{"id":10827,"date":"2012-07-08T22:01:50","date_gmt":"2012-07-08T22:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=10827"},"modified":"2012-07-08T22:04:55","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T22:04:55","slug":"life-imitates-political-artifice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=10827","title":{"rendered":"Life imitates (political, Islamophobic) artifice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[ by <strong>Charles Cameron<\/strong> &#8212; Dutch Islamophobia offers a terrible example of the sign turning into the signified ]<br \/>\n.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_10834\" style=\"width: 520px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.ad.nl\/ad\/nl\/1012\/Nederland\/article\/detail\/3282675\/2012\/07\/06\/Slepende-burenruzie-werd-Aziz-64-uit-Almelo-fataal.dhtml\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-10834\" src=\"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/media_xll_12660411.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"media_xll_1266041\" width=\"510\" height=\"288\" class=\"size-full wp-image-10834\" srcset=\"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/media_xll_12660411.jpg 510w, https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/media_xll_12660411-300x169.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 510px) 100vw, 510px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-10834\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Jan van Breughel, 2012? -- photo credit: Eric Brinkhorst, Algemeen Dagblad<\/p><\/div>\n<p>.<\/p>\n<p>The quote that follows is offered without much comment, except to note that the formal correspondences between the two instances of &#8220;Henk and Ingrid&#8221; are as compelling as the two situations themselves.<\/p>\n<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.islamophobia-watch.com\/islamophobia-watch\/2012\/7\/8\/henk-and-ingrid-turn-out-to-be-violent-racists.html\">Islamophobia Watch<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As the Netherlands heads for a general election, barely a day passes without a mention of &#8220;Henk and Ingrid&#8221;, or Mr and Mrs Average, in a political debate that has revolved around the economy and the euro zone debt crisis.<\/p>\n<p>The invention of populist politician Geert Wilders \u2013 who heads the anti-immigration, anti-euro Freedom Party \u2013 this mythical couple attracted a different kind of notoriety after a real Dutch Henk, with a wife called Ingrid, killed a Turkish immigrant, prompting commentators to warn that populism can backfire.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>**<\/p>\n<p>Compare the strange story of the writing and real-life enactment by the avatar of <strong>Vishnu <\/strong>of <strong>Valmiki<\/strong>&#8216;s <em>Ramayana<\/em>, which I alluded to in a <a href=\"http:\/\/new-savanna.blogspot.com\/2010\/07\/ritual-in-sita-sings-blues-part-4.html?showComment=1280178789181#c6407350120872735121\">comment on William Benzon&#8217;s blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I recall that when I was in India more than thirty years ago, I was told the Ramayana was written by Valmiki, first among poets &#8212; and it was only afterwards, and under the poem&#8217;s inspiration, that Vishnu did indeed take the form of Rama and come to earth to live out the story already depicted in Valmiki\u2019s epic.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[ by Charles Cameron &#8212; Dutch Islamophobia offers a terrible example of the sign turning into the signified ] . . The quote that follows is offered without much comment, except to note that the formal correspondences between the two instances of &#8220;Henk and Ingrid&#8221; are as compelling as the two situations themselves. From Islamophobia [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[526,334,560,753,678,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10827","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-charles-cameron","category-europe","category-india","category-islam","category-sembl","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10827","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10827"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10827\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10847,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10827\/revisions\/10847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10827"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10827"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10827"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}