{"id":951,"date":"2013-11-17T14:00:04","date_gmt":"2013-11-17T19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/?p=951"},"modified":"2013-11-14T17:15:21","modified_gmt":"2013-11-14T22:15:21","slug":"islamophobia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/2013\/11\/islamophobia\/","title":{"rendered":"There’s no such thing as ‘Islamophobia’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/p>\n

Kenan Malik<\/strong> has a post asking when does criticism of Islam becomes islamophobia?<\/a><\/p>\n

Here’s my answer: Never<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And it’s really quite simple: there’s no such thing as Islamophobia<\/a><\/strong>. Yes, there are some Muslims that are persecuted because of their superstition, just as there are Christians being persecuted in Muslim countries, and as there’s an anti-atheist bias in public policy among almost every country. But we don’t go around yelling “Atheist-phobia” or “Christian-phobia”. It’s \u00a0just bigotry<\/strong> and there’s no point in calling it Islamophobia. Zealotry is wrong, and using the term “Islamophobia” is to say Muslim victims are more<\/em> important than Christian or Atheist or Buddhist victims. (And it goes without saying that Islam is not a race<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

This is a matter of principle<\/strong>. Thought crimes are wrong<\/a>, period. And that’s exactly what “Islamophobia” is, a word coined to convict someone for what he thinks. It is a secular fatwa<\/a>, and I find it terrifying that so-called freethinkers are so eager to use it or consider it as something else, other than a shortcut for censorship<\/strong>. When it comes to free speech, religions are fair game, blasphemy is fair game.<\/p>\n

“Islamophobia” is an ad hominem<\/em> fallacy<\/a> – even worse, is a censorship attempt, is a cop-out.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, a phobia<\/a> is “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation”. It looks to me, fearing Islam, Christianity or any other religion is neither illogical, nor exaggerated – irrational beliefs are harmful<\/a>, religions are the root of almost all evil<\/a>, so it’s quite rational and self-preserving to fear them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kenan Malik has a post asking when does criticism of Islam becomes islamophobia? Here’s my answer: Never.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[205,34,45,110,288],"class_list":["post-951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-islamophobia","tag-censorship","tag-free-speech","tag-islam","tag-kenan-malik"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/avant-garde\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}