I have been accused by a man from Pakistan, commenting on one of my articles, of being “Islamophobic.’ The offending article was Part 1 in my series on the Islamisation of Britain. That particular article did not attack Islam at all, let alone Muslims, but that has not stopped it being labelled as “Islamophobic.”
In anticipation that my more recent article on Britain’s home-grown terrorism will illicit similar accusations, it may be helpful to share a few things I wrote earlier this year about how the idea of “Islamophobia” is being used as part of the Jihad against free speech. These observations come from my article “The Islamisation of Britain (Part 3): Censorship and Islamophobia“:
Having been unable to achieve [their] goal through direct warfare, Western Muslims have recently discovered that a far more effective tool is to harness the powerful ideologies of multiculturalism and political correctness. By strategically appropriating the language and processes of Western pluralism, Islamic communities have been able to forge a strange alliance with political liberalism and to shut down free speech in the process.
“Islamophobia” is the name given to a certain type of thought-crime. It was invented by the International Institute for Islamic Thought in the early 90’s and first began to appear in British newspapers in the mid to late 90s. Blogger Cheradenine Zakalwe researched the term and found that prior to 1997 it hardly ever appeared in public discourse.
Once Islamophobia began to be adopted more widely by the mainstream liberal media, it began functioning as an ideological weapon that enabled Muslims and their sympathizers to short-circuit crucial debate through the assumption that criticism of Islam is at best a symptom of irrational fear, and at worst a species of racism.
On the surface it seems preposterous that criticism of Islam (“Islamophobia”) could have anything to do with racisim. After all, Islam is a religion and not a race. However, the press frequently obscures this fact by using the terms ‘Muslim’ and ‘Arab’ interchangeably, even though the majority of Muslims are not Arabs. This semantic gymnastics allows the media to give the impression that Islam is a race and, consequently, to dismiss criticism of Islam as a racist offense or a hate crime against a certain people group.
The notion that Islamophobia is a form of racism is now taken as axiomatic by the liberal press. Huffington Post writer Nathan Lean declares that “Islamophobia is undeniably a form of racism” while Stephen Goeman writes that “race is what moves Islamophobes to hate.” Similarly, Sarah Ismail announced that “Islamophobia is one of the many varieties of this racism.” The testimony of dozens of other writers and public figures could be added to this chorus, all testifying to the idea that Islamophobia is a form of racism.
The only problem with the association of “Islamophobia” with racism is that it is false. Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, former member of International Institute for Islamic Thought, later revealed the true intention of those who invented the term: “This loathsome term” he later confessed, “is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.”
This use of “Islamophobia” represents the ultimate inconsistency among Muslims who want to see their religion defended on rational grounds while simultaneously wishing to banish objective discussion of Islam’s more controversial tenets and historical origins (i.e., such as whether the Koran mandates violence, and whether the historical Muhammad was a paedophile, madman, murderer or imperialist).
To learn more about this, read my full article “”The Islamisation of Britain (Part 3): Censorship and Islamophobia“.
Also see
- Britain Becomes Breeding Ground of Islamic Terrorism
- Arrested for Quoting Churchill
- Censorship and Islamophobia
- Review of Stealth Jihad
- The Islamisation of Britain
“[facebook-comments-master-un]”