The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain considers Baroness Warsi's recent comments about Islamophobia as an attempt to stigmatise critical scrutiny of Islam and stifle genuine debate. All religions should be scrutinised and do not deserve special treatment over any other beliefs, ideas or philosophies. Of course the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain strongly condemns all forms of racism, bigotry and violence, however we utterly reject any attempt to conflate these issues with valid criticism and debate about Islam and Islamism.
Recent press release from the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain
"Islamophobia" is a word I can do without. Some people think it's a useful way of describing the inaccurate, venomous stereotypes created by professional bigots like Richard 'I'm not a racist, but...' Littlejohn. Personally, I don't think "Islamophobia" brings anything to the party.
There are already enough words to describe people like Littlejohn. I've already used "bigot" and everybody knows what "prejudice" means. Once somebody has used the phrase "indigenous population" enough times it would only be fair to add the word "racist" to the list.
"Islamophobia" isn't merely superfluous. It's also unclear. Say that something is prejudicial, bigoted or racist and I'll have a good idea what you're talking about - hatred for, or discrimination against, a person, or group of people, based purely on ethnic origin, skin colour, not being from round here, etc, etc. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is completely unacceptable.
If you say that something is "Islamophobic", you might be talking about blanket prejudice towards people who were born into Muslim households and/or believe in the tenets of that religion, which, to my mind, is unfair, indefensible and just plain stupid. But you might equally be talking about criticism of the Islamic religion and/or how its practitioners interpret or act on it, which is an entirely different thing. Islam, like many other belief systems, makes claims that certain things are true and advocates particular views about morality and how society should be organised
Other people have feelings, just like you or me and, regardless of background, deserve just as much fair treatment, courtesy and consideration as we do. Of course, this doesn't stop us judging individuals by their words and actions. If somebody behaves badly, we might withdraw some of that respect and consideration. Pre-judging other human beings or groups of human beings by irrelevant factors like ethnicity, though, would be unfair and senseless . That's why prejudice is a Bad Thing.
Systems of belief aren't people, though. Being to asked to unquestioningly respect a huge, abstract system of metaphysical beliefs and moral precepts isn't the same as being asked to treat a person with consideration.
There's no compelling evidence that the universe was created by a supernatural being. There's even less evidence that such a hypothetical being sent His personal assistant down to one guy named Mo, in order to dictate a handbook on how the human race should live, (if you're satisfied with circular reasoning, then the assertions contained in the book itself might count as evidence, but they don't do it for me).
It's way more probable that the rules and regulations contained in Mo's handbook are just the social norms of a particular society, written down by a tribal elder, who created a god in his own image. The prophet may have sincerely believed that God's representative had been talking to him. Or maybe he just made the whole revelation thing up, in a conscious attempt to give divine authority to his own wishes.
That's more or less what I believe about that particular subject. It's not particularly clever, original, or relevant to my to my day to day existence, but it's a conclusion I've come to freely. I'm perfectly happy to rub along in a diverse society, alongside many other people who freely believe different things about the metaphysical nature of the universe and stuff that allegedly happened centuries before I was born.
As I'm not particularly brave, I also realise that I'm privileged to live in a society where it's safe to voice an opinion like this. Because what I've just written is, to some people, blasphemy and I am an infidel. Salman Taseer, remember, was murdered for saying something far less controversial than anything I've said. He needed more courage than I'll ever have just to suggest out loud that a woman shouldn't be killed on the hearsay of people who suggested that she'd disrespected the Islamic religion. For daring to say that, some treacherous bastard of a bodyguard decided he deserved 26 rounds from an automatic rifle at point-blank range. Spiteful, block-headed fanatics showered Tanseer's murderer with rose petals. Tanseer saw such people for what they were. When advised to tone down his criticisms of extremists like the one who would eventually kill him, Tanseer replied 'you have to stand up to bullies.'
According to Baroness Warsi's bizarre formulation, if I described a blameless Muslim in the street as more moderate than the fanatic who shot Salman Tanseer, I would be making an "Islamophobic" statement. I don't know if she thinks that Tanseer himself was an Islamophobe for disrespectfully calling violent Islamist reactionaries 'bullies.'
Charles Moore called Baroness Warsi 'muddle-headed', which is a charitable interpretation of her choice of words (it's a sure sign that things are getting bad when Charles Moore sounds comparatively reasonable). I'm irritated, but not worried by sloppy use of the word "Islamophobia" by people who can't quite grasp the difference between reasoned criticism of an organized system of beliefs and unthinking prejudice against people because their families happen to come, say, from the Indian subcontinent.
It does worry me when the term "Islamophobia" is used to stifle criticism of autocratic clerical authority, repression, misogyny, hatred of other religions, the persecution of apostates, oppression of gay people and even murder, by people like the ones who run the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC), a lobby group representing a group of Islamist states, including some of the most disgusting human rights abusers on the planet.
The OIC has for a long time been leaning on the United Nations to pass resolutions proclaiming, for example, that 'defamation of religious is a serious affront to human dignity', a hypocritical statement, given that religious language such as "infidel", "heretic" or "apostate" automatically defames all religions but one's own and that behaviour like this, this, this, this, this, this, this, this, or this, is a more 'serious affront to human dignity' than the curses of the most inventive blasphemer.
The OIC, and other hard-line religious reactionaries love words like "Islamophobia." Many of their opponents in the culture wars are tolerant, thoughtful, articulate people, living in liberal societies where open debate and freedom of expression are valued above blind faith and obedience to authority. It's hard to shut people like that up when they don't fear or respect you very much, but a clever propagandist can use liberals' general niceness against them. When people who are genuinely not racist or intolerant dare to criticize anything relating to Islam in any way, "Islamophobia" gets thrown back in their faces. Suddenly the liberals are the ones on the defensive. Being nice people, they have to go off topic, reassuring the world that they're not prejudiced, racist or intolerant, before they can get on with making whatever reasoned criticism they were trying to make.
As an argument-killer, "Islamophobia" is up there with the popular American neologism "hater." Both terms sound bigoted and prejudicial - "Islamophobia" sounds like "homophobia" and "hater" sounds like ... well ... "hate." And both terms can be fired back at liberal critics to stop an argument in its tracks, forcing the critic to go onto the back foot to refute the assertion of prejudice. As Mark Dery writes in his essay, Hate is All Around: The Politics of Enthusiasm and its Discontents:
Worst of all is the inability of the reflexively positive to distinguish between critical thinkers and haters (succinctly defined as Anyone Who Hates One of My Favorite Things). The concept of a “hater” is a fascinating one, and bears closer scrutiny...
At their wound-licking, hater-hatin’ worst, the politics of enthusiasm bespeak the intellectual flaccidity of a victim culture that sees even reasoned critiques as a mean-spirited assault on the believer, rather than an intellectual challenge to his beliefs. Journal writer Christopher John Farley is worth quoting again: dodging the argument by smearing the critic, the term “hater” tars “all criticism—no matter the merits—as the product of hateful minds.” No matter the merits.
(via)
"Islamophobia" is another linguistic product of 'a victim culture that sees even reasoned critiques as a mean-spirited assault on the believer.' Salman Rushdie has had reason to know that culture better than most:
I think that we live in a very timid age, and part of our timidity arises from our unwillingness to offend people. And as a result there are whole tribes of people now who define themselves by their offendedness. Who are you if you are not offended by anything? You're nobody, you know? Or even worse, you're a liberal.
No doubt the people who burned Rushdie's books, tried to intimidate publishers and booksellers with threats of violence and called for his murder would have called him a "hater", had the term been current then. But then the BNP are always whining that the "liberal elite" are trying to stifle their freedom of expression (as if they had a clue what the term meant), so we don't need a hypothetical example to work out that knuckle-headed bullies in general don't do irony.
As I don't like "Islamophobia", I feel that I should offer some kind of alternative. Because "Islamophobia" sneakily smuggles two entirely different concepts into one word, I think that the word is too risky and needs breaking up, in the same way that people have suggested splitting safe and steady retail banks from their high-risk, high-return, potentially economy-trashing investment arms. I'm quite happy for "prejudice", "bigotry" or "racism" to stand in for "Islamophobia" when that's what the term denotes. But what about "Islamophobia" in the sense of failing to uncritically approve of the Muslim religion or some aspect of it? I think history can help us with this one.
A few paragraphs back, I listed some aspects of Islam that perfectly well-meaning people might reasonably object to - autocratic clerical authority, repression, misogyny, hatred of other religions, the persecution of apostates, oppression of gay people and even murder. These aspects of organized religion aren't unique to Islam. All of these abuses existed in Christian Europe in the medieval and early modern periods (overlapping with the period when the Islamic World was, by the standards of the age, realtively learned, tolerant, liberal and cosmopolitan). It's not even an exhaustive list - the pious also had enough holy wars, torture, persecution of freethinkers, wich-burning and forced conversions to keep themselves amused for years. The Christian church hasn't gone away, it's just that Western societies have evolved away from being theocracies that defined people by their religion, in which religious authorities could command obedience by fear.
During the late 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, as the power of the church waned, there was a word for secularists who challenged and questioned the power of organised religion and the authority of clerics. Anticlericalism. It's not exactly an obscure word, but it's not very popular these days, either. It'll do me, though. Anti-clerical will go nicely on my mantelpiece next to anti-racist. Because I believe that people of all races and backgrounds deserve to be treated with consideration and deserve to live free from bigotry and bullying, even the bullying of hypocrites and cowards who call their hateful words and actions "faith" and turn the accusation of bigotry back on anyone who dares to stand up to them.
As I said, I'm lucky. At least in terms of freedom of conscience and religion, I know how it feels to be free.
Here's Nina Simone singing I wish I knew how it would feel to be free (link to YouTube added because embedded links don't seem to appear when blog posts are re-posted to Facebook)
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