Islamophobia myth
Kenan Malik
Prospect
Feb 2005
[D]oes Islamophobia really exist? Or is the hatred and abuse of Muslims being exaggerated to suit politicians' needs and silence the critics of Islam? The trouble with Islamophobia is that it is an irrational concept. It confuses hatred of, and discrimination against, Muslims on the one hand with criticism of Islam on the other. The charge of 'Islamophobia' is all too often used not to highlight racism but to stifle criticism. And in reality discrimination against Muslims is not as great as is often perceived - but criticism of Islam should be greater.
In making a film on Islamophobia for Channel 4 what became clear is the gap between perception and reality. Islamophobia driven by what people want to believe is true, rather than what really is true.
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A total of 21,577 [people] had been stopped and searched under the terror laws. The vast majority of these - 14,429 - were in fact white. Yet when I interviewed Iqbal Sacranie, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britainhe insisted that '95-98 per cent of those stopped and searched under the anti-terror laws are Muslim'. The real figure is actually 15 per cent. But however many times I showed him the true statistics he refused to budge. I am sure he was sincere in his belief. But there is no basis for his claim that virtually all those stopped and searched were Muslim - the figures appear to have been simply plucked out of the sky.
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Every year, the Islamic Human Rights Commission organises a mock awards ceremony for its 'Islamophobe of the Year'. Last year there were two British winners. One was the BNP's Nick Griffin. The other? Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. Toynbee’s defence of secularism and women’s rights, and criticism of Islam, was, it declared, unacceptable. Isn't it absurd, I asked the IHRC's Massoud Shadjareh, to equate a liberal anti-racist like Polly Toynbee with the leader of a neo-fascist party. Not at all, he suggested. 'There is a difference between disagreeing and actually dismissing certain ideologies and certain principles. We need to engage and discuss. But there’s a limit to that.' It is difficult to know what engagement and discussion could mean when leading Muslim figures seem unable to distinguish between liberal criticism and neo-fascist attacks.
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[W]e already live in a culture of growing self-censorship. A decade ago, the Independent asked me to write an essay on Tom Paine, the eighteenth century English revolutionary and freethinker. It was the 200th anniversary of his great polemic, The Age of Reason. I began the article with a quote from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses to show the continuing relevance of Paine's battle against religious authority. The quote was cut out because it was deemed too offensive to Muslims. The irony of censoring an essay in celebration of freethinking seemed to elude the editor.
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Spiked contributor Brendan O'Neill on Islamophobia:
Time for a backlash against the hate-obsessed state?
[...]
'Figures published by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) last week show that for the year 2005-2006 (which covers 1 April 2005 to 31 March 2006, thus including the aftermath of the bombings) there were prosecutions for 43 cases of religiously aggravated crime. That’s right, 43. Far from being a backlash, this figure is socially insignificant, representing a minuscule minority of overall crime for 2005-2006. The ‘backlash’ predicted by so many turned out to be a handful of mostly minor incidents carried out by drunks and losers.
As the Director of Public Prosecutions said as he presented the figures – sounding somewhat perplexed – ‘the fears of a large rise in offences appear to be unfounded’ (4).
Some of the headline coverage of the stats has chosen to focus on the percentage rise in prosecutions for religiously aggravated offences. ‘The Crown Prosecution Service’s Racist and Religious Incident Monitoring report for 2005-2006 shows an increase in prosecutions on the previous year for both types of offence’, says the CPS press release. ‘Religiously aggravated cases rose by 26.5 per cent.’ (5) That seems to be true. But in this instance, 26.5 per cent represents a mere nine cases: there was a rise from 34 prosecutions in religiously aggravated cases in 2004-2005 to 43 in 2005-2006.
Fewer than half of these religiously aggravated incidents in 2005-2006 can definitely be said to have targeted Muslims: of the 43 cases, Muslims were victims in 18 of them, Christians were victims in three, and a Sikh was a victim in one. In the remaining 21 cases, the actual or perceived religion of the victim was not known (more of which in a minute).
If you go you beyond the press release and dig into the CPS report, you’ll see that this means there were fewer prosecutions for religiously aggravated cases involving Muslims as victims in 2005-2006 than there were in 2004-2005. In 2004-2005, there were prosecutions for 34 cases of religiously aggravated crime, in which the victim’s actual or perceived religion was Islam in 23 cases; in 2005-2006, there were 43 cases of religiously aggravated crime, in which the victim’s actual or perceived religion was Islam in 18 cases. This means that the number of prosecuted anti-Muslim crimes fell from 23 to 18 in a year in which we were warned of an ominous rise in anti-Muslim hate.
[...]
It is worth asking what constitutes a religiously aggravated crime. When does public disorder become ‘religiously aggravated public disorder’? The CPS says it uses a ‘similar definition’ for religious incidents as the Macpherson report into the investigation of the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence used to define a racist incident. So a religiously aggravated incident is an incident perceived to be religiously aggravated by the victim or any other person. With such a sweeping subjective definition of religiously aggravated crime – where it is the perception of the victim or any bystander that counts – the really shocking thing is that the police books aren’t overflowing with religiously aggravated whispers, allegations and prosecutions.
[...]
The police and other bodies positively trawled for evidence of anti-Muslim hate post-7/7. London’s Metropolitan Police published a leaflet titled ‘Communities Together Can Help Fight the Effects of Terrorism in London’ – and by ‘effects of terrorism’ they didn’t mean injuries or rubble, but that imagined anti-religious backlash. The Met promised to respond ‘quickly and robustly’ to prejudice and hate, and provided phone numbers for different organisations for those who felt ‘vulnerable, confused and angry’ or believed they may have been ‘a victim of prejudice’. The Islamic Human Rights Commission ran ads on an Islamic TV channel encouraging Muslims to report harassment, which can be ‘anything from verbal abuse, nasty looks to physical assault.’ The Forum Against Islamophobia and Racism also encouraged more reporting of anti-Muslim incidents, and said Islamophobia can include anything from physical assault to not being shown ‘respect’ in public life (7).
[...]
Looking at the nature of some of the religiously aggravated crimes of 2005-2006, it is clear that anti-religious hatred is not a real social force but rather something indulged in by sad and often drunk individuals. Look at the cases highlighted in the CPS press release, presumably because they were seen as among the most dramatic. One incident of religiously aggravated common assault involved a defendant who refused to pay for his meal in an Indian restaurant and then subsequently submitted a waiter (who was Muslim) to verbal abuse and physical assault. In another, a Turkish Muslim woman and her teenage daughter were waiting at a bus-stop when a drunk shouted abuse at them and spat on the ground near where they were sitting; as the women boarded the bus the man spat in their direction and ‘his spittle [made] contact with their upper body clothing’ (8).
These are nasty incidents, and it sounds as though both men need to be put firmly in their place. But they also sound like the kind of inebriated incidents that happen fairly frequently around the country. I’ve witnessed numerous arguments and scuffles in Indian restaurants on Saturday nights, often involving a bunch of drunks making ignorant racist remarks at waiters. And who hasn’t had that uncomfortable feeling of being approached by a drunken loudmouth, often shouting and swinging his fists, while waiting at a bus-stop or sitting on a train? These two religiously aggravated incidents – flagged up in the CPS press release as examples for journalists to use – reveal nothing about society at large. Rather they show what most of us already know: there are some dickheads out there.
The two cases do, however, highlight dangers behind the authorities’ religious hatred agenda. The man who refused to pay for his meal in an Indian restaurant and shouted at the waiter was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment – six months. The judge admitted that ‘it would not have been custody if the offence [had] not been religiously aggravated’. The drunk at the bus-stop was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment (9). Here, the authorities are explicitly punishing people not only for what they do, but also for what they think; not only for their actions, but also for their thoughts, for the fact that they ‘hated’ someone. This takes us into the realm of thought crime, where a man who pushes an Indian waiter and calls him a ‘fucking cunt’ is likely to be get a slap on the wrists, while the man who pushes the waiter and calls him a ‘Muslim cunt’ can be thrown in jail for six months. It may be a crime to push a waiter; but should it be a crime to hate a waiter or his religion?
Finally, as in most hate crime debates, the aim of this overzealous punishment of individuals who commit religiously aggravated crimes seems to be to ‘send a message’ to the rest of us. The authorities are using these cases to tell us they are serious about stamping out religious hatred and ‘hate speech’. This degrades the law and any idea of natural justice. Individual cases are effectively turned into showtrials, as the law is used to correct what are seen as backward attitudes among the populace. Individuals are punished particularly harshly for something they said or thought while committing a crime, while the rest of us are patronised by police officials and judges who think we are backward and prejudiced. This is less about justice, and more about social engineering – and such a project is far more poisonous and divisive than anything a pissed-up buffoon could do on a Saturday night.'
So now "looking [at Muslims] is a form of discrimination". You definitely couldn't make this up.
Don’t stare at Muslims says advice to schools
The Sunday Times
April 15, 2007
Pupils and teachers have been told by an official body not to stare at Muslims for fear of causing offence. A document intended to educate against religious intolerance and sectarianism urges teachers to “make pupils aware of the various forms of Islamophobia, ie stares, verbal abuse, physical abuse”.
But Learning Teaching Scotland (LTS), which issued the advice to schools north of the border, has been criticised by politicians and Muslim leaders for going “over the top”.
The document states: “Some Muslims may choose to wear clothing or display their faith in a way that makes them visible. For example, women may be wearing a headscarf, and men might be wearing a skullcap. Staring or looking is a form of discrimination as it makes the other person feel uncomfortable, or as though they are not normal.”
The invention of Islamophobia
Sign & Sight
By Pascal Bruckner
03/01/2011
Islamophobia was invented to silence those Muslims who question the Koran and who demand equality of the sexes.
At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term "Islamophobia" formed in analogy to "xenophobia". The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist. This term, which is worthy of totalitarian propaganda, is deliberately unspecific about whether it refers to a religion, a belief system or its faithful adherents around the world.
But confession has no more in common with race than it has with secular ideology. Muslims, like Christians, come from the Arab world, Africa, Asia and Europe, just as Marxists, liberals and anarchists come or came from all over. In a democracy, no one is obliged to like religion, and until proved otherwise, they have the right to regard it as retrograde and deceptive. Whether you find it legitimate or absurd that some people regard Islam with suspicion – as they once did Catholicism – and reject its aggressive proselytism and claim to total truth – this has nothing to do with racism.
Do we talk about 'liberalophobia' or 'socialistophobia' if someone speaks out against the distribution of wealth or market domination. Or should we reintroduce blasphemy … as a statutory offence, in line with the annual demands of the "Organisation of the Islamic Conference". Or indeed the French politician Jean-Marc Roubaud, who wants to see due punishment for anyone who "disparages the religious feelings of a community or a state". … The French, having freed themselves from centuries of ecclesiastical rule, prefer discretion when it comes to religion. To ..[impose] restrictions on the right to question dogma is a return to the Ancien Regime.
The term "Islamophobia" serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire. It follows that young girls are stigmatised for not wearing the veil, as are French, German or English citizens of Maghribi, Turkish, African or Algerian origin who demand the right to religious indifference, the right not to believe in God, the right not to fast during Ramadan. Fingers are pointed at these renegades, they are delivered up to the wrath of their religions communities in order to quash all hope of change among the followers of the Prophet.
On a global scale, we are abetting the construction of a new thought crime … [a]nd our media and politicians are giving it their blessing. Did not the French president himself, never one to miss a blunder - not compare Islamophobia with Antisemitism? A tragic error. Racism attacks people for what they are: black, Arab, Jewish, white. The critical mind on the other hand undermines revealed truths and subjects the scriptures to exegesis and transformation. To confuse the two is to shift religious questions from an intellectual to a judicial level. Every objection, every joke becomes a crime.
… Let us not forget that today, of all the monotheist religions, Christianity is the most persecuted – particularly in Islamic countries such Algeria, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey or Egypt. It is easier to be a Muslim in London, New York or Paris than a Protestant or Catholic in the Middle East or North Africa. But the term "Christianophobia" does not function – and that's a good thing. There are words which taint language, which obscure meaning. "Islamophobia" is one of the words that we urgently need to delete from our vocabulary.
In what way is 'anti-semitism' different from 'islamophobia' as a term of reference?
Good question. I'll have to split my answer into a couple of separate comments because of Blogger's annoying character limit.
I think Bruckner, in the above post, answered this. "Anti-semitism", he says, is a form of racism, which "attacks people for what they are: black, Arab, Jewish, white." The accusation of Islamophobia by contrast is hurled at those who criticise some Muslims for what they do, as the Danish Cartoon exercise shows, "to silence those Muslims who question the Koran and who demand equality of the sexes... Every objection, every joke becomes a crime."
I had a brief reflection on definitions at this point, as befits an ex-philosopher. I offer these to you:
* Definition of "anti-semitism": the intense dislike for and prejudice against Jewish people
* Definition of "Islamophobia": prejudice or discrimination against Islam or Muslims
The obvious thing to note here is that this has nothing to do with the conventional definition of phobia (below), and hence Islamophobia is a piss-poor term even on its own merits (of course given that many of the most virulent anti-semites (Arabs) themselves speak a semitic language, that term ain't so good either):
* Definition of "phobia": an anxiety disorder characterized by extreme and irrational fear of simple things or social situations
So, in as much as "Islamophobia" means anything sensible, it means a prejudice against Muslims because they are Muslims. I hold that this is a largely fictitious (or at best, massively exaggerated) phenomenon, invented recently (as Brucker says) to silence political opposition. In contrast, "anti-semitism" describes a genuine and deeply menacing phenomenon.
Thinking on this, and I'm sure going way beyond Wembley's question, I was going to produce a couple of lists, one characterising what I feel to be the core of the (genuine phenomenon of) anti-semitism, and another on the (largely fictitious phenomenon of) Islamophobia. But by the time I'd done my list on anti-semitism, the differences were so glaring I didn't feel I needed to write the second list to show the contrast. Have a read of my next posting and maybe you'll agree. Certainly I can't see a single thing on my list that anyone could port over into a list on Islamophobia. Not that Wembley was asking me to do that anyway, but now it's done I'll post it ;-)
Peter Hitchens on 'Judophobia'
25 February 2011
Daily Mail - PH Blog
Mr Denton asks: 'Isn't it very hypocritical how you, on the one hand, disapprove of politically correct terms like 'homophobia' and then, on the other, freely use the term 'Judophobia' whenever the Israel or Jewish subject pops up?'
No. It isn't. The word 'homophobia' is used (for instance) by my enemies to describe and so defame me. I have no 'irrational fear' or 'irrational dislike' (choose your preferred translation), or any other sort of fear or dislike of homosexuals, as individuals or as a group. The use of the expression is designed to portray a reasoned position as a pathology and to damage me personally.
By contrast, we have as evidence of an irrational fear and dislike of Jews in the Arab and Muslim world the speeches of President Ahmadinejad casting doubt on the Holocaust, the description of Jews in Arab propaganda and the speeeches of popular preachers as being 'descended from pigs and monkeys' (the website MEMRI can and does provide reliable translations of this sort of stuff), foul 'Der Stuermer'-type depictions of hook-nosed, child-killing Jews such as the wall-painting in Gaza witnessed and described here by me, the continued propagation of discredited tripe such as 'the Protocols of the Elders of Zion' in the Arab media, the repetition in mainstream publications even of the mediaeval Blood Libel (the alleged use of Christian children's blood in the making of Passover pastries), the passages in the Hadith about the stones and the trees denouncing Jews at the last day, the close ties between many past Arab leaders and German National Socialism (most notably Haj Amin al Husseini, who fled to Berlin during the Third Reich and helped raise a Muslim division of the SS, he was the personal hero of Yasser Arafat), the sheltering of Nazi war criminals by Arab regimes - Alois Brunner, a notorious National Socialist child murderer was for many years given asylum in Damascus, where he may possibly still be living. I have myself listened to perfectly agreeable, well-educated, sane and intelligent Arabs spouting the most embarrassing rubbish about Jews as normal conversation in their living rooms.
I might add that my attempts a couple of years ago to hold conversations just outside my office with British 'anti-Zionist' protestors against the Israeli attack on Gaza (an attack I myself denounced as a cruel folly), in which I attempted to suggest that Arabs were sometimes mistreated by each other, were met with such unreasoning fury that I had to flee for my own physical safety when it became clear to them that I sympathised with the Jewish state.
And in general when I ask critics of Israel to explain why they single that country out for criticism, in a world full of comparable or worse wickedness, they tend to become either silent or enraged. What they never do is explain their selective rage. To do so would be to admit that there might be an unreasoning core to it. The whole phenomenon of Judophobia is a very strange one, not as far as I can see susceptible to reason. I've tried many times to hold reasoned, fact-based correspondences with persons who have this difficulty. It is quite futile. Some people just have this trouble, and there we are. One would feel sorry for them if it were not that from time to time their trouble leads to murder and other cruelty. My own solution is to try to persuade them that it is a problem, and one they should make an effort to control. But the temptation to indulge it, under the flag of anti-Zionism, is too strong for many sufferers.
[contd…]
[previous Hitchens excerpt continued]
I use the term 'Judophobia' for two reasons: First because I know that it will get past their outer mental defences against unwelcome thoughts. When they hear something described as a 'phobia', they initially assume that it must be one of those things that they ought to be against. This is the way they proceed. The jolt they receive when they realise that their views could be described in this fashion is potentially educative, and certainly satisfying.
Second, I do it because the phrase 'anti-Semitism' has lost its power. People either assume that they are themselves too nice to be such a thing, or assume that they are being called Nazis, when they know they aren't Nazis, so it bounces off.
I don't in the least think that 'Holocaust denial' is a loaded term. There is no doubt that the German National Socialist government engaged in the systematic, deliberate, industrial mass-murder of Jews, including women and tiny children. Those who seek to deny or minimise this are to be despised, as are all apologists for, and coverers up of crimes.
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