‘Islamophobia … Baseless Hatred’?
2nd April 2015
The Other McCain muses.
An astonishing phenomenon of the 21st century is the perversely ironic way in which the Information Age has actually increased ignorance. With all the knowledge in the world just a quick Google search away, many people have somehow managed to seal themselves off inside cocoons of confirmation bias, where they only encounter narratives that fit their preconceived personal prejudices. It is not simply a matter of people avoiding opposing opinions, but of filtering out facts in such a way that their worldview becomes wholly unrealistic. Paranoid hostility flourishes inside these online bubbles where kooks cluster, affirming their shared delusions and piling up “evidence” to “prove” their false beliefs to each other.
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This raises the question of whether “Islamophobia” actually exists. The term “phobia” denotes an irrational fear, yet the history of recent decades offers enough rational basis for concern to make the word “Islamophobia” inherently problematic. One may perhaps distinguish between two phenomena — a vigilant concern about dangerous radicalism, on the one hand, and a simple-minded bigotry on the other — but making that distinction does nothing more than to say, “Ignorant people are ignorant.” To say that fair-minded and educated people should condemn ignorant prejudice isn’t controversial. What is controversial is to assert that “Islamophobia” is a more important problem than the actual dangers posed by radical Islam.
The flat statement that “Islamophobia has criminalized the brown body” is a falsehood, and to then throw in “the suffering of countless victims of . . . baseless hatred” as the emotional freight of an argument requires us to ask, “Are the ‘victims’ truly ‘countless’? Where is the evidence of this ‘suffering’?” In order to sustain such claims, it will not do to cite a list of incidents or anecdotes. No one disputes the fact that ignorant hateful people do ignorant hateful things.
What is in dispute is whether “Islamophobia” — specifically, the concern about Islamic terrorism — has generated such a spree of anti-Muslim violence and harassment as to produce “countless victims.”
To the extent that there are any Muslim victims, they are typically the victims of other Muslims.