Reply To: Are we Islamaphobic?
Islamophobia is a word that is so abused it has lost almost all credibility as a reasonable descriptive adjective. When people say Islamophobe…they really mean anit-muslim (against muslims in general). I think that those who are anti-muslims need to reflect on why they generalise and attack an entire group of people who only share a set of ideas. You can be a contra-islamist (as many of us probably are) meaning you would prefer that Islam as an idea was discarded into the trash bin of ideas. Unfortunately contra-islamist is not used much though I wish it were. I see no reason to criticise people for being contra-islam and I think being anti-jihadist and anti-fundamentalist should be (and probably is) the norm amongst modern liberal societies.
Why am I a contra-islamist? While I know that few muslims are jihadist and few engage in the kind of horror stories we read about and see, I am quite aware (and it can be backed up by hard data) that women and homosexuals (for just a few examples) suffer endless hardships in most muslim societies, that even while many muslims do not support Jihadism, they do quite openly support anti-woman policies, execution for those who wish to leave the faith and vote for and welcome the barbarity of Sharia law. If you don’t believe this…then you haven’t objectively viewed the evidence, election results, surveys and anthopological field research properly. Is Islam unique in this way? No. Christianity and Judaism have their own brutal examples (as well as even Hinduism and Bhudism) though they have all mostly secularised. As a set of ideas…Islam is as scary, totalitarian, facist and uncompromising as it gets and it is hardly close to secularised beyond a small handful of countries. I am an unappologetic contra-islamist and I am not (nor should anyone be) anti-muslim.
