Islamophobia the socially acceptable hatred?

[baron]

Really? "The Serbians who carried out genocide against Muslims should not be punished or held accountable in any way, because they were fighting a necessary war to prevent the spread of militant Islam into Europe" is the sentiment of someone who's not in favor of killing Muslims?

That sounds very specific to me. I'm still unclear why you think it's any different from the killing advocated in the Koran, the contextual principle of which is supported by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide. I have no particular view on her statements because I don't know much about that war but I see nothing resembling what you maintain.

You're completely gulled by her false veneer of plausible deniability because she never said "Hey, you, go out and murder a Muslims right now?"

Like so many Islamic imams do regarding Jews or homosexuals, for example? And I'm not taken in by her in the slightest, I'm simply pointing out that you can't make equivocal statements on the basis of scant evidence (or you can but you can't expect people to agree). I don't think it's a goer to try and shoe-horn advocacy of Muslim genocide into the definition of Islamophobia when not one alleged Islamophobe has come out and said it. Later, you criticise me for "conflation of Islamophobia" with calls for illegal acts but here you are doing precisely that.

The same false veneer that all those "anti-jihadis" who Breivik found so influential and inspirational are hiding behind?

I don't see any connection.

Actually, it's the core of why you keep bringing that into the discussion, and it's explicitly to dismiss "Islamophobia". But to avoid cutting and pasting bits of your response out of order, more on that below.

The UN and the OIC have no power or influence on the lawmaking process in the US. People like Rep. Michelle Bachmann (who, just one year ago, was the leading candidate for the GOP presidential nomination), Rep. Louis Gohmert, and Rep. Peter King, on the other hand, do. And they in turn are being influenced like Islamophobic lunatics like deranged liar Frank Gaffney.

So much talk about influence and the repression of Muslims under Islamophobic society yet so little evidence. A minaret ban in Switzerland and a bunch of people who opposed the building of a mosque. If these powerful people you mention are being influenced by Islamophobes, show me how Muslims have been adversely affected so far.

Furthermore the UN resolution proposed was a binding one. Had it been adopted then it would have put huge pressure on the US to pass laws criminalising criticism of Islam, overriding your constitution. And that would almost certainly have come to pass by shying away from mention of free speech and categorising criticism of Islam as hate speech.

A BBC presenter being polite to you during an interview does not imply that the presenter agrees with you. A Fox News presenter explicitly agreeing with you, on the other hand, means exactly that.

I understand that, I was making the point that mere appearance on the BBC confers more authority to the subject than support by a Fox News presenter.

Here's what I was talking about above - your dismissal of Islamophobia because you can't find where one particular Islamophobe says anything that "suggests incitement to violence or criminality", as if Islamophobia was merely limited to exhortions to commit extrajudicial violence against Muslims.

I dismiss Islamophobia because it only exists in the minds of Islam apologists and those who seek to protect Islam from criticism. So what that some anti-Islamic criticism is wrong or even bigotted? Where is this 'phobia' that warrants such indignation?

No, I'm saying that the reason bigotry from one group towards another gets a label, while bigotry going the other way does not has to do with which side has the bigger influence on the direction of the discussion by virtue of their social, political, cultural, and normative dominance. This is the central thesis of the first major work to address the problematic way the West considers and describes Islam, Edward Said's Orientalism (Robin Richardson even attributes the first modern English usage of the term Islamophobia to Said himself in his 1985 article Orientalism Revisited).

I don't know what you mean by "discussion". I think this is a very simplistic way of looking at things and ignores obvious points such as, does the phenomenon actually exist? I'm sure you don't need me to point you to generations of hideous crimes and repression against ethnic minorities, Jews and gays, but where do we look for equal evidence of Islamophobia? I can speak for the UK at least when I say it does not exist.

Here you are again using the conflation of Islamophobia with calls for the same terroristic violence used by some Muslim groups to be used on Muslims, then implying that since no such calls exist, neither does Islamophobia.

Just like bigotry and prejudice and blacks is not limited to KKK lynchings and cross-burnings, neither is Islamophobia limited to calls for Breivik-style massacres on Muslims to be carried out posthaste.

It's not just not "limited" to that, it doesn't include that at all. It seems there's a lot Islamophobia is not but not much that it is. It's not incitement to kill, it's not calls to main or injure or terrorise, it's not instruction to break the law, it's not repression, it's not racism, it's not restriction of freedom, it's not restriction of religion, it's not anti-Muslim legislation... so what is it, exactly? At worst uninformed criticism undeserving of such hysteria as we see in certain quarters of the media, and from the OP. I remind you yet again of the OP's statement that - in the UK "Islamphobia has become a socially acceptable form of hatred", that we are placing "increasingly stringent restrictions on Muslims" and that we are on the cusp of "excluding them from national life in whatever polities and communiteis [SIC] they happen to reside in." Where on earth is the evidence for this? I look around and all I see are concessions to Muslims and bias against those who speak out against Islam.

Islam is criticised plenty in the West. By Muslims and non-Muslims alike. But criticism of Islam is not the same thing as Islamophobia, despite the desperate attempts of Islamophobes like Spencer to claim otherwise in order to defend their bigotry.

I myself, for instance, have, right here on JREF, talked about things like "the essentially misogynistic, patriarchal nature and origin of divorce in general under shariah".
No you won't. Cook and Crone wrote an entire book saying that Islam was nothing more than a variant of a messianic Jewish religion that didn't take shape until long after Muhammad's time (and that Muhammad himself was the leader of a Syrio-Arabic military expedition to conquer Jerusalem, with the later story of his hijra being a distortion of this event).

Dr. Kecia Ali, in her Sexual Ethics in Islam, has one whole chapter dedicated to Muhammad's marriage to Ai'sha, its problematic implications for Muslim sexual ethics in the modern world, and how contemporary Muslims have dealt and should deal with those implications.

Then there's this charming article, on the other hand, entitled "The Pedophile Pirate" (from a website which has blatantly lied about what certain hadith have said).

Two of those works are legitimate criticism of Islam and Muhammad's life whose authors have not suffered the "death threats" of your imagination. One is a blatantly polemical and insulting screed that is a shining example of Islamophobia, and absolutely correctly labeled as such.

Maybe it would help our definitions if you said why that article is an example of Islamophobia. Is it the way it's written? Are the alleged facts incorrect (I haven't checked or read it all so I'm perfectly willing to believe this is the case)? Or is an article automatically Islamophobic if the author dislikes Islam or its tenets? Which elements need to be present?

Imagine that article was written about an obscure non-religious figure. How quick would you stand up to defend this long-dead historical character and label the author? People write vitriolic passages about people living and dead all the time yet unless they relate to religious figures, specifically Mohammed, nobody pays them any attention.

Whichever way you look at it I think we both agree that someone who writes such articles, or draws a cartoon, or burns a Koran, should not be butchered on the streets. Personally I fully support the right of that author to write that article in the way he did and not only that, I maintain that such ridicule is essential when dealing with religion.

If you started a thread here reposting this, though, you'd certainly be labeled anti-Semitic. And absolutely correctly labeled as such.

And please note how carefully that website completely disclaims all forms of actual racism at the top of its article, and is especially angry at the white-supremacist site Stormfront for "stealing" their article. Oh, and I especially liked the section about "Jewish Deception and Dissimulation", which states "The response of the orthodox rabbis to documentation regarding the racism and hatred in their sacred texts is simply to brazenly lie, in keeping with the Talmud's Baba Kamma 113a which states that Jews may use lies ("subterfuge") to circumvent a Gentile." Why does that accusation sound so familiar? And the description of Michael Hoffman as the "foremost scholar of Judaism in the English-speaking world" sounds eerily like Frank Gaffney's description of Robert Spencer as the "acclaimed scholar of Islam".

I've already mentioned how religious criticism can be a cover for racism. But as you point out, where this is the case it's often pretty clear.

 

[A'isha]

That sounds very specific to me. I'm still unclear why you think it's any different from the killing advocated in the Koran, the contextual principle of which is supported by hundreds of millions of Muslims worldwide.

Mainly because one is applauding and supporting people who are very much still alive for a very specific action they carried out less than 20 years ago (with the implication that the specific action is not only still unfinished, but is part of a larger conflict), while the other is a minority of adherents of a religion attempting to apply a 1500-year-old scriptural description of what one group of long-dead people did to another group of long-dead people in a completely different place than either the people advocating the killing or the people they're advocating the killing of.

So stop being obtuse.

I also notice that you're more than willing to give Geller the benefit of the doubt when it comes to support of genocide, but you're happy to deny George Galloway the same benefit over in the thread about him.

Like so many Islamic imams do regarding Jews or homosexuals, for example?

And Christian pastors. Just ask the Ugandan gay community.

Are we done with the tu quoques now?

I don't think it's a goer to try and shoe-horn advocacy of Muslim genocide into the definition of Islamophobia when not one alleged Islamophobe has come out and said it. Later, you criticise me for "conflation of Islamophobia" with calls for illegal acts but here you are doing precisely that.

No, I'm saying that doing things like kissing the asses of mass murderers simply because their victims were Muslims is just one aspect of Islamophobia. You seem to consider calls for violence to be the be-all and end-all of Islamophobia.

Otherwise you wouldn't try to argue nonsense like "Has anybody you deem Islamophobic made such unequivocal statements calling for the murder of Muslims?"

or

"I've been listening to Geller lectures as I've been working and whilst I'd say they're less than evidential I haven't heard anything that I could point to as being fabricated to provoke hatred, and nothing at all that suggests incitement to violence or criminality. Yet it's very rare I can get five minutes into an Islamic lecture before I find all these things and more. So why does one warrant a special label and the other not?"

or

"In any event I must take it that neither Geller nor any of the other "Islamophobes" have ever called for the murder of a single Muslim AFAIK"

Because if you don't actually equate Islamophobia solely with the calls for violence against Muslims, then as far as I can tell your statements above are irrelevant red herrings in this discussion about the existence and prevalence of Islamophobia.

Unless you'd like to explain why you think the fact that Islamophobes like Geller haven't called for the murder of a single Muslim matters to them being described as Islamophobes in the first place? Because you can be an Islamophobe and support those who commit genocide against Muslims (like Geller), you can be an Islamophobe and call for direct violence (like those at Gates of Vienna and Bare Naked Islam), and you can still be an Islamophobe without doing either of those things.

So much talk about influence and the repression of Muslims under Islamophobic society yet so little evidence. A minaret ban in Switzerland and a bunch of people who opposed the building of a mosque. If these powerful people you mention are being influenced by Islamophobes, show me how Muslims have been adversely affected so far.

Umm...you just listed some examples yourself. Muslims in Switzerland are under a legal restriction that no other religion is subject to. Muslims in America are subject to lawsuits that no other religion is subject to (unless you'd like to point to a lawsuit filed to stop the construction of, say, a synagogue, arguing that "Judaism isn't a real religion for First Amendment purposes").

Furthermore the UN resolution proposed was a binding one. Had it been adopted then it would have put huge pressure on the US to pass laws criminalising criticism of Islam, overriding your constitution. And that would almost certainly have come to pass by shying away from mention of free speech and categorising criticism of Islam as hate speech.

Funny, Israel doesn't seem to much troubled by "binding" UN resolutions.

Besides which, the 2009, 2010, and 2011 resolutions were all non-binding (the only place I can find where any of these resolutions being voted on and/or passed is described as "binding" is on evangelical Christian websites like this).

The UNCHRC's General Comment 34 of 2011, in fact, comes out explicitly against things like blasphemy laws.

So, yes, the good citizens of the United States, of whatever religion, have far more to worry about from our Islamophobic legislators than from the nonexistent boogeyman on UN resolutions supposedly banning "criticism of Islam".

I understand that, I was making the point that mere appearance on the BBC confers more authority to the subject than support by a Fox News presenter.

No, it might confer recognition, but it doesn't confer any authority. And it certainly doesn't confer support, the way Eric Bolling supports Geller. And, to get back to the "social acceptance" thing that's in the title of this thread, Choudary's views certainly aren't accepted, while you yourself are going to great lengths to minimize Geller's abhorrent views, and have expressed sympathy for the EDL before. The views of those people, which are absolutely Islamophobic, are acceptable to you.

I dismiss Islamophobia because it only exists in the minds of Islam apologists and those who seek to protect Islam from criticism. So what that some anti-Islamic criticism is wrong or even bigotted? Where is this 'phobia' that warrants such indignation?

I already recommended a book to you that will tell you everything you want to know. Since you apparently aren't listening to me here at JREF.

I don't know what you mean by "discussion". I think this is a very simplistic way of looking at things and ignores obvious points such as, does the phenomenon actually exist? I'm sure you don't need me to point you to generations of hideous crimes and repression against ethnic minorities, Jews and gays, but where do we look for equal evidence of Islamophobia? I can speak for the UK at least when I say it does not exist.

There are entire websites dedicated to tracking and reporting on Islamophobia. Or, if that's too apologetic for you, all you have to do is read the Daily Mail.

Or (and this is my preferred option), you could read the book I recommended.

[EDIT: London-based Islamophobia Watch, incidentally, is recommended in this article from Foreign Policy magazine, about how Breivik is only the "the tip of the iceberg in a rising sea of radical Islamophobia in Europe"]

It's not just not "limited" to that, it doesn't include that at all. It seems there's a lot Islamophobia is not but not much that it is. It's not incitement to kill, it's not calls to main or injure or terrorise, it's not instruction to break the law, it's not repression, it's not racism, it's not restriction of freedom, it's not restriction of religion, it's not anti-Muslim legislation... so what is it, exactly?

http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-a-definition/

I look around and all I see are concessions to Muslims and bias against those who speak out against Islam.

With concessions like this, who needs Islamophobia!

Maybe it would help our definitions if you said why that article is an example of Islamophobia. Is it the way it's written? Are the alleged facts incorrect (I haven't checked or read it all so I'm perfectly willing to believe this is the case)? Or is an article automatically Islamophobic if the author dislikes Islam or its tenets? Which elements need to be present?

Yes, the facts are incorrect - the whole site is filled with errors like the one I already pointed out to you. And not just egregious errors about Islam, either...the webpage's author is just as willing to lie about the Bible as well. It's deliberately insulting, vitriolic, hate-filled, and is directed at all Muslims, everywhere.

If you honestly can't see how something like that is Islamophobic while Dr. Ali's book is not (even though they're both addressing the problems of Muhammad's marriage to Ai'sha), then I think this conversation is pretty much over.

Imagine that article was written about an obscure non-religious figure. How quick would you stand up to defend this long-dead historical character and label the author? People write vitriolic passages about people living and dead all the time yet unless they relate to religious figures, specifically Mohammed, nobody pays them any attention.

I'm tired of your deliberate obtuseness. If you can't figure out the distinction between writing that way about the most revered figure of the second-largest religion on the planet, and writing that way about "an obscure non-religious figure", then nothing I can say here on this humble message board will help.

Whichever way you look at it I think we both agree that someone who writes such articles, or draws a cartoon, or burns a Koran, should not be butchered on the streets. Personally I fully support the right of that author to write that article in the way he did and not only that, I maintain that such ridicule is essential when dealing with religion.



I've already mentioned how religious criticism can be a cover for racism. But as you point out, where this is the case it's often pretty clear.

No comment about the fact that this (and Michael Hoffman's jealous bigoted whine reproduced above) completely contradicts your assertion that only Islam gets a special word to label "criticism" of it as a religion, as well as your assertion that anti-Semitism is about ethnic bigotry and has nothing to do with Judaism as a religious belief? Especially since Hoffman himself considers his anti-Semitic "criticism" to be directly comparable to the same kind of (mostly religiously-based) "Muslim-bashing" that is generally considered Islamophobic?

 

[baron]

What immediately strikes me is that after you criticised me for going OT the key portion of my post that you miss out is my call to please return to the OP - which I bolded - and address it. And post some evidence for it.

Mainly because one is applauding and supporting people who are very much still alive for a very specific action they carried out less than 20 years ago (with the implication that the specific action is not only still unfinished, but is part of a larger conflict), while the other is a minority of adherents of a religion attempting to apply a 1500-year-old scriptural description of what one group of long-dead people did to another group of long-dead people in a completely different place than either the people advocating the killing or the people they're advocating the killing of.

You miss the point. A huge number of Muslims support the Koran when it calls for killing where Islam and / or Muslims are under threat ('are' as in now). Every single Muslim I've asked the question of has asserted this. I've already said I can't address Geller's claims because I don't have the background knowledge but I see nothing to support your view that she calls for genocide of Muslims.

So stop being obtuse.

I also notice that you're more than willing to give Geller the benefit of the doubt when it comes to support of genocide, but you're happy to deny George Galloway the same benefit over in the thread about him.

I suggest you go back to my posts on Galloway and read them properly and honestly, especially the part where I said I did not imagine Galloway supports genocide. I'm sure you realise that drawing further parallels between the two wouldn't be to your advantage.

And Christian pastors. Just ask the Ugandan gay community.

And I condemn these beasts too and have done so vociferously. Attempt to drag the threat OT again noted. This thread is about Islam, not Christianity.

Are we done with the tu quoques now?

Simply adding context.

No, I'm saying that doing things like kissing the asses of mass murderers simply because their victims were Muslims is just one aspect of Islamophobia.

You seem to consider calls for violence to be the be-all and end-all of Islamophobia.

Otherwise you wouldn't try to argue nonsense like "Has anybody you deem Islamophobic made such unequivocal statements calling for the murder of Muslims?"

It's a perfectly valid question. Have any of the people whose views you despise ever incited others to harm a Muslim - has Geller, has Spencer, has Steyn, has Wilders, has Murray, has Robinson, has Sultan? What about Harris, Dawkins and Hitchens (PBUH)?

or

"I've been listening to Geller lectures as I've been working and whilst I'd say they're less than evidential I haven't heard anything that I could point to as being fabricated to provoke hatred, and nothing at all that suggests incitement to violence or criminality. Yet it's very rare I can get five minutes into an Islamic lecture before I find all these things and more. So why does one warrant a special label and the other not?"

Again, relevant.

or

"In any event I must take it that neither Geller nor any of the other "Islamophobes" have ever called for the murder of a single Muslim AFAIK"

Because if you don't actually equate Islamophobia solely with the calls for violence against Muslims, then as far as I can tell your statements above are irrelevant red herrings in this discussion about the existence and prevalence of Islamophobia.

I thought my point was clear. I'll try and make it more so. We have essentially zero evidence so far of Islamophobia. So I started to examine what it might be, comparing anti-Islamic sentiments with Islamic anti-take-your-pick sentiments. The latter involve countless calls to murder, atrocity and intolerance - many physically carried out - so I found it interesting that the horror that is Islamophobia does not include any of these things. A very pertinent point and one you'd do well to remember as you take your polarised stance.

Unless you'd like to explain why you think the fact that Islamophobes like Geller haven't called for the murder of a single Muslim matters to them being described as Islamophobes in the first place? Because you can be an Islamophobe and support those who commit genocide against Muslims (like Geller), you can be an Islamophobe and call for direct violence (like those at Gates of Vienna and Bare Naked Islam), and you can still be an Islamophobe without doing either of those things.

Umm...you just listed some examples yourself. Muslims in Switzerland are under a legal restriction that no other religion is subject to.

Everybody is subject to that restriction, not just Muslims. If this is the best evidence we have for Islamophobia then it's hilarious. How repressed Muslims across the US and Europe must be if half of one percent of that population can't build a tower of a certain shape. As we know every Muslim must build at least one huge minaret in their lives, it's in the Koran. Sheesh, the Jews don't know how lucky they are.

Muslims in America are subject to lawsuits that no other religion is subject to (unless you'd like to point to a lawsuit filed to stop the construction of, say, a synagogue, arguing that "Judaism isn't a real religion for First Amendment purposes").

First, let's get to the truth. I presume you mean this mosque?

http://en.islamtoday.net/artshow-230-4468.htm

"Mosque opponents have fought construction for two years, arguing that Islam is not a real religion deserving First Amendment protections and that the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro has terrorist ties. The judge dismissed those allegations but held a trial on the narrower claim that the public meeting law was violated."

So there's no repression of Muslims and the claims that Islam was not a true religion were dismissed in a court of law.

Having cleared that up I can point you to lawsuits to stop the building of every building imaginable, from garden sheds to sports stadiums. Here's one for a synagogue.

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/...towns-rejection-of-synagogue-plan.html?pg=all

Funny, Israel doesn't seem to much troubled by "binding" UN resolutions.

Besides which, the 2009, 2010, and 2011 resolutions were all non-binding (the only place I can find where any of these resolutions being voted on and/or passed is described as "binding" is on evangelical Christian websites like this).

The UNCHRC's General Comment 34 of 2011, in fact, comes out explicitly against things like blasphemy laws.

You should re-read my post. The Islamic member states along with some non-Islamic ones were pushing for that non-binding resolution to become binding. I know there was a section written into it in 2011 to quash this, that's what I alluded to; I was using this example of how close we all came to having our free speech - such as it is - repressed further at the behest of Islamic nations and in the interests of protecting Islam from criticism.

So, yes, the good citizens of the United States, of whatever religion, have far more to worry about from our Islamophobic legislators than from the nonexistent boogeyman on UN resolutions supposedly banning "criticism of Islam".

Like what? Tell me what. What is this legislation being passed that is so repressive against Muslims? How is it manifest?

No, it might confer recognition, but it doesn't confer any authority. And it certainly doesn't confer support, the way Eric Bolling supports Geller. And, to get back to the "social acceptance" thing that's in the title of this thread, Choudary's views certainly aren't accepted, while you yourself are going to great lengths to minimize Geller's abhorrent views, and have expressed sympathy for the EDL before. The views of those people, which are absolutely Islamophobic, are acceptable to you.

I don't go to great lengths to minimise Geller's views. As I explained I'm largely unfamiliar with her and don't know enough about the Bosnian war to make a judgement on those statements. If you think that me saying I couldn't find any blatant falsehoods in the lectures I listened to, and that she didn't call for genocide, is "going to great lengths to minimise her views" then you're exaggerating by more than a few degrees.

And I should correct you regarding the EDL. What I actually said was that the EDL is infested by thugs and racists and that only its stated aims are worthy. However, I have a great deal of respect for Tommy Robinson and what he's trying to achieve with the EDL and I'm more than happy to clear up that point. The hysteria and loony accusations of the left don't touch me.

I already recommended a book to you that will tell you everything you want to know. Since you apparently aren't listening to me here at JREF.

A little arrogance seeping in there.

There are entire websites dedicated to tracking and reporting on Islamophobia. Or, if that's too apologetic for you, all you have to do is read the Daily Mail.

Or (and this is my preferred option), you could read the book I recommended.



http://www.islamophobia-watch.com/islamophobia-a-definition/

It's difficult to say whether all components must be present or just a subset, or even one. But I'm more than happy to say where I am on this.

1) Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.

Two very different attributes lumped in there. Islam is certainly not monolithic and those who treat it as such are ignorant. However, anybody who says Islam is responsive to change needs their head examined.

2) Islam is seen as separate and 'other'. It does not have values in common with other cultures, is not affected by them and does not influence them.

I doubt there's an "Islamophobe" in the world that believes this. If Islam didn't influence other cultures then there wouldn't be a problem.

3) Islam is seen as inferior to the West. It is seen as barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.

With the possible exception of "barbaric", I couldn't put it better myself.

4) Islam is seen as violent, aggressive, threatening, supportive of terrorism and engaged in a 'clash of civilisations'.

Difficult to know what this means. If it refers to all Islam then clearly this is an ignorant stance. If it means that none of these things are present in Islam then it is those behind the statement who are ignorant.

5) Islam is seen as a political ideology and is used for political or military advantage.

And yet it is widely used as precisely these things. I suspect the problem is with the poor phraseology, which should state that Islam can only be used for political or military advantage.

6) Criticisms made of the West by Islam are rejected out of hand.

In what context? Valid ones might be accepted but most I've heard are unfounded, bizarre or outright insane. Also, I have no interest in the arguments of those who live in the West and rage against the West from the perspective of Islam. Muslims in the US and the UK enjoy a level of tolerance and freedom unparalleled in any country in the world, especially the Islamic ones, and I will not listen to the whining of these Islamic professional victims.

7) Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.

I agree that when a Muslim is denied the freedoms of a non-Muslim then this is bigotry. Happily that doesn't happen in the UK and I'm awaiting the evidence for it happening in the US.

8) Anti-Muslim hostility is seen as natural or normal.

One could see anti-Muslim hostility as normal without any "Islamophobic tendencies". I think whoever composed this list drifted off towards the end and stopped concentrating.

With concessions like this, who needs Islamophobia!

(Reading just the first page)... What has this to do with concessions? You're just posting an article about a protest. They invite terrorist supporters to speak and get called a few naughty names. So what?

Yes, the facts are incorrect - the whole site is filled with errors like the one I already pointed out to you. And not just egregious errors about Islam, either...the webpage's author is just as willing to lie about the Bible as well. It's deliberately insulting, vitriolic, hate-filled, and is directed at all Muslims, everywhere.

If you honestly can't see how something like that is Islamophobic while Dr. Ali's book is not (even though they're both addressing the problems of Muhammad's marriage to Ai'sha), then I think this conversation is pretty much over.

I'm tired of your deliberate obtuseness. If you can't figure out the distinction between writing that way about the most revered figure of the second-largest religion on the planet, and writing that way about "an obscure non-religious figure", then nothing I can say here on this humble message board will help.

Don't put yourself down, that last paragraph helps immensely. It gets to the root of the issue. I don't give two stuffs if Mohammed is revered by a billion people. I am the sole arbiter of who I do and do not respect and I base my decision on rational and moral grounds. I will not be ordered to defer to any person on the basis of some lunatic ideology, no matter how widely and passionately held, and I reserve the right to criticise anybody as I see fit, with fairness, objectivity and justification.

No comment about the fact that this (and Michael Hoffman's jealous bigoted whine reproduced above) completely contradicts your assertion that only Islam gets a special word to label "criticism" of it as a religion, as well as your assertion that anti-Semitism is about ethnic bigotry and has nothing to do with Judaism as a religious belief? Especially since Hoffman himself considers his anti-Semitic "criticism" to be directly comparable to the same kind of (mostly religiously-based) "Muslim-bashing" that is generally considered Islamophobic?

Another misrepresentation. I accepted that anti-Semitism has a religious component, especially historically. The fact is that the label "Islamophobia" is thrown around far more freely than "anti-Semitism" and the chances of being branded an anti-Semite for criticism of Judaism or Moses or Abraham is vanishingly small. And the chances of you getting eviscerated outside your own house is nil.

I remind you yet again of the OP's statement that - in the UK "Islamphobia has become a socially acceptable form of hatred", that we are placing "increasingly stringent restrictions on Muslims" and that we are on the cusp of "excluding them from national life in whatever polities and communiteis [SIC] they happen to reside in." Where on earth is the evidence for this? I look around and all I see are concessions to Muslims and bias against those who speak out against Islam.

 

[A'isha]

EDIT: Never mind. We're arguing just to argue at this point, neither of us is going to convince the other (and your mockery of the Swiss minaret ban and comments about how the law, in its infinite majesty, forbids Swiss Christians and Swiss Muslims equally from building minarets on mosques, shows you have no interest whatsoever in discussing this topic in good faith).

And given the lack of participation by anyone else in this thread lately, I doubt anyone else even cares.