Three men have been arrested in London after a suspicious fire was set at “the home and office of publisher Martin Rynja”, aka Gibson Square Publishing, the UK publisher of The Jewel of Medina. According to the BBC, the three men were arrested under the Terrorism Act of 2000, “on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism.”
The police confirmed that there has been small fire inside the property in Lonsdale Square, which had to be put out. “At this early stage it is being linked with the arrests,” the spokesman added.
[Scotland] Yard officials have refused to identify those arrested or give any information on the nature of the terrorist plot they are alleged to have been planning.
Residents in Lonsdale Square said armed police, assisted by fire-fighters, broke down the door of number 47 at around 2.30 this morning.
My reaction: holy fucking shit. You have got to be fucking kidding me.
Thanks to Marianne and Faellie for the heads up.
Quick note – first, thanks very much indeed for your further comments, Liz. All really enlightening for me.
I am not, of course, an Islamic scholar, but there are elements about my own discipline (Provincial Roman archaeology) that make me intrinsically interested in the historiography of a subject, as well as current research, and this, apart from my age, makes me tend to be conservative in matters such as spelling. 🙂 I have to remind myself every time to write Boudica rather than Boudicca, and I still resent it.
There was an interview with Sherry Jones on BBC Radio 4 this morning, on the Today programme (early morning national news programme). I think this link will get anyone who is interested to the audio clip:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7641000/7641167.stm
Scroll down to ‘8.35 am’ and there is a box beside it for the audio thingy.
The interview, conducted by James Naughtie, one of the regular presenters, included discussion with one of the countless representatives of British Moslems, who said the expected things about offensiveness – and who also repeated the ‘soft porn’ charge, as far as I remember (I was washing my hair at the time). Ms. Jones herself said the expected things about freedom of speech. Nothing that has not already been debated to death here: the important thing is that the programme is heard by a LOT of people, so this is yet more publicity.
Forgive any typos – writing this not on my own computer, so not logged in an therefore can’t edit.
Huh. Akismet tells me this post will have to be moderated.
My $.02 on the Muslim/Moslem thing—and my thoughts aren’t even worth $.02—is that insisting on using an archaic spelling that does offend people, when there’s no reason to use the spelling, is like insisting on the viability of the words “colored” or “Negro.” At one point in time, they were acceptable terms for a person of color. And a friend of mine who teaches American Lit tells me that her students from time to time use the term “Negro,” think it’s not offensive, because they see it in the early 20th-century texts they read.
And yet. She always sets them straight. Sometimes it’s worth changing lifelong habits. I think it does a disservice to intelligent people if we say, “Well, you’re of a certain generation, therefore it’s okay if you continue using ‘Negro’/calling all women ‘honey’/etc.”
Apologies for the inadvertent double posting – I wasn’t quite sure what was going on.
Snarkhunter, I do hear what you say, but I still remain to be convinced of the intrinsic offensiveness of ‘Moslem’. The whole issue of political correctness can be a real minefield, since altering words is often no more than papering over the cracks: it does not alter attitudes, and the new, acceptable word will become tainted by negative attitudes in due course, often to such a degree that those who are directly affected will opt to return to an older term, and to ‘reclaim’ words that were once taboo. Although we all have to keep an eye on changing language, this process sometimes becomes difficult to follow, and people of goodwill start to become genuinely uncertain about which expressions are acceptable and which are insulting.
A person can speak respectfully using outdated terminology, and can express bigotry in up-to-the-minute correct words. Is it better to say, as I would, ‘all the Moslems I have known well personally have been estimable people’ or ‘all Muslims are evil terrorists’? The first is a courteous truth, expressed in unfashionable language, the second a vicious lie expressed in the currently approved form.
True enough, but language often reflects attitudes. I’m not saying that you, yourself, hold the bigoted attitudes associated with the older spelling. The spelling issue is pretty minor, in the grand scheme of things. But some language does need changing, even if it is just a band-aid.
And we must’ve posted our other posts simultaneously—I didn’t see your when I wrote mine. I had no idea her name was now spelled Boudica.
I “get” the fact that Muslims may find a fictional romance about Muhammad (pbuh) deeply offensive. Do Muslims understand that censorship of what is defined in Western democracies as free speech is just as deeply offensive to people like me? And one of the reasons I hate censorship because it always, always backfires.
I hate American Psycho. This is a book where the main character, a serial killer, traps a rat in a woman’s cheese-smeared vagina and nails a woman’s tongue to the floor. Because of these and other scenes, feminist organizations tried to organize a boycott.
Result? Increased sales! Now a major motion picture! Who in their right mind would want to read such a book? Can it be that some of the buyers were motivated by an “in-your-face” response to attempts to censor it?
Or maybe, as they say, there is just no such thing as bad publicity.
As AgTigress has pointed out earlier, there seems to be a difference between American English and British English. I’ve just checked my monolingual and bilingual dictionaries (from 2003 and 2004) and none of them gives any indication that the spelling Moslem is outdated or offensive.
If a word is considered to be politically incorrect in the US, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the same is true for the UK. Another example that comes to mind is “African American” and “Black British.”
For at least as long as Moslem has been spelt Muslim.
😉 🙂
Sandra, as I mentioned above, I also checked Moslem in the several dictionaries, all AE, quoted on Dictionary Com’s site. None of those states that the spelling is offensive, either, so this issue is not necessarily an AE/BE matter.
Although I fully accept that Muslim has become standardised in recent years, I am simply not convinced that the older spelling is genuinely offensive. If I were to become convinced of that, then certainly, I should stop using it.
I suppose? I don’t really know if we do that in the UK. But it was also the last ten days of Ramadan, the most holy time of year (which is why I wasn’t spending it arguing with anyone about anything – too much bad feeling) so it seems unlikely that a practicising Muslim would decide that it was a good time to firebomb someone for any reason. But then, research shows that (in Britain) terrorists tend not to be very religious.
“Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices.”
And on the whole Moslem vs. Muslim thing, I can only say that in my opinion Moslem does hold associations with Orientalism (it’s a step above Mohammedism). And since when was the Oxford English Dictionary the gold-standard for whether or not a word was offensive? The dictionary (supposedly) reflects common usage, so it’s a) actually backwards to define how a word is perceived by people by its description in the dictionary, and b) who writes the dictionary again? It’s a question of power. Just because someone has the power to name and define the other, it doesn’t mean that they also get to decide what we find offensive.
[I totally have an alibi for the day in question, btw]
A good dictionary, even if totally descriptive rather than prescriptive – that is, including even all the nastiest things that people say – does record perceived offensiveness. A totally prescriptive dictionary simply omits words deemed offensive, as most dictionaries omitted words like ‘fuck’ until well into the 20th century.
For example, the Oxford Dictionary for Writers and Editors omits ‘nigger’ completely, and under ‘Negro’ it states ‘avoid: dated and offensive’. This is a prescriptive dictionary in the sense that it sets out approved OUP house-style. Though it stipulates ‘use Muslim’ under ‘Moslem’, meaning that ‘Muslim’ is the approved OUP spelling, it does not say, ‘avoid: dated and offensive’ for ‘Moslem’ as it does for ‘Negro’. If Moslem has been regarded as an intrinsically offensive term since the ?1970s (rather than an outdated transliteration), then I am very surprised that no up-to-date serious dictionary of either American or British English fails to say so, quite plainly.
The whole post-Edward Said perception of so-called Orientalism has generated a good deal more heat than light, in my view. I hope that future generations will take another, more detached, look at the history. Are we to say that all standard English words and spellings relating to Islamic culture that were written during the period of European imperialism have automatically become offensive, because some people used them offensively? Words like Mohammedan and Mussulman (a direct borrowing from 16thC Persian) were intrinsically and basically neutral, and some authors used them in a neutral fashion, simply to distinguish people of different religions and cultures. Others, no doubt, used them offensively and patronisingly; yet others with respect and admiration. I cannot see how that situation, in a cultural milieu that has changed a good deal (and don’t forget that the Ottoman Empire was one factor in the attitudes of some periods) has somehow made particular words intrinsically offensive. Archaic or old-fashioned, maybe, but why offensive?
We all belong to some racial or religious group that has been insulted by others at some time! I do not regard ‘Welsh’ (derived from an Old English expression for ‘foreigner’) as an offensive word simply because, for centuries, the English persistently despised and oppressed my ancestors, and even coined a verb, ‘to welch’, founded on the false charge that Welshmen were dishonest.
Jews have suffered more from overt racism, both in recent times and back into the Middle Ages, than almost any other race/religion: the word Jew, often with a lower-case initial, was regularly used as a deliberately offensive expression in literary works in English as late as the 1920s and 1930s, and deeply offensive stereotypes of Jews were regarded as perfectly normal, but as far as I know (I shall certainly be told about it if I am wrong!), the word Jew has not thereby become offensive in and of itself. If I say now (and I mean it), ‘I hope all Jews reading this have a happy and healthy New Year’, am I going to be shouted down for using that word, simply because other people, in the past, have used it with hostility and hatred?
As I said above, I should prefer a person of goodwill using the taboo words to a person of impeccably up-to-date political correctness and bigoted beliefs. Language does matter, but very often changes in language do not achieve any improvement in attitudes, but simply proscribe perfectly good words. And they may be reclaimed (how about ‘bitch’ as used on this website, for an example?) This means that those who do not wish to give offence may finish up being afraid to say anything. This is not helpful.
I think this is an important observation. Those who suggest that social and economic conditions are a major factor are often shouted down. The strong desire of many young people to belong to a defined group, and to have high status within that group, also plays into the equation. I am sure it will all get worse before it gets better, because if there is one thing that humans never think of doing, it is learning from history. We are the only species that can analyse events that took place before our own lifetimes, but do we try to avoid the mistakes of the past? No.
I’m not half as patient as I may have given you guys reason to think I am, and I’m not sure I have the level of concentration necessary to respond to your comment with as much depth as I should. But I’m about to try.
Yes, but people did not decide that Negro was dated and offensive with reference to a dictionary. I’d assume that people were offended by ‘Negro’ and found it dated, and then the dictionary eventually caught up.
I don’t have a personal problem with orientalists, I have a problem with the attitude inherent to viewing the oriental other as an object to be named, defined, classified and judged, – for good or bad – by the (white, male, upper/middle-class) orientalist. You can tell me that all Mohammedans of your acquaintance are fine people, whom you admire exceedingly, but I’m still going to think you’re a bit of a wanker. As admiring as many orientalists may be, they are still robbing the objects of their study of the basic right of self-determination. Is it so difficult to call people what they call themselves?
Besides I don’t much care between Moslem and Muslim, I was just giving my opinion.
I don’t really see how the terms you use as examples really correlate with the Moslem/Muslim issue? I think Welsh probably goes into the ‘so much forgotten as to be reclaimed’ pile, and ‘bitch’ is at least partially reclaimed, ‘Jew’ is what Jewish people call themselves, and isn’t really affected by how other people choose to use it.
And I don’t see Moslem as being ‘intrinsically offensive’, just as I don’t think Negro is. What is intrinsically offensive is insisting on the right to use these words to describve people when they’d prefer that you don’t.
[I’m using the general ‘you’ here]
Hey AgTigress and shewhohashope ,
First, shewhohashope, Ramadan Mubarak! I hope the month is going well for you and your family.
I have to say, smartbitches really has me using my dictionaries this week! (Which is good, because my Arabic and Persian are dying slow deaths back in my parents’ house in the burbs.)
Regarding,
I will have to respectfully disagree. The term Mohammedan and its variants comes from a medieval misconception that early followers of Islam were part of a heretical or isolated Christian sect that had coalesced around a new prophet. Rather like the Manicheans had Mani and the Arianists had Arius, many early Christians assumed that Mohammedans had Mohammed.
This description was also linked to misinformation in Europe that followers of Islam worshiped in some way the prophet. This is a fundamental distortion of Islam, which is uncompromising in its refusal to place worshiped idols into competition with God. The fundamental unity of God, or tawhid, prevents both a trinitarian understanding of divinity and any honoring of a prophet that approaches the devotion due only to God.
Mohammedan is wrong because *the word itself* embodies a fundamental misunderstanding of what Islam is about. Adherents of Islam do not follow Mohammed in the sense that Christians follow Christ. Rather, adherents of Islam submit to the will of God alone (thus the word Muslim).
As for Mussulman, this sounds to my ear like a bad transliteration of how a Persian would pronounce a variant of Muslim or Muslime, which are my transliterations of the words given in my Persian dictionary.
At issue here, I believe, are two separate but related issues. First, there is the factual or descriptive accuracy of a word. Second, there is a question of how to respond to issues of power embedded in words.
If I were to put all of these words on a spectrum of accuracy, I would have Mohammedan at the “completely missing the boat†end and Muslim at the “best practice for a scholar who wishes to be taken seriously†end. Putting all issues of offense aside, anyone who uses the term Mohammedan is displaying ignorance about Islam. This is true of medieval commentators- they are displaying (what was at their time wide-spread) ignorance about what the religion is originally called and its fundamental nature. This is also true of people today- Mohammedan is an inaccurate and misleading way to describe an adherent of Islam. Muslim is the most accurate term- it is a transliteration of what followers of Islam call themselves in Arabic (and other languages), and it follows the most widely accepted and accurate way of transliterating Arabic. Moslem is accurate in the sense that it attempts to capture in English the word that followers of Islam use to describe themselves. However, Moslem is imprecise because it does not follow the most linguistically accurate and widely preferred method of transliterating Arabic.
That out of the way, we now enter the realm of what words convey. AgTigress, I know that you have some firm opinions about this. But hopefully you’ll stick with me for a while instead of writing this off as a PC screed 🙂
When I worked as a peer educator for a sexual violence prevention program, I did ask workshop participants to talk about the language they used to describe women, men, and sex. This is not because I believe I am or wish to be the PC police. Rather, *the way we talk about the world* and *how we act in the world* are related. The language we choose to use lays bare the assumptions we make about the world and our relative privilege within that world. By destabilizing our language, we can hope to destabilize our thought. Unfortunately, I think too often we succeed only in changing the word without changing the thought behind it. However, I don’t think that that means we should give up on language. Instead, we need to be better about challenging the assumptions underlying language rather than just the words themselves.
Shewhohashope had a really important point. One of the issues at stake here is the fundamental question of who gets to define and constitute identity. If a follower of Islam asks that I refer to her as a Muslima, why wouldn’t I comply with her wishes? If a transgender woman asks that I use the pronoun she, why wouldn’t I comply with her wishes? If a black Puerto Rican woman asks that I refer to her as Latina, why wouldn’t I comply with her wishes? Refusing, and continuing to use Moslem, he, and black, demonstrates that I think I know more about that person’s identity than she does. The cost of change to me is negligible- no one is asking me to call an evil person good or a right thing wrong. Someone is only asking that I accurately reflect their conception of self when speaking about them and their communities. The stubborn refusal to acknowledge this right to self-conception and description, combined with the comparative political, military, and economic privilege of scholars in Western institutions, lies at the heart of what I would call Orientalism.
I’m one of those wishy-washy, pragmatic, split the difference kind of girls. Demanding a greater and ever-greater exactitude in language can stifle ease and universality in a discussion. On the other hand, eschewing greater exactitude in language because one feels entitled to use whatever is most personally pleasing and easy is laziness and it produces subpar conversations. So my goal is to always use the simplest language that best reflects what is going on around me while always doing a double check to keep my own assumptions in line.
Sorry for writing a novel,
Liz
Yes, but members of Middle Eastern cultures likewise saw the European as ‘other’, ‘an object to be named, defined, classified and judged’, as a Christian and an infidel. That is the fundamental nature of human (and non-human) societies, to identify ‘us and them’, and to dwell on the ways in which ‘the other’ differs. All languages require their own words for other peoples, and inevitably, since many people are bigoted and racist, some of those words will have been used, on occasion, in an offensive manner.
Quite possibly. But if only those who are Muslim/Moslem may decide which word the rest of us are permitted to use, then perhaps you, being neither Welsh nor Jewish, should leave that judgement to the Welsh and the Jews? I would not insist on being referred to as Cymraes rather than ‘Welshwoman’, because, in spite of the history of deliberately offensive use of ‘Welsh’, that still remains the standard word in English for the people in question. Moslem and Muslim are English words/spellings, both close transliterations of the same original word, and to label one acceptable and the other offensive honestly does appear to me hair-splitting.
As I have said about a score of times, I have no wish to offend anyone, but there are issues here which have to do more with language than with race, religion and cultural history and which trouble me deeply. Sanitising language is a dangerous process: like censorship, it can sometimes have the opposite effect to the one that is sought, and can smooth the paths of those whose intentions are not beneficent.
From Merriam-Webster:
Thanks, RfP!
Hi AgTigress,
I think I’m going to toss out one more comment and then cut myself off for the time being. I have work and knitting that have been sadly neglected…
I’m going to leave aside this division of language issues from issues of race, religion, and cultural history, which I view as largely artificial. (What is language, in the end, but a vehicle for our ‘cultural history’?)
I think you have made clear the principles that underlie your decision to use Moslem rather than Muslim. You’ve put forward an interesting and clear argument, and I while I don’t buy into it 100% I think it holds together well, given the first principles you seem to be working from.
However, just because you don’t intend to give offense doesn’t mean that other people cannot take offense. I believe two people in this thread have expressed some discomfort with the term. You have analyized their arguments and the background information that I have presented and have decided to stick with Moselm. This is your decision to make, and you seem to be very clear about why you are making it.
However, know your audience! Not everyone is working off the same first principles and priorities that you have and are thus going to arrive at different conclusions about the appropriateness of Moslem. If sticking to the spelling Moslem is important enough to you so that you are willing to allow other things you have to say to get lost in people’s reaction to your spelling choices, then go ahead. However, each time you use that spelling you know that it is likely to cause offense in some people. You might not agree with the logic of the offendees, but you know it is out there.
Thus, I do not think it is fair to qualify use of Moslem with “I do not mean to give offense.” Regardless of what you do or do not intend, spelling Moslem will bug many more people than spelling Muslim. If your argument is that your reasons for retaining Moslem are more important to you than other people’s potential offense, then I think that is an honest and valid argument. (After all, your priorities are your priorities). Using Moslem and then claiming that you mean no offense is a less honest argument, in my opinion.
In the end, don’t mind little ol’me. I’m fine one way or the other, as former and future jobs have required me to wade through so much personally offensive material that I tend to take pleasure in calmly deconstructing things back to a level where I can communicate with someone regardless of where they’re coming from.
But I don’t think you should be surprised in finding that the choices you make in expressing yourself interfere with the effectiveness of your communication with people who hold different views from your own.
And as I did not spell check that last post, please forgive me…
analyzed
And if that post sounded harsh, please don’t take it personally! I have found this whole discussion to be fascinating and I have appreciated hearing from you. Also, as a long-time lurker I feel like I’m shoeing in on someone else’s party. So again, everything was said with best of intentions and a friendly spirit.
Ta, Liz
Liz, your interventions are always valuable and thought-provoking. Yes, I understand and accept most of your arguments, but I find them profoundly depressing and alienating.
I don’t think I shall attempt to tackle the issue of the relationship of culture, language and the rest!
Like works of art, insults require both a creator and a receiver to be complete. If A. deliberately insults B., and B. is duly insulted, the situation is clear: an insult has been proffered and noted. It is quite possible, however, for an insult to pass completely unnoticed by the target, because B. (insultee) did not know that A. (insulter) placed a very negative connotation on the word(s) used. I know this is possible – I have done it myself. Has an insult actually taken place when only the insulter was aware of it? In spite of the intention, I think not.
On the other hand, if A. inadvertently uses words to which B. takes exception, A. certainly remains morally innocent of offence, however outraged B. may be. That is not an insult.
That was my position in connection with the spelling Moslem until we embarked on this thread. Any offence was only in the mind of B., the recipient. Now I have had my eyes opened to the (to me) wholly unexpected sensitivities founded on two vowel-changes, of course I can no longer plead ignorance. I think I shall simply plead the despair of an old woman who can no longer keep up with life.
I must now add to an ever-increasing list of people whom I dare not refer to at all because I may not be up-to-date with the currently acceptable vocabulary. I have long been nervous of making any reference to those who inhabited the North American continent before the influx of Europeans. The acceptable ways of alluding to people, part of whose ancestry may be traced to sub-Saharan Africa, are not even the same in BE and AE, and keep changing anyway (I remember when some of the words now labelled offensive were actually the new, politically correct ones). Now I can no longer speak or write of those who follow the religion founded by the prophet who died in AD 632, because, who knows, next time I wish to do so, the rules may have changed again. This is tedious, and it is not useful for clear and friendly communication. We have enough troubles in this world without purposely adding to them.
Indeed, I wonder if I should start taking offence at the undoubted implicit ageism of those who object to the spelling choices of people who just happen to have learnt those spellings more than half a century ago, when there was no suggestion that they were unacceptable? I know the objectors may not really intend to insult me just for having been born soon after the beginning of the Second World War, but is it not insensitive towards my feelings, to expect me to know all the latest rules about appropriate language, both in my own dialect of English and that of the USA? I have decided to feel hurt, offended and insulted…
😉 🙂
Just one final question. May I ask which terms for the religion under discussion are currently acceptable and unacceptable in French and German? I presume that Mohammedaner(in), which is what the many North Africans who were working in Germany when I lived there, in the 1960s, called themselves, is now deemed offensive, insulting, bigoted etc? What has replaced it?
I would not wish to give offence when speaking in German or French, either. In fact, I had better just keep my mouth shut, since I am clearly too old for my discourse be acceptable to the world of AD 2008 – though oddly, today’s world seems to me no more enlightened than that of AD 1958. Oh, and I do know that ‘AD’ is a Christian concept. I don’t know how ‘CE’ is supposed to improve upon it, since it is based on the same date. We need to have SOME globally accepted fixed point, otherwise our computers would stop working.
Hey AgTigress,
I can tell you’re getting a little frustrated.
I completely get how disconcerting these issues get. My most recent moment of “wtf? I had no idea and now I’m confused and indignant” occured in response to vocabulary and critiques used by transgender activists. Things have been heating up on feminist blogs of late regarding the insensitivity/ignorance/outright hostility many feminists currently display to transgendered people. Following this opened up for me a whole new arena of questioning my vocabulary- it’s amazing how much I felt I could assume about other people’s gender. Now I’m a lot more tentative about these assumptions and I’m trying to wrap my head and my mouth around arguments used by transgendered activists. I think this is just the basic groundwork I need to do to become a better feminist.
Another good example of this wtf? response is the defensive reaction many romance readers on this blog and others have displayed towards woc bloggers and romance authors who have critiqued the industry’s racial segregation.
I think the absolutely worst response to an honest (and reasonable) critique is defensiveness. I have to say this raised my eyebrows a bit:
and this:
I think that it is quite clear from your posts that you are a well-educated and well-informed person who is actively engaged with the world around her. I do not think it unreasonable that such a person as yourself is generally expected to remain aware of the current social, political, and ideological implications of her language. All of us, whether we are 22 or 70, are expected over the course of our lives to learn and change and grow in response to new challenges and new critiques. I think the day we feel complacent and comfortable with our opinions is the day we have stopped engaging with this growth.
I do not think ‘stopping the growth’ is an issue that is absolutely associated with age. I know people my own age who have effectively made the decision to stick their fingers in their ears and sing ‘la la la’ at anyone who has new information or a challenging argument for them. I also know women in their 70s and 80s who are absolutely committed to learning, growing, and engaging with the changing world around them.
The unfortunate thing about what I’ll loosely term “cross-cultural/diversity” incidents is that often one doesn’t think about a particular occasion for offense until the foot is well into the mouth. I’ve made gaffes up one side and down the other ranging from serious racial slurs to lightweight comments that, when examined more closely, contained the potential to hurt. The only way out of the mess is forward.
I know a lot of very smart people who have a great disdain for what I’ll loosely call “cross-cultural competence.” I think that’s a shame. I believe the array of skills that fall in this area help one to eliminate the potential for minor/social infractions and miscommunication in order to get at the meat of an issue: where is the real disagreement and how are we going to live together with this real disagreement sitting between us? Where can we compromise and where are we going to draw boundaries? What sacrifices will I make for our relationship and our community and what rights will I insist on excercising?
If this all seems a bit much, I’ll confess that I’ve just finished an interview to work in diplomacy and I have a long history behind me of peer education. It kind of sucks to have to listen to the opinions of unrepentent misogynists and rape victim blamers and then respond respectfully to them while still remaining aware of one’s responsibility to survivors everywhere. But it’s those types of contentious, difficult conversations that are all about the language we use and the harm we do that I find most exhilerating.
So, in a nutshell, I guess I’m asking you not to take the easy out of getting frustrated and shutting down. You have your opinions and you have every right to express them. That doesn’t mean you get to determine how people will perceive your opinions. I think that if you are able to forcefully and rationally express your opinions- as you so clearly are- then you are also able to respectfully deal with whatever those opinions might stir up.
Back to work and knitting!
Also, I caught the ;-), but I thought I’d still respond more or less seriously. I’m afraid I’m an all-too-serious gal (my mom says I’m no fun cause I think too hard) and more often then not I take a joke with a straight face and run with it.
Still, I’m enjoying and learning from this conversation as long as you are!
One just gets tired, you know.
A just balance between continuity and change is fundamental within all societies (and specifically within language), and by definition, older generations are likely to tend the continuity and younger ones to spearhead the change. Nobody, of any age, can be au fait with all aspects of contemporary culture and language; we all specialise to some degree, and we all choose to avoid some things rather than to become deeply involved in them. This has nothing to do with age; we are all learned in some areas and ignorant in others; we have different histories, different cultural conditioning, much of it unconscious, and different ways of handling conflict. My interest in Islamic culture and my admiration for many aspects of it is genuine and very longstanding, but it is not really a major focus of my interests. Nor are romance novels, or indeed, any fiction. I begin to feel that my occasional presence here is probably a waste of everyone’s time.
I was really not joking when I said that I feel hurt and offended by some of the things that have been said to me here, because they genuinely seem to me, intentionally or not, to be contemptuous.
I have found your comments, Liz, and those of several others, (including Shewhohashope, even though she used an expression to me that I find deeply offensive) truly valuable and informative. I have learned: I am less pig-ignorant than before. But having done so, I think I’ll call it a day.
Hope the work, and the knitting, goes well. 🙂 I haven’t done any knitting for quite a while – maybe it would make me feel a little better.
I recommend knitting blankets. Big, soft, squishy, soothing blankets. Nothing provides better therapy in my book.
Also, no great mental concentration required if it is plain knitting, without any fancy pattern. I often used to knit and read at the same time, if the book allowed itself to be held open on my lap with bulldog clips (forget what they are called in American), because one doesn’t need to look at the knitting much – just let the hands get on with it.
🙂
I can’t keep up with this conversation, but I agree with everything Liz is saying.
AgTigress: I’ll refer to you as whatever you want me to refer to you. No Welsh person has ever asked me not to call them Welsh, and no Jew has ever asked me not to call them a Jew, but if they did, it would be their prerogative.
I don’t think it’s ageist to want people to be able to form their own identifications of themselves. And no-one was offended by your not knowing that Moslem/Mohammedan was outdated, what was offensive was your insistence of sticking to your own classification in the face being told that these terms were no longer used. There’s nothing ageist about a little thoughtfulness, and the self-determination pf entire people’s is possibly more important than a little personal inconvenience?
[And back on topic, I’m glad no-one was hurt]
Shewhohashope: for the record, I was perfectly well aware that Mohammedan was not a currently acceptable term: it has not been widely used in English for the best part of a century at least; it is not a term I have ever used in English, though I did so 40 years ago, when speaking German, amongst friends in Germany who called themselves Mohammedaner. I was also aware that Muslim had supplanted Moslem recently (within the last 30 years or so), but not why. I assumed it was simply a matter of perceived more accurate transliteration. We have sorted all that out, for which I thank you and others.
You may, with my goodwill, call me ‘Welsh’ or ‘British’; you may even call me ‘English’, though many Welsh, Scottish or Irish people, for good historical reasons, take umbrage at that name: I prefer not to be incorrectly labelled ‘Christian’, but I do not find the term offensive: I cannot object to being called ‘white’, ‘female’ or ‘old’, though I should prefer not to be stereotyped in terms of what ‘all’ old, white women are like.
However, I ask you, please, NOT to call me, however flippantly and hyothetically, ‘a bit of a wanker’. That is shockingly insulting, condescending and dismissive, and took me aback utterly. In the context of a serious discussion about what people might or might not find offensive, and your repeated plea to think of the other person’s feelings, its use just took my breath away.
I thank you very sincerely for the valuable insights you have provided, on this and other threads, about the traditions and perceptions within your community, but that casual jibe hurt and startled me so much that I felt, and feel, completely alienated. I never deliberately insulted you, whom I have never even met, by calling you a vile name, and I don’t think I deserved it.
I’m sorry, AgTigress, I shouldn’t have said that.
Shewhohashope, thank you very much for your graceful apology, which I accept. All forgiven and forgotten. 🙂
From now on. I shall try to remember the right way to spell Muslim.
I hope you have had a happy time of celebration for Eid.