“Islamophope”: Growing Orwellian Term To Crush Dissent, Speech, Critical Analysis
And it’s not just Muslim extremists using the term. It’s Muslims in general and Leftists and more…
CNS:
Muslim extremists are branding opponents “Islamophobes” in an effort to paint themselves as the victim and silence dissent and opposition to their political and religious beliefs, according to a panel convened in Washington, D.C., Tuesday.
“‘Islamophobia’ has become … the new battleground in this war” on terrorism, Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, said at the panel discussion.
She said the term “inverts victim and perpetrator” by portraying Islamic fanatics as the victim, thus allowing them to label dissent as a violation of human rights and, in effect, silence dissent.
The Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) at the United Nations has been lobbying hard for bans against “Islamaphobia, which are “tantamount to blasphemy strictures that have been used to curtail freedoms of expression, press, and religion by some of the OIC’s most repressive member states,” noted the Hudson Institute in its preview to the panel discussion.
The term “Islamaphobia” will be a major focus of the 2009 U.N. World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa.
Bayefsky said the goal of conference organizers, including Libya, Cuba and Iran, is to “deflect attention from the human rights abuses” and “to circle the wagons, to invoke mass hysteria, to suggest to people that they are under threat, which is in fact imaginary.”
She said that by labeling themselves victims of Islamophobia, leaders of Islamic regimes can justify harsh crackdowns on internal dissent and legitimize calls for similar crackdowns on outside criticism - such as calls for the punishment of cartoonists who depict the Muslim prophet Mohammed.
“If you can claim the other guy is the human rights violator,” Bayefsky said, “if you become the victim of racism and Islamophobia, then you justify the so-called struggle against the enemy of human rights.”
Some panelists, including Fahad Nazer, a resident fellow at the Institute for Gulf Affairs, said that Islamophobia does exist, pointing to Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), a long-shot Republican presidential hopeful, as an example.
Tancredo came under fire in July for suggesting in a radio interview that Mecca, a Muslim holy site, should be bombed if Muslim terrorists detonate a nuclear weapon in the United States.
“There is certainly something there,” Nazer said of claims of Islamophobia being harmful to mainstream Muslims.
Bayefsky acknowledged that “insofar as it means discrimination against Muslims, there’s nothing wrong with condemning Islamophobia.”
“But the problem is that it has been manipulated as a term to mean something quite different, to suggest that there aren’t particular cases of discrimination, but a kind of mass movement on the part of western governments and non-Muslims to denounce all of Islam, which is not the case,” she added.
The panelists agreed that the United Nations was not a reliable vessel through which to address issues of human rights or discrimination against certain religions.
Nazer suggested that there is reason to believe the Islamic regimes themselves may be shifting their approach to dissent.
“They will reform, however they’ll do it on their own terms and at their own pace,” he said, specifically referring to Saudi Arabia. “The good news is that Saudi officials condemn terrorism routinely.”
But, he said, “other developments … are more ominous,” such as reformers being asked to stop their political activism or being thrown in prison.
Nonetheless, Nazer said, “more than any [U.N.] declaration or conference, the Saudis are in a position to lead the Muslim nations by example and they can do so by lifting restrictions on speech, assembly and worship.”
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While I believe that islamophobia is real, to label anyone who disagrees with the extremists an islamophobe, is to take away the real pain that real victims of bias have felt, and to make it political.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:30 amThe UN conferenc e will most likely blame the US and our friends, especially Israel.
“The good news is that Saudi officials condemn terrorism routinely.”
And then they turn around and routinely allow the extremism to flourish in their country. What a farce. Get that bull out of here.
November 5th, 2007 at 3:55 amWell, we should make there ballistophobia a little more real!
November 5th, 2007 at 5:24 amLet me report to all concerned: I am an “Islamophobe” and proud of it!
Yes I possess all of the clinical aspects of the diagnosis:
1. I don’t like Radical Islamic Terrorists.
2. I don’t like Islamic fundamentalism.
3. I do not want the Quran imposed on our society.
4. I will never submit to Shariah law and will rebel with armed confrontation against it.
5. I beleive that this current war on terror is the right thing and that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are just and being conducted for all the right reasons.
Yeap, I’m an Islamaphobe!
During the old Cold War days our slogan was “Better dead than Red.” Today’s war calls for a slogan along these lines: “Better dead then be forced to wear a towel on your head like Ahcmed.”
Oh my, that sounds awful Islamaphobic.
November 5th, 2007 at 5:41 amThe term Islamofacism was coined in Maghreb by moderate muslims who were being slaughtered by Islamic Facists. It’s their term…not ours. The term is being properly used to identify and seperate Muslims like OBL from Muslims like Ms. Bhutto and Harmid Karzai.
There’s no “phobia” about it…except that phobic mentality comming from CAIR and the Muslim American Assoc.
Here in the US we have a thing we call free speech. No attempt by any Islamofacist to sue away those rights or to legislate awy those rights will ever succeed.
If CAIR and the UN wants to end the criticism, then groups like CAIR and their supporters need to end their support for terrorists like Hamas and Hizbollah.
Where are the big anti-facist protests by the so-called moderates against their Muslim bretheren who are slaughtering other Muslims, subjugating women, non-Muslims and gays?
Do you see any such large-scale protests around the world or in the US? I don’t.
There’s no “phobia” here. There is however, a massive amount of firepower waiting for the Islamofacists if they attempt to usurp our God-given rights or attempt to impose their draconian sharia laws upon us.
I wouldn’t call that a phobia…nor a threat…it’s just a promise. The constitution and our Judeo-Christian ethos is what gave rise to tolerance and the end of slavery in the first palce. We ain’t going back…
“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.” -Samuel Adams
“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards; and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors; they purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy on the present generation, enlightened as it is, it we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle, or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.”
November 5th, 2007 at 7:35 am– Samuel Adams, article published in 1771
Dan, mahbruthaaahh, that is a beautiful quote from my fellow Bay Stater, Samuel Adams! Too bad his (our) state has turned into a haven for precisely those pusillanimous losers he warned against!
We need to recall that the 1st PC version of a “phobia” that was invented in order to shut up any criticism was… HOMOPHOBIA. The Islamists have just done what the homos have done for decades.
Heh, heh.
November 5th, 2007 at 9:24 pm