Hasan Azad (a doctoral candidate at Columbia in Islamic Studies) and Thomas Beale (an “e-health expert, platform technologist, and e-community builder”) recently discussed – in a solemn and turgid “exchange” for the benefit of readers of The Islamic Monthly – the momentous question of whether “Islamophobia is racism,” and further, whether the “attempt [by “Islamophobes”] to deny the racist nature of Islamophobia is of utility [to them] in extending a particular racial politics without risking the accusation of racism.” Hasan Azad’s short answers: Yes. And Yes. Of course, the more that the racists who are Islamophobes deny that racism has anything to do with Islamophobia, the more that proves, obviously, that they are racist Islamophobes, or Islamophobic racists, or something. Q. E. D. It’s at that level. Next question.
It’s an appalling but comical performance. Thomas Beale and Hasan Azad appear to be engaged in a debate, but in truth, they both take for granted and agree about the very things that most demand discussion. Both are given to breezy pronouncements (“One can’t deny the institutionalized racism in the US,” “I make the point – which is a historico-philosophical one—that European history is ideologically and epistemologically rooted in ‘Otherness’”), often using the modish vocabulary of what Azad calls “the academy,” full of attacks on such things as “post-colonial hegemonic discourse” that only a Hamid Dabashi or a Rashid Khalidi could stand or understand.
They assume that the Western, white world is guilty of “Islamophobia,” a term that’s everywhere in the perfervid musings of Hazan Azad, somewhat less so in the more subdued contribution of Thomas Beale – but which neither deigns to define. Now commonsense tells us that “Islamophobia” ought correctly to be defined as “the irrational fear of, and antipathy towards, Islam.” For Beale and even more for Azad, there is no possibility of a rational fear of Islam. For Azad, all fear of Islam is “irrational.” Not Al Qaeda, not the Taliban, not Al-Baghdadi or Al-Zarqawi, not the Islamic State’s beheadings and immolations, not Boko Haram’s kidnappings, not Osama bin Laden, not Nidal Hassan at Fort Hood , not Mohammad Atta, not Anwar Al-Awlaki, not Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook at San Bernardino, none of the Muslim participants in more than 27,000 separate acts of terror since 9/11 – none of these are mentioned by Beale or Azad as just possibly constituting reasons why some non-Muslims might now be displaying signs of what they inaccurately call “Islamophobia.”
What Beale and Azad are arguing over is not the existence of “Islamophobia” (they agree that it exists, and agree that it is wrong), but whether “Islamophobia” should be considered a form of “racism.” Beale says Islamophobia is not “anti-Muslim personal racism,” but rather, a “fear-of-Islam sentiment.” Of course there is no good reason for that “fear-of-Islam sentiment”; the problem is the ignorance of non-Muslims who “have never educated themselves on Muslim culture or Islam,” and when they express their (baseless) fears, they naturally “sound in some way racist.” And Muslims in turn feel “insulted” and become “reactive.” So what we have here is apparently a Failure to Communicate. What is needed is for non-Muslims to “bother to find out about Islam” (apparently non-Muslims still know so little, after all these years), so that they can “contribute to the kinds of conversations being had by modernizing Muslims” and “can articulate real problems (radicalization etc.).” Those last two words constitute Beale’s only recognition that there might just be something wrong – a “real problem” – not with Islam itself, but with that supposedly bizarre version of it that always appears after “radicalization.” It’s not much, but more than the nothing that Hasan Azad concedes.
Azad doesn’t think there’s any failure to communicate. He thinks “Islamophobia” is “racism” even though Islamophobes deny it – they would, wouldn’t they? — and he quotes favorably a paragraph from one David Tyrer, a “Reader in Critical Theory at Liverpool John Moores University,” which deserves to be given in full:
The attempt to deny the racist nature of Islamophobia is of utility in extending a particular racial politics without risking the accusation of racism, and in doing so it also centres problematic ideas of phenotypal racial difference, not by labeling Muslims as biologically bounded but by contrasting Muslims against other minorities who are held as such. It thus guarantees the continued hold of race as the basis for organising society and distinguishing between subjects, because it holds phenotypal race as the logical arbiter of whether racism can be said to exist. However, it also constructs Muslims as a lack — as lacking raciality.
No, I didn’t understand all of it, either. But I gather that Hasan Azad had no trouble with the mumbo-jumbo, for he confidently explains: “In other words, by denying that Islamophobia is racist, Islamophobes both reconfirm a politics of racism, where society is organized hierarchically by ‘race’ (which, let us remember, is a modern Western construct that was historically, and till now, used to categorize differences among peoples for the purposes of ruling over them by white Europeans, the master race…)”
Now do you feel better? But you already knew that most of world history is all about white Europeans and their belief that they constitute a “master race” – which is why they had to “construct” the idea of “race” in the first place. And now those diabolical Europeans, racist Islamophobes all, deny that Islamophobia can be racism, because Muslims, they claim, are not a race. Europeans “make disparaging comments regarding Muslims and Islam,” claim that Islam is “backwards,” that Muslims need to “modernize,” that they are “irrational,” that their religion is “inherently violent.” (Where do those Islamophobes get these crazy ideas?) Europeans even seem to believe in the “intrinsic superiority of Western theories of knowledge, of Western politics, of Western ideas and of Western ethics.” And if that kind of criticism isn’t the “racism” of a would-be “master race,” I don’t know what is. I’m only surprised that Hasan Azad neglected to name-drop Adolf Hitler, Houston Stewart Chamberlain, and Simon Legree.
To bring us back to reality: Islam existed for 1350 years before anyone brought up the notion that Muslims constituted a “race.” And the only people who did so are the hasan-azads of this world, in order to attribute the claim to, and thereby blacken the names of, those they call “islamophobes.” Now those putative “islamophobes” know perfectly well that Islam makes a universalist claim. It is open to all, and unlike Hinduism or Judaism, is not limited to a particular people (though Arabs have pride of place). We’ve all seen the photographs of Mecca during the hajj, where every racial group is represented. And in the benighted West, we know that Muslims no more constitute a “race” than do Christians. But Azad refuses to let this go.
Beale agrees with Azad that there is a real problem with “Islamophobia.” It’s just that he sees this “phobia” as having “far more to do with fear of a radical [violent] ideology than any ‘race’ problem.” That “radical [violent] ideology” is a threat to those “parts of the Western tradition” that “most educated people want to keep” – “liberty of speech and thought, the rule of law, human rights, secular democracy” – and he implausibly describes these achievements of the Western world, attained over two millennia of struggle, as “not Western, other than historically” (what does that mean?) and insists that “similar thinking can be found in other cultures.” Which other cultures does Beale have in mind? If one of those “other cultures” is that of Islam, it would be helpful to have him forthrightly state that, so we could then ask him to expatiate upon this “similar thinking” about “freedom of speech and thought, the rule of law, human rights, secular democracy” in Islam. Don’t we have a right to be provided with the textual and historical evidence that would support such an astonishing claim?
Here and there Beale does hint that there may be some slight validity to Western worries about Islam. For example, he says that when “one group of people” (i.e., Christians) perceive “another group from countries as diverse as Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Indonesia” whose “members self-identify as ‘Muslim’ prior to any other category,” they – those Christians – “start to put them [the Muslims] in a category like Christian Evangelicals…and… start worrying about fanaticism.” So when Muslims “self-identify as Muslims,” they put Beale in mind, in their potential for fanaticism, of….Christian Evangelicals. Now think of all the acts of terrorism and mass killings by Muslims. Then think of all the similar acts for which Christian Evangelicals have been held responsible. Compare. Contrast.
The “exchange” between Thomas Beale and Hasan Azad includes a segment on that still-fashionable academic topic, “Otherness.” For Azad, Europeans fear Muslims because their own history is “ideologically and epistemologically rooted in ‘Otherness.’” Apparently those Europeans have always needed an “Other” to fear and to hate. For Azad, the fear of Muslims has nothing to do with the Muslim conquests in past centuries, or with the Muslim invasion of Europe at the present time, but everything to do with the psychic needs of Europeans themselves. Hasan Azad doesn’t appear to recognize – he says not a word about – how the conflict between Believer and Unbeliever sits at the very center of Islamic teachings. Nor is history his strong suit. There’s not a word about the Muslim armies that conquered the once-Christian East, and North Africa, and subjugated its peoples, went into southern France and, while turned back at Poitiers by Charles Martel, managed to hold onto the Iberian Peninsula for 800 years, won the Christian territories in Anatolia and southeastern Europe, and transformed the Byzantine (Greek Orthodox) Empire into the Ottoman state where Muslims rule to this day, while for more than a millennium, by sea Muslim corsairs from North Africa ravaged the coasts of western Europe, raiding villages as far north as Ireland and even, on one occasion, Iceland, while the Ottoman Turks, having carried their conquests ever deeper into eastern Europe, sent their armies into Hungary and, on two occasions, managed to lay siege to Vienna. Azad’s failure to mention any of this suggests he considers it all irrelevant; for Hasan Azad, Europeans needed someone to play the role of “the Other,” and there were the Muslims, just waiting for their close-up.
A few years ago, in a piece posted at The Huffington Post, Hasan Azad bemoaned the fact that Muslims were beginning to feel unwelcome “in their own country” (America) because “[Americans] are who we are in the truest deepest sense, as a result of our coming to know each other – in the truest, deepest sense.” I allow myself to believe that in reviewing his vaporings on “Islamophobia” and “racism,” I have come – in the “truest deepest sense” — to know something about what makes Hasan Azad tick, and I’m sorry to say it has little to do, in the truest deepest sense, with these United States.

DFD says
So what else is new?
ECAW says
If you didn’t get that, my mate Craig will explain about “racism without race”:
https://craigconsidinetcd.com/2015/11/18/muslims-arent-a-race-so-i-cant-be-racist-right-wrong/
KrazyKafir says
In America Christianity is a non-white majority religion. So why are the Islamophobes not anti-Christian if race was really the factor?
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/poll-white-christians-population-216154
jewdog says
Reading this just makes me more adamant than ever that my tax money NOT go to liberal arts programs, but strictly to technical, professional and vocational programs where the students learn real skills and can start paying taxes once they get real jobs.
If people are paid, well paid, to simply spout off any nonsense, than they will. Please don’t make me contribute to that corruption.
Lucretius says
It’s revolting, and we will be made to. And the remarkable thing is, even as all the mass bogus studies students embark on their post college years as unskilled life failures, how few of them will repent and embrace self-responsibility, but think their professors’ talk of victimhood and power structures were confirmed by experience. So mentally and emotionally polluted are they that the poverty caused by their life decisions will bring cries for more welfarist redistribution. Precisely the Democrat selling point and why they are so eager for more ‘free’ (left-bureaucracy controlled and tailored) education, the better to strip YOUR young ‘uns minds from your influence.
Richard Paulsen says
Very cofusing to find a book in the bookstore criticising Ayaan Hirshi Ali, being an islamophobe. By a popular gay person.
.” God´s on our side.” “God´s on ourside.” Enemies claiming God is on each side. The same claims historically as nowadays.
On which side then is God? Better being on the winners side before the God of the enemy rules over you.
Jay Boo says
Islam will always find someone to hate
tlc says
No, how’s about YOU are nuts.
kilfincelt says
I have educated myself on Islam. It is a theocratic ideology and I want nothing to do with it. My sentiments are not based on racism because Muslims are of all races, but on an ideology that permits lying to promote it, abuse of women, intolerance toward non-Muslims, abuse of children, theft, murder, and war among other things. Common sense tells me that Islam along with its Shar’ia law is inferior in every respect to the mores and values of western civilization. This doesn’t mean that I am anti- Muslim as many Muslims suffer because they don’t believe every part of the ideology. However, reform would seem to be extremely difficult because of ignorance within the poorly educated Muslim countries as well as people like Azad and Beale who want to cover up the truth about Islam by calling people Islamophobes to prevent any truthful discussion from occurring.
Angemon says
Oh, he’s one of those people – incompetent engineers who try to prop themselves up by adding layers of buzzwords to pretend they’re experts at… well something – just look at all those nice sounding buzzwords!
Wellington says
Hugh Fitzgerald reasons the way academics did some half century ago or earlier. Hasan Azad and Thomas Beale reason the way academics to today. In microcosm, the descent is crystal clear here.
Wellington says
“….do today” and not ….”to today”
Chris says
A phobia is defined as an “irrational fear”.
Given that the vast vast majority of ideologically-driven violence against civilians in the world today is being done by followers of Islam, in the NAME of Islam, it’s architect Muhammed, and it’s deity Allah, pointing to religious scripture in the Qur’an and it’s interpretive cannon the Hadith, opposition to Islam hardly seems irrational. Quite the contrary.
If there is a phobia at work it seems to be an Islamic indoctrinated phobia of all things NOT Islamic – or not Islamic “enough” in the eyes of Islam’s most fanatical adherents. A sort of Islamophobia-phobia, or infidelophobia.
It bears frequent repeating because it is true – while there may be Muslims who are personally peaceful and tolerant, Islam itself is not by any stretch of imagination a peaceful much less great religion. It is a dark oppressive ideology wrapped in the trappings of a religion – one might correctly say cult – that is fundamentally incompatible with Judeo-Christianity and most other religious belief systems, Western culture, and in fact any society which wishes to call itself civilized.
Islam is a pirate ideology born and sustained by conquest and enslavement. It cannot be otherwise, no matter what one may wish. It assimilates, it does not create, enhance, or advance anything except itself.
Norger says
Very well said.
eduardo odraude says
The irony is that Islamic doctrine mimics race by making Islam involuntary, through the death penalty for apostasy, and by forbidding criticism of Muhammad and Allah. Thus many Muslims are part of Islam in the way a person is part of a racial group, without any sense that there is a choice in the matter. Insofar as “race” has any reality at all, it is a physical reality over which we have no choice. Islam by contrast is an ideology and ultimately it is a choice for which people should be held accountable if that choice threatens and hurts others — which it does.
Jack Diamond says
Islamic teaches we are all born Muslim, no choice in that matter. So it is involuntary. If we are not Muslim now we are either in ignorance or in rebellion, renegades, and require “correction” or punishment. All the Biblical prophets were Muslims. The only religion before Allah is Islam (3:19) no other is acceptable (3:85). This is how Muslims deal with the “Other.”
Hasan Azad even blames the “misunderstanding” of Sharia by the likes of the Islamic State, not on Islamic fiqh, not on the dhimmi institution of the early Caliphs, but on the modern Western state. On “European” legal codes, not Islamic ones!
“The historic sharia was not punitive…The purpose of premodern sharia was to bring about communal cohesion, through local qadis or judges – who were not affiliated with the state in any way – and their mediation between and for aggrieved parties. In premodern times, the punishments we are now conditioned to instantly associate with sharia were rarely, if ever, carried out.
To repeat, sharia was a fundamentally ethical institution, whose central purpose was the maintenance of social harmony, based on love and trust within and between communities and towards God.
So what are we witnessing today? As a result of the colonial dismantling of the historic institutions of sharia – which included the waqfs or endowments and the madrassa or religious schools – and their replacement with European legal codes, sharia ceased to be studied and practised in the manner it had been for centuries previously.
Thus sharia becomes a system of punishment where the most extreme punishments are meted out, or are dreamed of being meted out, en masse, with no sense of differentiation and contextualisation, as was the case with the premodern sharia… These groups {ISIS, Boko Haram, Taliban} are not primitive barbarians seeking to return to a primeval age – despite their wanting to return to what we now know is a fictitious past. They are fundamentally modern, and they are products of modernity. Therefore their thinking is inescapably modern and post-colonial – in the sense of being unconsciously inflected by the history of colonialism.”
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/modernity-sharia-nation-state-201471011222927143.html
(that practice of sharia “for centuries previously” has been chronicled by Bat Ye’or, in sickening detail}
The crimes of sharia imposing states? Blame it on the West. Real Shari’a is something wonderful.
Try it, you’ll like it. The Innocence of Muslims must be proclaimed from the academic rooftops. Or else.
So says Hasan Azad, no doubt a future Secretary of State or head of Homeland Security.
No Fear says
Naziphobia is racism against white people. 🙂
eduardo odraude says
It is reasonable to hate and fear totalitarianism, and four factors argue that Islam is totalitarian.
1. There are dozens of news stories about major public institutions and public figures, journalists, artists, comedians, teachers, actors, etc., who admit they self-censor on the subject of Islam because of death threats from Muslims. See http://www.quotingislam.blogspot.com
2. At the same website, see the link on “Human Rights and Islam.” It goes to data from a respected human rights organization that shows the worst region in the world in terms of human rights is the Middle East/North Africa, the core Islamic region.
3. Polls of Muslims globally show that violent totalitarian values are mainstream in many parts of the Islamic world. For example:
Pew Research (2010):
84% of Egyptian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
86% of Jordanian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
30% of Indonesian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
76% of Pakistanis support death the penalty for leaving Islam
51% of Nigerian Muslims support the death penalty for leaving Islam
4. The core Islamic texts include as core elements Islamic totalitarian expansionist features. Again, see at the quotingislam website links to such core texts in a university database.
Those four factors dovetail to show “Islamophobia” and concerns about the spread of Islam are reasonable.
marble says
Christians and Jews are victims of racial kaffirphobia.
KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM says
“Hasan Azad (a doctoral candidate at Columbia in Islamic Studies)”…It took me 2-3 weeks of part time perusal of Jihad Watch, Gates of Vienna (GOV), Sultan Knisch (Daniel Greenfield), DR. Bill Warner, Dr. David Wood and several other truthful, informative sources on the evil of islam and its pervert prophet mad m0-hamhead to comprehend the systemic evil of islam…and this assclown put in years of effort with the net result of a PHD in Taqiyya?
Jay Boo says
Islamophobia is not racism.
Islamophobia is — HYPOCRISY-ism
Jay Boo says
correction
accusation of Islamophobia is — HYPOCRISY-ism
Mark Swan says
One of the characters spouting this nonsense is working on a Doctrine
In Islamic Studies:
Putting a two dollar title on a two cent field of study …He surely sees the nonsense He
is studying as a means to create a niche job…something He can develop into a popular
money making ploy…as long as the bottom does not fall out of the Muslim promoting
market…He should do ok.
Demsci says
Hugh Fitzgerald reasons logically and rational and it’s a pleasure to read his articles.
But I want to start right out with what I perceive as the main obstacle for getting a majority of Westerners (51 % or more) to finally start fighting back against Islam.
It is the question if we may or may not “Paint all Muslims with the same brush”. Time and again discussions founder on this incredible BIG NONO, which I experience time and again in my own circle and see reflected in so many articles.
And it means that Azad and Beale have an easy way in their stupid deliberations. They KNOW the Western Majority simply will not let ALL MUSLIMS BE GUILTY. It is the excuse, the discussion-stopper, the stopper of listening, compromising; YOU CANNOT PAINT ALL MUSLIMS WITH THE SAME BRUSH.
Of course the Azads of the world complement this security with the absurd notion that the Islamic State is NOT ISLAMIC and the president of USA, France + prime-minister of UK + so many other politicians echo him. If not with the absurd libel that Israel + America are behind the rise of Islamic State.
And Azad + Beale have it easy, because of this abovementioned Western attitude. They will not even admit Islamic State has the true Islam, but anyway, they will at least, and with much success due the abovementioned western attitude, paint Islamic state as a tiny minority (you know the drill).
And for what??? do we have to antagonize the majority of our own Western people?? For giving Islam the dignity and honor of being highly mono-interpretable, thus CLEAR? With a high clarity-level as Islam claims? Sent from God, written by highly intelligent and charismatic leader, Mohammed? No.
Do we have to abide by what the Islamic schools of thought UTTER, when we confidentally can portray as human, not divine, interlopers??? And Muslims know it!
Islam is not capable to be mono-interpretable, it cannot now be changed anymore and it is replete with contradictions and gibberish. You see the CLEAR verses, but in the big picture they are CONTRADICTED.
If we compare Mohammed to a presidential candidate, we would immediately see his (If he ever existed) many inconsistencies, hence his monumental UNCLARITY in Quran, Hadiths, Sira
And that is what matters, NOT how all Muslims interpret Islam, but it’s very unclarity, combined with the undeniable mountain of evidence of the existence of bad and detrimental interpretation of Islam.
But then we can say we are afraid of RADICAL Islam, that counters Azad effectively. Because then there MUST of necessity be ANOTHER interpretation. And that means CHOICE. And we can demand such CHOICE from Muslims for entry and residence in Democratic Nations. And ONLY from Muslims, for good rational reasons, for the rational majority to swallow.
So the vast majority is innocent? peaceful? So, we can ask, why in heaven’s name dare we not ask them to choose the democratic side against the totalitarian supremacists? Why can\t they choose that , why, why, why?
And Muslims condemning Islamic State is completely useless, because they no doubt condemn us ALSO, or even MORE. No, saying the Islam is Multi-interpretable gives them a division, and a choice.
When we consider Islam as wonderfully clear and mono-interpretable we will keep our own majority eternally antagonized. And for what; Islam is NOT CLEAR, Obsolete, contradictive, incomplete and we can show it to the majority!
Singh the Sikh says
Why is there no Hindu-phobia?
Or Christian-phobia?
Or Sikh-phobia for that matter?
Why no phobia about Buddhists?
Why is there only talk about islamophbia? Why, of all religions, only Islam suffers from this problem?
Why aren’t young people from any of the other religious communities being radicalized?
Again, why are only Muslim youths in danger of radicalization, in just about each and every country that have settled in,but never anyone from other religious groups?
It’ll be good to get some answers to these very perplexing questions.
Mirren10 says
What *excellent** points, Singh !
I have printed out your questions, and shall ask them the next time I’m confronted with some dhimmi tool moaning about poor muslims being subjected to ‘islamophobia’.
Mockingjay says
Yes, you make a real excellent point – and hey, I ‘ve got an idea myself: why don’t we islamophobes start reacting really, incredibly, completely offended every time someone accuses us of racism from now on? It is a real insult you know. Instead of going “ah well” every time this accusation is made, like I tend to do, why not get REALLY “Ben-Affleck-defending-islam” – offended when someone is even TRYING to make the point that criticism of islam equals or originates from racism. I think it could be real interesting to try this strategy, and I truly believe that we all should stop taking these accusations for granted.
Demsci says
When so-called “Islamophobes”, or counterjihadists, maintain that there is “Islam” and only “Islam”. Like in one true version of it, and that version clearly detrimental in diverse ways, then it becomes easy for people like Azad and Beale to stir up against them, AND get the support of,
the majority of Western media, citizens and their chosen politicians (who cater to a majority).
The counterjihadists loath and fear Islam and see much Taqqiya, with the intent of apologists to mislead the majority. And at best they see Muslims ignorant of their own religion, which has, according to Muslims AND Counterjihadists both, only ONE TRUE version.
This is why Muslims will only CONDEMN Islamic State but will never side with Democratic nations against Islamic State and also why counterjihadists see so many Muslims as potentially on the side of Islamic State; because in the end, with only ONE Islam, Muslims have no choice.
But there can be Islam-critics who say that Islam’s greatest fault lies in its unclarity, ambiguity, multi-interpretability by Cherry-pickers. And that Muslims have choices. And that before Al Ghazali and the 4 schools of thought in Sunni-Islam and the 4 in Shia-Islam there were the free thinking Mutazilites or so and the gates of Ijtihad were still open then.
The counterjihadists (and many Muslims too) play all-or-nothing, but the majority of Westerners will never countenance any kind of “painting all Muslims with one brush”. This majority tends to call the counterjihadists who choose all-or-nothing bigots and yes, even racists. With their position counterjihadists make the efforts of the Hasan Azads easy.