“On this the holiest of days for Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholic, and Protestant Christians comes an article on the necessity of spreading Islam in the West.”
Muslims are seeking to spread their message – and, what’s more, they’re doing it on Easter Sunday. Robert Spencer is outraged.
“In the long annals of judicial stupidity, there can rarely have been a more idiotic judgment than that recently given by Lord Justice Brooke of the British Court of Appeal. It reads like the suicide note not of a country alone, but of an entire civilization.”
Theodore Dalrymple expresses outrage over the Shabina Begum case. “No expressed desire by a child or young woman to wear traditional clothing such as the jilbab can be taken as arising from free choice – even if, in any given instance, it is the result of such a choice – because of the oppressive nature of the subculture.”
A US blogger applauds Harry’s Place for its “magisterial dismembering” of Islamophobia Watch. (Must have missed that one.) Apparently we’re suffering from “reflexive Islamophilia”, defined as “the tendency of some Western Leftists to offer an intellectual free pass to Islam and Muslims because it is non-Western”. (I’m afraid grammar is not one of this blogger’s strong points.)
Our basic mistake is to suppose that Islamophobia is a form of racism: “It is not – Islam is a religion, an ideological choice.” Really? How come there are so few Muslims among white inhabitants of the United States, then? And rather more among people of colour in the Middle East? Well, obviously, they just made different individual choices.
Pearsall’s Books, 26 March 2005
Update: For Pearsall Helms’ reply – which fails to address the point I was trying to make, namely that religion is not primarily an individual choice but rather part of a community’s collective culture – see here.
Gordon Brown makes some favourable comments about British Muslims. Robert Spencer is appalled by this abject capitulation to Islam. “Please, Mr Chancellor, show me where I can find in the Qur’an and Sunnah the idea of equality for non-Muslims.”
Mind you, Spencer is on record as saying that “Islam is not a monolith”, and that he is prepared to “encourage any Muslim individual or group who is willing to work publicly for the reform of the Islamic doctrines, theological tenets and laws that Islamic jihadists use to justify violence” (see here) – so, according to some people’s reasoning, he can’t be characterised as an Islamophobe.
Over at Harry’s Place, the eponymous blogger offers a critique of Islamophobia Watch and challenges our characterisation of certain leftists and liberals as Islamophobes. Compared with some of the anti-Muslim rants that have appeared on his site, it’s quite a reasoned piece – but entirely wrong, of course.
In his critique Harry quotes part of the Runnymede Trust’s definition of Islamophobia, which is reproduced on our site: “Islam is seen as a monolithic bloc, static and unresponsive to change.”
He claims that most of the leftists and liberals criticised on our blog would reject that view and therefore cannot be characterised as Islamophobes: “The whole point of supporting liberal progressives, socialists or gay activists in Muslim countries or in the ‘Muslim community’ is that there is the potential for change and that Islam most certainly isn’t a monolothic bloc.”
The problem with this argument is that, if you take the Runnymede Trust definition absolutely literally, then Islamophobia doesn’t exist anywhere in the world. Even fascists are prepared to make a formal distinction between different tendencies within Islam, along the lines Harry proposes.
Daniel Pipes worries that both Hezbollah and Hamas have mass support and can be expected to poll well in democratic elections. What to do? For Pipes the solution is obvious: “… the Western response should be unambiguous – by keeping Hezbollah and Hamas out of the democratic process”.
“Islamophobes are aggressively organizing propaganda that portrays Islam as a foreign religion that came with the backward, violent Arabs, who oppress women and deny them their rights of education, driving, working, or even leaving their homes. This completely distorted image is ingrained in the minds of the majority of the American public as a result of organized efforts by bigoted figures.”
Salwa Rashad on Islamophobia in the USA.
Outrage! proposes that Iraq should remain under foreign occupation for some time to come, on the grounds that “a hasty withdrawal could pave the way for the seizure of power by Islamic fundamentalists”:
Outrage! press release, 20 March 2005
Daniel Pipes agrees that “a too-quick removal of tyranny unleashes Islamist ideologues and opens their way to power”:
Outrage! warns that the real threat to Iraqis is Sharia law:
Outrage! press release, 20 March 2005
Robert Spencer warns that the real threat to Iraqis is Sharia law:
Daniel Pipes suggests that the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (which numbers Prince Charles among its patrons) was established to avenge the defeat of Muslim forces at the battle of Poitiers in 733 and is part of a plot (discovered by Melanie Phillips) to reduce non-Muslims to subordinate status in Britain.
Keep taking the pills, Daniel.