Good article by Roger L. Simon on the term “Islamaphobia” that is being bandied around a lot lately over the Ground Zero Mosque:
Along with “progressive” (a word that should be restricted to poker), “Islamophobia” is one of the more maddening propaganda constructs of our time. Orwell could not have done better.
Of course we all know what a phobia is – an irrational fear. It comes from the Greek phobos, meaning “fear” or “morbid fear.” Common ones are acrophobia (heights) and agoraphobia (crowds).
With very minor exceptions, I have seen little irrational fear of Islam in our society. What I have seen is a lot of serious and justifiable dislike of the religion for its ideology – notably its heinous treatment of women and homosexuals and its opposition to the separation of church and state, all codified by its all-encompassing Sharia law that seeks to legislate all facets of existence while instituting a global caliphate.
Nevertheless, soi-disant liberals and progressives or whatever they want to call themselves accuse those who dislike Islam for those reasons of irrational fear.
~~~Clearly I see it as ideological battle with the word “Islamophobia” itself a weapon in that battle. It is an obvious way of avoiding debate by tarnishing the opposition.
Only it is not working very well anymore. It’s become too obvious. With 70% of the country opposing the Ground Zero Mosque a huge number of people aren’t buying it. Or don’t care. How many times can you attack someone before we’re back in grammar school and it becomes a case of “Sticks and stones may break my bones but names will never hurt me”?
~~~There are many examples but some recent ones are Fareed Zakaria – who has informed us that GZM critics are worse than Hezbollah – and NYT’s Timothy Egan – who thinks most Republicans are dopes. Talk about projection.
He comes up with a new word: Islamophobiaphobia….
an irrational fear of ideological nitwits
And I agree that its been tossed around way too much by many on the left at the first sign of opposition to the mosque. As Roger writes:
One of the key ones is the ability to differentiate. For example: just because you oppose a mosque being built at Ground Zero doesn’t mean you oppose mosques in general.
Sure, there are some who you can righteously be call Islamophobic, but I think most people just do not want this mosque so near to a very painful site. I don’t want it either. I also understand we are not at war with Islam itself and there are many many good Muslims out there. But just because I don’t want THIS mosque there doesn’t mean I’m Islamaphobic.
Jonah Goldberg puts things into perspective:
Let’s put this in even sharper focus. America is, outside of Israel ,probably the most receptive and tolerant country in the world to Jews. And yet, in every year since 9/11, more Jews have been hate-crime victims than Muslims. A lot more.
In 2001, there were twice as many anti-Jewish incidents as there were anti-Muslim, again according to the FBI. In 2002 and pretty much every year since, anti-Jewish incidents have outstripped anti-Muslim ones by at least 6 to 1. Why aren’t we talking about the anti-Jewish climate in America?
Because there isn’t one. And there isn’t an anti-Muslim climate either. Yes, there’s a lot of heated rhetoric on the Internet. Absolutely, some Americans don’t like Muslims. But if you watch TV or movies or read, say, the op-ed page of the New York Times — never mind left-wing blogs — you’ll hear much more open bigotry toward evangelical Christians (in blogspeak, the “Taliban wing of the Republican Party”) than you will toward Muslims.
Most conservatives have been very careful to distinguish between the small percentage of Muslims who want to see the United States in flames and those American Muslims who love this country as much as everyone else.
What says more about America–that we always, ALWAYS manage to refrain from an anti-Muslim backlash, or that progressives are always, ALWAYS, convinced that one is on the way?
Islamophobiaphobia it is then.
See author page