Friday 14 September 2012

"Islamophobia" - time to end the doublespeak.

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that a number of people in the Islamic world are kicking off and killing people about something utterly trivial. Again. If you do need to catch up, though, there's a decent tl;dr here.

However, at this point you could be forgiven for not being terribly interested in what's set the nutters off this time (although you should definitely care about their actions, which have already left many dead. Again.). I mean, you can guess. Someone spoke or wrote or drew (or in this case made a film, as it happens) about their "prophet" Mohammed and so they're screaming blasphemy and demanding retribution. Again. Because they absurdly think their damn silly superstitious rules apply not only to them but to everybody else. Again. And their response has been crazily, loonily, insanely disproportionate.

..... Again.

If there is any good that can come out of this whole depressing mess, it's that the Muslims who're doing it - and I accept they're a minority, by the way - are hurting their own cause when they do this stuff, in the long run at least.

Why?

Because they're making Muslims look like lunatics. They're showing Islam up for the oppressive, paranoid, violent ideology it is. They're showing the world that Islam cares more about some obscure film than it does about murder, injustice, torture, abuse, oppression, mutilation, inequity and violence. They're demonstrating again that Islam cares more that we should all feign respect for their "prophet" than it does for innocent human life.

And you don't get away from that, by the way, with "oh but Islam isn't really about that".  Bull. Shit. Christians have been making the NoTrueChristianTM argument for centuries, and it doesn't wash for them either.  If you believe in the "truth" of a given book - and if you consider that belief a virtuous thing - you don't get to object when someone else takes those same lessons from that same book and uses them to justify murdering somebody. Know why? Because they have precisely the same amount of evidence to say that their beliefs are correct as you do to say yours are - that is, none. Nada. Zip. Bupkis. Zilch. (That goes for arguments between religions too, by the way; someone who believes for no rational reason that Book X is magic hasn't a moral or logical leg to stand on when someone else believes the same about Book Y and acts on that - but that's maybe a point for another day.)

I can virtually guarantee that at least some people who read this - Muslim or otherwise - will by now have dismissed me as "Islamophobic", or even racist.  But I have a couple of points to make about those two accusations (because it's not the first time they've been aimed at me).

"Racist", first, because that's the most transparently nonsensical thing to call someone who dislikes Islam. The only way in which an aversion to a religion could be taken to mean an aversion to a "race" of people would be  if one had to belong to a certain race in order to be a Muslim. Not only is that demonstrably not the case, but even if it were true it would make Islam racist, not me.

And "Islamophobic", which brings me back to the title of this entry.

I am sick. To goddamn. Death. Of this mealy-mouthed, snivelling, craven, manipulative, lying little gobshite of a word that's wormed its way into our lexicon.

Look up "phobia" in any decent dictionary. There are lots of variations on a theme, but you'll notice there is a commonality; they all describe a "phobia" as irrational, illogical, disproportionate to the danger, unreasonable. My chest-constricting, panic-inducing, uncontrollable fear of injections is all of those things - it is a phobia.  My fear and dislike of Islam is not irrational, or illogical, or unreasonable - and it certainly is not disproportionate to the danger it poses. Just ask the families of all the people it's killed.

We know what happens when Islam is allowed to rule, we've watched it for centuries; education and reason are set at naught, women become property, people can be murdered at whim in the name of "honour", genocide can be justified by reference to the magic book. And to draw the "prophet" Mohammed becomes the greatest of all wrongs, an insult that can justify murder.  There are factions within Islam that openly wish to destroy Western ideals and take over. One of the most common taunts I hear from Muslims when discussing religion online is along the lines of "watch out Europe, you'll fall to Islam in the next 10/20/50 years".

So yes, you're damn right I'm scared of Islam, as well as considering it ethically loathsome, factually laughable and worthy of no respect whatsoever (that last point is crucial - I am scared of Islam, but I do not respect it. Do not mistake the two). I consider freedom of expression to be the most important right we have, and we in the West have fought hard to get it. I am scared of any ideology that threatens this freedom. Is that irrational, when we know through centuries of bitter experience what happens when we don't have that freedom? I don't think so. I consider that a perfectly rational dread, which by definition means it is not a phobia.  So please can we drop the ridiculous, knee-jerk label? All it does is reinforce the notion that those of us who watch Islam with fear are unreasonable in that fear or in our expression of it. We're not; we're precisely the opposite.

42 comments:

  1. I would not call you Islamophobic, however it does seem to exist, it is being stirred up by the media. I don't think it does us any good.

    I got a new solicitor today, an Islamic woman. I grinned from ear to ear. The prophesy is coming true!

    It's a good example of what is really happening. Islamic women in the West are empowering themselves by becoming experts at the laws that have the power to free them.

    Meanwhile young Islamic mean are driving around in pimped up cars, playing rap music, smoking, drinking... even having sex out of wedlock!

    I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for the Islamification of Europe. The threat is greatly exaggerated, in fact, the threat is to Islam.

    And this is why I have my reservations over the atheist response to Islam. If we attack Islam, they don't listen. The Christians will listen! They will join in with us. In fact have a louder voice than us.

    What I think will win against Islam, is when their youth see us in modernity, and see their religious leaders in the Middle Ages, and they make a choice. We don't have to argue with them, we can show them the way.

    Unfortunately, Christianity still stands in our way, and I think that is the best place to focus our efforts.

    Of course, that shouldn't stop us pointing the finger when we see the most outrageous abuses. Most Muslims will too, and it would be nice to be on the same side as them because they are about a billion voices.

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  2. This is a difficult one. The problem is there are good reasons to be concerned about Islam over other religions because it appears by any reasonable estimate to have the largest proportion of incredibly dangerous fundamentalists, and there are large swathes of it that are outright medieval.

    That said, a lot of the reasons people give for their dislike of Islam are either being applied to all Muslims, or are simply just flat-out incorrect. So one needs to navigate a veritable minefield of incorrect generalisations about Muslims while acknowledging the propensity for Islam/Islamic societies to produce the nutcases that they do.

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  3. I'm not so confident as Vicky about the penetration of Islam into Europe. The combined moans of islamophobia and racism are potent weapons in suppressing debate. Last year a discussion meeting at a UK university was stopped by an islamic thug and the response of the authorities was to blame the discussion organisers. At the London School of Economics the Atheist, Secular and Humanist student society was threatened with losing its Student Union affiliation and funding because they published a Jesus and Mo cartoon.

    While we no longer have blasphemy laws in the UK but we do have offence laws under which prosecutions can be made for insults. All it takes is a complaint by theist that they are offended.

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    1. Thats a pretty good example of a fight we should be taking on. Religious groups shouldn't be able to stop free speech or lawful gatherings, or be able to pressure organizations to expel them or deny them license, etc.

      I don't care of they are Muslim, Christian, Sikh or Jewish.

      There is just one thing that should be remembered... a picture of Mohammad doesn't just offend the crazy fanatics, it offends a very large proportion of Muslims. We may be saying, "Your religious laws do not apply to us", but I seriously doubt that is the message they are hearing. So we either have to go all out, all the time till they get it. Or decide to fight a different battle.

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    2. Couldn't agree more. De-sensitize them.

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  4. You put my thoughts on this matter into words much better than I've been able to do. I desperately hope more people of reason show up in the world so we can be rid of this fear and violence based on ridiculous shit.

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  5. What will win against Islam is it's transformation. The 5 Pillars don't include "beheading". A more progressive, non-violent, some might say "mystical" Islam would probably do it, but this could also be said for Christianity and other religions. It actually already exists as the Ba'hai movement, and likely others. Sakat (alms giving), one of the 5 pillars, would likely solve a good amount of the problem, either rich entitled radical Muslims are committing the violence, or poor hungry ones, either way, some alms has to happen.

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  6. The people being killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria are almost entirely Muslims being killed by other Muslims. If you don't understand that, you are truly kidding yourself.

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  7. I completely agree with "SoggyMoggy"'s article above, and now is the right time for all those who value freedom of expression, and indeed freedom at all, to sit up and take notice of the impending threat posed by Islam, the most dangerous and backward of religions, if its adherents are anything to judge it by. Hitchens was and Harris is right on this, and it's about time stupid western politicians stopped being frightened of accusations of stirring up racial and religious hatred and realised that racial hatred is anyway irrelevant, but hatred of this religion and what it makes people do is precisely what is necessary. I would be just as angry and concerned, by the way, if white orthodox christians in some European country got gunned up, and flocked out onto the street in huge testosterone charged mobs chanting after their god, what their 2000-year-old book tells them, and threatening and abusing America or Britain, killing innocent people in the process.

    We know it's religious, and we know that modernity has yet to catch up with these people. Just as Christians do, Muslims of all degrees of extremity will take from their holy book all sorts of teachings demonstrating what a nice bloke their prophet was - unbelievably for the 21st century, an outpouring of sentiment admiring the prophet was all over Twitter the other day. Humanity should have grown up by now. I don't deny people the right to be religious and express themselves. I do not like it stuffed down our throats, thank you. And if it becomes a danger to civilization, as it clearly now is, we need to be intelligent enough to deal with it. The first step is to start disposing of religion at home. If we can't do that we will struggle to defeat the threat Islam poses. Secular democracies in the West need to hurry up and advance ideologically to be able to oppose the threat. Be in no doubt that Islam is already quite well enough prepared - it has been for centuries, and its methods are as potent as ever. "Kill the unbeliever" is a simple message that any fool can and evidently will understand. I very much fear that while the West wrings its hands, and frets about upsetting moderate religious voters, it will fail to outmanoeuvre the Islamists and we'll all die before our time.

    Ironically, it seems to me that the rage of Islam against America is partly born of envy of the West's wealth (whence its ability to bomb a middle eastern country or prop up its dictator, whichever is politically preferable) but sadly this wealth is the result of modern enterprise, in a free market, in a (comparatively) liberal, equal society - something Islam will prevent them from achieving. It will until or unless the imams controlling the various interpretations of the holy book do what the bishops and popes did with Christianity and start to massage the orthodoxy to allow for the way society progresses. Luckily for us we've reached a stage of hypocrisy in the west such that the majority of Christians "thank god" can go about happily thinking they believe in the bible while happily for us they don't believe in all the bronze age sacrificing, brutal punishments and racial hatred. This is surely the biggest crisis facing the world at the moment: I for one do not want WWIII, I want - we need - some concerted international action to start educating and persuading people that the fairy stories they have been told and are being told are lies - massive, collective, perhaps convincing, popular lies, but lies nonetheless, and therefore it is not right to kill the unbeliever, it is wrong so to do. Who would have thought that teaching people right from wrong could be so difficult and yet so vital?

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  8. I feel exactly the same way about christians, jews, and hindus.

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  9. At the end of the day, Islamaphobia (that is in its true sense of being scared of the faith) is becoming a more and more justifiable position to hold amongst those subjected to its extremists. I agree with this article in that the word shouldn't be used as a synonym for racist, but in its literal sense.

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  10. dear soggymog.
    I love your writing and it makes good sense from your point of view.i am not much of English writer but i hope i can get the point across. just some things came across my mind while i was reading your art of writing.

    well when i was young, i had a fear of black spiders. lots of people have said that they are poisonous and you will die almost instantly. the fear grew with me, and every time i see a spider or black spider i get very aggressive. i automatically get up, hunt down the spider to its death.

    a few years back, i was reading a research about the black spiders and in the research it said that 95% of people that get bitten by a spider they die of heart-attack and not from the spiders venom.

    why was this? because of media, people have been taught that black spiders are deadly and yet they are not. we believed that they are dangerous and that is why we get aggressive towards them and yet they have not done any harm to us.

    who knows, maybe we will find cure in their venom just like we found cures in the stinging of the bees..

    as for freedom. i could go on and on and on like a duracell battery. but i dont get why when i drive like 120 miles and hour i get a ticket, why when i leave my car unlocked i get robbed, why when i put a loud music the cops show up? why why why?

    is it that im hurting others in the process? or im i annoying someone else? or a group of people? if im putting a loud music forcing the people around me to listen to it????
    of if im speeding im endangering the life of many??

    there is no freedom in this world.. i am limited to everything im doing. i traveled half of the world by now and everywhere i go im limited..

    why is this???? because if everyone had the freedom to do what they love and want, this world would be chaos. why?

    all the scientists would build big explosives, all the best drivers would drive at maximum speeds. all heavy drinkers would drink and drive.. all Mexico would cross the borders of the states...

    so freedom is not the case you have. im sorry but if you find any freedom in your life right now. please invite me. i will be glad to join you.

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  11. another thought that came to my mind.. if you ever watched the movie "300" as the Spartans world to be great warriors. they train in the harshest of climates, strongest of opponents. so the Spartans grew strong and fearless..

    that said, i wanted to add that the media has power luring people to what perspective they have. lets give an example.

    if i taught you and showed you for over 10 years that muslims share flowers between each other, help one another, they have good technology, good architect, worlds skyscrapers and they have the strongest industrial manufacturing. i would dare my life on this that you wouldnt be as scared as of now.
    but
    if i show you the the blood and the violence and the dead and the poor, psychologically you would reject it. why is this? because its built in the human nature.

    lets take an example of whats happening today... as so called "freedom".
    lets say i have seen your mom. and i know you would be very aggressive that you would point the gun at me if i do not say sorry or else otherwise you shoot...

    knowing this, i have a plan to ruin your picture because i dont like you so...... i get a camera a film, a couple of audience, then ill send you something about your mom and then when you get aggressive everything is on tape, then ill show the whole neighbors and then might youtube it..

    do you think?????? that people would have a good impression about you? i doubt not. because all they see is violence in you.

    and this is whats happening to the world....
    our ignorance kills our hearts, and makes us aggressive because we fear of something that is not there in reality but in a Photoshopped image.

    i hope i have cleared myself and always look forward to your responses. and as the famous quote goes " an eye for an eye and who ever starts in the baddest one"

    lets look around and see, lets learn before we speak, lets taste before we cook, lets touch before we punch, let us knock the door kindly to it can open kindly and knock down the door to get fired at..

    we came from our mothers whom, we came out kids fresh and tender, we grow to be aggressive and abusive.. all for what???? i wish i can keep the wealth with me when i will be buried under the soil, the soil that everyone on top will step on, i just hope that one person remembers me when i die... today im here, tomorrow im gone, after tomorrow i have never existed.

    let us come together and save the planet and go green. before the freedom of my unborn child is taken away. or he'll grow to kill me at the end because i have taken away his freedom.

    looking forward to your replies

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  12. You madam, are an idiot. The spoken word (or any modern variant) is not an excuse for violence. Think about the contrast. One made a video. The other murdered people. Free speech is the right to be offensive. Your religion is not granted an exception. Deal with it. Grow up. Act like an adult.

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  13. That doesn't excuse the fact that we (largely on false pretenses) are "over there" killing huge numbers of people. Imagine, for a moment, that the situation is reversed. That islamic militias have invaded your country and are killing your fellow citizens. Are you going to feel more emotion over that, or the fact that drunk drivers are killing more of your people? Emotions will always center on the actions of "outsiders". Just as americans focus on the (relatively insignificant) criminal acts of illegal immigrants.

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  14. Don't forget.

    All those Muslims who are rioting, they are all 'ignorant about their religion.'

    Why do Westerners take for granted that Muslims are ignorant about Islam?

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  15. Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that a number of people in the Islamic world are kicking off and killing people about something utterly trivial.

    Your entire premise may be off; several sources (including the CNN story you cite!) have reported that militants responsible for the embassy attacks may have used the protests as cover for their operation and that the attacks were neither spontaneous nor a response to the video.

    Inhale, exhale? Your phobia seems to be affecting you.

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    1. T%he best... imaginary friend ?

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  17. Whatever else you can criticise fundamentalist Christians for, they have in no way engaged in the kind of riotous behaviour on the same scale as some Islamic fundamentalists have on numerous occasions. It is flat-out incorrect to say that they're AS BAD as the fanatics demolishing embassies.

    Terry Jones et al are complete morons, but throughout their cavalcade of stupid behaviour they haven't killed anybody or set any buildings on fire.

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  18. So they're responsible for other people's actions, now? Honestly, that could easily have been an atheist disparaging Islam. On some level, I think it should have been, since to my mind, that's our prime directive. In fact, a young man in Egypt was arrested for atheism. As much as I despise Christianity, and realize it has a greater effect on me than Islam does, I don't blame the fundamentalist Christian for the arrest of an Egyptian Atheist. I place the blame squarely where it belongs: with the Muslim community.

    OTOH, OirishM, the only reason that Christian's aren't doing this is secularism has them on a tight leash. This sort of thing was plenty prevalent in the Dark Ages. What happened was that a series of strong Kings and Queens (and rulers like Bonaparte) stood up to the Vatican and said, "No more. You don't have the right to kill for religious reasons." That's why we have the much more tame Christianity you know today. Islam is going through their own version of The Dark Ages, where they have too much power in the Middle East, but here in the West, as Vicky Caramel stated above, we don't have that problem, for the same reasons we don't have that problem with Christianity or Judaism. Secular law keeps religious fanaticism on a very short leash. When they try to slip that leash (usually by curtailing scientific education, unfortunately), that's when religion becomes a major problem, so that's why it's important that we don't become complacent as we watch the dog and make sure it doesn't go digging in ours or the neighbors' yard, so to speak.

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  19. bibra, if the attacks had been political in nature and not religious, I wouldn't have very much to say. But as it stands, they were religious in nature, so to you I say this: Despite our outward appearances, the US is not a theocracy. It is still a democratic and representative republic, and separation of church and state still does exist here, no matter how tenuously. And as an American Atheist, I say that the only way it will ever become a Christian Theocracy is over my dead body.

    Now, to counteract that bit of bluster, I have a joke I like to tell to religious right-wingers who support the Republican party. And I'll share it with you:

    Recently, the American Church of Christianity was acquired by Ayn Rand's objectivists. The next version of the King James Bible you read will have The Fountainhead as The Old Testament, and Atlas Shrugged as The New Testament. Jesus is being replaced by John Galt, and Peter will now be played by Dagny Taggart. Of course, the cross will be replaced by the dollar sign as the Christian holy icon.

    If you don't get the joke, you probably don't live in America, or never heard Hitch's insight into the right wing of our political structure. Tying that joke back to the topic, it's worth noting that Halburton and many other corporations posted record profits during the many wars we fought in the middle east.

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  20. Yeah, it's all just about the religion. Nothing to do with the decades of brutal repression by U.S./NATO backed dictators. Nothing at all. *headdesk* You know, one of the beautiful things about being an Atheist is that, at least in theory, you're capable of taking a step back; looking at the bigger picture, searching for context since, as Ben H. Bagdikian wrote in The Media Monopoly, "facts without context are meaningless." I say in theory because I look at this attitude far too many skeptic blogs like this have towards Muslims as if they aren't even human, unlike all the other religions we dispute and I wonder, how then are we any better than the Christians who bomb gay night clubs and women's health clinics? There's being an Atheist, and then there's being an asshole. I'm the former, not the latter. This isn't just "oh those crazy Muslims." VIOLENCE LIKE THIS DOES NOT OCCUR IN A VACUUM PEOPLE!

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  21. I am torn between both these points of view, knowing as I do, many perfectly peaceful and friendly Muslims. But the the point in this article with which I can't argue is that the extremists are taking their view from the same book as all other Muslims. Are we saying that any extreme religious faction is essentially wrong, or at least guilty of misunderstanding the book?

    No, in fact the majority are not better understanding the teachings of their holy book but are guided far less by it. Their morals and and ethics are basically the same as all humans, morals that have evolved in order to protect and expand our species.

    In my opinion the extremists actually tend to be the ones who are following the religion more closely. The further people are from the extremists in their religion the closer they are to the views of atheists.

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  22. http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist-292636-global-conspiracy.html

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    1. Hi there. Unfortunately I don't have time to keep up with my comments as they happen as I do have a full time job and the usual other commitments. I can't now see your original comment, but I'll have a look at the blog.

      The only comment I'll make in response before doing that is this; the last thing on earth that I *want* to believe is that there are significant groups of people out there who wish to see me and everything I value destroyed.

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  26. Being raised in a devout religious environment is basically brainwashing. Concepts like freedom, legitimate criticism, and rationalism simply never come up in such a setting. Anyone who questions is by definition the epitome of evil, a threat to all that is good and true, and Must Be Destroyed, Period.

    Faith is the enemy of reason. It's not the fault of the hapless believers who've been programmed to hate, but it is the fault of the culture that sustains such practices.

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    1. And I'm sure you believe that. Without evidence. Which, of course, is the problem.

      When religion does not agree with the real world, the devout person chooses to reject reality rather than re-think their faith.

      We have the same problem with devout Christians, many of whom explicitly say "I will accept only those parts of science that uphold my faith, and reject all the rest." Whenever you put ANYTHING on a higher level than factual reality... whenever you make science and reason subordinate to ANYTHING... you've abandoned reason and set yourself against the progress of human civilization.

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    3. Excuse me, copyleft you are again total wrong (in particular about me)!

      And this is a long discussion what is evidence what is reality etc... etc... just remove from your mind robotic faithful person image... do not make generalizations...

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    4. "Prove the creator doesn't exist?" You've got that backwards; that's not how science and logic work.

      The one making the claim has the burden of proof; otherwise, you'd have to believe ANYTHING anybody said, about ANY topic whatsoever, until you encountered ironclad proof that it was wrong. And have you ever encountered absolute proof that there were no leprechauns?

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  27. Chaza you are not a scientist. Your argument is fallacious and well trodden. Non belief in creationism does not equate to belief in non-creationism. This is why no-one is interested in debating creationists - they can't even get the basic tenets of the arguments straight.

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  28. Hi Smegger68, I'm sorry but how you know I'm not scientist? I am...ok.... I have noticed that majority of you in this site have a fake names even SoggyMog, and she even hide her photo. who hide his ID? Who? I must say I regret being in this site because is so secretively...God I was so stupid to come to here and pay comment I should have noticed that majority are fake. this is last time I visit here, it's scary especially after SoggMog hid her photo...

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  29. You're scared.... of a WEBPAGE? People quite often converse online using a nom-de-plume, but if you scratch the surface even slightly you will see that nobody is hiding. You simply have to click on my name to see my profile and then click my homepage to see my facebook page. All of which you should know if you spend more than 5 minutes a week on the internet.

    Why do I say you are not a scientist? Your arguments and thought processes are not scientific. Apparently you have an honours degree and work as a physicist. This qualifies you to talk about physics, much as my BSc qualifies me to talk about computer science. Doesn't make either of us scientists by the proper definition. Unless you have a doctorate I don't know about.

    And why have you deleted all your posts?

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  30. I penned a poem on this issue, hope you like it:

    http://bloodyreligion.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/islamist-apologists.html

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  31. I meant to comment on this when I first read it but I forgot and I've since read back a couple months and I simply had to tell you that I love you. Seriously, I agree with pretty much everything you post about. How did you get in my head?
    I also really really appreciate this post most of all because so many people refuse to say anything about Islam. I'm also not a fan of the Atheism+ movement and the players at its centre. These women would rather complain about being hit on in elevators and being a called bad names then criticizing the most obvious and least apologetic proponent of misogyny in the world today which is Islam. Why is it that it seems like a significantly higher amount of energy is being devoted to establishing and defending the A+ movement than any of them have been giving to criticizing the atrocities by Islamists in the Middle East in the past couple of months? It's why if I needed (I don't) or wanted a female atheist representative I'd choose a women's rights activist like Ayaan Hirsi Ali over a petty feminist like Rebecca Watson or Jen McCreight any day.

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