Islamophobia - what exactly does it mean? Seems no-one can accurately give a definition that all agree with. The word itself means fear of Islam and not, as many believe, a prejudice against Islam, and here is the crux of the matter - it's a nonsensical word. Anti-Islam would be a more accurate description of what we term Islamophobia. The word homophobia has the same problem.
There is no Catholophobia or Hindophobia. I can criticise those religions without being labelled with a word and all the connotations that go with it. Anti-Catholicism is genuine though. The appendage of phobia has a pejorative connotation.
Religions are all open to criticism, and so they should when they assert they are the one, true religion based on divine revelation - they can't all be such. Why should Islam be singled out and given special treatment with the word Islamophobia? All Abrahamic religions contain passages within their sacred texts that can justify believers doing despicable things to non-believers. As far as I'm concerned, they're all nonsensical and I can think of no question for which we once had a scientific answer, however imperfect, which has been superseded by a religious one, but I can think of many in the reverse. Religion has been squeezed out of the area of science and has retreated into philosophy, which doesn't answer any questions, it simply poses more.
Islam is somewhat singular in the way it uses death as a punishment - something Christianity dropped centuries ago as a barbaric relic. According to many surveys, even so-called moderate Muslims have sympathy with the use of the death penalty for certain Islamic transgressions. Such transgressions within most Islamic countries would certainly result in the death penalty.
It would seem that an accusation of Islamophobia is something that's used to stifle criticism of the more barbaric aspects of Islam - the way it treats apostates, gay people, women, the way male genital mutilation is mandatory, etc.
Early Islam had a cultural flowering when it made enormous contributions to medicine, philosophy, mathematics, art, astronomy, art, etc., building on the works of the ancient Greeks that were lost to the west during the Dark Ages when the Alt-Right dominated Europe, but all that was stopped dead in its tracks some 800 years ago when the Abbasid Caliphate came under the influence of a radical form of Islam, the anti-rationalist Ash’ari school, that pronounced faith had precedence over reason and reason could only be used where it promoted faith. Where reason and faith clashed, faith was to be used. That was the end of the Islamic Golden Age and it has never recovered, remaining in its own Alt-Right Dark Age.
Many apologists for Islam maintain we must wait for the Islamic Reformation, which will be a natural consequence of the migration of Muslims into the west and their exposure to a rationalist mindset, which has a certain validity - but how long can we wait? Meanwhile the more barbaric, anti-rationalist forms of Islam stalk our streets spouting hatred and dealing death to anyone who dares to criticise it. Given Islam has no central authority, there is no Pope-like figure to stand up and speak out against this barbarism. That's the problem.
Let's get back to the word Islamophobia though. A phobia is not just a fear, it's primarily an 'irrational' fear. Is it irrational to fear a philosophy whose more fanatical and literal adherents would cut off your head or throw you off a tall building for an Islamic transgression that's entirely legal in the west, like being gay or publishing a cartoon? I would emphatically say not - it's entirely rational and justified; it's precisely why many Muslims who are not as reactionary as the hardliners are fleeing ISIS and the Taliban. If I draw a critical cartoon of Jesus or the Pope, I'll suffer nothing more than some huffing and puffing of self-righteous indignation, not burning at the stake. I dare say that had the Enlightenment not happened, I
would be burned at the stake.
We must not, however, tar all Muslims with the same fanatical brush of ISIS or the Taliban. There are many millions of Muslims in Britain who want nothing other than to simply get on with their lives, even if 40% of them support a parallel system of sharia. The corollary of this, however, is that 60% don't - or, rather, 60% don't
or are ambivalent. I'd like to know how many of that 60% are dead set against it.
Nothing, however, justifies the massacre of Muslims by other fanatics, like in New Zealand. If you're going to criticise a backward-looking religion, do it with logic, reason and the law of the land, not guns - unless you're faced with fanatics with guns. Using guns against those without guns makes you an extremist fanatic too.
Islamophobia is not racism and should not be confused with it - there are many Muslims of European, Caucasian extraction who were converted when the Balkans were part of the Ottoman Empire, for example the
Ciscassians. There are also many Muslims who are not
Semitic (another of those strange words that many apply only to Jews, but applies equally to Arabs, as the link shows) - 62% of the world's Muslims live in Indonesia and 10% of Indonesia's population is Christian (as an aside,
Indonesia's blasphemy laws are heavily weighted toward Islam and are an affront to rational thought).
Islam is a religion, a philosophy one is free to choose or not, although becoming apostate has severe consequences in Islamic countries, demonstrating that freedom of conscience - a key attribute of western thought - is antithetical to Islam. In the vast majority of countries where it has dominance it's oppressive, bigoted and intolerant.
To view the above map properly, click on it to show the hatched areas, where support for the death penalty for apostasy is >80%. It was compiled from the 2013 PEW global survey of Muslim attitudes.
Am I fearful of Islam? You bet I am, especially of Wahhabism - as fearful of it as I am of Nazism and as fearful as people 600 years ago were of Catholicism during the Inquisition. The Saudis promote this austere version of Islam by the building of mosques throughout the world, funding them anonymously through shell companies. In the UK the
majority (41.2%) of masjids are
Deobandi - read for yourself their affiliations in the link. Religious extremism is the No.1 cause of terrorism, having superseded national separatism decades ago.
If you think you're not fearful of Islam and you liked Monty Python's Life of Brian, try to write and publish a similar satire of Islam, even if just in the UK.
Another problem with the language used to describe religious extremism is the use of the word radical; we hear of radical Islam in reference to the hardliners. Religious extremism isn't radical, it's reactionary. Radicalism looks forward whereas the reactionary looks backward and the religious extremists certainly look backwards.
Am I fearful of British Muslims? A minority of them, but by no means the vast majority (strangely enough, it's the 16-24 year old group that is becoming more 'radicalised', which is worrying, and this is possibly due to them seeking an identity, as many indigenous British refuse to see them as British, despite being 3rd or 4th generation). Do I detest Islam as a philosophy? Yes, in the same manner I detest all forms of organised religion, but Islam more than most due to the fact it's still mired in the Middle Ages and hasn't yet had its teeth blunted. Does that make me Islamophobic? No - my fear is rational and based on observable fact.
Analyse and discuss.
