Salon commentator is a little late to the party, but he still nails it:
What Lean is doing here is deleterious to free speech: he is trying to equate criticism of a religion (whose followers, in this case, mostly happen to be nonwhite) with racism. This sophistry cannot be allowed to stand. “Islamophobia” is nothing more than a quack pseudo-diagnosis suggesting pathological prejudice against, and fear of, a supposedly neutral subject, Islam, in the way agoraphobic folk cringe at open places or claustrophobes dread an elevator. Based on the erroneous premise that those who criticize Islam are somehow ill, the term, along with its adjective “Islamophobic,” should be banished from our lexicon as pernicious to rational thinking. People, regardless of race or creed, deserve equal rights and respect; religions, which are essentially hallowed ideologies, merit no a priori respect, but, rather, gimlet-eyed scrutiny, the same scrutiny one would apply to, say, communism, conservatism or liberalism. No one has a right to wield religion as a shield – or as a sword.
What makes this interesting is that Salon is almost the definition of comfortable champagne socialism. Seeing this much good sense on this subject from this source leaves me a little dumbfounded.
Just want to note, some of us were here already.
