary but as a
spectrum: sometimes they're built overnight,
sometimes they're built a little bit of the
law being changed at a time. Although
they're increasingly normal in a post-9/11
world camps are of course nothing new.
You might notice strong parallels here to Sheth's idea of making exceptions
of people.
Camps are a consequence of racialization,
which we discussed in Part 1, and I'll say
one more time; you really need to understand racialization to understand this video. Racialization appears
to justify the need for camps by making the
target population seem unsuited to existing
outside of one. So, armed with these concepts
we can now look at how racialization
begins to construct camps around Muslim bodies.
Laws about detention and immigration are a
good place to start. As a consequence of the
US Patriot Act, and laws like it, would-be
Muslim immigrants have been detained on the
grounds that they might commit terrorism,
which comes with the suspension of their normal
rights to open, fair trials, and the
like. Razack focuses particularly on Canadian legal
cases, because that's where she teaches. Normally,
someone would be detained if they had
done something wrong or if you had definite evidence they were planning to but in the
cases she examines and the thousands like them, Muslims are detained
without that kind of evidence
and without what would normally be called
"due process." So we're dividing the population: making exceptions for one particular group to the normal rules
and pushing them further away from the protection of the state.
Consider also the practice of profiling. Where you've been, who you've associated with, where you've recently traveled. What would only be circumstantial evidence in someone
else's case can be damning in a Muslim's.
Razack calls this "Sleeper Cell Logic," the
idea that all Muslims might be a threat because they're Muslim, no matter how much evidence
you might have for that in an individual
case. Big parallel to the internment of Japanese
Americans we discussed in part 1.
I'm drawing the line at getting into this
debate, but Razack also says we see the racialization
of Muslims in the US and Israel's refusal
to consider a two state solution to the Israel/Palestine
conflict. The idea is that just as anti-Semitism
can play a role in anti-Zionism, so too can racism can
play a role in people thinking that Palestinian
Muslims voted "the wrong way" in the 2006 Palestinian
election. I'm gonna get enough hate in my
comment section without getting into that,
but there's another example for you to consider.
What all these examples feed into is what Razack calls the "culture clash narrative," the idea
that Islam is fundamentally different from and incompatible with "Western values,"
and therefore that it must be eradicated. Not only is this an obvious example of racialization
in action, but it's also a colonial way of thinking. The culture clash narrative can be used to justify feelings
of superiority in the dominant culture and therefore be used to justify aggressive, imperialist
policies and crimes. We see this narrative
being spun when Islam is referred to as "barbaric"
"irrational," or "Medieval." The language of
rationality has long been used to mark out
certain groups as incapable of being reached
by anything but violence, located in a pre-modern, uncivilised
state from which we, the modern, civilised
people, must "liberate" them, and where, crucially,
that liberation will take place on our terms, not theirs. If you've read any Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins,
and many other people, you might recognise some of these themes.
What all this gets at is the control of the
unruly that we talked about in Part 1. If
you're in the group that's racialised and
pushed out well that'd be bad for you. So better stop being unruly
and tow the line. Better be one of the
"good Muslims" who does what they're told,
doesn't speak up about any systemic injustices
they might suffer, and doesn't criticise Sovereign
Power. And if you're constantly being asked
to reaffirm your loyalty because you're constantly
under suspicion, then there's less room for
you to go, "You know what, obviously ISIS are a bunch of
assholes, but at the same time I don't think my government's foreign policy in Syria is
the right way to go," because if you do, this
is what happens. Muslims are cast out of a
whole range of political positions that other
citizens can publicly occupy much more easily.
The special measures that single out Muslims for detention and attention are racialising because
they say that all the means for governance
we have - the law, due process,
our rights - those are for us. They do not work
on you and therefore do not apply to you because
you are fundamentally different, dangerous,
savage.
Razack also says we see the racialization
of Muslims in the way that we respond to patriarchal
violence in Muslim families and communities within our own nations. Take so-called
'honour killings.' When the media and politicians talk about these, they talk about them as
if they have only Muslim causes. The wrongness is located in Islam, the "culture" that supposedly
promotes these killings. Contrast that to
the way we talk about white women who are
murdered for leaving abusive relationships. There, the wrongness is located most often
in the individual murderer. Honour killings
are sequestered in their own little zone and
not usually talked about as an example of
the violence that faces women everywhere as
a result of patriarchy. Razack says again,
we're feeding the culture clash narrative,
making exceptions of one group of people.
When we look at a woman wearing a veil and see her as automatically oppressed and in
need of liberation without giving her a voice
in that discussion,
we again racialise Muslims as a pre-modern, uncivilised people,
and we also erase the agency of Muslim women who choose to wear the veil for a variety
of religious and other reasons. The real liberation is Muslim women choosing for themselves what
to wear, whether that's a veil or not
When we talk about forced marriages we don't acknowledge the way that systemic racism drives
communities into themselves to seek rejuvenation by making young people
marry people from similar backgrounds,
and we don't talk about the ways our immigration
systems can cut communities off and leave people to try and
exploit loopholes that are there for spouses. Like with terrorism, these issues are talked about
as if there is no background context that
the West has the power to affect. In particular
Razack says we ignore the role colonialism played in popularising conservative religious interpretations
in the first place.
Razack says its also telling that when it
comes to Muslim women being victims of violence,
we focus on 3 things: Female Genital Mutilation, Forced
Marriages, and Honour Killings, but we don't talk so
much about the comparatively more widespread violence of the wars that Western countries
wage, or the economic and educational systems
that keep wider groups of people, including
Muslim women, down. Because of course those thing are systemic to us, and can't easily be written
off as "a Muslim thing." Razack writes, "The
body of the Muslim woman, a body fixed in
the Western imaginary as confined, mutilated, and sometimes murdered in the name of culture,
serves to reinforce the threat that the Muslim man is said to pose to the West, and is used
to justify the extraordinary measures of violence and surveillance required to discipline him
and Muslim communities. It is virtually impossible to name and confront the violence that Muslim
women (like all groups of women) experience at the hands of their men and families without
providing ideological fuel to the 'war on
terror.'"
Nevertheless, patriarchy must be confronted, especially when it's violent. Razack is not saying
that we need to just forget about these issues,
we need to address them, but we need to find a way of doing it that
doesn't justify racism and imperialism.
Her proposed solutions involve seeing the communities where this kind of patriarchy takes place
not as "uninvited immigrant guests" but as people displaced by colonialism and under considerable
social and economic pressure, where attempts to control those within the group will be
stringent as a result of those conditions.
The real solutions involve giving women
in those communities more options to seek help in a way that suits them: like shelters, housing, employment,
safe spaces for women, better-trained
service providers - y'know: the things that
makes it easier for everyone to live.
So. Since this is the question I know some
of you will have clicked on this video for,
can you be racist towards Muslims? If Sheth and Razack are right about racialization then
yes, you can. Because the distinguishing feature required to begin racialization could, in
the right historical context, be skin colour or religion or gender identity even, if history was the
right way, because race comes from power,
as we discussed in Part 1. And whether or
not you want to attach that label to it, the practice of making exceptions for Muslims in the law and in the
minds of the people is a worrying trend, in all the ways that Razack has observed. And maybe you can think of some other ways
in which Muslims are made exceptions of.
Some people will tell you that "You can't be racist towards Muslims because is a
religion, not a race." As we've seen over these two videos, that presupposes a certain definition
of the word "race" which it is possible to argue against. As I explained in Part 1, quoting the dictionary
would be begging the question.
Does this mean that the doctrines of Islam should never be criticised, or that the actions of groups for
whom Islam is an ideological pillar should
never be criticised? No. It doesn't
mean that - that's a strawman used by people who like to throw around the term "regressive left."
But an awareness of how these systems of power function - their history, their legacy, and who they really serve -
will help us do that in a way that doesn't inadvertently do more
harm than good. In particular seeking out the voices of Muslims themselves who are aware of how these
systems of power function and have lived experience under them , will help us do that in a way that
keeps the ghost of colonialism at bay.
Razack says that for those of us who live
in countries that are rich and powerful in part because
of our ancestors' colonialism, we are called
to find our identities through oppressing and excluding an
Other. There's an old racist slogan in
my country, "There ain't no black in the Union
Jack." People who use that can't define Britishness except in terms of excluding
somebody else. A little bit like how toxic masculinity calls men to find manliness only by oppressing
women. We define ourselves as "rational" and "civilised" by being in conflict with
"uncivilised and irrational" enemies, and
Sovereign Power will create those enemies
to serve its own agenda. In this way we justify our position of global dominance to ourselves,
and that stops us from critically examining our own behaviour both on the personal and on the national level. And
it stops us seeing the true complexity of politics, economics, international relations, terrorism studies,
and philosophy. Seeking out the voices of
the victims of colonialism is how we challenge
that.
As always there's a list of recommended readings
and videos in the description if any of this
flew over your head or you want to go through any of it in more detail. On a different note: I've been doing this YouTube gig a while now
so I'm gonna get some strong feelings in my comments section on this one. Probably gonna get quite a bit of vitriolic hatred. I hope that
if you haven't found these videos useful you can at least see that I'm not pulling this stuff out of
my butt. I really researched on these videos and really put a lot of work in. This is
challenging stuff, intellectually and maybe
personally as well: and that's what this channel is
about. You'll find 100 channels that will just summarise what Plato or Nietzsche said, and then as
soon as you've finished watching the video you'll forget what they ever said but you'll feel clever. That's not what I'm about. I wanna get people
in a position where there can actually do philosophy, and use it to engage with the world today,
and if you haven't found these videos useful then it's not because I'm trying to pull the wool over your eyes
or cut any corners in any way. If you
did find it useful,
then letting me know you did or sharing them with somebody else who might like them would really, really be appreciated. So what do you think
of Sheth and Razack, and the way race comes
from power? Leave me a comment, I will go
through some of them next time, I know I didn't
on these two episodes that's because they
were already running long. And for more philosophical
videos from me, every Friday, please subscribe.
Lastly, if you've made it this far into the
video then I can only assume that you are a keen bean,
so I have a Patreon page. If you could support me giving free education to everybody
anywhere in the world, for free, then I would really, really appreciate that because I do not have a lot of money
or get a lot of money out of this. But if you can't, no worries, we'll leave it. And I'll see you in the next video. Bye!
