Islamophobia

Islamophobia is the fear, hatred of, or prejudice against the Islamic religion or Muslims generally.

Islam’s tenets are frequently distorted and taken out of context, with particular acts or practices being taken to represent or to symbolize a rich and complex faith. Some claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy, or irrevocably hostile to modernity and the rights of women. And in too many circles, disparaging remarks about Muslims are allowed to pass without censure, with the result that prejudice acquires a veneer of acceptability. ~ Kofi Annan

Islamophobia has grown since 9/11 and it is alarming. It is creating divisions. Muslim women wearing Hijab has become a problem. It is seen as a weapon. A woman can take off her clothes in some countries but she can not put more on? And why has this happened? Because certain western leaders equated Islam with terrorism. ~ Imran Khan

[Islamophobia:] A word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons. ~ Andrew Cummins

Quotes

A

• Islam’s tenets are frequently distorted and taken out of context, with particular acts or practices being taken to represent or to symbolize a rich and complex faith. Some claim that Islam is incompatible with democracy, or irrevocably hostile to modernity and the rights of women. And in too many circles, disparaging remarks about Muslims are allowed to pass without censure, with the result that prejudice acquires a veneer of acceptability.
  • Kofi Annan — "Secretary-General, addressing Headquarters Seminar on confronting Islamophobia, stresses importance of leadership, two-way integration, dialogue" (7 December 2004)

• Islamophobia has become so mainstream in this country that Americans have been trained to expect violence against Muslims - not excuse it, but expect it. And that's happened because you have an Islamophobia industry in this country devoted to making Americans think there's an enemy within.
  • Reza Aslan, quoted in "If the Sikh Temple Had Been a Mosque", The New York Times, August 10, 2012.

• At a time when Muslim communities are being exhorted to do more to tackle violence by a handful of extremists who purport to be Muslims, it is vitally important that our government and police are equally pro-active in seeking to tackle extremist violence against British Muslims and the Islamophobic climate that gives rise to it. ... The need for fair and equal treatment for British Muslims is even more pressing because many Muslims do not have sufficient confidence to report attacks against them to the police. There is therefore an urgent need to restore Muslim community confidence to tackle the problem of under-reporting of violent crime in much the same way as has been achieved with other minorities in the recent past. Time has come for politicians to finally take this issue as seriously as racism, anti-Semitism and homophobia.
  • Muhammad Abdul Bari — MCB Brings Experts and Parliamentarians Together to Discuss Islamophobia(05 March 2010)

B

• Islamophobia is often based on stereotypes about the religion (e.g. terrorism and misogyny), which are 'channelled' into attacks on Muslims. Hence, Islamophobia can be defined primarily as a hostility towards Islam, rather than Muslims, though it must manifest itself (secondarily) as hostility towards Muslims.
  • Malcolm Brown, quoted in Racism (2003). London, New York: Psychology Press. p. 197.

C

• The pathology of Islamophobia is growing throughout the West — it is taking its most lethal form in India.
  • Noam Chomsky, quoted in "India has turned Muslims into a 'persecuted minority': Noam Chomsky", Dawn, February 12, 2022

Inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric and threatening to ban the families and friends of Muslim Americans as well as millions of Muslim business people and tourists from entering our country hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. ~ Hillary Clinton

• Inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric and threatening to ban the families and friends of Muslim Americans as well as millions of Muslim business people and tourists from entering our country hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror. So does saying that we have to start special surveillance on our fellow Americans because of their religion...
  • Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s remarks following the Orlando shooting, Washington Post, June 14, 2016

• Since 9/11, law enforcement agencies have worked hard to build relationships with Muslim American communities. Millions of peace-loving Muslims live, work and raise their families across America. And they are the most likely to recognize the insidious effects of radicalization before it's too late, and the best positioned to help us block it. So we should be intensifying contacts in those communities, not scapegoating or isolating them.
  • Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s remarks following the Orlando shooting, Washington Post, June 14, 2016

• We see no colonialism, racism, or so-called "Islamophobia" in submitting Islamic practices to criticism or condemnation when they violate human reason or rights.
  • "The St. Petersburg Declaration" (March 2007), quoted in Paul Cliteur's The Secular Outlook: In Defense of Moral and Political Secularism (2010), p. 276.

• Because we live in a liberal democracy and therefore have certain double standards to maintain, any criticism of Islam or of Muslims always draws the immediate accusation of Islamophobia, a dishonest word which seeks to portray legitimate comment as some kind of hate crime.
  • Pat Condell, The trouble with Islam (16 March 2007, from YouTube).

• [Islamophobia:] A word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.
  • Andrew Cummins, in a Tweet that was later widely misattributed to Christopher Hitchens by Sam Harris and Bill Maher, see [1]

D

• Islamophobic violence is nurtured by histories of anti-black racist violence.
  • Angela Davis, Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Closures and Continuities, Birkbeck Annual Law lecture at Birkbeck, University of London (25 October 2013). Transcrip

• The Organization of Islamic Cooperation has launched the term “Islamophobia”, which was immediately adopted by the US, the EU, academic bodies like the American Academy of Religion, and then the media and the chattering classes in the West, in India and elsewhere. Its users translate it as “hatred of Islam” but it really means “fear of Islam”. It treats warnings against the threat Islam poses to rival convictions as well as to freedom and democracy as a psychic disease on a par with claustrophobia (fear of closed spaces) or arachnophobia (irrational fear of spiders). It is an excellent way to poison the debate by declaring your enemies insane.
  • Koenraad Elst, 4, 2014. Politicians praising Islam? Non-Muslims, seek shelter! And Muslims, too! [2]

• There is no doubt that this fusion of terrorist and Muslim feeds virulent forms of Islamophobia, which is also encouraged by such incidents as the Westgate Mall massacre in Nairobi and the Anglican Church bombing in Pakistan. 9/11 greatly intensified this tendency toward fusion, but it had also been nurtured by Israeli propaganda that portrayed their Palestinian and Arab adversaries as "terrorists." In fact, the US government approach after 9/11 was modeled in many of its features on Israeli tactics developed during the long occupation of Palestine.
  • Richard Falk, "Syria and Our Educational System: A Discussion With Noam Chomsky, Richard Falk, Lawrence Davidson and Ilan Pappé", truthout.org, October 13, 2013.

• Islam has been one of the main targets in the Chinese government’s campaign against the Uyghurs, and Islamophobia is being tacitly encouraged by Communist party authorities. Students, peaceful academics and even ordinary people for the simple reason for being Muslims are being jailed, with a massive high-tech surveillance state that monitors and judges every movement, subjecting the widely marginalised Uyghur people to a brutal siege. Internment camps have been set up with up to a million prisoners being indoctrinated and ‘re-educated’, leading to empty neighbourhoods, with major mosques in the major cities of Kashgar and Urumqi standing deserted. Prisoners in the camps are also being compelled to renounce God and embrace the Chinese Communist Party doctrines and prayers, religious education, and the fasting in the month of Ramadan being increasingly restricted or banned. Those who disobey are reportedly subject to torture such as solitary confinement, deprivation of food, water and sleep, and even waterboarding. The reason that so many are being held is because most are arrested for no discernible reason, other than to curb religious practice and erase Uyghur culture.
  • Lukman Harees, Why The Muslim World Is Silent Over China's Repression of Uyghurs, World Uyghur Congress, 2 January 2019

• There is no such thing as Islamophobia. Bigotry and racism exist, of course—and they are evils that all well-intentioned people must oppose. And prejudice against Muslims or Arabs, purely because of the accident of their birth, is despicable. But like all religions, Islam is a system of ideas and practices. And it is not a form of bigotry or racism to observe that the specific tenets of the faith pose a special threat to civil society. Nor is it a sign of intolerance to notice when people are simply not being honest about what they and their co-religionists believe.
  • Sam Harris -Reference archive|1=http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-08-13/ground-zero-mosque/3/%7C2=2011-03-08}} What Obama Got Wrong About the Mosque] - The Daily Beast, August 13, 2010

• Needless to say, there are people who hate Arabs, Somalis, and other immigrants from predominantly Muslim societies for racist reasons. But if you can’t distinguish that sort of blind bigotry from a hatred and concern for dangerous, divisive, and irrational ideas—like a belief in martyrdom, or a notion of male “honor” that entails the virtual enslavement of women and girls—you are doing real harm to our public conversation. Everything I have ever said about Islam refers to the content and consequences of its doctrine. And, again, I have always emphasized that its primary victims are innocent Muslims—especially women and girls. There is no such thing as “Islamophobia.” This is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it.
  • Sam Harris. —Sam Harris, in a letter to Glenn Greenwald. [3]

• This is very urgent business, ladies and gentlemen, I beseech you: resist it while you still can and before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing. You will be told, you can’t complain – because you’re Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture, as if it’s an accusation of race hatred for example or bigotry, whereas it’s only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion.
  • Christopher Hitchens quoted at Christopher Hitchens Resisting Islam

• Islamophobia has grown since 9/11 and it is alarming. It is creating divisions. Muslim women wearing Hijab has become a problem. It is seen as a weapon. A woman can take off her clothes in some countries but she can not put more on? And why has this happened? Because certain western leaders equated Islam with terrorism.
  • Imran Khan. Speech at the United Nations General Assembly, 2019 Transcript online, Business Recorder, September 27, 2019.

• One of the reasons for Islamophobia; in 1989 this book was published maligning, ridiculing our Prophet (PBUH). The west could not understand what was the problem. They don’t look at religion the way that we do. And so; in their eyes Islam was an intolerant religion. It became a watershed.
  • Imran Khan, Speech at the United Nations General Assembly, 2019 Transcript online, Business Recorder, September 27, 2019.

• Groups should not be targeted for their beliefs, only for their activities if they are criminal.
  • Salem Marayati, Spreading Saudi Fundamentalism in U.S.: Network of Wahhabi Mosques, Schools, Web Sites Probed by FBI, Washington Post

• "....People like Cenk Uyger and Reza Aslan have made a career out of equating the criticism and intolerance for Islam to “attacking” 1.6 billion Muslims and portraying them as a singular group of worshippers. Uyger and Aslan claim the entirety of the Ummah are persecuted by atheists – while conveniently forgetting how much the Ummah propagate hatred and violence towards vocal atheists worldwide which is precisely the cause of so many attacks on Bangladeshi atheist/secular bloggers’ and the impending violence vowed upon more atheists and secularists around the globe...."
  • Aki Muthali in Atheistophobia: It’s time to talk about the most persecuted minority in the world, nation.com.pk 2015 September, 27.
• And while theologians are especially responsible for leading the Muslim resistance against Islamism, Muslims could not be expected to do this if Islamism's twin, Islamophobia, was not also challenged. There are those out there who harbor an irrational fear of Islam. Islamophobes and Islamists have this much in common: both groups insist that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology at odds with liberal democracy, and hence both insist that the two will inevitably clash. One extreme calls for the Qur'an to be banned, the other calls to ban everything but the Qur'an. Together, they form the negative and positive of a bomb fuse.
  • Maajid Nawaz, Radical: My Journey out of Islamic Extremism (2013), p. 212

• After the outbreak of Covid-19, one was hoping that the global calamity will be combated on top priority without any consideration of race, ethnicity and religion. [...] Overall, during the last couple of months, the hate-filled atmosphere has taken a sharp upturn and the popular talk is veering towards shun Muslims and boycotting their trades. This does remind some of the boycott of Jew traders before the "final solution" was put into action in Germany. Already the myths, stereotypes and biases against Muslims in particular and partly against Christians abound in the society. A hate-creation mechanism is already in place. This mechanism has become robust during last few years. The roots of this mechanism are fairly deep and it has been actively nurtured by communal elements. That a human tragedy like Covid-19 could have boosted divisive processes was unthinkable a few years ago. To create a negative image, to manufacture stereotypes and biases against the minorities, a large network of trained people, owing allegiance to Hindu nationalism have spread far and wide, deep into the vitals of society.
  • Ram Puniyani during the 2020 coronavirus lockdown in India, Combating Hate: Building Bridges of Love, 14 May 2020, NewsClick

• The provocation and justification for the aggression at level of ideas was provided by Shah Bano blunder by a section of Muslim leadership. After this there was no looking back and all the medieval history was used to demonise the Muslims of today. The additions to the list of stereotypes were fast and furious. Love "jihad", ghar wapasi and cow protection mobs came in, and each served to undermine the Muslim identity and marginalise the community, while the graph of violence saw a parallel rise. The outcome was ghettoisation or seclusion of the minorities, among whom insecurity grew and threw its members further into the arms of maulanas with their rigid pronouncements about Islam. These maulanas and their teachings is what a section of the media uses to characterise the whole community. The moderate Muslims, the ones trying to articulate humane values, have been pushed to the margin.
  • Ram Puniyani, Combating Hate: Building Bridges of Love, 14 May 2020, NewsClick

• To add to this, social media was brought into operation with thousands of trolls, fake news and what have you. Today’s speed of hate-creation has only become possible because of the ground "work" done over decades. It is in this light that many Muslim intellectuals have come together as a think-tank, which they call Indian Muslims for Progress and Reforms. One hopes that they will be able to push for reform and open the pathways for jobs for the Muslim youth while countering the media that demonises them. Apart from these contemporary steps, one wishes to urge upon them to study and reflect upon the foundations on which the present hate-ethic is being spread.
  • Ram Puniyani, Combating Hate: Building Bridges of Love, 14 May 2020, NewsClick

• [C]riticism of Islam is often taken to be criticism of Muslims. That is... false. One can criticize the Quranic command to beat disobedient wives without criticizing Muslims. The accusation of Islamophobia... often fails at this point. Islam is not Muslims, and one can criticize Islam while affirming and loving Muslims.
  • Nabeel Qureshi . Answering Jihad: A Better Way Forward (2016)

• "Islamophobia", the thought-crime that seeks to suppress legitimate criticism of Islam and demonize those who would tell the truth about Islamist aggression.
  • Melanie Phillips, Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within (2006), pg. xvii.

• Tolerance defines our constitution and the British people. If the UK is to live up to its tradition of tolerance, this needs to be taken seriously. Islamophobia needs to be abolished.
  • Peter Oborne — MCB Brings Experts and Parliamentarians Together to Discuss Islamophobia(05 March 2010)

• A kind of racism still exists in the United States, and Islamophobia is a more convenient way to express that sentiment. There has also been an attempt to paint Muslims as enemies of the United States.
  • Feisal Abdul Rauf, "Q&A with Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf". Interview with Daniel Burke, washingtonpost.com. August 29, 2012.

John Esposito, Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understanding (2004)

John Esposito, speech at the UN seminar Confronting Islamophobia: Education for Tolerance and Understanding in December 2004

• We find statements by religious, polital leaders and the media that incite Islamophobia. I'm going to give you some, otherwise we wind up talking in very true but general statements. And I think we need to hear the actual words, because these are the words that people, who are in churches, people who are watching the media, hear. And if they don't have a context within which to place them, they will draw us out of conclusions. While George Bush and Tony Blair may distinguish between Islam and extremism, Franklin Graham tells us that "Islam is a very evil religion. All the values that we as a nation hold dear, they don't share those same values at all … these countries that have the majority of Muslims." You might think of Franklin Graham as an individual, but if you are in the Muslim world, you know that Franklin Graham gave the invocation at the first inauguration of president Bush, that Franklin Graham a year and a half later was asked to speak on Good Friday at the Pentagon. That sends a signal. Pat Robertson: "This man [Muhammad] was an absolute wild-eyed fanatic, he was a robber and a brigand. And to say that these terrorists distort Islam … they are carrying out Islam. I mean: This man [Muhammed] was a killer and to think that this is a peaceful religion is fraudulent." Benny Hinn at a pro-Israel rally: "This not a war between Arabs and the Jews, this is between God and the devil." And there are many others.

• While Islamophobia like anti-Semitism is centuries old, it too will not be eradicated easily or soon. Therefore we all have a critical role to play: Government policy makers, educational institutions and the media, religious and political leaders, educators, media people, believers and unbelievers, the private and public sectors and international organisations like the UN are charged today to address and promote inter-religious and inter-cultural dialog to build a world based upon a modern notion of tolerance, that is grounded in mutual understanding and respect for others. For the end of the day Islamophobia, anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance know no religious, racial, tribal or national bounderies or limits. The message at the end of the day is simple and clear: Islam is not the enemy, religious extremism is.

See also

• War on Islam

External links

• Islamophobia Studies Journal - Islamophobia Research & Documentation Project, UC Berkeley.
• Reports – European Islamophobia - European Islamophobia Reports EIR
• Islamophobia Today Newspaper - An Islamophobia news clearing house
• Sammy Aziz Rahmatti, Understanding and Countering Islamophobia.
• Islamophobia or anti-Muslim racism – or what? – concepts and terms revisited by Robin Richardson