Islamophobia - The lie that refuses to die

A lie told a million times remains a lie, regardless of how widely adopted it is in media, academia and bureaucracy.

Doesn’t it seem like our politicians, media and Muslim activists are hellbent on proving Goebbel’s dictum “A lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth” right?

Islamophobia is the lie that refuses to die. By now, it is well known that the term was popularised by the Islamic Regime of Iran and The Muslim Brotherhood, to suppress any criticism of Islam. So, why is that, in 2024, democratically elected politicians in Britain are practically stepping on one another to be seen as the biggest proponent of this propagandist concept, designed to enforce Shari’ah on non-Muslims?

How does this proverbial naked emperor get to waltz through our societies without anyone pointing out its transparent lack of substance? How did it all start?

In his paper “Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism – or what? - Concepts and terms revisited” Robin Richardson traces the term back to Alain Quellien’s 1910 book “La politique musulmane dans l’Afrique Occidentale Française” (“Muslim politics in French West Africa”), which was a critique of how French colonialists administrators “viewed the cultures of the countries now known as Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Niger and Senegal”.

Richardson finds the first written usage of the English version in Edward Said’s Orientalism reconsidered from 1985, where the Palestinian-American activist and writer draws a parallel between antisemitism and Islamophobia. Said writes

“…hostility to Islam in the modern Christian West has historically gone hand in hand’ with antisemitism and ‘has stemmed from the same source and been nourished at the same stream.” (Said 1985: 8-9)

Then, what is the problem? Does anyone deny that Muslims are discriminated in the post 9/11 climate? If not, isn’t that Islamophobia?

Yes, I deny this and no, it’s not. First of all, the claim that Muslims are discriminated against in The West is grossly exaggerated. If they were, they wouldn’t risk their lives travelling here on dinghies and small boats across the Mediterranean and, once here, push for their family members to join them.

Secondly, attacking people because of their Islamic faith is anti-Muslim bigotry, which is widely condemned across every corner in every Western society. But Islamophobia isn’t anti-Muslim bigotry.

Islamophobia is a tactic. It’s a strategy to import Shari’ah through the backdoor. It’s a ploy to prohibit criticism of Islam and its doctrines. It’s the attempt to enforce blasphemy laws for one single religion - Islam - and give it protected status.

Unless one maintains that it is impossible to differentiate a collective set of doctrines from individual adherents (vast majority of whom only follow the creeds selectively), one must acknowledge that ideas are not above scrutiny and the case for Islamophobia disintegrates.

Recently, on Sam Harris’ podcast “Making Sense”, the grossly overrated Rory Stewart stated that attacking an ideology must mean that you’re condemning the people holding said ideology. To argue for his position, Stewart referred to Nazism and Nazis - proclaiming that he abhors the people because they hold reprehensible ideas, and therefore, loathing Islam must mean that one resent Muslims.

The level of intelligence among our political class on show…

What Stewart misses, or is too feebleminded to understand, is that where Nazism is a monolithic ideology, solely focused on the eradication of Jews and non-Arians, Islam has mandates on everything from taxes, sex, martyrdom and divorce (ironically, throughout the conversation, Stewart himself repeatedly stated that there is no “one Islam” - which would mean that Islam is false). An individual can call him or herself a Muslim, and only believe in the benign verses of the Quran and Hadiths, and make excuses for the illiberal, barbaric injunctions, as many do.

And what is the logical conclusion of Stewart’s claim? That Islam can contain injunctions for genocide, racism, chauvinism, pedophilia and slavery (all of which it does) and we still shouldn’t criticise it, since that would be bigoted against people calling themselves Muslims, even if they reject those particular elements. Which other religion enjoys such privileges in Western society? Which other ideology should be granted such safeguarding?

Islamophobia mandates prohibitions against victimless crimes - including the drawing of cartoons, writing of novels, singing of songs, thinking of thoughts. It tells me, who have read the Quran, that I am not allowed to express disgust over the content of that hideous book. It demands that I cannot castigate Mohammed for marrying six year old Aisha when he was 54, and raping her three years later.

Back when The Onion was still funny, they published the following cartoon with a headline as striking as it is simple:

Everyone, whether they admit to it or not, immediately gets the point. That’s because only Islam demands protection from satire, parody and ridicule, even when it’s a ridiculous religion. Only Islam is blackmailing our societies, under the threat of violence, to censor the press, to disband parliamentary processes, to force a teacher into hiding for the crime of showing cartoons which angered some Muslims so much so that they slaughtered satirists in Paris.

Who denies this?

Instead, we are confronted with an endless swathe of red herrings;

• What about Galileo?

• The crusades!

• Jo Cox was killed by a white supremacist, you know!

• Anders Breivik, Rolf Harris and Jimmy Saville were all white men!

These are as boring as they are stupid. If your argument rests on examples from a thousand years ago, then maybe it’s time to reevaluate.

And if the killing of Jo Cox MP is to be condemned, then why should Muslims who act the same way - at a rate orders of magnitude higher than any other population - get a pass?

No one in civil society offered any excuse for Thomas Alexander Mair, who murdered Jo Cox. When Anders Breivik carried out his heinous terrorist attacks, the whole world rushed to condemn him. Jimmy Saville and Rolf Harris are forever branded as monsters.

But not Islamo-fascists.

Preposterously, only Islam gets to be defended the moment Muslims commit acts of terror. Only when their co-religionists murder cartoonists - CARTOONISTS - do Muslim activists write articles such as “As a Muslim, I'm Fed Up With the Hypocrisy of the Free Speech Fundamentalists”(Mehdi Hasan, 2015).

When the bodies of Anders Breivik’s evil were still being uncovered, no Western journalist rushed to write an article to defend his motives, as Glenn Greenwald did for the terrorists in Paris that fateful day 2005.

As the late, great comedian Norm MacDonald once noted:

But turn the tables, and what do we see?

When Lee Anderson MP makes an admittedly dumb accusation about Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan, what happens?

What price did Theo van Gogh pay for making a short film, “Submission”, critical of Islam? And his collaborator, Ayaan Hirsi Ali?

What happened to Salman Rushdie when he wrote “The Satanic Verses”?

What phobia is that then, when filmmakers, cartoonists, novelists, teachers and MPs are slaughtered, stabbed and lose their careers for criticising Islam?

And when would it be rational to hold fears of Islam?

The most comprehensive data available on Islamic terrorism is by Foundation Pour L’innovation Politique, where they have chronicled attacks from 1979 - 2021 from around the globe.

As they report:
We can establish that between 1979 and May 2021, at least 48,035 Islamist terrorist attacks took place worldwide. They caused the deaths of at least 210,138 people. On average, an Islamist attack has resulted in the death of around 4.4 people. We identify and quantify the modus operandi and targets. Explosives are the most common type of weapon used (43.9%), while the military is the main target (31.7%), ahead of civilians (25.0%) and police forces (18.3%). The picture of this phenomenon is becoming clearer. Afghanistan was the country most affected by Islamist terrorism, ahead of Iraq and Somalia. Within the European Union, France was the country most affected, with at least 82 Islamist attacks and 332 deaths. We also show that the majority of Islamist attacks (89.5%) were in Muslim countries and that the victims were mainly Muslims, in the same proportions.

If, on average, they kill 5, 000 fellow Muslims annually, is it irrational to fear what they’d do to us, if given the chance?

Where do you draw the line?

How many Manchester Arena bombings is sufficient to be cause for fear? How many 7/7s? How many terrorist attacks on the streets of London, Paris and Amsterdam? How many 12 year old girls need to be raped - some by over 100 men - by perpetrators who explicitly justify their evil by invoking Quranic injunctions about the rights of the Muslim man over the kafir female? When is it acceptable to acknowledge that Muslims pose a unique threat to Western society?

If the answer is “Never!”, then we’re dealing with masochists defending sadists.

And what about the claim about Muslims being oppressed in the West?

This lie took off post 9/11, but crumbles under the slightest scrutiny, as the exact opposite is true.

It’s only in The West (including, ironically, Israel) where Muslims enjoy full human rights, where women are equal to men under the law, where they have freedom of thought and expression. Where they can run for office, operate their own businesses, pursue every ambition and realise any dreams.

It’s only in The West where individuals as majestically incompetent and spectacularly unimpressive as Rashida Tlaib, Sadiq Khan and Naz Shah can be elected to public office, primarily because they are Muslims.

So why, instead of eternal gratitude, do we hear this never-ending track of Islamophobia? Because at this time in The West, victimhood is the currency of the day. Whether it’s race, religion, sexuality or gender, people are incentivised to claim some sort of oppression, regardless of the merits of their claims.

When we see the never-ending killings - whether it’s festival goers near kibbutz Re'im, commuters in London, shoppers in Stockholm or Christians in Nigeria - preceded by shouts of “Allahu Akbar”, we should reserve the right to question, ridicule and attack the ideology behind the barbarism. When we acknowledge that instructions calling for the murder of freethinkers, non-believers, apostates and homosexuals are deplorable vulgarisms, we are not being bigoted or phobic - we are being rational and moral.

There is no such thing as “Islamophobia”, just as there is no “Christianityophobia”, “Judaismophobia”, “Hinduismophobia” or “Buddhismophobia”. And just as no other religion in the West demands shielding from criticism, Islam deserves no special dispensation or privilege. Especially when its doctrines are the most inquitous, preposterous, laughable and stupid of them all.