{"id":3339,"date":"2014-04-29T00:52:17","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T04:52:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/?p=3339"},"modified":"2014-04-29T01:04:04","modified_gmt":"2014-04-29T05:04:04","slug":"the-scourge-of-islamophobophobia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/2014\/04\/29\/the-scourge-of-islamophobophobia\/","title":{"rendered":"The Scourge of Islamophobophobia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"rowan\"<\/a><\/p>\n

With all the talk of “Islamophobia”, a buzzword used by Islam defenders to shame any criticism of Islam, one thing that rarely (if ever) gets any mention is that Islam indeed joined a privileged status, even here in the US; that it gets away with practices that would never be tolerated in any other context; and that it has taken advantage of our (misplaced) default “respect” for religion to the fullest.<\/p>\n

I have given examples of this in the past: Islam routinely practices discriminatory traditions<\/a> that Rosa Parks fought to end; it openly displays<\/a> symbols of misogyny and oppression; and it cynically pays lip service to condemning terrorism while at the same time<\/a> promoting the very ideological basis of terrorism. And finally, to add insult to injury, it accuses anyone who dares to call it out of intolerance; they have even coined a word for this, “Islamophobia”, to be used as a bludgeon against anyone who dares open his\/her mouth about any of the above (and much more). The trick has worked like magic: as we have seen, even the British government<\/a> has been too scared to act against Sharia courts that violate British law by issuing rulings against victims of domestic abuse, lest it be accused of “Islamophobia”.<\/p>\n

The wonderful Ali Rizvi, self descried “Muslim atheist” that I have mentioned before<\/a>, has a great article<\/a> on the Huffington Post<\/em> in which he cites a number of examples of how American Islamist organizations, most notably the Council of American Islamic Relations<\/a> (CAIR), have used our fear of being politically incorrect to silence criticism of Islam. Here are some good examples:<\/p>\n

Last month, a white American man successfully convinced the Massachusetts liberal arts school Brandeis University that he was being victimized and oppressed by a black African woman from Somalia — a woman who underwent genital mutilation at age five and travels with armed security at risk of being assassinated.<\/p>\n

That<\/i>\u00a0is the power of this term.<\/p>\n

The man, Ibrahim Hooper, is a Muslim convert and a founding member and spokesman for CAIR. The woman, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, is an unapologetic activist for the rights of girls and women and a harsh, no-holds-barred critic of the religious ideologies (particularly the Islamic ideology in Muslim-majority countries that she experienced first-hand) that perpetuate and maintain their abuse. Having abandoned the Islamic faith of her parents and taken a stance against it, she is guilty of apostasy, a crime that is punishable by death according to\u00a0most Islamic scholars, not to mention the\u00a0holy text itself.<\/p>\n

Hirsi Ali was also involved with the award-winning documentary,\u00a0Honor Diaries<\/a><\/i>, which explores violence against women in honor-based societies, including female genital mutilation (FGM), honor killings, domestic violence, and forced marriage. Despite featuring the voices of several practicing Muslim women, the film was\u00a0deemed “Islamophobic”\u00a0by — you guessed it — the poor folks at CAIR. Again, they felt\u00a0they<\/i>\u00a0were the real victims, wanting their own voices heard while silencing those of the victims of FGM and honor killing in the film.<\/p>\n

“So what?” you say. “It’s 2014. No one’s going to take that kind of position seriously, right?”<\/p>\n

Wrong. Astonishingly, this ludicrous argument was enough to convince both the University of Illinois and the University of Michigan to\u00a0cancel their screenings\u00a0of the film.<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, this Islamophobia-phobia also worked successfully on Katy Perry, a singer well-known for fighting her evangelical minister parents to break out of a strict Christian upbringing. Her\u00a0music video for\u00a0Dark Horse<\/i>\u00a0enraged over 60,000 angry Muslims who\u00a0signed a petition\u00a0demanding that it be removed for blasphemy. The video showed a man wearing an “Allah” pendant being burned to ashes, pendant and all. The scene was visible for less than a second in the original video.<\/p>\n

She gave in. The petition was successful, and within a day, the\u00a0offending scene was edited out\u00a0of the video.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Astonishing examples of de facto Sharia-based rules on freedom of expression (First Amendment be damned!). But did you notice the funny word he uses to describe what is happening? “Islamophobia-phobia”: the threat of accusing someone of Islamophobia, or such accusation actually being made, to shut them up. And I think, since we are likely to come across many such \u00a0example for the foreseeable future, we may just as well shorten it for easier use. Let’s call it Islamophobophobia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all the talk of “Islamophobia”, a buzzword used by Islam defenders to shame any criticism of Islam, one thing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3339","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-secularism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3339","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3339"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3339\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3339"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3339"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/skepticink.com\/nocrossnocrescent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3339"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}