I'm sick of Soumaya Ghannoushi

Update: Check out the comments section of the article. Some of the posters are taking her to school.

For those of you who don't know who this clown is, she's a columnist for the online english AlJazeera. If it isn't enough that al-Jihaderiya has to bombard us with snuff films and tapes of the bearded he-slut offering phony truces, they make us suffer the tedious rambling of this deluded, patriarchy-loving apologist.

I've decided to summarize and analyize her latest bit of crap so you don't have to. Because I'm nice like that.

First off is the title:

Europe should accept its Muslims

You can already see where this is going. Of course it should - but should it accept Islamofascism and terrorism? And should Muslims accept Europe, Soumaya?

In the name of culture, Bush’s wars turn into a noble mission to bring democracy to the culturally hostile Middle East, while Blair’s draconian crackdown on civil liberties becomes a necessary defence of "our British values" against cultural and religious aggression.

How dare that imperialist cowboy pigdog try to help democratize our wonderful, utopia in the Middle East! And the nerve of Tony Blair's draconian - that's right, draconian! - desire to keep all Britons, Muslims included, from getting blown to Smithereens. And what are these draconian measures, exactly? Being able to monitor and arrest suspected terrorists? Oh my, what a police state? If you're concerned about civil liberties, honey, you might want to look at our own countries and see if you can spot any abuses there.

The dichotomy between ‘we’ and ‘they’, ‘we’ the Europeans, or Westerners, who are imbued with the light of reason and spirit of progress, and ‘they’ who still dwell in the darkness of superstition and cultural stagnation.

Ah, I know this was coming - the old "cultural relativism" argument. Guess what? Some of us happen to think that societies with individual rights, gender equality, democracy and human rights are superior to other societies without these values. That's not a racist statement, it's a statement about culture. Read this for a start.

This colonialist rightwing discourse is on the ascendancy once more in Europe, such that the Chirac government could unashamedly recast the bleak decades of French colonisation of Africa and the Arab Maghreb as a ‘civilising mission’ in the history syllabus taught in French schools.

Dontcha mean the eeeevil colonialist rightwing imperialist neocon christian zionist corporate conspiratorial discourse that perhaps there is a problem in Europe now with integration, and that the current system isn't working?

Instead of driving European governments to forge more open relations with their socially deprived and institutionally marginalised religious and ethnic minorities and to review their policies of illegitimate military expansionism, September 11 has turned into a pretext for clinging to a right wing aggressive agenda at home and an arrogant foreign interventionism.

Yeah, after 9/11, we had the nerve to respond to a direct attack on civilization - we used it as an excuse, no less, to attack the nuts who attacked us. We should have had a few diversity workshops instead, asking why bearded mullahs don't like us.

In this climate, multiculturalism has been painted as Europe’s scourge and the root of its ills. As one writer put it, "the time for sophistry is over…. our country must assert its values".

Europe’s minorities are in other words the cause of all its social, political and economic deficiencies. The remedy lies in suffocating them through stringent legislations and ruthless practices, from stop- and- search and surveillance, to control orders and shoot- and- kill police tactics.

Oh, how ruthless! Being asked to open your bag in a fucking train station! Asking that you at least accept and adhere to a country's values of freedom and individual rights. And no, minorities are not the cause of all of Europe's problems - socialism, unreformed economies and the bureaucracy of the EU are probably part of the problem. But when a large portion of the populace has hostility to the country and refuses to integrate, this is a cause for concern, no?

They and their faith have been reduced to a security problem to be dealt with exclusively by the intelligence services. However much Europe’s Muslims attempt to prove their allegiance to the nation-state, they remain in the eyes of its strategists a fifth column and a threat to homeland security.

No you haven't. But consider London. Madrid. All of the thwarted terrorist threats. Isn't it legitimate to be concerned about security?

That Europe incorporates in its midst a multitude of cultures is undeniable. But cultural pluralism does not simply refer to the phenomenon of cultural diversity.

It points to the existence of many which are equal in the public arena. The presence of a multitude of communities in itself is not enough. The important thing is whether they are treated as equals by the state.

This is plainly not the case in Europe where ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poor housing, some of which unfit for human habitation, to suffer health problems, lag behind in education and experience unemployment than their white counterparts.

I agree that the French tend to discriminate and treat immigrants as second-class citizens. Something needs to be done to solve a complicated problem. Like, maybe, integration? The problem is, many do not want to integrate.

Denouncing multiculturalism has become a gate to reviving the tradition of cultural essentialism, with its belief in the superiority of European culture and myths of the white man’s burden and his civilising mission.

I've touched on this before. The belief that democracy and individual rights are good values that people should strive for does NOT mean racism. Ayan Hirsi Ali, an African woman, is a good example of someone who thinks she's entitled to be an individual, even though she was born into a non-European culture.

In this context, the intensely rich and complex Islamic culture, which had fostered some of the most cosmopolitan and open societies in history, in Baghdad, Damascus, Cordoba, or Istanbul, has found itself reduced to a narrow set of vulgar stereotypes.

Is Islamic culture open and cosmopolitan now? For it's time, yes it was, but if you looked at the old Islamic empire by modern standards, I'd give it a nyet on the freedom scale.

These range from the subordination of women and arranged marriage to fanaticism and religious despotism. Such arguments bespeak much ignorance and prejudice.

Vulgar stereotypes, eh? So I guess these issues are NOT a problem? As an educated Muslim woman, you should be trying to combat these problems, not push them under the carpet and write them off as "prejudice".

Some liberals are particularly fond of the following question: How, they ask, is it possible to be tolerant with the intolerant? But with the recent assaults on civil liberties and the drive to police the public sphere and encroach into the private realm of the citizen in Europe and the US, this inherently flawed question has been reversed.

You can't be tolerant of the intolerant.

But there is something even more hypocritical and sinister here. You are lecturing western countries about civil liberties and freedom that you, as an Islamist who wants a more religious society, do not believe in yourself. If you had your way, individual rights would not be as important as defending the welfare of the ummah and apologizing for terrorism.

And for that, Soumaya Ghannoushi, I hereby declare you a Cheerleader of Patriarchy.