"Islamophobia" is Justified

Guest Commentary by Edward Cline:

Islam gets such good Western press that one can’t imagine why Muslims protest so much. For every “offensive” cartoon of Mohammad that bubbles up into public view from the fetid swamp of a decaying and suicidal European culture, there are miles of newsprint that implicitly or overtly take the side of Islam. Of course, the “public” is fortunate if it ever sees these cartoons, because most Western newspapers and news services are too tremulously funked to reprint them for their readers’ edification. The cowardice is artfully disguised by most publications under the cloak of multicultural “tolerance” and “respect” for a great religion.

The exceptions are perhaps such bastions of freedom of the press as The New York Times, which, so much the worse, seems to be sincere in its esteem for a creed whose chaotic and often homicidal tenets were established by a murderous barbarian who heard a voice in the night. The angel Gabriel’s, the legend goes. One imagines Allah was too much of elitist snot to speak directly to a mere mortal.

The Islamists’, or Islamofascists’ protests against such alleged “offenses” seem all out of proportion to their infrequent occurrences. This is because the Islamists demand complete, across-the-board “respect” – or submission. Islam forbids Muslims to criticize the creed; its fundamentalists also expect infidels to abide by the same prohibition.

An instance of Islam-friendly journalism is an Associated Press item of September 16, under the headline “U.N. expert: Religious bias a threat to peace.” No, the “religious bias” is not Islam’s persecution and murder of Christians, Jews, and other religious faithful around the world, but a phenomenon called “Islamophobia.”

“A U.N. expert on racism on Friday branded the defamation of religions – in particular critical portrayals of Islam in the West – a threat to world peace.

“’Islamophobia today is the most serious form of religious defamation,’ Doudou Diene told the U.N. Human Rights Council, which is holding a three-week session in Geneva.

“Diene cited a caricature of the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in a Swedish newspaper, a protest by far-right groups in Belgium Tuesday against the ‘Islamization of Europe,’ and campaigns against the construction of mosques in Germany and of an ‘ever increasing trend’ toward anti-Islamic actions in Europe.”

One’s first thought after reading this pap is: “He must be kidding.” But, then, Mr. Diene is a U.N. “expert,” and such “experts” not only get things backwards, but get them perversely backwards, as well. No one notices it, perhaps least of all Western journalists.

“Diene, a Senegalese lawyer and U.N. expert on racism, was presenting a report on defamation of religions to the 47-member council. The report also includes sections on anti-Semitism and other forms of persecution around the world.”

If Mr. Diene asserted in his report that “Islamophobia” is the “most serious form of religious defamation,” then one can bet that the sections on anti-Semitism and “other forms of persecution” will not be very lengthy or sententious. If they exist, these sections will not dwell on:

· The regular defamation in cartoons, editorials and in television programming of Jews, Christians and other religionists in the Muslim media.

· The Islamic Sudanese government’s campaign of genocide and ethnic cleansing in Darfur.

· The fatwahs against the Danish and Swedish cartoonists (not to mention the still outstanding fatwah against Salman Rushdie, and the achieved fatwahs against Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gosh).

· The destruction or vandalizing of churches and attacks on non-Muslims during Muslim riots in Europe, especially against non-hijabed, non-Muslim women.

· The synagogues in many European cities now protected by the police or private armed guards against Muslim jihadists.

That is just the tip of the iceberg.

The Associated Press item concludes:

“African and Islamic countries welcomed the assessment and called for moves
to draft an international treaty that would compel states to act against any form of defamation of religion. European Union members of the council and other countries cautioned against equating criticism of religion with racism.”

The only religionists now claiming that any criticism of Islam by Westerners constitutes “racism” are Muslims. And the “caution” by Europeans and presumably other Western nations on the council is the usual meekly vacuous squeak of protest.

None of this was noted by Frank Jordans, who filed the AP report. Now, before he filed his article, he might have taken time to consult a dictionary on the term “phobia.” The Concise Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a “morbid fear or aversion.” Webster’s New Collegiate defines it as “an irrational, persistent fear of a particular object or class of objects.” The American Heritage defines it as “a persistent, abnormal, or illogical fear of a specific thing or situation.”

He might have then asked himself: If Islamists or jihadists in the name of Allah were not so regularly persistent in their suicide bombings, detected and foiled conspiracies to perpetrate mass casualties in the West, kidnappings and murders of non-Muslim humanitarian workers, and other episodes of Islamic religious violence, would anyone be justified in developing a “phobia” for Islam? No.

However, since all these outrages are committed by Muslims in the name of Islam, could “Islamophobia” be considered at all morbid, irrational, illogical or even abnormal? Is such a phobia any less justified or understandable than harboring a phobia for rattlesnakes, black widow spiders, or poisonous centipedes?

Perhaps, he might have further thought, such a phobia is more justified or understandable because, while one might have a chance but fatal encounter with a snake, spider or centipede, Islamists or Islamofascists deliberately target their victims. The difference, he might have realized, is one of volition.

Then the journalist might have scoffed: Who or what is the real “threat to world peace”? How can this U.N. “expert” take so much exception to the defiant but pathetic gestures of a dying culture – the cartoons, the protest against the Islamization of Europe and so on – and characterize them as “destabilizing”?

And, if he had any self-respect as a journalist, and respect for his profession, he might have taken principled exception to the idea of an “international treaty” that would prohibit or punish the defamation of any religion. He might have thought: I’ll say what I damned well please about any religion. As far as I’m concerned, and based on all the evidence of the last thirty years of Islamic violence, Islam has earned that phobia.

Jordans could have enlightened his readers about the Swedish cartoon mentioned by Doudou Diene – of Mohammad head’s on the body of a dog, a mullah holding the dog leash – drawn by Lars Vilks and published in Nerikes Allehanda on August 18. He could have mentioned the $100,000 reward for the murder of Vilks and a $50,000 reward for murdering the newspaper’s editor, both offered by the purported head of Al Qada in Iraq, Abu Omar al-Baghdadi.

Whose “peace” was threatened? Islam’s, or the Swedes’? These questions did not occur to Jordans, and so he did not bother to enlighten his readers.

Jordans could have enlightened his readers about the “far-right protests in Belgium against the ‘Islamization of Europe.’” These protests occurred in Brussels on September 11, when a peaceful protest by members of Belgium’s opposition parties was broken up by Belgian police, who beat and arrested two prominent demonstrators. The police undoubtedly wanted to prove to Islamists that they are on their side and can be just as brutal when it comes to punishing anyone who publicly speaks on the danger of recognizing Sharia law in an expiring Western culture.

Jordans could have questioned the use of the term “far-right” when it is used to smear anyone who protests Islamization anywhere, and emphasized that while it has traditionally been the “far right” that is accused of using “police state” tactics to squelch opposition, any more it is the far left that is employing them, such as in Belgium.

Jordans’ investigative skills must have been in a sleep mode on this subject, too.

Finally, Jordans could have mentioned another instance of anti-Islamic action in Europe cited by Diene, the “campaigns against the construction of mosques in Germany and Switzerland.” He might have merely noted these campaigns, and posed the question of whether they alone can stem the tide of Islamization, then proposed that it is the totalitarian ideas that are the foundation of Islam which must be combated, not their manifestation in the form of mosques. (He might have even pointed out that no synagogues, churches or even chapels may be built in Saudi Arabia and other Islamic fiefdoms, and delved into the Islamists’ double standard on the matter of places of worship.)

Jordans could have written something like this:

“In the West, churches and synagogues are just that – places for people to go and worship and socialize. But in the West, as well as in the Middle East, and in Indonesia and other Muslim-dominated countries, most mosques are venues of rabble-rousing and jihadist recruiting, where imams and mullahs regularly declaim against the West for its sins against Allah and call for holy war. This has been so thoroughly documented by intelligence services that it is a wonder most mosques in Europe and the U.S. have not been raided and closed down by counter-terrorism authorities.”

But, he didn’t write that. And if he had the knowledge to write it, he would not have dared to write it and file it. And if he had the integrity to write and file it, would the AP have accepted it? Is its motto “All the facts all the time”? Not likely.

That is giving Islam a good Western press. It is dishonest enough to cause one to develop a severe case of “media-phobia.”

Crossposted at The Dougout