Legitimizing Censorship: ‘Islamophobia Studies’ at Berkeley
By Cinnamon Stillwell and Rima Greene
“Islamophobia studies” is the latest addition to the academic pantheon of politicized, esoteric, and divisive “studies” whose purpose is to censor criticism of differing views by stigmatizing critics as racist or clinically insane. The University of California, Berkeley’s recent Sixth Annual International Islamophobia Conference—organized by the Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project (IRDP)—was titled, “The State of the Islamophobia Studies Field.” The fact that this “field” doesn’t yet formally exist in the U.S. may explain why speakers the first day of the conference barely mentioned it. As in years past, the conference featured victimology, academic jargon, and anti-Western rhetoric.
The audience, including a number of women in hijabs (headscarves), ranged from twenty to fifty students and faculty members. Because the conference was preempted by another event, it had to shift between two venues. Adding to the confusion, the schedule was made available online only days before. While IRDP director and Near Eastern studies lecturer Hatem Bazian bragged at the outset that the conference livestream had garnered “seven thousand” viewers in 2014, this year, visual and audio problems often rendered it unwatchable.
In his introduction, Bazian apologized for these mishaps before launching into a glowing report about the alleged state of “Islamophobia studies,” which, according to the IRDP website, “has witnessed rapid expansion in the past fifteen years.” He claimed that the field had “come of age” in that there is “no longer . . . a debate over whether we should use the term or not” or if “it is real or not,” except for “those who really don’t want to confront Islamophobia” or “don’t want to deal with the reality of what has taken place.”
In fact, there is no consensus on the existence of “Islamophobia” in the U.S., particularly in light of FBI statistics showing Jews experiencing the highest number of religiously-motivated hate crimes, with Muslims a distant second. Conflating legitimate criticism of Islam and the myriad human rights abuses occurring in its name all over the world with an irrational fear or prejudice towards all Muslims further obfuscates the matter.
Undeterred by such concerns, Bazian proudly noted the “broad range of fields” represented at the conference in order:
[T]o create as large a conversation as possible about Islamophobia with the intention of expanding the academic material that is available for individuals and classrooms.
He alleged that, “This is part of a series of conferences taking part internationally,” including Paris, London, the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, and eventually India. Then again, he said as much at the 2014 “Islamophobia” conference and, at the time, IRDP did in fact co-organize a number of such international ventures. However, at this juncture, a search yields no evidence for IRDP-connected international conferences this year.
Munir Jiwa, founding director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Islamic Studies and assistant professor of Islamic studies at the Graduate Theological Union, followed with the talk, “Frames and Scripts of Islamophobia.” Jiwa maintained that the U.S. and the U.K. view Islam through the “frames” of the September 11, 2001 and July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks, respectively, and lamented that, “This forgets the long history of Muslims in the West” and “Muslim contributions to Western civilization.” Referring to the alleged shortcomings of the latter—including, ludicrously, the Enlightenment—he made the ahistorical assertion:
Much like Colonial and Enlightenment ways of dividing the world: us and them. It’s as if the West just came up with all these great ideas on its own.
Jiwa complained that Americans see terrorism as “barbaric,” “out of the blue,” and “related to Islam, rather than the most warring nation in the world”—i.e., America. He was perplexed that, “the violence that Muslims do” is viewed through the prism of “religion rather than the socio-political context,” despite the fact that this perspective merely takes Islamic terrorism at face value. As for the Islamic State (ISIS), he found it “amazing that they think it has nothing to do with our being in Iraq,” as if every GOP candidate for president isn’t required to state his opinion on the invasion. He never mentioned ISIS’s atrocities, only “our responsibility in creating the context for that violence.”
Jiwa then denied the systemic problem of “Islamic patriarchy” by claiming that the “oppression” of Muslim women was viewed as “not because of geo-politics, [but] because of Islam.” He bemoaned that, “millions of our dollars are going into saving Muslim women,” an outdated allusion to the war in Afghanistan. Rehashing a joke he made at the 2012 “Islamophobia” conference, he suggested Afghan women save American women from the perils of the “beauty industry.” Turning to gay rights, he decried “how sexual minorities are deployed” as a test to determine “if Muslims are regressive or progressive.” Nowhere did he acknowledge the responsibility of Islam for the sorry state of women’s and gay rights in Muslim-majority nations, but rather blamed the West.
Later, Jasmin Zine, an associate professor of sociology at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, spoke about “‘Embedded Academics’ and the Construction of Islamist Youth Radicalism.” Based on her work “studying the 9/11 generation of Muslim youth in Canada,” Zine concluded that it was not jihadist ideology that led to their “radicalization,” but the “politics of empire,” “Islamophobia,” and the “racialized security industrial complex.” Engaging in a moral equivalency, she added the disclaimer:
I’m saying this not to create a space of innocence for violence or terror perpetrated by Muslim bodies, but rather to situate these acts within a broader historical context . . . such as the racial violence of colonialism, genocide, slavery, occupation, and apartheid.
On the subject of “embedded academics,” or those whose research aids the military or intelligence services in counterterrorism, Zine stated, “I’m interested in how academic research is used in service of neo-imperial goals.” Such goals, she contended, include “racial and religious profiling” and “using culture to apprehend for the purposes of domination and annihilation.”
Employing a term coined by Columbia University Iranian studies professor Hamid Dabashi in his book, Brown Skin, White Masks, Zine asserted that, “This work is supported by the ‘native informer,” adding that, “In Canada, we have Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji, Raheel Raza who fall into that category.” Singling out liberal Muslim-Canadian writers and activists for condemnation revealed the radicalism of her core beliefs.
So, too, did Zine’s avowal not to become an “embedded intellectual.” Referring to the Canadian government’s Kanishka Project which, as noted at its website, “invests in research on . . . terrorism and counter-terrorism,” including “preventing and countering violent extremism,” she admitted that:
I’ve been asked to apply for this funding and I generally haven’t because it’s offered by Public Safety Canada [the national security branch of the Canadian government], the same people who are profiling our youth, who are keeping migrants away from our borders, who are limiting immigration.
If contributing to the public safety of one’s own country constitutes an “ethical dilemma,” as Zine described it, her conception of citizenship is profoundly flawed.
While this year’s conference may have failed to usher in the dawn of an officially recognized “Islamophobia studies,” it wasn’t for lack of effort. Soon after, IRDP announced the latest edition of its politicized bi-annual publication, the Islamophobia Studies Journal. Perhaps following UC Berkeley’s lead, Georgetown University recently launched the Bridges Initiative, a project of the Saudi-funded Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding devoted to “protecting pluralism – ending Islamophobia.”
The subject is all the rage in the field of Middle East studies and throughout academe, which is doing its utmost to silence critics of the Islamic supremacism, systemic social problems, and total chaos plaguing the region. If and when “Islamophobia studies” becomes a reality, we can’t claim we didn’t see it coming.
Berkeley resident Rima Greene co-wrote this article with Cinnamon Stillwell, the West Coast Representative for Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum. Stillwell can be reached at stillwell@meforum.org.
Marty says
Islamophobia is oxymoronic and cannot be seriously studied, since it does not exist.
Other oxymoronic concepts are Naziophobia, Pedophilophobia and Cancerophobia,
Presumably this silly organisation will be studying them next
Cecilia Ellis says
I am more interested in the upcoming Berkeley course, “Islamic Global Atrocities,” the course that actually names the elephant in the room. Oh . . . that’s right . . . it doesn’t exist. What was I thinking? That would be provocative,
Allan says
I want to start a couple of new fields of study that I humbly submit would be far more fruitful fields of enquiry: Criticism-of-Islam-phobia and Islamophilia.
mortimer says
Muslims fear freedom…eleutherophobia.
Huck Folder says
@Allan:
Islamophilia-up, if you’re a pre-pubescent British indigenous girl.
Angemon says
I’ll just leave this here:
Paris – Charlie Hebdo, Jewish market
London – Terrorist bombings, Lee Rigby
Netherlands – Theo Van Gogh
Belgium – Anti-terror raids prevented muslims from murdering police officers in the street
Canada – Parliament Hill shootings
Switzerland – Last year, a terrorist cell planning a terrorist attack with explosives and toxic gas was dismantled
India – Around 80 million Indians killed since the arrival of islam.
Clearly those are places in need of explaining why one shouldn’t connect islam and terrorism, right?
gravenimage says
Very important point, Angemon.
Wellington says
Positioned against all this academic rot and nonsense is a very powerful ally for all those who know what Islam is truly about. That powerful ally is the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America. No greater enemy has Islam ever known—–or feared.
Darren says
Which is why many powerful and well connected people in this country are trying to get hate speech laws enacted. I read an alarming article on Breitbart or Drudge that said the vast majority of Democrats support hate speech laws. Not a good sign, and as the public indoctrination and social experimenting system, media, and the universities continue to pump out more and more brainwashed people, their numbers will only grow. I wish some bright person on the right could figure out a way to take back academia from the entrenched communists and socialists. This is a major problem, that leads to many other problems.
Wellington says
Yes, the First Amendment is powerful but it is not immortal and it could be slayed if many on the Left continue to misunderstand liberty. Such misunderstanding, I might add, is indicative of the totalitarian thinking that has crept into Leftist thought over the past half century.
Something else is going on here too and that is that those who won’t fight evil often hate those who do. Just look at the abuse Pamela Geller has taken as of late.
pdxnag says
Delegitimizing the First Amendment. You shall not be allowed to criticize your Islamic overlords, either before they seize control of the government and most definitively not after they do. Criticism of top Islamic dogs is also tantamount to criticizing Islam itself, just as the thugs say who today rule Islamic hell holes. Tyranny and terror is a feature, not a bug, under Islam.
(Isn’t it okay to definitionally isolate out the tangential religious nature of Islam so as to characterize it as substantially political and supremacist for First Amendment purposes or for proper application of laws criminalizing sedition?)
Wellington says
“Isn’t it okay to definitionally isolate out the tangential religious nature of Islam so as to characterize it as substantially political and supremacist for First Amendment purposes or for proper application of laws crimalizing sedition?”
Even assuming, pdxnag, that your clearly understandable proposal would be accepted, Islam would still be protected by the First Amendment just as Marxism, Nazism and other freedom-crushing secular totalitarian ideologies are. The key here is to comprehend that the First Amendment unreservedly protects belief but not necessarily action that occurs because of belief.
As I have noted many times here at JW, Islam in America is not the problem. The problem is Islam in America continuing to be looked upon in a positive way. Once Islam is properly characterized and thereafter viewed as negatively as other totalitarian ideologies (like Marxism and Nazism), it will still remain legal but any action based upon Islamic belief which contravenes American law would then be prosecuted to the maximum and, as well, Islam, just as with Marxism and Nazism, would henceforth be pushed to the margins of American society as a belief system that only the confused and the evil adhere to (nothing like scorn, contempt and mockery to put malevolence in its place). Should this occur, Islam would be no more of a threat to America than other totalitarian ideologies have been (and one of the great benefits of this “sea change” would be a halt to further Muslim immigraton to America).
But this is a big “should.” Very big. Time for a new Evil Empire speech by an American President who has as much moral clarity as Ronald Reagan had. Not there yet (and it most certainly won’t occur under Obama who, whatever his motives, is a fool about Islam as he is about so much else). Unfortunately, I see no one on the political horizon who could bring America “there.” Damn shame. But the neccesity for what I have asserted is not diminished by the void in leadership in our time. Indeed, such necessity waxes and not wanes all the more precisely because of the mediocrity or worse that characterizes American leadership from either major party at present.
Oh yeah, fluid times no doubt and times which embolden inquity and pose a threat to liberty. But then, when has liberty ever had a smooth sail of things? It is always fragile while enemies of it are always too plentiful. Islam, I submit, is a sterling example of one of the many enemies that has plagued and continues to plague just about the most precious thing mankind can possess——-freedom.
Knight of St. John says
Another extremely knowledgeable, informative and eloquent post Wellington. Thank you.
pdxnag says
I think that open expression of displeasure with Islam — to be considered a success — must result in mass apostasy, coupled with vigorous protection of those who do from those who do not.
Wellington says
Thank you for your gracious comment, Knight of St. John.
Wellington says
I agree, pdxnag, that mass apostasy is an essential feature of an overall success against the world’s most intolerant religion. And the fact that “vigorous protection” should exist for those who do defect from the great fraud which is Islam is testimony to just how awful the bogus and control-freak “master faith” really is.
Don McKellar says
Reading the headline, I was rather hoping that they were actually offering a course on “Islamophobia”. Now that would be absolutely remarkable and hugely entertaining.
I’m always amazed at how tiny the audiences are for these sham events — three or four dozen! — and yet the Islamophobia nuts hold such sway STILL with mainstream media and so many officials. No matter how many jihad murders, conspiracies, open criminal activity is revealed related directly to, and commanded by Islam! When you put it all together it becomes clear that the reason for their power and influence stems from massive amounts of money to buy influence — all coming from “secret” sources in the Middle East, of course.
jewdog says
The conference was poorly attended because there was a competing conference nearby on Cynophobia, organized by dogs. They too see themselves as victims, and are particularly upset at their poor treatment in Muslim countries. Dogs are people too, you know, and can be very loyal. Not all pit bulls are terrorists.
mortimer says
So…’Islamophobia’ is real, but the 100,000 jihad deaths since 9-11 are not real in the same way.
Hatem lives in his own ‘reality’.
gravenimage says
mortimer wrote:
So…’Islamophobia’ is real, but the 100,000 jihad deaths since 9-11 are not real in the same way.
……………………………..
They are just a “colonialist construction”, Mortimer.
mortimer says
The dubious ‘contributions’ of Islam to the West have been privateers, enslavers and invasions of Europe.
The ideas of a Spanish or a Baghdad ‘golden age’ have been debunked by further scholarship. They were overrated examples of what scholars in Muslim countries did before they were finally shut down as heretics.
jewdog says
Islamic culture was not always this crazy. Maimonides was court physician to Saladin in Cairo 800 years ago. Even though there were extremists, such as the Almohads of Spain that Maimonides had fled from, and the hashishin Shiite assassins defeated by Saladin, there were also many Muslim intellectuals who joined with other Muslims and Jewish scholars in constructive endeavors.
The Christian Crusaders were much worse to the Jews than the Muslims, and Jews and Muslims fought side-by-side against them.
The extremism we see today is probably the result of increased literacy and the availability of Islamic texts on the internet and in book form, allowing more people to learn and possibly emulate their violent, supremacist teachings. The Islamic State, as Raymond Ibrahim has pointed out, is a product of a similar process of textual fidelity that produced Protestantism. Perhaps someday there will be a Muslim Enlightenment as people learn more.
mortimer says
Maimonides fared better than most Jews due to being a famous doctor in demand. Others were not so lucky.
However, Maimonides knew of the sufferings of the Jewish community and wrote this about it. Although Maimonides is frequently referred to as a paragon of Jewish achievement facilitated by the alleged enlightened rule of Andalusia, his own words debunk the utopian view of the Islamic treatment of Jews:
“… on account of our sins God has cast us into the midst of this people, the nation of Ishmael [that is, Muslims], who PERSECUTE US SEVERELY, and who devise ways to harm us and to debase us…. NO NATION HAS EVER DONE MORE HARM TO ISRAEL. None has matched it in debasing and humiliating us. None has been able to reduce us as they have…. We have borne their imposed degradation, their lies, their absurdities, which are beyond human power to bear…. We have done as our sages of blessed memory have instructed us, bearing the LIES and ABSURDITIES of Ishmael…. In spite of all this, we are not spared from the FEROCITY of their WICKEDNESS and their outbursts at any time. On the contrary, the more we suffer and choose to conciliate them, the more they choose to act belligerently toward us…”
Maimonides lived it.
A Muslim enlightenment will merely be large numbers of Muslims realizing that Islam is harmful and false.
jewdog says
I’m familiar with that statement by the Rambam, which probably reflected his early negative experiences in Spain, but overall, things are clearly worse now than back then. Maimonides did collaborate with many Muslim intellectuals in Cairo.
Saladin also had several Christian physicians which he kept employed despite fighting the Crusaders.
Don McKellar says
“The Islamic State, as Raymond Ibrahim has pointed out, is a product of a similar process of textual fidelity that produced Protestantism. Perhaps someday there will be a Muslim Enlightenment as people learn more.”
We are in the age of Moslem Enlightenment. When you start with a text based on a relatively benign and positive philosophy at the core like the Christ character in the New Testament, you get a Christian Enlightenment. When you start with a text based on a violent supremacist and hate monger at the core like the Mohammad character in the Koran and hadiths, well, what do you think that Enlightenment will be like? There is only one way to go with true Islam, and that’s down.
Perhaps I should have said we are now in the Moslem Endarkenment. Because that’s what this is and that’s what the Islamic State represents.
mortimer says
What you get when the source text is light is an Enlightenment.
What you get when the source text is dark is a darkening, an obscuration, a shadow, an eclipse…an eclipse of reason and morality.
Islam is inverse morality. Islam is a total eclipse of reason and human decency.
Huck Folder says
mortimer:
Since ‘islam’ claims everything to itself, then rather than an eclipse, they are a black hole.
And that should be their umma symbol.
gravenimage says
jewdog wrote:
Islamic culture was not always this crazy.
………………………
Sorry, jewdog—I can’t agree. Every Islamic “Golden Age” were the death throes of conquered lands, before the last of the dhimmis converted, fled, were murdered, or succumbed to despair. (Just as the West if she ever fell to Islam would be presented as a “Muslim Golden Age” for a few decades).
And there will never be an “Islamic Enlightenment”—any more than there could be a Fascist Enlightenment or a Stalinist Enlightenment.
If any of the lands of Dar-al-Islam ever experience an enlightenment, it will be because they have jettisoned Islam.
dumbledoresarmy says
Jewdog – have you yet read Andrew Bostom’s “Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism”? Or Bat Yeor’s “The Dhimmi”? Or David Littman’s “Exile in the Maghreb”. Or Martin Gilbert’s “In Ishmael’s House”. Or Mark Durie’s “The Third Choice” which analyses the dhimma system and how it *works* and what it is intended to do, namely…**kill the soul** of the dhimmi.
And that was the system under which *all* non-Muslim communities were forced to try to survive, in every part of the dar al Islam, from the 7th to the 19th centuries. Under Islam, not one of those communities truly flourished; not when one looks very carefully at all the available evidence.
People who live or lived as de jure or de facto dhimmis are (and were) usually as unable / unwilling to see and name the full awful reality of their situation – the extent to which they are or were being subjected to Abuse, to deliberate Evil – as are many other victims of sustained, severe and hard-to-escape Abuse with whom we are familiar – abused spouses, abused children and prostitutes in thrall to violent sadistic pimps.
Many of the Jews who escaped from places like Islamic Egypt, North Africa, Iraq, Persia and Yemen and came to Israel are only now – or their children – starting to realize just how awful their situation – and that of their forebears – *was* when they lived as a non-Muslim minority within a Muslim society.
mortimer says
Hatem Bazian should debate Robert Spencer or Pamela Geller or David Wood if he thinks there is a real ‘Islamophobia’.
He no doubt realizes he would lose. Better to complain about how free speech is unfair to Muslim supremacists and misogynists so no one can cross-examine him and challenge his flimsy, fallacious arguments.
Hatem Bazian would be forced to admit that ‘Islamophobia’ is:
– an ad hominem fallacy of thought: mud throwing from a 7th century honour-shame culture, ‘poisoning the well’, ideological warfare
– a thought-terminating cliché conceived to bully and beat down critics of Islam, preventing them from applying critical thought to real difficulties
– a rehash of Mohammed’s slanders in the Koran, accusing his critics of mental illness or moral depravity or subhuman status as ‘the worst of beasts’
– a facile slander that claims ‘all critics of Islam are sick’, stupid, immoral or subhuman’
– Dirty Pool, cutting off the speech of the critic of Islam before they can finish a sentence. Muslims don’t play fair if they can play Dirty Pool
abad says
Isn’t the very word “Islamophobia” of leftwing origin? That’s what I thought.
I’m just surprised the LL at Berkeley is allowing these “studies” there.
JS says
They should have invited Robert Spencer and Pamella Geller as guest speakers.
Gary Fouse says
I was on the Berkeley campus a couple of weeks ago and decided to go see the Islamophobia Research and Documentation Center for myself. I figured since I am an adjunct teacher at UC Irvine, I could introduce myself as a researcher and ask to sift through their extensive files.
Alas, the IRDC is nothing more than your typical broom closet of a teacher’s office big enough for one person. Nobody was there, of course.
I guess they have all those files on microfiche.
gravenimage says
Thanks, Gary.
You may know that the “Zeytuna Institute”—supposedly the first “Islamic university” in the US—is pretty theoretical, too. It exists in a couple of offices at a Lutheran church a few blocks from UC Berkeley—lent by silly dhimmis—and has only offered a handful of classes over the years. No one, to my knowledge, has ever matriculated.
Richie says
I assume the Jews will be blamed for evgerything
Paul says
Everything’s a ‘Zionist’ plot, even places far away from Israel and
where they’d have nothing to gain from such things – that would
include the massacre perpetrated by devout Muhammadans in
Mumbai in 2008, the way in which Buddhists (BUDDHISTS!) had
finally had enough with rape, violence and murder – all committed
in accordance with devout Muhammadanism – in Burma, and finally
turned on them and gave them a taste of their own medicine, and
the sickening treatment of Christians in Pakistan. Muhammadans
are the only ‘people’ never to have done anything wrong ever.
Dan says
Actually, the term Islamophobia should addressed as it’s an example of how those who control the language, control the people.
1st, “dictionary.com defines “phobia” as: “a persistent, irrational fear of a specific object, activity, or situation that leads to a compelling desire to avoid it.”
But “freedictionary.com says:
1. A persistent, abnormal, and irrational fear of a specific thing or situation that compels one to avoid it, despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous.
Note the difference?
And as a side note, dictionary.com’s co-site, thesaurus.com, lists as alternative for “Conservative,” narrow minded, small minded, bigoted and intolerant.
Whereas “Liberal” is expressed in nothing but glowing terms, even though I’ve seen plenty of narrow minded, small minded, bigoted and intolerant liberals.
My advice is to avoid the co-sites as they seem to be example of “Controlling the language.”
In any case, just using the freedictionary.com’s site, take the “despite the awareness and reassurance that it is not dangerous.”
Well anything and everything CAN be dangerous; heights, small spaces, spiders and snakes, bacteria, whatever, but getting hurt by such is generally just bad luck as such things are not actively trying to hurt us.
Heights, small spaces, spiders and snakes, are not thinking entities that have DECLARED intent to harm us
Radical Islamists however, have declared such, multiple times, and have acted on such declaration.
Australia seems to have nothing but poisonous spiders and snakes, but during the months I’d spent there I never gave them a second thought, and in fact never even saw a snake, let alone a poisonous one.
But in a year and a half of sailing through Muslim waters and countries, we had to deal with four pirate attacks.
And the women in all those countries are treated EXACTLY as Sharia law says they are to be.
The term “Islamophobia” is a misnomer and it’s a classic propagandist’s technique those in the wrong use to confuse and deflect blame.
Probably a more accurate term would be to call radical Islamists; “everthingelsenotIslamintheworldaphobics.”
mortimer says
Islam has real problems. It is not ‘phobic’, but reasonable to discuss them.
The main ones are: 1 No Golden Rule 2 No free speech 3 No democracy 4 Jihad – holy war of supremacism 5 Honour killings 6 Taqiyya – sacred lying 7 Taqlid – group think 8 Misogyny – repression of women 9 Rape of kafirs as jihad prizes 10 Genocide 11 Ethnic cleansing 12 Al-Walaa wal-Baraa – Islamic apartheid 13 Torture 14 Plundering 15 Cruel and unusual punishments 16 Backwardness – stagnation 17 Violence against women 18 Slavery 19 Discriminatory Sharia law 20 Hatred of the arts 21 Pedophilia disguised as child marriage 22 Fifty generations of cousin marriage and genetic defects 23 Cruelty to animals 24 Extortion tax to humiliate disbelievers 25 No historic basis 26 Anti-intellectual obscurantism 27 FGM 28 Arab racism 29 Theocratic totalitarianism 30 Vigilantism.
‘Islamophobia’ is seven fallacies in one: 1) ad hominem 2) red herring 3) poisoned well 4) loaded words 5) exclusion of evidence 6) holy cow fallacy 7) overgeneralization.
Calling critics of Islam ‘insane’ is beside the point. The threat of Islamic terrorism is real. The character or sanity of the critic is independent from the truth of a criticism. Thus, the ad hominem fallacy is irrelevant. Facts remain true regardless of the messenger.
Just like ‘Islam is peace’, the ‘Islamophobia’ campaign will run aground when most people discover they are being misled with seven fallacies of thought. This complex fallacy is hard to debate, because it is basically name-calling.
‘Islamophobia’ is predominantly a ‘loaded word’ fallacy. Many Gays have fallen for it by using the emotion of sympathy, rather than reasoning it through to understand that Islam commands the execution of Gays (for being gay) and with unspeakable cruelty and horror!
‘Islamophobia’ is used for the exclusion of any evidence that will be damaging to the credibility of Islam. ‘Islamophobia’ is only a slur invented to silence non-Muslims who question Islam and Muslims.
Muslims use this slur to avoid responding to tough questions.
Paul says
It’s possible to be prejudiced against individual people who are
nominally Muslim, but within the unholy Muhammadan-‘progressive’
alliance they’ve devised this ‘Islamophobia’ nonsense. Aggressive
Muhammadans are ostensibly totalitarian ,whereas Cultural Marxists
haven’t yet come to terms with their own totalitarianism, and although
they talk a good talk about being against homophobia, racism, sexism
etc., they are in complete agreement with them. So, if you oppose a
piece of shit like Anjem Choudary who believes that gays should be
put to death. women should be dressed in ridiculous bin bags, and that
Israel should be wiped off the face of the map, they’ll accuse you of
being ‘Islamophobic’ (and by extension, ‘racist’, ‘neo-Nazi’ and ‘bigoted’).
This may appear a bit extreme or paranoid, but it’s a pattern I’ve
observed over and over again.
Paul says
If we’re going to be “inclusive”, “diverse”, “respectful”, “tolerant”, and all the
other Cultural Marxist buzzwords, shouldn’t we also introduce ‘Christianophobia
Studies’, helping to raise awareness about terrible things like beheadings, rape,
kidnappings, institutionalised second-class status etc? – Not to mention
‘Jewophobia Studies’, ‘Hinduphobia Studies’, ‘Buddhistophobia Studies’,
‘Apostateophobia Studies’ etc. Silly me, the only people ‘oppressed’ in this
Orwellian world are the oppressors themselves. I curse the Muhammadan
oppressors and their cowardly dishonest and mean spirited Cultural Marxist
lackeys. Rot in hell the lot of you.
Ranchman says
Let me see here…first, they attempt to JUSTIFY their atrocities toward others who disagree with them somehow, then they blame those atrocities on US! Next, they lie through their teeth about “muslim accomplishments” in the world and tell us, with all the fake sincerity they can muster, that we didn’t build that, they did! Gee, I wonder where they got THAT from! Any ideas, 0bama? I couldn’t even finish reading such drivel, it made my eyes shoot out blood. We all need to pay attention to what is happening, though, because the Marxists in Washington will use this and anything else they can get their grubby little hands on to bring down the rest of us.
Kenzo Amer Levesque says
We supporters of Robert Spencer absolutely must start using the word “kafirphobia” to counter the islamophobia campaign. Kafirphobia has caused more deaths and injuries and pain and injustice over the past few years than this supposed epidemic of Islamophobia.
Where are the courses on Kafirphobia in Arab Universities?
Jack says
Once again the Muslims are defenseless saps who were pinned into a Worldview by the colonialist & imperial White West that control the Media of production and generate revenue. The Muslims are mere victims. Thank G-d he didn’t run us through the 9/11 belief Arabs weren’t involved. You know I think for some of these fools they actually believe this crap.
R Cole says
Probably hold normalizing ISIS courses next!!
All sponsored by our friends in the UAE and Saudi.
This is no doubt the Islamic ‘enlightenment’!!
Paul says
At least the UAE have correctly designated CAIR and the Muslim
American Society as terrorist entities, unlike Barry Hussein Obama’s
administration – surprise, surprise.
Karen says
A quick review of the IRDP website reveals that CAIR is both a project partner, and on the advisory board of their publications. So much for the project’s credibility.
Their 2014 publication includes an entire section written by someone from CAIR, which details supposed financial connections. Claiming the “Islamophobia Industry” rakes in over $119 mil/year, the writer could only document $1.6 mil in salaries among 7 people it targeted, a rather paltry percentage of the total.
Most telling part; the writer claims that since CAIR’s research is limited, we must assume the situation is worse than they report. I guess that is what passes for research rigor.
http://crg.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/SP2014%20V2-Iss1-FINAL-Color.pdf
Funny thing; there was no mention at all of CAIR’s nefarious connections, nor of the shady activities of certain CAIR founders.
sheik yer'mami says
Looks like a CAIR takeover.
I’m surprised they didn’t hire Reza A$$lan for propaganda nonsense like this:
REZA ASLAN: The good news is that everything that is said about Muslims today — that they are not American, that they are fearful, that they don’t belong here. Everything that was said about Muslims today were said about the Jews in the ’40s and ’50s. Was said about Catholics at the end of the 19th century.
And those two religions through the passage of time, through the slow-building of relationships and the integration of story became very much part of the religious fabric. The same thing is going to happen to Muslims. The bad news is then we will find somebody else to hate.
Joseph says
The SCARY part is that the liberals/left is teaching our future leaders this dribble. Many of these kids will fall for this style of thinking because it is based on half truths bolstered by full out lies written by a supposed person “in the know”. They teach some real liberal/leftist BS at Berkeley, I know this for a fact from 1st hand experience. I am unscathed due to my curiosity for the truth and not willing to eat a pile of shit because it has sugar on it.
B.S.–bull shitter
M.S.–master shitter
P.H.D.–(bullshit) piled higher and deeper
profitsbeard says
What’s next? A course on Jim Jones’s Kool-Aid recipes?
Islam is a Death Cult.
Death Cult’s have no redeeming qualities.
And require no more study than to read the damned Koran, look at Islam’s horrific historical depredations, and then fight to rid the world of their grisly ontological plague.
Uncle Vladdi says
“Islamophobia” = Terrorists making honest fear of the terrorists’ terror tactics “illegal.”
DO WHAT WE SAY AND DON’T COMPLAIN ABOUT IT – OR ELSE!
gravenimage says
Legitimizing Censorship: ‘Islamophobia Studies’ at Berkeley
………………………….
Well, I can’t say this surprises me. This is my Alma Mater, and I have seen this coming.
The least objective and most nearly content-free course I took in four years was a Hispanic Studies class. I was appalled—even the slightest disagreement was bullied and shouted down and characterized as “racist” and “colonialist”. I can only imagine how many times worse this course will be.
More:
Munir Jiwa, founding director of UC Berkeley’s Center for Islamic Studies and assistant professor of Islamic studies at the Graduate Theological Union, followed with the talk, “Frames and Scripts of Islamophobia.” Jiwa maintained that the U.S. and the U.K. view Islam through the “frames” of the September 11, 2001 and July 7, 2005 terrorist attacks, respectively, and lamented that, “This forgets the long history of Muslims in the West” and “Muslim contributions to Western civilization.”
………………………….
The only presence of Muslims in the West was as brutal conquerers in places like Spain, Portugal, southern France, southern Italy, Sicily, Greece, and the Balkans. None of this was salubrious, and their presence only “contributed” in any positive way in the form of our resistance to their tyranny.
And Munir Jiwa launched the nasty radical-chic “Bay Area Intifada”, which uses the vicious hashtag, #WhyAmericaShouldNotBeSaved.
One of the Tweets reads, “On some real shit, If you’re not a “danger” to police and power – You’re essentially worthless in the grand scheme of things” and another “Pigs (i.e., police officers) are Haram”.
https://twitter.com/bayareaintifada
Muslims don’t want to see anyone protecting Infidels from them. If they can rope in useful idiots like far-leftists and anarchists to this stupidity, they are all the happier.
More:
Referring to the alleged shortcomings of the latter—including, ludicrously, the Enlightenment—he made the ahistorical assertion:
Much like Colonial and Enlightenment ways of dividing the world: us and them. It’s as if the West just came up with all these great ideas on its own.
………………………….
*Nothing* divides the world more than does Islam into “us’ and “them”. Believers and unbelievers are the central division, in terms of whether one is slaveowner or slave, rapist or rape victim, oppressor or oppressed, murderer or murder victim.
And the idea that Islam had *anything* to do with the Enlightenment could not be further from the truth—the two are philosophically as opposed as is possible.
More:
Jiwa complained that Americans see terrorism as “barbaric,” “out of the blue,” and “related to Islam, rather than the most warring nation in the world”—i.e., America. He was perplexed that, “the violence that Muslims do” is viewed through the prism of “religion rather than the socio-political context,” despite the fact that this perspective merely takes Islamic terrorism at face value. As for the Islamic State (ISIS), he found it “amazing that they think it has nothing to do with our being in Iraq,” as if every GOP candidate for president isn’t required to state his opinion on the invasion. He never mentioned ISIS’s atrocities, only “our responsibility in creating the context for that violence.”
………………………….
So—Jiwa is fine with slavery, mass-rape, and genocide. Odd that this would—supposedly—be the Muslim reaction to our foolishly attempting to bring democracy and the civilized rule of law to Muslims. I’m not sure I’d brag about that…
More:
Jiwa then denied the systemic problem of “Islamic patriarchy” by claiming that the “oppression” of Muslim women was viewed as “not because of geo-politics, [but] because of Islam.” He bemoaned that, “millions of our dollars are going into saving Muslim women,” an outdated allusion to the war in Afghanistan. Rehashing a joke he made at the 2012 “Islamophobia” conference, he suggested Afghan women save American women from the perils of the “beauty industry.” Turning to gay rights, he decried “how sexual minorities are deployed” as a test to determine “if Muslims are regressive or progressive.” Nowhere did he acknowledge the responsibility of Islam for the sorry state of women’s and gay rights in Muslim-majority nations, but rather blamed the West.
………………………….
In other words, oppression under Islam can be sneered at as constituting an actual problem—it will be interesting to see how this will go over in Berkeley. Probably all too many there will swallow this whole.
And the trope about how Islam saves women from the “beauty industry” is absolute crap. In fact, Muslim women are coerced to be attractive for their husbands—and abused or discarded if they are not—in a way that has never held in the free West. And women in the West can reject the “beauty industry” in a way that a Muslim woman in Afghanistan would never dare do the Burqa and other strictures on women.
75% of women in prison in Afghanistan are in for crimes of “Zina”—fleeing forced marriages, running away from abusive husbands, being accused of daring to speak to unrelated men. There is *nothing* like these horrors in the West.
More:
Later, Jasmin Zine, an associate professor of sociology at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, spoke about “‘Embedded Academics’ and the Construction of Islamist Youth Radicalism.” Based on her work “studying the 9/11 generation of Muslim youth in Canada,” Zine concluded that it was not jihadist ideology that led to their “radicalization,” but the “politics of empire,” “Islamophobia,” and the “racialized security industrial complex.” Engaging in a moral equivalency, she added the disclaimer:
I’m saying this not to create a space of innocence for violence or terror perpetrated by Muslim bodies, but rather to situate these acts within a broader historical context . . . such as the racial violence of colonialism, genocide, slavery, occupation, and apartheid.
………………………….
What crap—this is just more of blaming Jihad on the victims of Jihad. And right now, the only apartheid, slavery, and genocide is being perpetrated *by Muslims*.
More:
On the subject of “embedded academics,” or those whose research aids the military or intelligence services in counterterrorism, Zine stated, “I’m interested in how academic research is used in service of neo-imperial goals.” Such goals, she contended, include “racial and religious profiling” and “using culture to apprehend for the purposes of domination and annihilation.”
………………………….
Yeah—trying to prevent Muslims from murdering you is “annihilation”…sarc/off
More:
Employing a term coined by Columbia University Iranian studies professor Hamid Dabashi in his book, Brown Skin, White Masks, Zine asserted that, “This work is supported by the ‘native informer,” adding that, “In Canada, we have Tarek Fatah, Irshad Manji, Raheel Raza who fall into that category.” Singling out liberal Muslim-Canadian writers and activists for condemnation revealed the radicalism of her core beliefs.
………………………….
In other words, someone who so much as pretends to be a “moderate” Muslim is selling out. The only real Muslim is a violent Jihadist. Isn’t that something of a problem? Only for “colonialists”, apparently…
Also, look at the false positing of this as a racial issue—whereas, Muslims of any race are just as likely to be murderous in the name of their foul creed.
More:
So, too, did Zine’s avowal not to become an “embedded intellectual.” Referring to the Canadian government’s Kanishka Project which, as noted at its website, “invests in research on . . . terrorism and counter-terrorism,” including “preventing and countering violent extremism,” she admitted that:
I’ve been asked to apply for this funding and I generally haven’t because it’s offered by Public Safety Canada [the national security branch of the Canadian government], the same people who are profiling our youth, who are keeping migrants away from our borders, who are limiting immigration.
If contributing to the public safety of one’s own country constitutes an “ethical dilemma,” as Zine described it, her conception of citizenship is profoundly flawed.
………………………….
Yup…of course, the useful idiots in Berkeley may not see it that way…
Huck Folder says
“Jasmin Zine, an associate professor of sociology at Wilfred Laurier University in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, spoke about “‘Embedded Academics’”
Does that mean what I think it does?
gravenimage says
Probably so, Huck. In other words, academics who are actually *against* violent Jihad terrorism are denigrated as “embedded academics” (no doubt a sneering reference to journalists embedded with coalition military in Afghanistan or Iraq).
Notice that while Jasmine Zine criticizes “profiling our youth” and “limiting immigration”, she has *no* such criticism for Jihad terrorism.
And why would she? Here’s more victim-mongering, including the ridiculous assertion that random Muslim “youth” are being followed by agents with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service at the mall.
http://www.straight.com/news/sociology-professor-jasmin-zine-says-muslim-youths-are-often-misunderstood
She completely discounts any genuine threat from Muslims to Canada or any other Western nation.
Huck Folder says
Actually, I was thinking more of embedded as: ‘manly’ ISIS terrorists embedding their pubescent Yazidi victims.
Bad pun.
William Lucas Harvey Jr. says
“How the Term “Islamophobia” Got Shoved Down Your Throat”
https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2012/08/25/islamophobia-thought-crime-of-the-totalitarian-future/
https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/11/27/how-the-term-islamophobia-got-shoved-down-your-throat/
https://creepingsharia.wordpress.com/2010/12/13/the-%E2%80%98islamophobia%E2%80%99-myth/
Edgar Allen says
The real enemy to all mankind, is VERITOPHOBIA, or fear of the truth.
VERITOPHOBIA is a curse on mankind, at all times and in all places. Just like Islam. Just like the Koran.
homeros says
correctly: VERITASPHOBIA
Benjamin says
Franklin said is 1722
Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as publick Liberty, without Freedom of Speech; which is the Right of every Man, as far as by it, he does not hurt or controul the Right of another: And this is the only Check it ought to suffer, and the only Bounds it ought to know.
“This sacred Privilege is so essential to free governments …..
….http://franklinpapers.org/franklin//framedNames.jsp
More Ham Ed says
Studies in Islamorealism here at JW.
More ham! With cheese!
Bob Smith says
Good idea.
Get yourself $50K into debt for a degree in Islamophobia Studies.
The “students” should demand a tuition refund.
Peggy says
Our education system has been hijacked. Next generation will have no hope unless we stop this madness now.
Just wondering who will actually want a degree in this.
Green Infidel says
Someone wanting to work for a “human rights” organisation travelling to conferences and staying in fancy hotels (maybe through public money) persuading journalists, lawmakers and educators about the need to crack down on the worst thought crime there is – the criticism of the Religion of Peace?
A big career beckons – with both petrodollars and leftist government tax dollars in plentiful supply…
Peggy says
You’re right. We have plenty of traitors willing to sell their soul. For some reason I was looking at this from my perspective. Big mistake there.
Never lower your guard.
Jay Airahs says
Universities are full of hedonistic self- aggrandizing pot-head professors who claim to be atheist but routinely make special allowances for Islam while groveling to the nearest Muslim within earshot.
ploome says
my head is exploding
Kasey says
How about Berkeley setting up a course also in Islamorealty studies. They’d have so much current and past documentation to draw from, it might make it however a bit hard to know just where to start.
albert says
It would be a good idea if Berkley set up a study of ” Dhimmitude ” and ” Jizhya” in Islamic countries which is a very real problem for minority communities in for instance PAKISTAN, EGYPT, INDONESIA, IRAN, MALAYSIA basically every ISLAMIC country the very poorest in those communities forced to pay an extra tax simply for the ” priviledge” of being allowed to stay alive in a muslim country. People being denied very basic human rights, children being denied education, adults being denied jobs, homes being burned down, places of worship being burned down, children being kidnapped raped and murdered and the authorities turn a blind eye, these are everyday occurrences for minorities living in ISLAMIC countries, and those are the so called MODERATE countries, most in receipt of western aid, NOW we come to the extremist countries like LIBYA, IRAQ and SYRIA where all but the most extremist muslims are in danger of being beheaded be they man woman or tiniest of children, the scum there have no pity. Mustn’t forget Slavery, Slavery has been re-introduced by muslims, and not just Isis, general support for this policy has come from Imams in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia , Libya and Egypt.
Yes Berkley could do a very real service for these people if they set up a study into all this then Lobby the UNITED NATIONS for action on this lack of basic human rights throughout the Islamic world.
BTW whoever would have thought that with a black President of the United States slavery would be reintroduced to the world in the 21st century? and his reaction, he went playing golf !!!!!!
albert says
Just realised, looking at what I’d posted, Oh no ! That was Islamophobic, oh my goodness, how terrible of me, then a part of my brain says that’s the truth, then part of my brain says, well you’re not supposed to tell the truth !
You’re not. What not ever.
No, not ever, just when you’re talking about Islam.
Even if you’re just speaking the truth about some terrible event that just happened.
No not if it was done by a muslim that’s Islamophobic.
Well what about these extremists going about killing people, beheading little children, you have to tell the truth about that.
No that’s Islamophobic, they don’t have to be muslim to do that. It could be an old lady from down the street doing that.
What, Mrs Jones she’s a lovely lady, she wouldn’t do that, besides they’re all ugly hairy smelly bastards, swaggering around with machine guns they got off John Kerry, shouting Allah huakbarr, you can clearly see they’re all muslim.
You see that’s it, a classic case of Islamophobia , just because they walk around with machine guns killing people and chopping peoples heads off YOU set yourself up as judge and jury and brand them killers.
But they film themselves doing it.
Ahh but why do they do it , they could come from broken homes.
Yeah they probably broke em.
And how do you connect this with Islam ?
They shout Allah Huakbarr and say to the camera, we must all convert to Islam or die.
So that’s it, that is all the evidence you have to level against the” religion of peace” the most peaceful religion there has ever been on earth and you better agree or you’re a dead man , well quite frankly that wouldn’t be enough for John Kerry, that CERTAINLY wouldn’t be enough for the great Hillary Clinton and it’s not enough for me either.. you do realise you could be arrested….you’d better apologise.
I couldn’t be arrested for telling the truth.
Not yet, but it’s coming, you’d better apologise.
Who to ?
To Berkeley University of California, John Kerry, Hillary Clinton and all the muslims in the world.
What even the ones in ISIS who kill children and cut their heads off.
ALLEGEDLY !!!!!
It’s on camera.
You see, there you go with your Islamophobia again, just apologise…or else.
OK I’m sorry.
PS NOT REALLY.
duh_swami says
The proper study of Islamophobia by islamophobes is to read Quran and other Islamic literature and visit and read Jihad watch on a daily basis. Those who do that get an A in Islamophobia, sometimes an A+. The only thing to watch for is the uncontrollable urge to draw a cartoon of Mahound.
Always keep some paper and colors on hand just in case…
particolor says
A New Turkish Halal Toilet Roll will do for Bedding Artists !!:-)
particolor says
“Budding Artists” that is !! Before the Spilling Cops get here !! 🙂
Huck Folder says
I believe ISIS are bedding artists.
jayell says
“.. there is no consensus on the existence of “Islamophobia” in the U.S……”….I don’t think that there is any consensus on the existence of “Islamophobia” anywhere, except perhaps as an essentially fabricated and meaningless pretext amongst those who for some reason seem to think they have some right to push Islam down everyone’s throat. The sooner that this ‘con’ is universally exposed and squashed for good, the better.
Gufo says
Islamphobia does not exist as they mean it. The meaning of the term is “fear of islam”. A very healthy, morally just fear of what islam represents and sanctions. Am I afraid of pedophiles not being prosecuted because they’re muslims? Of course I am! Am I afraid of women’s genital mutilation being labeled as a cultural difference? Of course I am! Am I afraid of rabid dogs screaming and shouting death to everyone and everything, and out stupid governments not doing anything about it? Of course I am! Am I afraid of racism, genocide, anti-semitism, being labeled as a cultural difference? Of course I am! Am I afraid of these thugs brainwashing students to believe that the victims are the problem in islam? Am I afraid of double standards and muslims getting special privileges because their muslim gang is in the White House? Of course I am! We all should be, afraid of what it represents, but not afraid to fight against it!
Huck Folder says
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia
“Wolfram Richter, professor of economics at Dortmund University of Technology, told Sardar: “I am afraid we have not learned from our history. My main fear is that what we did to Jews we may now do to Muslims. The next holocaust would be against Muslims.” Similar fears, as noted by Kenan Malik in his book From Fatwa to Jihad, had been previously expressed in the UK by Muslim philosopher Shabbir Akhtar in 1989, and Massoud Shadjareh, chair of the Islamic Human Rights Commission [!] in 2000. In 2006 Salma Yaqoob, a Respect Party Councillor [Galloway’s crowd], claimed that Muslims in Britain were “subject to attacks reminiscent of the gathering storm of anti-Semitism in the first decades of the last century.”.
Malik, a senior visiting fellow in the Department of Political, International and Policy Studies at the University of Surrey, has described these claims of a brewing holocaust as “hysterical to the point of delusion”; whereas Jews in Hitler’s Germany were given the official designation of Untermenschen, and were subject to escalating legislation which diminished and ultimately removed their rights as citizens, Malik noted that in cases where “Muslims are singled out in Britain, it is often for privileged treatment” such as the 2005 legislation banning “incitement to religious hatred”, the special funding Muslim organizations and bodies receive from local and national government, the special provisions made by workplaces, school and leisure centres for Muslims, and even suggestions by the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and the former Lord Chief Justice, Lord Phillips, that sharia law should be introduced into Britain.
The fact is, wrote Malik, that such well-respected public figures as Akhtar, Shadjareh and Yaqoob need “a history lesson about the real Holocaust reveals how warped the Muslim GRIEVANCE CULTURE has become.””
“Professor John Esposito of Georgetown University calls Islamophobia “the new anti-Semitism”.”
But there never were 1.5 billion Jews. Jews don’t divide the globe into Dar al-islam and Dar al-Halb. Jews have NO plans to conquer the world, unless you believe the fake ‘Protocols’. Millions of fake refugee Jews are not flooding the CIVILIZED world. …
“Paul Jackson, in a critical study of the anti-Islamic English Defence League, argues that the term Islamophobia creates a stereotype where “any criticism of Muslim societies [can be] dismissed …” The term feeds “a language of polarised polemics … to close down discussion on genuine areas of criticism …” Consequently, the term is “losing much [of its] analytical value”.”
“Writing in the New Humanist, philosopher Piers Benn suggests that people who fear the rise of Islamophobia foster an environment “not intellectually or morally healthy”, to the point that what he calls “Islamophobia-phobia” can undermine “critical scrutiny of Islam as somehow impolite, or ignorant of the religion’s true nature.””
“In Australia, a Professor of Psychology from the University of Melbourne and a Professor of Sociology from the University of New South Wales have said that the term Islamophobia is used to dismiss opinions people dislike, by invalidating the people who hold those opinions. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said in January 2015 following the Charlie Hebdo shooting “It is very important to make clear to people that Islam has nothing to do with ISIS. [sick] There is a prejudice in society about this, but on the other hand, I refuse to use this term ‘Islamophobia,’ because those who use this word are trying to invalidate any criticism at all of Islamist ideology. The charge of ‘Islamophobia’ is used to silence people”
Jeff says
Our universities are an embarrassment.
Dean says
The Islamists want Jewish land (all of Israel after they have destroyed all of the Islamic Middle East, most of Africa and Europe), they want to wipe out other people and kill those who do not follow their particular version of Islam and they want to destroy history and replace it with their own Islamo-centric “narrative,” and they want to use the suffering of Jewish people and appropriate the Holocaust; refashioning antisemitism into the fake “Islamophobia” which does not exist. If it did exist, then Muslims, post-9/11 would have been evicted from America because the enemy is not merely a few oddball terrorists, it is a belief system that is endangering all people, including Muslims. The term “Islamophobia” is meant to silence criticism of mass murderers.
Sam says
If an educational institution allows for a course like that I would question everything else they teach. Academia, media, American public are clueless about everything I believe. Time for divine intervention as people can not be trusted with anything nowadays. I am disgusted.
Uncle Vladdi says
From:
http://sheikyermami.com/2013/05/17/un-pressures-germany-to-bow-to-hate-speech-hysteria/
Georgina May 18, 2013 at 8:09 am
Islamaphobia is alive and well, and should be banned.
Fear of islam causes people to permit islamic sex-slave gangs to operate, puts slamic critics in prison, permits parents to castrate small girls and cover their faces.
If we are to have a world in which ‘islamophobia’ is a crime, let us at least define it correctly:
Fear of islam = fear of violence caused by not submitting to violent islamic demands.
Now that IS irrational!
…
Liberals like to keep using the irrationally puerile argumentum tu quoque critical thinking logical fallacy – that: “islam isn’t evil because we all do it too!” – in order to avoid ever blaming anyone for anything, BY blaming “everyone!”
Liberals are disgusting, reactionary, cowardly traitors: “We have to let the violent criminals do what they want to us, or else they’ll do what they want to us anyway!”
Liberals (and all governments are statist gangsters) like moslems, believe in “everything goes” fatalism;
i.e: “Since every given crime’s going to happen anyway, we can’t deny it, so the best we can do, since have to allow it, is to accept, Submit to it, compromise with it and accommodate it! Whee!”
The only thing both militarists (moslems) and pacifists (liberals) can agree on, is that there should be no resistance to armed aggression! Victims must learn to Submit and become better victims!
duh_swami says
The title, Islamophobe, should be laughed at, not taken seriously. it only has as much power as we give it. To me it is a ridiculous claim, and should be ridiculed. Fear of Islam is a retardant…It is word magick and word trickery. The way to get over being tricked, is to get over being tricked. Most of the posters here have done that…
Westman says
“… censor criticism of differing views by stigmatizing critics as racist or clinically insane.
Check this out and tell us who is “clinically insane”
“..the Earth is fixed and does not move”, ” as for evidence based on reason, the Westerners present all kinds of theories, but we Muslims also have theories and brains”
http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/4787.htm
If we don’t agree with him, are we “Islamophobic” or just laughing ourselves silly?
When Science and Islam collide and Islam is “perfect(ly)” wrong what are we supposed to do? Ignore it? Change the science textbooks lie for political correctness? Are we “Islamophibic” if we point out that they have been taught a falsehood?
Start by correcting the Islamic Ideology to fit actual facts and respect will increase. Right now it is the realm of Cargo Cults.
gravenimage says
And just take a look at the poster for this event—it shows Muslims ‘under the microscope’.
But it shows a Muslimah and child—the Mohammedans *least* likely to be directly involved in Jihad terror. Now, she may well be teaching Jihad—but is less likely to be waging it herself.
Notice that they deliberately omitted any image of older Muslim “youth” or men.
The whole intent of this image is to imply that Muslims don’t actually present a threat, and that scrutinizing Muslims is hence both unnecessary and wrong—never mind the burgeoning number of Jihad plots and realized attacks against the West. You aren’t supposed to notice.
Westman says
Right on Graven,
I think we’re learning that Islam operates the Faux News of Religion.
dumbledoresarmy says
Well spotted.
Trust our resident visual artist to ‘decode’ the image.
What that boils down to is “human shielding”.
voegelinian says
“Now, she may well be teaching Jihad—but is less likely to be waging it herself.”
Teaching Jihad is waging Jihad — as surely as exploding, shooting, stabbing or beheading.
The former (Jihad of the Pen, Jihad of the Tongue) is calculated and deployed to enable the latter (Jihad of the Sword) to gain more of a foothold of eventually succeeding.
Arthur says
I wonder for what kind of job a degree in Islamophobia qualifies someone? Or dare I ask?
Senior official in the state department?
Personal adviser to the president?
Higher rank in the military?
Top job in a Saudi-funded PR firm?
or just another academic post in Islamophobia studies?
I can imagine it would be a red flag on any foodservice job. And the holder could probably not even sell cigarettes at the local gas station–or maybe just to kuffars. No wonder that gas station is always out of toilet paper!
rabrooks says
A prerequisite is that you must first define “phobia”, and then use it in a sentence!
dumbledoresarmy says
Jihadwatchers with access to the Berkely campus could have a lot of fun with a SWAT poster/ leaflet campaign.
Visit the campus and neighbourhood armed with multiple printouts of Lorna Saltzman’s brilliant “Are You an Islamophobe?” satirical pop quiz (once you print it out, draw in the little boxes for the Y/ N answers, and the box at the bottom for totting up your score). Here’s the handy link so you can print it off. (If you’ve never read it before, *do*. And make a copy and put it on your hard disk and on your phone, for future reference as required).
http://pajamasmedia.com/phyllischesler/2009/08/26/are-you-an-islamophobe/
PHYLLIS CHESLER: CHESLER CHRONICLES
August 26th, 2009 10:17 am
Are You An Islamophobe?
Take This Test To Be Sure…
Accidentally-on-purpose leave copies of this hilarious and education pop quiz tucked amongst the student newspapers and arty / avant garde magazines in the cafes frequented by faculty and students. Leave them on the desks in the ‘quiet study’ section of the library. Pop them up your sleeve and then – ‘palm them’ inside the covers of random textbooks in the library and in the second-hand student bookshop/s.
Tack them up on the noticeboards – official or unofficial – that are used to advertise student Events (such as amateur band concerts and student plays and meetings of student socieites) and share houses.
And here’s something else even shorter and sharper: a zinger of a bon mot from the late Christopher Hitchens.
“Islamophobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.” — Christopher Hitchens.
Now *that* would be one to chalk on pavements all around the campus. Or to print up on posters and stick to trees, posts and hoardings. Print it off on post-it notes and stick it inside every toilet-door on campus. Put it on little strips of paper like a fortune-cookie insert – I suggest a colour scheme of bright-green and white – and spread it about like confetti. Scatter it hither, thither and yon. Blitz Berkeley with it. And then stand back and see what happens.
Frankly, it’s banner-worthy.
Lynn says
Islamophobia: A word created by fascists used by cowards to manipulate morons.
jobardu says
Laws have to be applied equally to all. Muslims regularly denounce Jews, Israelis, Christians and Americans, among others. This gives them no legal standing to object to criticism of Muslims and suppress free speech.
The academic freedom and tenure of faculty, at least in the past, was based on this recognition. If academics support suppression of free speech, to say nothing of Antisemitism, misandry, and verbal abuse of others then they can’t logically claim that they are entitled to free speech. Doing so makes them authoritarian hypocrites, which in fact they are. I have begun withholding support form may Alma mater because I don’t want to endorse educating a bunch of Brownshirt fascists that will destroy the country and its hard fought freedoms. Academia needs more intellectual diversity, not less.