Maajid Nawaz and the Problem of the Well-Meaning Racist

Maajid Nawaz very eloquently explains something that has bothered me for awhile, but which I feel is difficult to talk about as a white radical.

It's also a good example of why I try to hold my own 'side' to higher standards, not because I'm against them but because I expect better. When what is holding back the growth and development of the Muslim Left if our own Western Left, we need to reaffirm our principles and abandon the same tribal group-thinks we spend so much time criticising the Right over.

'This is the “racism of the anti-racists,” the new Orientalism. Increasingly today, it is the defenders of everything black and brown, every Oriental and exotic religious and spiritual practice, those who have taken to portraying their cultural sophistication by being able to pronounce Eastern culinary dishes with correctly accented syllables, who are guilty of the most patronizing and debilitating form of racism and bigotry.'

As Maajid Nawaz says, these aren't Western Liberal Ideas, they are human ones. And if we succumb to parochial instincts of tribal identity and continue to stimy those struggling for what we already take for granted, then we fail not just our brothers and sisters in the Muslim community, but advancement of the entire human family.

Merry Christmas.