The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (32 page)

Chapter 16

“ISLAMOPHOBIA” AND TODAY’S IDEOLOGICAL JIHAD

W
hat have moderate Muslims done with the unmistakable evidence that jihad terrorists are working within mainstream Islamic traditions and using the Qur’an and Muhammad’s example to exhort Muslims to wage war against unbelievers? Have they clearly and definitively rejected the teachings of the jihadists as being incompatible with any twenty-first-century version of Islam? Have they confronted and refuted the jihadist exegesis of the Qur’an and Islamic tradition? Have they presented an alternative vision of Islam that will be convincing enough to compete with the jihadists’ “pure Islam” in the global battle for Muslim minds?

Guess what?

• The UN has condemned “Islamophobia” while turning a blind eye to atrocities committed by jihadists.
  
• The charge of “Islamophobia” is used to intimidate and silence critics of violent jihad in Islam.
  
• Some groups are even trying to brand those who tell the truth about Islam and jihad as purveyors of “hate speech.”
  

By and large, the answer to all these questions is no. Instead, “moderate” Muslims have invented “Islamophobia.”

At the UN: A new word for a new tool of political manipulation

No one had heard of “Islamophobia” just a few short years ago. But a year is a long time for a well-oiled propaganda machine. Now this concept, vague and ultimately empty, is taken seriously at the highest levels. In December 2004, Kofi Annan presided over a UN seminar on “Islamophobia,” explaining with his best PC straight face: “When the world is compelled to coin a new term to take account of increasingly widespread bigotry, that is a sad and troubling development. Such is the case with ‘Islamophobia.’ The word seems to have emerged in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today, the weight of history and the fallout of recent developments have left many Muslims around the world feeling aggravated and misunderstood, concerned about the erosion of their rights and even fearing for their physical safety.”

The UN’s focus, not unexpectedly, stayed mostly on the aggrieved, misunderstood Muslims, with no questions raised about the Islamic roots of jihad terrorism. Nor was there any discussion of the compatibility of Islam with universally accepted ideas of human rights, as embodied in the UN’s own 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Islamic responses

We have already seen that Iran’s Sheikh Tabandeh published an Islamic critique of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Islamic world has seen fit to formulate two major responses to this document: the 1981 Universal Islamic Declaration of Human Rights and the 1990 Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam. Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which we owe to the courageous Charles Malik of Lebanon, states: “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief.”
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You will find no analogous guarantee of the freedom to change one’s religion in either of the Islamic declarations; indeed, as we have seen, traditional Islamic law mandates the death penalty for those who leave Islam. What’s more, the Cairo declaration states: “Everyone shall have the right to advocate what is right, and propagate what is good, and warn against what is wrong and evil according to the norms of Islamic Shari’ah.”
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By focusing on “Islamophobia” instead of the unpleasant realities of Islam, the UN dishonors past and present victims of jihad terror, and colludes with terrorists. Although this stance is born of political correctness and a putative concern to prevent vilification of innocent Muslims, it actually prevents honest attempts by Muslims and non-Muslims to address the actual sources of jihad terror and find some way to turn Muslims away from the path of violence.

What is Islamophobia, anyway?

Journalist and Islamic apologist Stephen Schwartz defines “Islamophobia” this way:

Notwithstanding the arguments of some Westerners, Islamophobia exists; it is not a myth. Islamophobia consists of:

attacking the entire religion of Islam as a problem for the world

condemning all of Islam and its history as extremist

denying the active existence, in the contemporary world, of a moderate Muslim majority

insisting that Muslims accede to the demands of non-Muslims (based on ignorance and arrogance) for various theological changes in their religion

treating all conflicts involving Muslims (including, for example, that in Bosnia-Hercegovina a decade ago), as the fault of Muslims themselves

inciting war against Islam as a whole
³

While there may be by this definition some Islamophobes in the world, Schwartz actually obscures more than he reveals. Does labeling as “Islamophobic” the practice of “attacking the entire religion of Islam as a problem for the world” mean that it is also Islamophobic to focus attention on the Qur’an and the Sunnah of the Prophet as motivations for terrorist activity? If so, then jihad terrorists worldwide are themselves “Islamophobic,” for, as we have seen, they routinely point to jihad passages from the Qur’an and Hadith to justify their actions. Nor is a frank discussion of the doctrine of Islamic jihad equivalent to saying that the “entire religion of Islam” is a “problem for the world.” No one is saying that
tayammum
(ablution with sand instead of water) or
dhikr
(a dervish religious devotion) or other elements of Islam pose a problem for the world.

Defining the condemnation of “all of Islam and its history as extremist” as “Islamophobic” is similarly problematic—and not just because of the sloppy imprecision of the word “extremist.” Jihad and dhimmitude are part of Islam. Yet no commandment of any religion has ever been uniformly observed by its adherents, nor any law universally enforced. Jews and Christians in Islamic lands were able at various times and places to live with a great deal of freedom; however, this does not contradict the fact that the laws of the dhimma always remained on the books, able to be enforced by any Muslim ruler.

Likewise, while it may seem “Islamophobic” to deny “the active existence, in the contemporary world, of a moderate Muslim majority,” it is also beside the point. Whether a moderate Muslim majority exists depends on how you define “moderate Muslim.” Is it one who will never engage in terrorist acts? That would make moderates an overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide. Or is a moderate one who sincerely disapproves of those terrorist acts? That would reduce the number of moderates. Or is a moderate Muslim one who actively speaks out and works against the jihadists? That would lower the number yet again. Or finally, is a moderate Muslim one who actively engages the jihadists in a theological battle, trying to convince Muslims that jihad terrorism is wrong on Islamic grounds? That would leave us with a tiny handful.

Moreover, it would be silly for anyone to treat “all conflicts involving Muslims…as the fault of Muslims themselves,” or to incite “war against Islam as a whole.” To go to war with Islam as a whole—grizzled shepherds in Kazakhstan and giggly secretaries in Jakarta as well as bin Laden and Zarqawi—would be absurd and unnecessary. But what does Schwartz really mean by saying that those who would advocate “war against Islam as a whole” are “Islamophobic?” Would that include those who recognize that Islamic jihad has been declared against Americans and who advocate resistance?

All this indicates that “Islamophobia” is virtually useless as an analytical tool. To adopt it is to accept the most virulent form of theological equivalence, and to affirm, against all the evidence, that every religious tradition is equally capable of inspiring violence. In many cases, this is part of an attempt to smear Western civilization by comparing the sins of Christians to an ideal, fictionalized Islam. To make this comparison is to deny the sensible observation of the once eminent atheist and, late in life, theist philosopher Antony Flew: “Jesus is an enormously attractive charismatic figure, which the Prophet of Islam most emphatically is not.”
⁴
Once again, this is not base theological one-upmanship, but a realistic analysis of Islamic jihad. It also strengthens the idea that Western civilization is worth defending.