Put Islamophobia on ice

“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.

COMMENT | There is no such thing as “Islamophobia”. There are of course racists, bigots and other cretins who disparage Muslims and Islam around the world but unfortunately, the world is filled with racists and bigoted people who disparage all sorts of people, their religion and culture. This is not solely a Muslim issue.

What is solely a Muslim issue is this idea that any criticisms of Muslims is an attack on Islam or that acknowledging empirical evidence of the way how “Islamic” states operate is anathema to freedoms and rights enjoyed in the progressive world is verboten in "civilised" company. That any contrary narratives to the acceptable politically-correct discourse is an attack on a peaceful, peace-loving people who have always been at the mercy of colonialism or other forms of “Western” imperial ambitions. This is Islamophobia in a nutshell.

So, these Malaysian students in the United Kingdom gave out ice lollies in exchange for messages of peace. Apparently, they did this because they were deeply affected by the Manchester attack and wanted people not to hate Muslims. In other words, people had to sign messages of peace on their boards to show how there was no animosity towards Muslims instead of these Muslim students demonstrating that they disavowed the violent Islamists who preach hate against anything Western, secular or Christian. Muslim victimhood became the focus of the tragedy instead of the carnage of children and women who were the victims of violent Islamists.

University of Essex student Muhammad Fariq Bukhari Samsudin said that he planned “to introduce Ramadan to his non-Muslim friends so they can break fast together”, which is really painful to read because I wonder how Fariq would react if his Christian friends introduced him to Lent and perhaps together they could appreciate the spiritual harmony that religious observances supposedly bring.

Fariq also claimed that "I think the root of the problem is that most of the people don't even understand Islam”, which is again something of a misdirection because some Muslims are always deflecting and saying that they would leave the interpretation of dogma to religious scholars except -

1) When it suits their purposes to educate people on their religion.

2) When attacking critics, especially when said critics abandon the Abrahamic theological discourse in favour of rationality and empiricism.

Religious discourse that revolves around dogma is self-serving. I made this point in another piece - “Intelligent discourse in the Abrahamic faith revolves around the concept of doubt. They revolve around this concept because of the influence of the secular world. Rational Christians, Jews and Muslims who have shed their religion’s extremist impulses engage in conversation and not dogma. They attempt to reconcile their doubt with what the secular world has to offer.”

Whenever someone makes the claim that people do not understand their religion, it most often means that their religion has a lot to answer for. All religions have commonalities. Those positive commonalities make it possible for people of diverse religious faiths to play well with others. Call it evolutionary or spiritual but the result is the same, the receding of religious dogma and the acceptance of plurality of thought...