Islamophobia is making a dangerous comeback.
"It is time for us to flush the word 'Islamophobia' down the toilet and start looking in the mirror and ask ourselves: How did we get here?"
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Islamophobia seems to be making quite the comeback.
European politicians are leveraging it to rally Muslim voters in their countries, and U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration can’t seem to say the word “antisemitism” without including Islamophobia in the same sentence.
So we’re all on the same page, Islamophobia is the fear of, hatred of, or prejudice against the religion of Islam or Muslims in general, especially when seen as a geopolitical force or a source of terrorism.
But there’s something really awkward about this definition: Many of us have totally rational reasons to be frightened by Islam and Muslims. Unlike the Jews — who have the words “smart” and “clever” affixed to them to mean insults, and who are charged with the crimes of tremendous wealth, manipulation of media and finance, control of superior technologies, and secret access to the world’s governments — millions of Muslims are, as a matter of fact, a geopolitical force and a source of terrorism.
The Middle East and North Africa used to be predominantly Christian. Now they are predominantly Muslim — and growing in the latter direction. In most Middle Eastern countries, Christian populations are declining and there is “horrifying growth” of Christian persecution, according to the organization Open Doors.
The situation for Jews in the Middle East and North Africa has not been any more favorable. Israel, established in 1948 in the Jews’ indigenous homeland, was attacked by five Muslim-majority countries just hours after the Jewish state declared its independence that year.
Since then, nearly a million Jews were implicitly or explicitly expelled from Muslim-majority countries in the region, and multiple wars have been waged by Muslim-majority countries against Israel to rid the Middle East of Jews. After all, Islam is transparent in its unfriendliness toward Judaism in text, creed, interpretation, and action.
“As someone who sat in mosques as a child and heard the imams preach incessantly, ‘We must kill all Jews,’ I am not surprised by the level of antisemitism that has been brewing on social media since October 7th. But I am shocked by the complacency of many Westerners,” wrote Luai Ahmed, a Yemeni activist.1
As far as Islam and the Muslims being a source of terrorism, it would be foolish to say that all terrorists are Muslim. They are not. There are White terrorists, Black and Brown terrorists, American terrorists, French terrorists, Russian terrorists, Asian terrorists, et cetera. But nearly 70 percent of terrorist attacks in the UK, for example, are Islamist.2
“Similarly, 70 percent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking,” according to writer Anna Stanley. “It would be absurd to avoid mentioning this in the study of cancer so smokers don’t feel uncomfortable.”
Still, this comparison is not well-received in heavily liberal circles, where “shared humanity” and “live and let live” are levied to make excuses for everything that is defective about progressive identity politics. And it is easy to live somewhere far, far away from the Middle East and preach “cultural relativism” if you haven’t been murdered or kidnapped after undergoing anal gang-rape during a music festival, at the hands of Muslim men shouting in Arabic, “Allah is the greatest!”
Of course, the people who preach “shared humanity” and “live and let live” know very little about the contents of Islam — because, if they did, they would know that Islam (or at least, fundamentalist Islam) doesn’t preach these virtues. It uses them to gain acceptance in the West and then rage against it, both in verbiage and behavior.
Furthermore, liberal immigration policies have imperiled several Western countries because of unorganized, ineffective immigration infrastructure, which has resulted in inadequate absorption and assimilation. Historian Niall Ferguson said the failure has been in not explaining to immigrants “what the deal is if you come to a new society. You have to accept the norms, the laws of that society. And if you don’t, if your allegiance remains to some other power, then you’re not fulfilling your side of the implicit contract.”3
Not all immigrants are created equal, though. Latin American immigrants in the United States might have illegally made their way there, but you rarely hear about Latin Americans championing destruction and downfall of “the West.” Muslim immigrants are a different crop, because they often bring with them an immense devotion to Islam, which preaches principles that often times are in direct conflict with Western ones.
Yet, somehow, Islam gets a free pass in liberal spaces thanks to “freedom of religion” — even though all religions are not the same or even vaguely similar. Some religions are more hostile than others, which is not an Islamophobic statement. It’s a fact, the same way that Christian, Hindu, and even Jewish factions had periods of unacceptable violence in relation to their religion.
But just because other religions exercised unacceptable violence in the past doesn’t mean that we should tolerate today’s Islamic variations. As historian Yuval Noah Harari said:
“History is not about remembering the past. It’s about liberating ourselves from it.”4
What many people don’t realize about Islam is that it is not just a religion. Islam is also a political ideology. One aspect of this ideology is that Islam “doesn’t recognize a distinction between mosque and state, the way that Christianity recognizes a distinction between church and state,” according to Niall Ferguson.
Hence why, in much of the Middle East and North Africa, society is fundamentally unstable. Lawrence, who knew Arabia well, compared it to shifting sand that one moment speaks quietly and the next turns into a storm.
“It is a society that has a strong tendency for violence, a society that can only exist under the rule of tyranny. It is a society that is overly preoccupied with genius, pride, and victory. It is a society that in a certain sense is still characterized by the ancient mentality of ancient times,” said historian Benzion Netanyahu. “And when the combination of this ancient mentality with the modern weapons of destruction is created en masse, the conditions will be created for the emergence of global shocks, and in my opinion a threat like no other was created, not only for Israel, but for the entire West.”5
Cue: the Islamic Republic of Iran, which makes no secret about its profound distaste for the United States, Israel, and the West in general. It also makes no secret about its ambitions to develop nuclear weapons. You might have the luxury of taking the Iranian regime’s hateful words and dangerous desires with a grain of salt, but as both a Jew and an Israeli resident, I do not.
Hence why am I incredibly supportive of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, even as innocents die, because I know that Israel’s war against Hamas is not just a war against the world’s fifth-most active terror group. It’s a war against Iran, which has routinely vowed to wipe Israel from the planet. Just this week, Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei tweeted about “the disappearance” of the “Zionist entity from the face of the earth.”
Thus, to destroy Hamas in Gaza is to send a vital message to Iran that the Jewish state — and, by extension, the Jews — are not taking their Islamic proxies like Hamas lightly anymore. For those who don’t live in Israel, I have no doubt that you’d want your government to do whatever it takes to ensure safety on your country’s borders, especially against Islamic militias that vow to bring about your country’s destruction.
And, I get it, not all Muslims are violent, Jew-hating, West-bashing sons of a gun, but to focus on “all the peaceful Muslims” is a charade that covers up a pertinent point. Like other religions, many Muslims are submissive to Islam’s extremists elements. So, yes, these “peaceful Muslims” probably won’t carry out a vicious terror attack in the service of Allah, but they also won’t speak out against others who do. It’s this sort of passivity that got six million Jews — 40 percent of the world’s Jewish population at the time — systematically murdered in the Holocaust.
It’s also this type of passivity that, if fundamentalist Muslims had their way, would turn more countries into Islamic theocracies, where the pronouns of many of today’s liberal Muslim supporters would be “was/were.” As the recent joke goes: There aren’t enough tall buildings in the Gaza Strip to throw “Gays for Gaza” off of.
In Gaza, the West Bank, Iran, and other places, Islam as a political doctrine is often used to cover up mind-boggling corruption. During the Second Intifada (a violent Palestinian uprising against Israel), for example, the immeasurably kleptocratic Palestinian Authority started incorporating Islam into its political rhetoric and adding jihad to its agenda.
As a result, the Authority gained even more support financially and politically within the Arab and Muslim worlds: Money officially donated to the Authority during the Second Intifada jumped 80 percent, from $555 million to more than $1 billion.
All this while the Palestinian Authority refuses to use its considerable international aid (billions of dollars) to relocate more than 100,000 Palestinians from Palestinian-controlled refugee camps to residential locations in the territories, preferring to leave them confined under extremely unpleasant conditions — which is likely to make many of these Palestinians more religious and more radicalized.
And get this: Hamas is even worse. An off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas started out in 1988 as an Islamic social-religious organization, not a political one. But over time, Hamas leadership realized that, if it was going to stay in control of Gaza, it needed to adopt a sociopolitical program.
In schools, community centers, and mosques throughout Gaza, Hamas infiltrates their content with anti-Jewish and pro-terror propaganda. Administrators, teachers, clerics, and community leaders are not just there to do a job, but to serve as megaphones for Hamas’ genocidal, fascist, Islamic fundamentalist ideology. Dissidents are tortured and killed, often publicly to ensure others know what’s good for them. Hamas operatives even kidnapped, tortured, and murdered the owner of Gaza’s last Christian bookstore, and firebombed the place twice.
“For Hamas, being Muslim means supporting Hamas, and people who do not support Hamas aren’t Muslims,” wrote Ala Mohammed Mushtaha, whose family has lived in Gaza for generations.6
Hence why Hamas uses mosques as warehouses to stash money, weapons, and equipment. Large, wrapped-up prayer rugs are “donated” to Gaza’s houses of worship — except only “special volunteers” are allowed to open them or transport the rugs in and out. Big boxes are marked as food aid, but “there wasn’t food inside,” just “something made of iron,” Mushtaha said.
But don’t tell this to all the overly liberal folks who march arm-in-arm with Muslims and Arabs under the “pro-Palestinian” banner — the epitome of selective outrage that only makes these people look like laughable hypocrites who are picky and choosy about the “causes” they support. Meanwhile, millions of innocents are dying in civil wars across Syria, Sudan, and Yemen; China has been displacing Muslims in internment camps; but these other events aren’t cause for purposely stopping traffic in Western capitals and disrupting public speeches.
However ridiculous these overly liberal folks are, I can accept “pro-Palestinian” demonstrations in the name of free speech and the right to “peacefully” protest. The more pressing problem is when these sentiments creep into our institutions, like academia, which they already have.
At Kings College in London, for example, students are taught that “terrorism is not the problem, rather the systems they oppose are terrorist,” reflecting post-modern identity politics dressed up as counter-terrorism education. Everything is viewed through the lens of power. Either you’re an oppressor or being oppressed, and Islamist extremism is simply exaggerated, even though a British government report’s findings were in direct conflict to these doctrines of the day.
In New York City, a public school is being accused of “Jewish erasure” after a map from one of its classrooms surfaced showing all the countries of the Middle East — except Israel, which is labeled a country that doesn’t exist: “Palestine.” Pre-K and elementary students in the “Arab Culture Arts” program probably don’t know that it is funded by Qatar Foundation International, the American wing of the Qatar Foundation, a nonprofit owned by the ruling family of the wealthy Arab state which harbors Hamas leaders.7
And a nationwide movement in America called “liberated ethnic studies” seeks to introduce a divisive politicized project into the country’s K-through-12 curriculum, disavowing a central tenet of education fostering national unity and cohesion. As part of their efforts, teachers are targeted for indoctrination into an ideology that casts Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel as oppressors and enemies of progress.
Unsurprisingly, prominent consultants associated with “liberated ethnic studies” are BDS movement advocates whose purpose is to aggressively inject everyone with heavily biased and grossly inaccurate anti-Israel materials.
The University of California system rejected “liberated ethnic studies,” prompting its Ethnic Studies Council to write a letter to the University of California Board of Regents, accusing them of “demonizing” the BDS movement and equating it with “anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian sentiments.”
Some Muslims, though, are courageously speaking out against Islam’s problematic and potentially catastrophic ways. And it’s from them that we can truly understand Islam and Islamophobia.
“Dear Muslims,” wrote Luai Ahmed. “The world is scared of us. The world is laughing at us. The world is worried about us. And there are legitimate reasons for their worry that we cannot keep denying. It is time for us to flush the word ‘Islamophobia’ down the toilet and start looking in the mirror and ask ourselves: How did we get here? How come the largest and most thriving terrorist organizations in the world are Muslim? Why do we keep repeating these stone-age traditions that have failed us and continue to fail us?”
“Meanwhile, we are stuck on Earth in the Middle Ages, going to our poisonous mosques every Friday, reciting the same chapters and the same stories of Mohammed,” added Ahmed. “Why haven’t all of these books and teachings led to any scientific, technological, or medical advancements? 1,400 years of us, stuck, debating: ‘Which is the correct sect?’ ‘What is the correct interpretation?’ ‘Who is a real Muslim? ‘How can we convince people to become Muslims?’ Why on Earth would anyone want to become Muslim today?”
Luai Ahmed on X
“Scandalous Indoctrination: Inside a Kings College Counter-Terrorism Course for UK Civil Servants.” Fathom.
“Israel, Islam & the New Cold War | Niall Ferguson.” John Anderson. YouTube.
“FULL INTERVIEW: Ari Melber & Yuval Noah Harari on MSNBC’s The Beat (November 2023).” YouTube.
“Ben-Zion Netanyahu in an interview in 1998.” Haaretz.
“Hamas Kidnapped My Father for Refusing to Be Their Puppet.” The Free Press.
“NYC Public School Wipes Israel from the Map.” The Free Press.
What we are seeing played out, I think, is more appropriately called "Islamophilia." And one may add in "Stockholm Syndrome" and terror appeasement related to the world's tremendous fear of Islamist terrorism centered in Iran and spreading across the clobe, not to mention "white guilt" as a major factor in the West failing to protect its interests in not becoming part of the global Caliphate.
Josh, your article is "spot on". As a Canadian, burdened for too many years under the yoke of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's left-of-liberal wokism, I've had to hear him invoke the word "Islamophobia" every time any mention is made of anti-Semitism. This, despite the fact that attacks against Muslim communities in Canada are relatively few while anti-Semitic attacks are through the roof. Canada's Muslims outnumber Jewish Canadians by at least 20 to 1, so we haven't been hearing much push-back against this from Trudeau's political opponents either. For most Canadian politicians it comes down to numbers: There are more Muslim voters than Jewish voters so guess who is going to get thrown under the bus? So far, Trudeau has led the charge among Commonwealth countries in voting for Israeli ceasefires in UN resolutions and I'm not hearing about any groundswell of support for Israel from other quarters in Canada. I read a saying lately on Facebook (the author eludes me, sorry) to the effect that what every Diaspora Jew must do is study Torah and have an Israeli bank account. I'm already engaged in the former and working on setting up the latter. Am Yisroel Chai.