The Distinction

by Nouri Lumendifi (Algeria)

Experts have failed to present the nuances of Muslim political thought and behavior. The results of oversimplification and inflammatory rhetoric have been bigotry and widespread distrust of Muslims at home and abroad.

It has always baffled me that certain public personalities often show so little concern for the results of the their statements and actions. For instance, a plethora of primarily rightist scholars of Islamic and Middle Eastern history have spent much of their time demonizing that strange phenomena of “Islamism” in belligerent, categorical, simplistic, and unsparingly general terminology. While they often preface their talk show appearences, speaking engagements and the like with a “distinction” between the political ideology they lament and the “beautiful” or “admirable” religion of Islam.

Nevertheless, this dividing line is usually torn down by the time they get through the early stages of their projects. The message recieved by the audience is not that there are Muslims that are humane, peaceful, honest, and — ghast — “normal”. Rather, the impression is that “Muslims” or “Islam” or “the Arab world” is anti-modern, universally anti-Western, backwards, ignorant, genocidal, terrorist, misogynist, anti-Semitic, and incompatable with democracy (unless of course, this democracy is imposed by force by foreigners).

The faux distinction predicatbly leads to problems. Not only do viewers get what amounts to propagandistic hate-speech, they also receive the seeds of bigotry and hate-speech. I say “seeds” because often times the personalities that make the “distinction” actually do mean well. Their inflammatory rhetoric makes money, and gets them invited to more television appearances. How interesting would a debate over the Lebanon War be if it were between sober academics? It would never get the kind of ratings that a debate between Alan Dershowitz or Daniel Pipes and James Zoghby would. Thus, the dogs are unleashed.

They further justify their acid spews with the notion that, for far too long, academics have not been forthright enough about the “thread” posed to the United States and her “interests” (e.g. Israel, and various economic assets) by not using the proper analysis or language.

Fair enough. But what good does it serve to point out that rising numbers of Muslims invariably means that “shari’ah” will, without fail, find its way into the legal system of whatever jurisdiction is in question, with no evidence to support the claim? Or to make alarmist proclamations that “Eurabia” is on its way, because the “Euro-Arab axis” is positioning itself to unite the Mediterranean against Israel, again with no actual proof of such an occurrence? As The Economist wrote last year, Eurabian charges are “widely exaggerated,” especially when it comes to the idea that the integration of Muslim immigrants in the West is “impossible” because of some civilizational gulf.

The results of such pseudo-scholarship are upon us. An increasing number of Western, overwhelmingly Christian, commentators are coming to the conclusion that the problem today is not with Muslims, or with their political ideologies, but with Islam as a religion. Even Daniel Pipes is worrying that many see “the religion itself, rather the radical ideology it spawned, as inherently hostile to Western ideals.”

From Bat Ye’or to skinheads to  Robert Spencer to evangelical movements, Islam has become the enemy. Muslims now seek to take over the hearth of Western civilization, Western Europe, through a government strategy of Muslim (or as the contras would write Islamic) migration to a Europe plagued by low birthrates and weak religious and cultural values. Islam forms the historical foil of Christendom; a warlike, utterly innovative, and fundamentally violent and primitive. The peoples most associated with Islam, the Arabs and the Turks, are the vessels of Islamic hatred and violence. Their civilizational achievements are few and far between, and if they flourished while Western Christians wallowed through the “Dark Ages,” this is nothing remarkable, after all, they weren’t even that dark. Peoples “conquered” by Islam, the Christian minorities of the Levant, the Greeks, the Persians, the Berbers, and so on, are hypnotized under Islam’s spell and are racially, culturally, and civilizaitonally superior to the Arabs and Turks. They should throw off the faith of backwardness and take up the religion of modernity; that of Christ.

In America, where few Americans have actually met Muslims, it is often alarming to find that an “Arab” or “Muslim” has been freely elected to represent his fellow Americans. The shari’ah is on its way when a black man is sworn in on the Qur’an (never mind that it was Tommy J’s!). It is unsurprising that with such a climate in the popular media, as intellectually incompetent or inexperienced “representatives” of the American Muslim community are put on with the purpose of making villains for the prime-time battle between the Dar ul-Islam and Christendom. Funny accents and dark skin (white skin and funny dress) — the markers of alien origin in America — push American Muslims to the fringes of the political discourse as Christians and Jews discuss what poses a bigger threat: the presence of Muslims or the rise of “Muslim power” visa vis Iran or the new “caliphate”. It does not matter that American Muslims are among the most prosperous and acculturated minorities in the country.

It is no wonder that large swaths of the American public believe Muslims to be a security threat and should have their rights limited. 22% would not even want to have a Muslim neighbor.

This hatred has propelled the new bigotry against Muslims to gain surprising legitimacy. The fact that the “distinction” is almost always between “Islamic extremists” and “Muslim moderates” — never between Muslims and religious political radicals — is cause for alarm. But, the widespread belief that all or most Muslims support terrorism and political violence gives credence that by not using terrorism, Muslims are somehow not “practicing” their faith.

As is the practice, American Christians go searching for official condemnations of terrorist attacks by “Muslims.” But when Muslims do condemn terrorism, they are ignored or dismissed for being “insincere”. Insincere, because these defenders of civilization are not seeking condemnations, they are seeking apologies.

Apologies for being Muslim. Apologies for Islam’s existence. Apologies for the actions of others, whom most Muslims do not know, do not like, and do not care about. Cond
emnation of specific acts or terrorism in general does not allay irrational fear, hatred, and distrust of Muslims. It does not give rest to religious racism (as most of the time the “crimes of Islam” are laid at the feet of Arabs and Turks almost exclusively; when these are perpetrated by Iranians, Kurds, or Malays it is due to “Middle Easternization”, or being under the influence of Arabs).

I often disagree with the application of the term “Islamophobia” to those who question curiosities within Islam and Muslim communities. However it is in my firm belief that those who dismiss the concept of Islamophobia as a “defense” of radical Islamism or as a “myth” or “wretched concept,” to use the words of the cartoon statement. Islamophobia, irrational fear of, hatred of, and discrimination against Muslims and Islam most certainly exists and is pervasive in certain political circles and geographic regions. While it has the potential, like any other name for specific ethno-religious group, to be abused, it should not be dismissed off hand because of this. One cannot properly address the violence against Muslim communities in the United States, and parts of Europe without calling it what it is. Before there was a name for anti-Semitism (a concept abused very much for political purposes) there was no adequate way to deal with it, because there was no way to articulate it.

Perhaps Islamophobia or anti-Muslim bigotry does not exist in the shelter of academia or cushy intellectual circles, but it is very real at the street level. I can attest to the barbaric consequences of ignoring anti-Muslim voilence. One cannot say “I hate Muslims but don’t mind Islam”; this kind of distinction is almost always disingenuous in every sense of the word. The converse, often made by Jihad Watchers, that the battle is against Islam, not Muslims as people, is equally tomfool. Muslims and Islam are a package. One cannot hate Christianity and not have issues with Christians. The same with Jews and Hindus. These sentiments always rise and show themselves, and must be dealt with. American whites often have, and still do, deny that very obvious racial discrimination took place in their country. Why must we continue that tradition today?

Hostility towards Muslims taints even sympathy for Judaism and Israel, according to a Wall Street Journal piece by Fania Oz-Salzberger. “New pro-Israel voices base a love of Jews upon the hatred of Muslims,” she writes. European voices against Islam mix a xenophobic racialism with a sympathy for other peoples “overrun” by the “armies” of Islam, such as the Israeli Jews and the Christians of Lebanon and Syria. Often, those Christians whose loyalty is based more on ethnicity than religion are denounced for their “dhimmitude,” their submission to their Muslim compatriots.

Oz-Salzberger writes that the European sympathy with [non-Muslim] minorities is “far too late and somewhat suspect,” as the same sort of rhetoric found today in Eurabian conspiracy theories was found decades ago right before Europeans began to exterminate millions of innocent Jews. Ah, the crusade for civilization.

A threat does exist from Islamic radicalism. But this threat should not cloud the fact that there is no Muslim or Islamic monolith, or that operating on the assumption that anything and everything about Islam is negative and incompatible with “Western values”. Conspiracy theories and blanket racialism should be judged to be just as incompatible with Western civilization as the intolerance of Islamist extremists.