The Price of the Islamophobia Phobia
Standing way behind the sidelines and observing the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ controversy develop in recent weeks, I was struck by the often intemperate use of the term ‘Islamophobia’ to describe criticism of the project. From CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper to Georgetown University’s John Esposito, through the Muslim Public Affairs Council and even across the Atlantic at MPAC UK and in the Guardian, there appeared to be a concerted effort to convince the general public that we are living in times of a ‘heightened climate of Islamophobia’ to quote MPAC’s communications director Edina Lekovic.
Of course anti-Muslim bigotry exists in any country one could care to mention and it must be fought, along with many other kinds of bigotry, racism and discrimination, but in the current climate it is prudent to think back to Kenan Malik’s 2005 essay in which he warned that “The charge of ‘Islamophobia’ is all too often used not to highlight racism but to stifle criticism” and to consider who is promoting the concept of Islamophobia and why.
It is hard to believe that the worthy cause of fighting anti-Muslim bigotry can be advanced by individuals and organisations who themselves engage in racism and bigotry of other kinds. Selective anti-racism is a chimera which simply cannot withstand scrutiny; either one embraces the concept of universal human rights or one doesn’t. It is therefore both significant and disturbing to realise that some of the main players in the campaign against Islamophobia are deeply mired in other forms of bigotry.
Thus CAIR – an organisation with links to Hamas (one of the most anti-Semitic set ups on the planet), an ‘unindicted co-conspirator’ in the Holy Land Trial and a body which recently presented an award to Helen Thomas who only weeks before lost her job because of anti-Semitic comments, states on its web page about Islamophobia that (emphasis mine):
“ When 9-11 happened, the people already predisposed to viewing Islam with suspicion jumped on this bandwagon and through a multitude of primarily right wing outlets have been successful in creating a climate of extreme prejudice, suspicion and fear against Muslims. This sentiment has also been aided by many pro-Israeli commentators such as Daniel Pipes, Steve Emerson, Judith Miller, and Bernard Lewis among many others.”
Eric Margolis says with righteous indignation that “Islamophobia has become the mantra of the right, not only in the US, but across Europe” on the pages of the Huffington Post whilst promoting bizarre 9/11 conspiracy theories on his own blog, designed to attribute the rise in Islamophobia to deliberate engineering by Israel and the Bush administration.
The Guardian prints a letter entitled “Islamophobia is a threat to Democracy” signed by assorted British public figures including Hamas supporter and funder George Galloway and spokesman for the Hamas front known as the British Muslim Initiative, Anas Altikriti. Another signatory, Ismail Patel, is also a member of the BMI in addition to his activities at the Muslim Brotherhood-backed Islam Expo, the Conflicts Forum and the so-called human rights organization Friends of Al Aqsa, which promotes on its website the works of assorted fanatics and Holocaust deniers. Mr Patel was also a passenger on the Mavi Marmara, alongside the Muslim Brotherhood-linked IHH thugs. Another notable signatory is former London Mayor Ken Livingstone, best remembered for his warm welcoming of anti-Semitic, misogynistic, homophobic Muslim Brotherhood leader Sheikh Yusuf al Qaradawi. When challenged about his association with Qaradawi, Livingstone accused critics of being guilty of “lies and Islamophobia”.
One could go on and on, mentioning for example that the Muslim Council of Britain and Dr. Abdul Bari its Secretary General have repeatedly boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain, that Caroline Lucas’ Green Party has a far from exemplary reputation on the subject of anti-Semitism or that Brendan Barber’s TUC sees fit to run a boycotting campaign (on the pretext of human rights abuses) against one country alone in the entire world and in collaboration with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign which openly supports those seeking the annihilation of that country and the patrons of which include prominent Union members.
The general state of affairs though is perfectly clear and eloquently described by Edmund Standing in an article entitled “ ‘Islamophobia’ and the Abuse of the Discourse of Anti-Racism”.
“While anti-Muslim bigotry is undoubtedly a problem that needs to be confronted, the elasticity of the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ is dangerous, for it is open to abuse by those who seek to silence legitimate criticism of Islamism and Islamic beliefs and practices. Arguably, for many who push the idea that the West is in the grip of rampant ‘Islamophobia’, silencing criticism of Islamist politics or Islam itself is their true intention. “
Edmund Standing correctly identifies one pernicious aspect of the misuse of the term Islamophobia – its employment as a deflection of opposition to radical Islamism. It is not by chance that some of the main promoters of the concept of an ever-rising wave of Islamophobia are also some of the key players on the Islamist scene. There is, however, an additional aspect to the situation and that is the fear of career-killing accusations of Islamophobia which paralyses broad swathes of the establishment in Western countries.
Rightly and justifiably, we will no longer tolerate racism, discrimination and bigotry in our democratic Western societies, but ironically, our failure to properly define anti-Muslim bigotry and the fact that the subject has been neglected and allowed to become the sole preserve of often ideologically motivated agents has lead to our silent toleration of a growing number of human rights abuses within the developed world.
Female Genital Mutilation was outlawed in the UK in 1985. Despite the fact that some 500 girls a year are subjected to this horrific crime, there have been no prosecutions whatsoever.
No-one knows the real numbers, of course, but it is estimated that every year some 17,000 British citizens are victims of so-called ‘honour’ crimes, including kidnappings, sexual assault, beatings, murder and forced marriages. Despite there being no shortage of horrendous testimonies of girls as young as 9 being married off against their will (and therefore also denied their right to education), often abroad, the 2007 Forced Marriage (Civil Protection) Act in the UK still does not make it a punishable offence to force someone to marry. Boys too can be victims of forced marriages, and are particularly at risk if they are homosexual. Some 14% of the estimated 8,000 victims a year are male and 21% are minors. In the whole of Europe, only Norway (2005) and Belgium (2006) have made forced marriages illegal outright.
Since unofficial Sharia courts were upgraded to the status of ‘arbitration tribunals’ in 2008 many British Muslims, particularly women, will not even be guaranteed their rights under British law. Since 1991, for example, rape within marriage has been illegal in the UK. The head of the Islamic Sharia Council in Britain and senior cleric of Britain’s main Sharia court, Sheikh Maulana Abu Sayeed, thinks differently.
“Clearly there cannot be any rape within the marriage. Maybe aggression, maybe indecent activity… Because when they got married, the understanding was that sexual intercourse was part of the marriage, so there cannot be anything against sex in marriage.”
So great is the fear of being branded Islamophobic that the Western establishment is failing miserably at tackling these obvious breaches of human rights happening to their citizens on their soil. When so many of the Islamist-orientated organizations which promote the Islamophobia agenda including think-tanks, academic institutions and so-called human rights organizations - such as the Islamic Human Rights Commission , which even gives out an annual ‘Islamophobia award’ (mostly to people whose politics they disapprove of) – have gained levels of entryism into the establishment as advisors or partners, it is hardly surprising that the Islamophobia narrative is so widespread and the fear of being branded by it so rife. The patronizing practice of communicating with their Muslim citizens only through mostly self-styled ‘community leaders’ which is adopted by so many Western politicians only adds to the problem.
But the people who pay the price for this phobia are not the politicians, public servants, academics or media types who carry on receiving their generous salaries just for keeping their heads down and mouths shut; they are the Muslim women, gays and apostates who are double victims. Already victims of an archaic system they may quite reasonably have assumed that they had left behind by virtue of their American, British or other Western citizenship, these people are also victims of the West’s impotence when it comes to affording them their rights under law because of an inexcusable fear of being branded racist by bodies with no justifiable authority to criticize any democratic liberal society and an openly declared anti-Western political agenda.
It is the fact that we are prepared to give up on the human rights of certain sections of our society which really makes us bigots; not some tin-pot accusations on the part of terrorist or theocratic dictator sympathizers whose commitment to universal human rights does not exist and whose abuse of the discourse of anti-racism is harming so many. It’s time we in the West stopped allowing ourselves to get distracted by Islamophobia and started battling anti-Muslim and all other kinds of bigotry, wherever we may find them.
Hadar Sela is an Anglo-Israeli writer, blogger, and Israel advocate living in Israel, with a special interest in the influence of the media on contemporary antisemitism in the United Kingdom.
