The Germanic aphorism, ‘Aus einer Mucke einen Elefanten machen’ is very often forgotten. Its translation in english is a derivation of the term, equivalent of ‘To make a mountain out of a molehill’. As nothing more will discharge foam into the mouths of muslims and their apologetics than marginal scrutiny and dissent that’d seem largely frivolous to members of other religions and practises. You don’t believe me? Needn’t take my word for it. No other religion with the exception of Islam has its name prefixed to phobia. And if you’re a proponent of free speech, you’d soon see the vanity of this all.
The prelude to the neolexia of the word will encompass one point. That a phobia is an irrational fear of something. Ideas and prescripts can be affirmatively subjected to dislike without it being branded an act of an irrational fear. The word, Islamophobia predates the September 11 attacks, being formed in the 90’s and coined by a Muslim Brotherhood front in america (Northern Virginia, to be pedantic). The saudi-subsidized organisation formulated the terminology in an endeavour to emulate the success emerged from ‘’homophobia’’. Vestiges of homogeneous interpretations of the word were faintly used before the 90’s. Any suggestion that it stemmed from 9-11 is a fat misconception. Improper to veto, it has unequivocally worked and operates to this day to victimise the culprits. It has morphed into a defense mechanism used by muslims to attack free speech, which is the secular rabbi’s mitzvah .Wishing nothing but to furnish muslims with a force field whereby any comment that is of dissentient nature is ricocheted away towards the critic to belittle them into thinking they’re the vulgar ones. That an act of disapproval is blasphemous. That you could get away with the ghastliest of things to ethics if only you have this stupid word in your arsenal.
One of the series of 12 depictions called the Jyllands-Posten drawings.
The oversensitivity of muslims outcasts itself as plain as a pikestaff. You ought to be exempt from being silenced on the grounds of ‘offending someone’ like it constitutes a rebuttal. Be the statement innocuous or not. Be it scrutiny or profanity. Taking offence is as much of a prerogative as submitting the offence is. Nevertheless, it is contemptible to attest that a reaction to the latter should by any means warrant an uproar of pestilential ignorance. An exemplification is the the row over the Danish cartoons caricaturing the prophet Muhammed in 2005. The depiction of a lit bomb on his head is deplorable, needless to say. There is a tradition prevalent in Denmark of satirizing a taboo subject and Islam indeed wasn’t spared of it. It had ushered a ruckus in the Islamic world leading to the boycott of Danish products and the aflaming of embassies. The fatwã sanctioned to Salman Rushdie by ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini is an analogously loathsome case. The fatwã, sentenced him to death in 1989 for the publication of ‘The Satanic Verses’ on Radio Tehran. Subsequent firebombing of bookstores, execution of translators and the death of rioters were a repercussion of free speech. I’d desire not to derail but most fatwas are de facto, puerile. In 2009, a fatwã was imposed interdicting the use of the polio vaccine to which was increasing in the subcontinent of India, Nigeria and other places. Humans mayn’t be immune to polio, but it is indubitable that islam is immune to appraisal. Even by its own followers. As an act of apostasy is punishable by death under the jurisdiction of Sharia (slowly but facetiously weeps).
It is high time we stop equating scrutiny of Islam or any other precept, religious or political (for that matter) with racism. There’re notable disparities in a plurality of dimensions. It is scarcely a bother, let alone a plight to tackle the umbrella-term effects of Islamophobia. A doodle, if you will. Effortlessly substitute Islamophobia (minus its connotations) with the appellation of ‘anti-muslim bigotry’. A case in point of ‘anti-muslim bigotry’ is the vacuous generalisation that ‘all muslims are terrorists’. On a more sinister note, an instance of non ‘anti-muslim bigotry’ is to denounce the unfair treatment of women under Islam, the barbaric and savage nature of the Sharia, dhimmitude, the dehumanizing promise of virgins to martyrs (reiterated over several surahs), genital mutilation, the implication of a flat world, so on and so forth.
I could get away with perhaps a few scratches, if that for ridiculing Joseph Smith’s reaction when the wife of Martin Harris hid Smith’s manuscripts in the 19th century. Or how his translations of an Egyptian papyrus asserting that it was the Book of Abraham were fabricated. Ultimately, my point is this. The less we fear being labelled Islamophobic, the clearer you’ll see how contaminated some things really are. Ponder it, at your own risk. Bear in mind, this was all written by a jolly apostate of islam.
Free Hema, By Mert Maximilian euphratesmert@gmail.com
Politics ad Infinitum 