Of course, the most problematic aspect of Islam is terrorism. No-one can ignore the devastating news of 9/11, 7/7, and other terrorist atrocities perpetrated by people claiming Islamic allegiance.
Since the 1980s there have been approximately 20,000 fatalities and 50,000 injuries resulting from terrorist incidents perpetrated by various Islamic groups worldwide. All of us brace ourselves for the next onslaught in spite of appeals ‘not to let the Islamist terrorists change our way of life’, and ‘not to divide us, because that’s what they want’. The UK in 2017 saw the Manchester Arena bombing in which 22 young people and children died; the Westminster Bridge attack in which five were killed; and the London Bridge/Borough Market attack in which eight were killed. Many more people were seriously injured. In the latter two cases cars were driven into pedestrians and in the last knives were used. All were claimed by ISIS as sponsored by them. Yet we are entreated to pay attention to Islamophobia as if Muslims are the true victims, and leftist media regularly report rises in so-called hate crimes against Muslims (TellMAMA, 2017). Another disingenuous SJW tactic is to tell us we have more chance of slipping over in the shower and dying, than dying in a terrorist attack. London’s first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, misjudged the mood disastrously when he made a statement to the effect that Londoners, like New Yorkers, have to expect terror attacks (Samuels, 2016). This was just a few months before Islamist terrorists struck again in Britain, where the police do not routinely carry guns and ordinary citizens are defenceless.
Islamist terror attacks come and go but let us briefly place them under a magnifying lens. When 9/11 and 7/7 happened, and later the co-ordinated Paris murders and truck attacks in Nice and Berlin, we appear to have succumbed to trauma and outrage exhaustion. 130 people were killed and 413 injured on 13 November in Paris, 84 of them by mass shooting at the Bataclan Theatre. Tunisian-born Mohamed Lahouaiej-Bouhlel killed 84 people including ten children, and injured 202 in Nice in July 2016 by driving a truck into them. Also using a truck, Anis Amri, a Tunisian asylum seeker, killed 12 and injured 56 in Berlin in December 2016. Salman Ramadan Abedi, a young man from a family of Libyan refugees to Britain, used a suicide bomb at the Manchester Arena in May 2017 to kill 23 and injure 250 mainly young people. These are only some of the headline incidents. A comprehensive analysis of such attacks in Britain is found in Stuart (2017). All these atrocities were committed by Muslim men and had ISIS backing. In some cases ISIS have issued statements naming their attacks as retaliation for Western military action in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. But the reasons behind them are closely linked with the mission of ISIS to Islamicise the West, and the ‘targets’ also suggest an assault on Western hedonism.
Let us imagine the horrifying physical impact on the victims, all of them innocent, many very young; many who were not killed were dismembered or disfigured and left with probably lifelong psychological trauma. Imagine the insane commitment and hatred involved on the part of the perpetrators. Imagine the fiercely loyal gangster mentality required to stab, shoot, bomb, behead and maim civilians who have done nothing injurious to you or your loved ones. Add in the incidents of throwing infidels off buildings or setting them on fire. Presumably all this is done under the delusion that paradise and smiling receptive virgins await them. Those who commit terrible murders, for example Albert DeSalvo, Peter Sutcliffe, Jeffrey Dahmer, and many others, are rightly regarded as dangerous and incurable psychopaths. Yet Islamist terrorist murderers are, somehow, seen as almost honourable activists motivated by spiritual and political ideals, not by individual or group psychopathy. In fact, after endless academic analyses and clinical diagnoses, all we can apparently come up with is that such terrorists are motivated by any number of indeterminate socioeconomic, cultural, religious, psychiatric and other factors. Meanwhile, we are asked not to resort to Islamophobia, to turn the other cheek, to love not hate, and so on. Please be meek. I am certainly not suggesting that anger at these incidents and murderers be turned into Anders Breivik-style revenge attacks, or rudeness towards ordinary Muslims. But we should not be expected to dissociate from these traumas by avoiding the obvious Islamic attribution: even the careful Islamist appellation is a clumsy way of separating the religion from its supposedly tiny group of bad apples (O’Neill, 2017b). Nor should we buy into the SJW narrative that the West first did it to them so we now deserve it.
Atheism is proclaimed a sin in the Quran, is punishable by death in some cases, and has even been equated with terrorism (Withnall, 2014). As an atheist, I do not respect any religion. I wish they would all cease to exist or at least retreat behind closed doors. I certainly wish that Islam would go away, or leave these shores for more Muslim-friendly countries. I am not rude to individual Muslims and would never condone hatred or violence against them. But I do consider their religious and cultural beliefs to be superstitious nonsense. In fact, I regard Islam as perhaps the worst of religions, the most authoritarian, aggressive, irrational, anachronistic. It is not ‘just another religion with kindness at its heart’. That is surely OK for me to declare in my own free-speech country, without my being conflated with so-called Islamophobia? ISIS would gladly behead my kind if they could, but hopefully moderate Muslims living in the UK would accept the right to disagree with me (and home-grown moderate SJWs would only call me intolerant). However, we know that ISIS and affiliated groups wish to establish a worldwide Islamic caliphate, and that this Islamic theocracy has no regard for democracy: the thoughts, decisions and votes of human beings are as nothing compared with the revealed Word of Allah. What I and others do not really know is what moderate Muslims really think of us. I know that my Christian friends accept or at least forgive me with good humour but I am unsure if the same goes for Muslims. With the Salman Rushdie fatwa and Charlie Hebdo massacre in mind, many of us are probably somewhat cautious about what we say and write, and in this sense Muslims have already begun dictating permissible behaviour and limiting freedom of speech in the UK and the West (Bawer, 2006; West, 2015).
Although a small minority of Muslims has lived in the UK for 300 years, and small waves of immigration have followed, especially in the 1950s, it is only from the 2000s that Muslim immigration has been substantial. The country from which most Muslims have arrived is Pakistan, followed by Bangladesh, Somalia, India, Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The vast majority have moved to London, then also to the West Midlands, North West England, and Yorkshire and Humber. Many groups live together in areas such as Tower Hamlets in London. Somalis in particular are poorly educated and often unemployed. About one in three Muslims is under 15 years of age. Muslim women are often not working outside the home, and many do not speak English. A disproportionate number of prisoners in England and Wales is Muslim. It is estimated that around 5,000 people annually convert to Islam, many of them women, and many Scottish (Azam & Goodwin, 2015). Reasons for conversion — or reversion — are not known but may be related to the novelty of Islam, its growth and vigour, its simplicity, certitude, and to loneliness. People also leave Islam but the stigma and danger involved makes any calculation of numbers difficult (Cottee, 2015).
Sometimes The Guardian doesn’t know quite where it stands on Islam, which is, after all, famously homophobic and patriarchal, and at odds with most PC underdog groups. Flood (2017) struggled to achieve balance between the claims of Berkeley’s KPFA radio station that Richard Dawkins is an alleged Islamophobe, and Dawkins’ own self-defence. KPFA cancelled a scheduled event on being warned that Dawkins was abusive and hurtful towards Islam, that he had vilified it, calling it vile and evil. In his defence, Dawkins admitted he has criticised ‘Islamism’ but has also frequently criticised Christianity and other religions without being barred from speaking. The Guardian’s reviewer Gaby Hinsliff had no qualms about calling Douglas Murray’s (2017) eloquent, bestselling book on immigration ‘gentrified Islamophobia’. The overall, well-known position of the leftist and PC press is that most criticism of Islam is unacceptable Islamophobia. Nuance is unrecognised.<
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On the matter of alleged Islamophobia, which represents a kind of sibling rivalry with anti-Semitism, we need to be much more focused. As the Dawkins case illustrates, any criticism of Islam tends to be regarded by Muslims as Islamophobia. Anyone who expresses any negativity towards lslam becomes in PC parlance an Islamophobe. The media, particularly the leftist media, repeat this epithet endlessly. There is no difference, it seems, between someone who murders a Muslim and someone who expresses theologically nuanced views about Islam, or someone who is a sincere atheist honestly declaring themselves at odds with lslam and other religions. In June 2017, sixteen days after the London Bridge and Borough Market attack, Darren Osborne drove a van into a crowd near Finsbury Park Mosque in London, killing one man and injuring ten. He was said to have shouted several things, including ‘This is for London Bridge’ and ‘I want to kill all Muslims’. This retaliatory murder by a man who was apparently mentally ill can be described as Islamophobic, but it is qualitatively distinct from reasonable verbal or written criticisms of Islamic theology, culture, and Muslim immigration into Britain. To be fair to Islam, however, an implicit hierarchy of religious suffering probably does exist that suggests Judaism is the aristocracy of the oppressed and the most immune to criticism (Finkelstein, 2003).
Although Muslims are a much smaller minority in the USA than in the UK, the effects of 9/11 and reactions to it have ensured that it has a very high profile. There are now well organised and funded Muslim groups addressing Islamophobia in the USA. The Haas Institute, for example, supports the view that there is a longstanding anti-Muslim movement characterised by ‘orientalism’ which targets Islam, and stereotypes Muslims and Arabs in the US and elsewhere, and it is growing. Not only is there a great deal of organised anti-Muslim sentiment, but an ‘othering’ of Muslims that operates even at the level of legislation. Alarmist anti-sharia views are embodied in law as institutionalised Islamophobia according to one report (Elsheik et al., 2017). The British group Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) similarly, loudly, calls out Islamophobia, but questions hang over its larger political aims and alleged link with extremists (Matthew, 2015). Clearly there are diametrically opposed views here, with either genuinely aggrieved or disingenuous Muslims crying Islamophobia and denying any real link between Islam and terrorism, on the one hand, and concerned anti-Islamists on the other. Jung (2011) critiques the Western ‘essentialist’, orientalist interpretation of Islam, while critics of Islam legitimately ask why frequent contemporary worldwide terrorist acts are not associated with any other religions.
Islam whether of the mild-to-moderate kind or the radical, so-called Islamist kind, comes across as intrinsically infidelophobic, following Quranic injunctions. To be an infidel, an atheist or apostate is a sin. Infidels are bad, and in certain circumstances are subject to a death penalty. Now, I believe that the artful employment of victim terminology is at the very least silly, but we can play this game. Infidelophobia is the justified counterpoint to Islamophobia, at least if we assume that all human beings are equal. Yet only a little thought reveals that Islam obviously enjoys special status as a religion that places it above the views of non-religious and indeed non-Islamic individuals. Islamic supremacy, we might call it. The infallibility of Allah as revealed in the Quran via Muhammed means that atheists, apostates and other non-Muslims have a lesser right to be heard than true Muslims. Those Muslims who murdered the staff of Charlie Hebdo can be considered Quran-obeying martyrs, or they can be regarded as fascistic, mass-murdering infidelophobes. Yet obviously no cry of infidelophobia has the same stigmatic power as that of Islamophobia. Why not? On a similar note, since Islam places surrender to Allah as a higher good than human reason, surely this invites a charge of reasonophobia (or cognophobia, logicophobia, philosophobia, or whatever alternative ingenious term we can find)?
Husain (2007) confirms that kafir is ‘an Arabic term as derogatory to non-Muslims as “wog” is to non-whites’. He admits that when he became a radical follower of the Islamist leader Abul Ala Mawdudi, he was no longer a ‘mere Muslim [but] better, superior’. Mawdudi declared his a ‘revolutionary doctrine’ that aimed to ‘overthrow governments’; this was far from being ‘man-made politics’. Husain learnt that there were ‘partial Muslims’ and ‘true Muslims’, terms which correspond well with the common distinction between moderate and radical Muslim. Living in east London, Husain felt that he and his fellow Muslims were ‘pioneers, at the cutting edge of this new global development of confronting the West in its own back yard’. Husain extricated himself from ‘robotic Islamism’ through love, further study and reflection, and career success; yet many do not move from extremism to moderate ‘British Islam’.
The ISIS publication Dabiq listed in its 15th issue six reasons ‘why we hate you and why we fight you’ (ISIS, 2017). Only two of these were about hatred of military interventions and invasions of Muslim lands. The others are all about disbelief in Islam (Allah is oneness, and He has no son); the secular and liberal nature of the West (use of alcohol, drugs, gambling, usury, feminism, gay rights, fornication); atheism (denial of Allah); and crimes against Islam (particularly mockery). ‘We will never stop hating you until you embrace Islam’ is the conclusion. It mentions the ‘blessed attack on a sodomite, Crusader nightclub by the mujahid Omar Mateen’. The publication bears pictures of the aftermath of some ISIS atrocities; it mocks democracy; it lectures on the correct place of women; on its front cover is the slogan ‘Break the Cross’. Yet its tone, apart from sheer intolerance and violent hatred, is otherwise like any unsophisticated Christian evangelical, fundamentalist publication. Every Muslim terrorist in Britain, whether a refugee or born here, signs up to these beliefs, and the intensity of hate and murderousness displayed here is far beyond any of the so-called hate crimes condemned by Western SJWs, themselves pale reflections of the mujahideen who are ever ready to call out so-called Islamophobia.
Aside from ‘Islamic extremism’, the most compelling example of aversion to Islam is its common visibility, in the sheer numbers of male Muslims with long beards and loose-fitting clothes (the djellaba) that look like out-of-place pyjamas to Westerners — all of which is prescribed by some Muslim texts. Consider too the medieval-looking female Muslim wear of headscarves, burkas and especially full-body and face-covering garb that seems ridiculous to most of us in Britain, like a badge of superstition and a stubborn refusal to integrate. It can also look like an invasion. Add to this the appearance of halal shops and mosques and we have an even greater visible impression of opposition. It can of course be argued that this is cultural richness, or that it is simply harmless, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels like rudeness. It feels backward. I don’t like it, many of us don’t like it. Even minorities-defending feminists must dislike Islamic tendencies towards propagating misogyny in schools (Sylvester, 2017). It is even more depressing when one sees Muslim converts, apparently attracted by the authoritarianism of Islam, parading in their new alien dress. But the biggest impact is on free speech. It is obvious to me that I dislike this invasive culture, but I seem to be forbidden or discouraged from saying so in my own country.
Sentencing a man rightfully found guilty of the racist abuse of and incitement to commit violence against Brexit-challenger Gina Miller in 2017, Senior District Judge Emma Arbuthnot said, ‘You show this hatred by publicly directing abusive threats at others, which is a criminal offence in this multi-racial society we are lucky enough to live in’. The defendant Rhodri Philipps was indeed unpleasantly, indeed dangerously abusive and threatening, and sentenced appropriately, but the judge’s final words here are mere matter of opinion with no legal merit. One can without being threatening disagree that we are lucky to live in a society with increasing interracial and interreligious tensions, indeed one that can be described in terms of dangerous superdiversity.
SJWs seem to believe that although there is no such entity as race (perhaps there are ethnic groups but the distinction remains unclear), people who see thing
s differently from them are racist and as individuals can be described as ‘a racist’. Tarnished as a racist, like being placed in the same category of evil as paedophiles and Nazis, you are likely to experience severe difficulties, and that’s how SJWs like it. Race is even more problematic when discussing Islam because it isn’t race-focused, it is not the same as Arabic identity but did issue from the Arab region. It is however closely associated with certain countries: in order of most Muslim populated — Indonesia, Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh, but also highly concentrated in North Africa and the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa, and elsewhere. The Organisation of Islamic Co-operation has 57 member states. Originating in Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad and Islam’s holy city, this central Muslim region is however not the place where Muslim refugees converge. Criticism is often levelled at Saudi Arabia for its lack of hospitality and the linked irony of the secular West becoming the common destination for Muslim migrants. Saudi Arabia offered to build 200 mosques in Germany during the major refugee crisis of 2015, while the building of Christian churches in Saudi Arabia is prohibited. Saudi Arabia’s riches, rooted in oil since the 1930s, give it international power in spite of its poor human rights record. In principle, it should be the primary destination for Muslims (and is during the annual hajj, or pilgrimage), given its strict adherence to Islamic law (including executions by beheading) and its relatively modest population (about 30 million) and its large land mass. We have to ask then why it does not welcome migrant Muslims and conversely why so many insist on moving to countries where so many indigenous citizens do not welcome them. We might conclude that Saudi Arabian Islam is not friendly to its own kind, and that many Muslims moving to secular countries do not authentically embrace strict Islam but are in effect crypto-apostates. This parallels the situation of many aggrieved blacks who complain about racism while remaining where they can enjoy most prosperity and freedom but least naturally belong.
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