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spacestationtrustfund's review against another edition
1.0
New concept: pick-me Arab.
The West does not need defending, believe me. And the thing is, you can lick the boots of Western imperialism all you want, but it's still not going to treat you like anything more than a subhuman barely literate monkey. The only way to escape the majority of the dehumanisation is to assimilate so completely that you spend your life kowtowing in apology for daring to be born Arab and/or Muslim, sucking the dicks of Western racists who get to show you off as an excuse to be racist, because they don't give a shit about the difference between East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, or Egyptian and Levantine Arabic, because you're not a person to them, you're a bargaining chip. I do actually have legitimate criticism of this book, as well as Ibn Warraq's scholarship as a whole, his misinterpretations and misunderstandings of Said's theses—specifically the intended scope of Said's work and its purpose in acknowledging an extant problem rather than condemning an entire portion of the world outright—but what would be the point? Much like those (sadly non-hypothetical) racists who use the few self-loathing "token" whatevers as a justification for their bigotry, anything I said in response would be feeding into the negative image Ibn Warraq is all-too-eager to embrace. Engaging on an intellectual level with these kinds of people is an exercise in frustration, because they don't actually care about the facts, they only care about being louder than you. And so I won't waste my time going through Said's book and digging up actual quotes to disprove Ibn Warraq, because honestly I do not care enough about one shitty example of a broader shitty trend—because I, apparently unlike Ibn Warraq, have no interest in being the model minority doormat for those who would fetishise, dehumanise, stereotype, and dismiss my culture and my people, fuck you very much, goodbye.
The West does not need defending, believe me. And the thing is, you can lick the boots of Western imperialism all you want, but it's still not going to treat you like anything more than a subhuman barely literate monkey. The only way to escape the majority of the dehumanisation is to assimilate so completely that you spend your life kowtowing in apology for daring to be born Arab and/or Muslim, sucking the dicks of Western racists who get to show you off as an excuse to be racist, because they don't give a shit about the difference between East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, or Egyptian and Levantine Arabic, because you're not a person to them, you're a bargaining chip. I do actually have legitimate criticism of this book, as well as Ibn Warraq's scholarship as a whole, his misinterpretations and misunderstandings of Said's theses—specifically the intended scope of Said's work and its purpose in acknowledging an extant problem rather than condemning an entire portion of the world outright—but what would be the point? Much like those (sadly non-hypothetical) racists who use the few self-loathing "token" whatevers as a justification for their bigotry, anything I said in response would be feeding into the negative image Ibn Warraq is all-too-eager to embrace. Engaging on an intellectual level with these kinds of people is an exercise in frustration, because they don't actually care about the facts, they only care about being louder than you. And so I won't waste my time going through Said's book and digging up actual quotes to disprove Ibn Warraq, because honestly I do not care enough about one shitty example of a broader shitty trend—because I, apparently unlike Ibn Warraq, have no interest in being the model minority doormat for those who would fetishise, dehumanise, stereotype, and dismiss my culture and my people, fuck you very much, goodbye.
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