“Defining Islamaphobia makes it virtually impossible to avoid interpretations that encompass any criticism of Islam. A better term would be ‘anti-Muslim’, which makes clear that the view or action is against Muslims as individuals, rather than Islam as a religion. Likewise, I would be happy to use the term anti-Christian where appropriate.”
While this is true and accurate, jihadis and their allies and enablers have for years smeared foes of jihad violence and Sharia oppression of women as “anti-Muslim,” and so that term is hardly less problematic than “Islamophobia.”
“As a Christian I’m worried that Islam is above criticism,” by Tim Dieppe, Premier Christianity, November 4, 2022 (thanks to The Religion of Peace):
I was pleased to see the government has finally dropped plans to adopt an official definition of Islamophobia. Communities secretary Michael Gove recently told a debate on extremism that it “would be very difficult to get a precise definition,” adding: “I think there are dangers if a university or another organisation, which should be the home of free debate, uses a definition like that to police what people can say.”
Pressure to adopt a formal definition first mounted in 2018 with the publication of a report by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) entitled Islamophobia Defined. They proposed the following definition: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
As I pointed out at the time, this definition is hopelessly vague and highly problematic. Islam is not a race. Criticising Islamic culture, beliefs or practices is not racism. According to this definition, saying that UK law is preferable to sharia law would be Islamophobic, since sharia law is an expression of Muslimness.
RELIGION VS RACE
The concept of Islamophobia plays into a victim mentality that society should not encourage. As a Christian, I do not want to promote the concept of ‘Christianophobia’ despite the fact that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world today. If we officially define Islamophobia, surely this opens the door to every other religion and minority group demanding their own corresponding definition – but is this really what we want?
Defining Islamaphobia makes it virtually impossible to avoid interpretations that encompass any criticism of Islam. A better term would be ‘anti-Muslim’, which makes clear that the view or action is against Muslims as individuals, rather than Islam as a religion. Likewise, I would be happy to use the term anti-Christian where appropriate….
Wellington says
If there’s a more bogus term than “Islamophobia” in our time, I don’t know what that term would be. Right up there with other spurious nomenclature like “climate-denier” and “homophobia.”
Notice that virtually without exception derisive terms like Islamophobia, climate-denier and homophobia all come from the Left (and Muslim allies too in the case of Islamophobia—but notice not “nearly” so much with homophobia). This is not a coincidence. The Left misuses language as it misuses facts in general in order to advance its agenda.
For the Left facts are optional. Ideology is paramount. Same with Islam. This is ALWAYS a characteristic of totalitarian thinking, whether modern Leftism, Islam, Nazism, Marxism, et al.
Take over language as Orwell certainly noted, and do it successfully, and you are at least half way to achieving your goals. Here totalitarian ideologies excel all the while staid speakers of the “mere truth,” for example conservatives in the West in our era, are again and again to be found “behind the eight ball.”
What is needed? Why, kick-ass speakers of the truth. No prisoners and all that. Trump has shown the way (though his own ego continues to be his own worst enemy). The former Pope, Benedict XVI (still alive I would note) also spoke truth to power. As did Winston Churchill. Ronald Reagan. Margaret Thatcher. Et al.
Unless stalwart guardians unafraid of the truth speak their minds plainly and at the same time denigrating and mocking falsehoods posing as truth, then to this very extent (or lack thereof) will truth perish and other good things like liberty and equality under the law. So much hangs in the balance right now for all of mankind. So much.
gravenimage says
+1
Westman says
“ISLAMOPHOBIA IS NOT FREEDOM”, contains the truth that, “ISLAM IS NOT FREEDOM”. Just knock off the phobia and be resolute.
The future victim holds up half of that sign in the photo as a fellow traveler, much in the manner of Trotsky, thinking their long term interests are the same while the opposite carries the symbol of oppression and conquest. This photo image should be transferred to a permanent bronze placard in the White House to record the foolishness of the past to future generations.
When are going to stop apologizing to a religion that cannot improve the lives of its own followers yet declares its intention to rule the world by force?
Wellington says
You posit the query, Westman, when is the West “going to stop apologizing to a religion….” This is a perfectly reasonable concern of yours expressed in your hypothetical.
Optimally, I hope tomorrow, better if it had been yesterday, or even far better twenty years ago.
But, worst case scenario, I fear NEVER because I have to consider that the West has not gone into temporary stupid mode but permanent stupid mode. Just look at all the clowns and jokers, with few exceptions, now in charge of the West in order to confirm this dismal prognostication.
I’m sure you’ll understand why I so very much hope I am wrong here. Would relish being wrong here. Never more so.
somehistory says
Some people hate Truth. Whatever the subject, but especially those Truths that are “self-evident.”
mozlums of the oic invented the fake term for the Truth about their evil belief system in order to latch onto the other ‘phobia’ regarding homosexuality.
Opposing homosexuality is not a “phobia,” but the word was used against those opposers until it stuck and became a ‘thing’ to call…and even prosecute in court…those people who don’t like hearing, seeing, and are refusing to support, declaring its negativity, etc.
The mozlums of the oic saw how they could create a phobia out of thin air and make people afraid to speak the Truth about their evil, demonic, filthy, depraved, system of lies.
It is not “irrational”…fear or otherwise….to oppose the evil of islam and it certainly isn’t a “phobia” to tell the Truth about this evil, to expose it for as many as will listen and learn.
Jesus said His disciples would be “hated by the world.” No matter how much Truth is told about Christians not being like mozlums, Christians are still “hated by the world.”
If mozlums carry out the “hatred” of the world against Christians, and mozlums are *feared* by many, so the Truth has largely been hidden.
James Lincoln says
somehistory says,
“Opposing homosexuality is not a “phobia…”
100% correct.
One can morally oppose a certain lifestyle – but not fear it.
Homosexuals are not *feared* by heterosexuals. As a Christian, I pray for them.
And your reasoning is correct about the totally nonsensical term “islamophobia.”
somehistory says
Thank you, James. I appreciate your reply. And we pray for all to come to accept Jesus, but I usually refrain from telling people personally, lest they become offended or even hostile. Jesus can read their hearts, and know if they are “rightly disposed to everlasting life.”
There may be some who are that way, trapped by islam’s threats of death.
Westman says
Wellington, I can’t put into words the depth of despair I feel when seeing the nation fall into self-destruction that first rejects, then tolerates, then embraces the vices and populist thinking that destroyed previous civilizations.
After the midterm elections I’m sadly considering that we may be on the way to the late great state of America. How does that song go, “Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am, stuck in the middle…” Citizens seem quite willing to be followers of the popular without gaining knowledge to judge the ideas espoused. It’s like high school elections and peer rumors on a grand scale – and we did become pregnant with Islamic notions while standing up….
gravenimage says
UK: ‘As a Christian I’m worried that Islam is above criticism’
………………………………………………………
Tim Dieppe is not wrong in his worries. Kudos to him for speaking out.
mg says
I have ‘Jihadaphobia’. Proud to say…. I stand with innocents who’ve been at best forcibly intimidated, subjugated into stone silence, and those victims of Jihad who’ve been tortured, disfigured, murdered, and or slaughtered.
There is no confusion here….
Jayell1 says
Sorry, but who exactly says the ‘islam is above criticism’? Because they don’t speak for 99.9% of the civilised world, and they’re certainly not authorised by anyone to dictate what will or will not be ‘above criticism’ – because nothing is. Furthermore, so-called ‘islamophobia’, like any other ‘phobia’, would be a condition reserved for those suffering some kind of mental or intellectual impairment, so how dare these insolent self-appointed nonentities presume to cast totally ridiculous and unjustified aspersions on those who have the intelligence to recognise a patently fabricated fraud when they see one, just because it destroys a rather pathetic attempt at public deception?