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1. European discourse on “islamism” and Political Islam no longer means anything more than ‘manifests Muslim identity in a public space’ and/or ‘interacts with the political sphere’.
2. Hijabs and not wanting to swim in a mixed-gender pool are not political assertions that infringe on others’ rights. They’re just people being conservative. Thinking homosexuality is a sin is a person’s religious belief...
3. .. and human parents have a right to raise their kids in a religious tradition; whose rights are infringed if those kids are taught to interact with others with respect?
4. Muslims in Europe are always criticized for “not integrating.” But when they get advanced degrees and use the law to uphold the rights enshrined by their own countries, their govs shut down their orgs & rub their faces in the dirt, #CCIF.
5. In Austria, ‘political Islam’ talk says that such integrated and committed Muslim citizens are actually dissimulating, that their legal, political and social activism mask an “inner belief” that really despises democracy.
6. What evidence is there of this? None! It’s antisemitism in different garb, insisting that citizens doing nothing more than asking for equal treatment and civic respect are part of a hidden conspiracy.
7. Macron won’t tolerate Muslims who don’t think girls deserve education... who the heck is he talking about? Read about the girls who were at the center of the hijab-in-school controversies: educated, strong-willed and independent!
8. More straw-manning to justify violating basic rights. Muslims in the West want to be fully-fledged, three-dimensional civic and political participants in their societies.
9. But because W. Europe seems inclined to define itself not by the values its laws enshrine but by mundane shibboleths of dress and lifestyle, Muslims’ very existence causes friction on the political sphere.
10. Muslims are free to wear hijab and live in slums as long as they’re manual laborers. But if they try to participate in society *as Muslims* they find that in the end it’s about power and knowing your place. Act as “French” or “Austrian” as you can and pray you get by.
11. Fanon wrote about how French colonial forces in Algeria were frustrated at not being able to see, to access Muslim women. It seems from this politician that not much has changed. If Muslim woman don’t want to marry non-Muslim men, they’re a threat the law needs to address.
12. That this about power and not values or ideals doesn’t get any clearer than that.
13. And while I’m here, since “islamism” according to the “definition” being shopped around by the UAE includes American lawyers suing racist zoning committees among, basically any Muslim who doesn’t want their entire worldview defined by some corrupt autocrat,
14. I think the term needs to be retired.
