Reply To: Are we Islamaphobic?

[SteveInCO]

Simon Mathews wrote:

As others have stated I think “phobic” is the wrong term. Phobic is an irrational fear[…]

Oddly, no one makes this complaint about the term homophobia, which one would think (by inspection) means “fear of homo[sexuals]” rather than “hatred of homo[sexuals]”. I first heard this term in the early 1980s (it may have first been introduced back then) and my thought bubble was…wrong suffix! The problem is though, it’s hard to construct a satisfactory term by putting miso- and homosexual together. Miso-homo-ist? Miso-homo-y? They don’t precisely roll off the tongue.

It too is the term that has stuck. And just to be clear, mislabled or not, I think what we refer to as “homophobia” is both real and deplorable. Your point about “Islamophobia” being constructed to push a false equivalency to “homophobia” is well taken. The two things are not equivalent, for the reasons you gave.