Friday, September 8, 2017

"There's No Such Thing As 'Islamophobia'"

Read the whole thing. 

"With its fluid meaning, the word Islamophobia amalgamates two very different concepts: the persecution of believers, which is a crime; and the critique of religion, which is a right. A newcomer in the semantic field of anti-racism, this term has the ambition of making Islam untouchable by placing it on the same level as anti-Semitism."

"The notion of Islamophobia is meant to give the religion of the Prophet a status of exemption denied to other spiritual systems. To regularize the presence of Islam in free societies means giving the faith exactly the same status as other confessions: neither moronic demonizing nor blind idealizing. We must beware when fanaticism borrows the language of human rights and dresses up as a victim in order to impose its grip on power. There is an old saying: the devil also likes to quote scripture."

"Walk through the streets of any big European or American city, and you will pass Baptist, Catholic, Lutheran, and evangelical churches, Hindu temples, synagogues, mosques, pagodas, and on and on. This peaceful cohabitation of diverse expressions of the divine is a wonder of the West. The best that we can wish for Islam is not "phobia" or "philia" but a benevolent indifference in a spiritual marketplace, open to all beliefs. But it is precisely this indifference that the fundamentalists want to eradicate. It cannot be the equal of other faiths, since it believes itself superior to them all. This is the core of the problem."