Category Archives: Xenophobia

Bigotry, Jesus, Jews, Muslims, Racism, Religion, U.S. Senate, US Congress, Xenophobia

New Trendy Bigotry: Rent a Jew, Rent a Muslim, Rent a Bigot (or Elect One)………

March 29, 2017 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Do Jews get a discount when they buy a car? Do they own McDonald’s? Do Jews control the media and international banking? Do any of them live here anymore? These are among the questions German school children ask Jews who volunteer in a new outreach program with the provocative name, “Rent A Jew.” The Jews in question are not actually “rented” since they volunteer their time. But they do present themselves as living exhibits of something young Germans hear about constantly, thanks to their curricula on Germany and the Holocaust but rarely see: living, talking, walking Jews as they live their lives today. The program – launched in 2015 by the Munich-based Janusz Korczak Academy in collaboration with the Jewish Agency for Israel – is beginning to catch on. The Jewish Agency provides funding for the program, which mixes education with humor. “Rent a Jew,” the group’s tagline urges. “You will never forget your first.”

What next? Rent-a-Muslim for the Trump and Bannon and Gaffney kids to learn from?
Some say Muslims may be the “new” Jews in Europe and the United States. The next target for frustrated underemployed Christians and Evangelicals who can’t wait for “The Day” when all Jews are expected to convert to their peculiar old sect started by Jesus of Nazareth.

I don’t believe it, this thing about Rent-a-Muslim. It takes a long history, many centuries of suspicion, discrimination, abuse, and massacres to get to where the Jews are. And requires us to have a lot of talent that makes others realize their own shortcomings, which we don’t have yet. Besides, Muslims are nowhere near being group targets of life-and-death situations: there just are too many of us, and we are not one race or one nation. We come from all over.
Even the New Neo-Republican Party can’t build that kind of a wall. I believe that in this Congress and at the New White House they are realizing that and focusing on their real long-term enemy: a well-educated and healthy American people.

Besides, Muslims don’t make good scapegoats. We make better goats than scapegoats, given how our native countries are managed.

Maybe Rent-a-Bigot can become a viable business in some coastal states. A quaint conversation piece on one of the two coasts. Unless you elect a whole passel of them and let them loose on a country.

FYI: unlike the myth being encouraged in extreme right wing media, not many Muslims prefer slitting throats. Many prefer AK-15 (but that would be a Russian connection no?). One other thing is worrisome, tough: many of us like our food, especially our meat, Kosher (except we called it Halal after we copied it from the Jews about fifteen centuries ago).
More on this later, possibly, stay tuned…….

Cheers
M. Haider Ghuloum

Islamophobia, Mathematics, Paranoia, Terrorism, Xenophobia

United States of Paranoia? Italian Mathematician Terrorist Armed with a Hessian Matrix…….

May 9, 2016 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“A math equation landed an Ivy League professor on an American Airlines flight in questioning Thursday under suspicion of being a terrorist. Guido Menzio, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, was working on a differential equation while waiting for the Syracuse-bound plane to take off from Philadelphia, the Washington Post reported. He had to present the findings of a working paper at Queen’s University. But a passenger somehow mistook the equation for Arabic or some sort of Islamic code for a terrorist attack……….”

Things are beginning to get out of hand in this election year in the land of Milk and Honey, Fruits and Nuts. Any know-nothing xenophobe (who probably can’t even spell the word) can now point a finger at a fellow flight passenger and cause a lot of inconvenience and maybe some misery.

Guido Menzio is not even a Muslim or an Arab or a Pakistani. He is obviously an Italian or an Italian-American. So , because of his Mediterranean dark looks, and because he was solving some mathematics equations, probably some of the calculus problems we all did in college, he was suspected of terrorism. They thought the mathematical equations were some dangerous foreign language, like Arabic. He was profiled. Good thing he wasn’t writing music.

Moral of the story? There probably is none, just that some people can’t tell a Hessian Matrix from a proverbial hole in the ground.
Cheers
Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Africa, Arabian Peninsula, U.S. Foreign Policy, U.S. Politics, Xenophobia, Yemen

Tale of Two Invasions: Threat to Texas, Assault on Yemen……….

May 6, 2015 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“Amid unfounded, Internet-fueled rumors that U.S. Special Operations Forces might be trying to take over parts of the southwest, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered Texas State Guard forces under his control to keep an eye on the U.S. military during a large upcoming training exercise. The exercise is called Jade Helm 15…………..”

Texas has gone xenophobic. No, not towards Mexicans or even Muslims. Like Yemen on the Arabian Peninsula, Texans now worry about a foreign invasion, but not by Saudis and their African mercenaries. Its worst nightmare comes from Washington, DC.

The U.S. military plans some exercises in Texas. Normally that would not cause any consternation in Tejas. Except that now the commander in chief is a blackish man who is a Democrat from Hawaii (by way of Illinois and possibly some distant shores as well).

Texas politicians, from governor on down, are making a lot of noise about a possible U.S. invasion of Texas. You’d think it is Mr. Putin marching into Ukraine. Imagine Mr. Obama as General Santa Ana, leading an army to reclaim Texas. But this is not new for embattled Texas: when they are not busy executing poorer convicts or keeping Mexicans out, Tejas officials are often concerned about a Yankee invasion from the north. It would be the third invasion from the North: the first one was by the immigrants of the Mexican province of Tejas before 1836, the second during the Civil War.

The previous governor even hinted at possible secession from the Union, now that Abe Lincoln is dead and buried for good by his own Republican Party. The party that has switched places with the Old Democrat Party of the CSA and Jim Crow and Dixiecrats.

Now about the assault and possible invasion of Yemen by a bought and fully-paid African-Saudi coalition………..

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum
[email protected]

Marriage, Saudi Arabia, Xenophobia

Foreign Marriage and Polygamy and the Frustrated Single Wahhabi……..

August 11, 2014 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

“The official said Saudi men have been prohibited from marrying expatriate women from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Chad and Myanmar. According to unofficial statistics, there are about 500,000 women from these four countries currently residing in the Kingdom. Official sources said Morocco has made it conditional for Saudis wishing to marry Moroccan women to provide clean criminal records. The sources said Moroccan authorities also require applicants to provide written consent from his wife if he is already married……….”

Saudi authorities also now require for any citizen wising to marry a Moroccan woman to provide a criminal record of the woman, to prove that she has no dangerous crimes and illegal drugs in her past. The Moroccan, for their part, require that a Saudi man who is already married must provide her approval to his marriage of a second Moroccan wife.

Life is getting tough for sexually repressed and frustrated Saudi men. They are banned by their own government from marrying the nationalities mentioned above, and it has been made hard for them to marry Moroccan women. The Moroccans also have their own requirements. They are also required to get approval of the Wahhabi authorities before they can marry any foreign woman, even if the marriage is done outside the country, even on Mars.

It is a good thing for them that Generalisimo Field Marshal President Al Sisi has not come around to restricting the summer marriages many vacationing Saudi men have with Egyptian women, nor has he cracked down, yet, on dirty older Saudi men marrying underage Egyptian child brides.

Cheers

Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

[email protected]

Iran, Racism, WTF, Xenophobia

Apple Issues: iRacism? iXenophobia? iIranophobia? iStupidity ……

June 22, 2012 Mohammed Haider Ghuloum

Neck of the woods
“An American teen was unable to shop at an Apple store simply because she was speaking Farsi with her uncle. What seems to be a clear-cut case of ethnic profiling turns out to be in line with official company policy. Sabah Sabet, a 19-year old US citizen of Iranian extraction, and a student of the University of Georgia, took her uncle to buy an iPhone and an iPad at an Apple store in a mall in Alpharetta, Georgia, local news channel WSBTV reports. But she was in for a shocker, as the store clerk refused to sell them the devices after he found out Sabet and her uncle were speaking Farsi. “When we said ‘Farsi, I’m from Iran,’ he said, ‘I just can’t sell this to you. Our countries have bad relations,’” Sabet recounted. Sabet said the incident, which she describes as “discrimination” and “racial profiling,” …………..”

“However, U.S. sanctions laws do not prohibit the sale of products to Iranian Americans or Iranian visa-holders in the United States. Yet, multiple Apple Stores have refused service to both American citizens and Iranian students legally residing in the United States solely on the basis of their ethnicity. In particular, Apple Stores at North Point Mall in Alpharetta, Georgia and at Perimeter Mall in Atlanta, Georgia have been implicated in this practice .………..”

The United States is the least xenophobic country and society in the world, yet there are pockets of it around.
It is definitely racism (a Russian news agency called it iRacism). These products are made in CHINA, by CHINESE workers, and how stupid can you get for F-sake! I think that is just some parts of Georgia being Georgian. Next time these Iranian-Americans are asked what language they are speaking they ought to say (heaven forgive me for suggesting that someone lie) Hebrew. No problem, piece of cake.
Cheers
mhg
[email protected]

Arabia Deserta: MENA Focus