The ‘Islamophobia’ Scam
Muslim antisemites and their collaborators hijack sympathy as yet another excuse to smear and hate on Jews.
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This is a guest essay written by Nachum Kaplan, who writes the newsletter, “Moral Clarity.”
You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.
Complaining about rampant “Islamophobia” is often a cynical tactic that antisemites use to create a conversation about Gaza — so they can smear Israel and defame Jews.
Communications theorists call it an “instrumental grievance.” It is a complaint expressed not for its own sake, but to segue to another topic. Complaining about so-called “Islamophobia” to create an opportunity to talk about the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza is an example.
Step 1: Complain loudly that “Islamophobia” is rising alarmingly and that governments are not doing enough to tackle it.
Step 2: Attribute the rise in “Islamophobia” to people attacking Muslims merely for expressing their justifiable concerns about the Israel-Hamas war.
Step 3: Angrily spread lies, quarter-truths, and propaganda about what Israel is doing in Gaza to make Israel look bad.
Step 4: Sit back and laugh as the credulous media lap it up, spread the lies, and stoke antisemitism.
Claims that “Islamophobia” is surging become more frequent whenever there is some political advantage to be gained from it.
In Canada and Australia, both with crucial general elections of late, there are complaints about “Islamophobia” being made almost daily in electorates and ridings with large Muslim populations. They want to make clear that they will be voting on so-called “Muslim issues,” by which they mean immigration and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
This trojan-horse trick of talking about one thing and then sneakily shifting the conversation to Israel’s alleged sins is just one function of making “Islamophobia” an issue.
Before getting into these other functions, let me be clear.
I do not care about “Islamophobia.” Yes, yes. We are all members of the “I oppose all forms of discrimination” club. But I am a paid-up lifetime card-carrying member of the “Don’t mess with the Jews” club.
Yet, I feel I must write about this “Islamophobia” tactic because those who employ it are sewer-dwelling antisemites, and they are a more serious threat than is generally appreciated, when it is appreciated at all.
The most common reason people cry “Islamophobia” is to shield Islam from criticism. From women’s rights to shariah law, there is no shortage of things to criticize, and crying “Islamophobia” serves as an all-purpose defense against such criticism.
It creates some deliciously stupid scenarios. For example, consider one stating that the Quran is antisemitic in parts and that this contributes to Jew-hatred among Muslims. It is a factual statement, but making it will get you branded a racist or, worse, an “Islamophobe” — which is grammatically intolerable.
This has created a ludicrous situation in which criticizing Islam for containing antisemitism will get you labelled as a racist, while imams can preach antisemitism at their mosques as long it is coming from religious texts. This is precisely morally backwards. Those opposing bigotry get accused of it themselves, while the actual bigots are free to continue and framed as victims of racism.
This dovetails perfectly into another reason for making “Islamophobia” complaints, which is to frame Muslims as victims. Palestinianism, in particular, demands a deeply tiring victimhood narrative. The Palestinians never accept any responsibility for their starring role in the conflict. Hamas attacks Israel, Israel defends itself and fights back, and the Palestinians and their global army of idiot supporters start complaining about Israeli aggression and pretending they are the victims.
Anyone whose brain has not atrophied to peanut proportions can see this is ridiculous. The Arabs started every war against Israel since before the First Arab-Israeli War in 1948. Facts remain true even when they are awkward. Disturbingly, the international media is among those who refuse to let facts or logic interfere with their wholesale acceptance of the Palestinians’ provably fictitious narrative.
The media’s mendacity makes it complicit in the past year’s record number of antisemitic attacks across the West. Fear of being branded “Islamophobic” stops people in Western countries from making the most obvious observation that Muslims are behind most antisemitic incidents, while it is not Jews behind acts of Muslim bigotry. Antisemitism is preached in many mosques, but you do not find anti-Islamic rhetoric coming from rabbis and cantors in synagogues.
By crying “Islamophobia,” antisemites discourage people from criticizing Islam because, in Western “progressive” politics, being labelled a racist or bigot is about the worst thing that can befall you reputationally.
What’s more, the cynical use of crying “Islamophobia” as a tactic to talk about Gaza is a very strong tell for antisemitism. People who get angry about Palestinian victims from the Gaza war, but show no concern or animation about any of the world’s much larger conflicts (including Muslim-on-Muslim violence) show it is not human suffering they care about. It is only the one conflict involving Jews that riles them. Even an ice hockey referee can see the antisemitism here.
Many of these anti-Israel protestors are outright jihadists, while some are closet jihadists who hide their jihadism under the guise of support for Palestinians. It is not a very good hiding place because all informed observers know that Palestinian politics is awash with jihadism and terrorism. Hamas was elected to power in Gaza because it is an Islamist terror group, not despite it being one.
The Palestinian Authority is scared to hold elections in Judea and Samaria (also known as “the West Bank) because it knows Hamas will win them. Many Palestinian Authority members are, in any case, Islamists themselves. This is hardly surprising given that Palestinianism is a form of Islamism.
Those who want Israel to stop fighting, including many world leaders and stonefish-stupid United Nations types, are doing so because Israel is decimating Hamas. Those demanding a ceasefire are advocating a move that would ensure Hamas, whose violence is so grotesque that it sickens any normal person, remains a political force. These “pro-Palestinian” protestors are supporting a mass murdering Jihadist terror group.
Call me an oddball, but I do not want to live alongside terrorist sympathizers and apologists. When these extremists turn up at rallies with keffiyehs and masks, they are showing their true selves. They have taken their disguises off, not put a costume on.
When Hamas tells the world proudly that it wants to kill all Jews, destroy Israel, destroy Arab kingdoms, bring down the West, and impose shariah law, the international community does not take it seriously. Likewise, when protestors in Western cities support terror and Islamism, no one can see it.
Maybe everyone has gone deaf and blind and cannot hear or see what these sociopaths are doing. Too bad they did not go dumb instead so we would not have to listen to their racist lies and toddler chants.
There is also something even more nefarious about these people that rarely gets called out. They are using this issue to normalize religious discourse as part of secular Western politics. In Western countries, religion appears in politics only rarely, around hot-button issues such as gay marriage but never on issues such as foreign policy. That is by design. This Gaza/“Islamophobia” fetish is an attempt to bring Islam into mainstream politics.
The playbook is well-established in Europe. First, Islamists raise an issue. Then they seek representation in local councils and, voila, religion is playing a role in politics. This is then repeated at higher levels of government. I cannot think of a country that has benefited from having sectarian politics, and anyone who wants to introduce it ought to be punted as far from our political institutions as possible.
People are entitled to be angry about the war in Gaza. I recommend they take their grievances up with those responsible for it, the vile Islamist Hamas, which started the war on October 7th in 2023 and which still holds Israeli hostages.
If these protestors are not pressuring Hamas, then I presume their motives are dark and antisemitic. This problem is going to get worse if Western states do not find the mettle to stop it.
There is no Islamophobia anywhere in the Western World. There ought to be much more of it because it's infiltration of Western societies is extremely dangerous. But the Islamists have already won. The most regressive civilization on earth has fully captured the so called progressive left. It has captured virtually every government in the Western World. One year ago yesterday President Biden gave a speech as he was facing a backlash from all the vicious Jew hate emanating from the Red/Green alliance. His speech decried "Anti-Semitism and Islamophobia" as if there is any Islamophobia as if Islam wasn't the prime force behind the new anti-semitism as if he couldn't denounce the Jew hate alone because it would upset the Muslims." This is how the Islamists have succeeded. And when Trump actually tries to stop it he's accused of "weaponizing anti-semitism.
Politicians with backbones of straw when they feel the need to denounce antisemitism always co-mingle it with the mythical “Islamophobia”. They cannot just denounce Jew hatred by itself.