I had occasion recently, in a discussion I stumbled into online, to consider the question of what the word “Islamophobia” means, and I’ve offered my thoughts on that below. My intentions in examining this are as pure, compassionate, and humane as possible (I hate Islamophobia), but some might find this commentary triggering anyway. I promise I did my best.
There are several versions of Islam that are humane and wonderful, and it’s important to me to make sure Islam is made an equal partner in the community of religions, nations, and civilizations. Attacks on ordinary Muslim civilians are always wrong, whether physical or verbal, and Trump’s Muslim ban, China’s genocide of the Muslim Uyghur people, the attacks on Muslims by Hindu and Jewish fascists in India and Israel respectively, and Myanmar’s vicious Islamophobic militias are and were all evil. I don’t believe Israel should be destroyed, but so is the Israeli government and military’s occupation of the lands Israel won in the 1967 war – I believe in a two-state solution to that conflict, and I want to see a free and independent Palestine.
But there do exist interpretations of Islam which are supremacist, fascist, racist, bigoted, imperialist, brutal, and cruel, and if you study Islamic history, scripture (the Qur’án), law (sharí’ah), tradition (the Sunnah), and theology, what I’ve learned is that it’s fairly easy to represent the evil interpretations of Islam as orthodox and normative based on the most ancient and most literal possible reading of the texts, the one that is considered normative for Islamic law by most leaders of the two largest branches of Islam, Sunni and Ithna’Asheri Shí’ah. Classical Islamic law, which has never been officially reformed, envisions a society in which straight Muslim men have the same kind of hegemony in society that straight white men do now, and in which non-Muslims either live as second-class citizens (if they’re Christians, Jews, or Zoroastrians) or get murdered (if they’re Hindus, Sikhs, Bahá’ís like me, or anyone else.) It also mandates the death penalty for blasphemy, apostasy, heresy, adultery, atheism, and homosexuality, and there are verses in the Qur’án that some Muslim clerics believe justify spousal abuse, Judeophobia, slavery (including sex slavery), permanent war against non-Muslims to establish Muslim hegemony, and hatred of unbelievers in general.
I don’t think it counts as Islamophobia to call attention to the fact that all this is true. All religious bigotry and supremacism is the same species of evil, and I don’t think it’s ever acceptable for people to oppose Islamic extremism and supremacism if they don’t also criticize similar behaviours among fascist Jews, Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, and Sikhs (even though Islamic extremists are more geographically widespread than the others), but the fact remains that the particular kind of analysis in which I am here engaged should properly be understood as anti-fascist, anti-supremacist, humane, and necessary as a matter of the defense of the principles adumbrated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. When people call it Islamophobic to be honest about the fact that there are some interpretations of Islam that are evil and that are causing a lot of harm around the world, I get very angry, especially because there is no Muslim country in the world in which there is full equality of rights and dignity between Muslims and non-Muslims, and such peoples as Christians, Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan and Afghanistan, Assyrians and Yezidis in Iraq and Syria, Bahá’ís in Iran and Egypt and Yemen, Christians in northern Nigeria and Indonesia, Copts in Egypt, Maronites in Lebanon, Buddhists in southern Thailand, and many other peoples (such as the Amazigh, Kalasha, Zoroastrians, Yarsanis, and Mandaeans) suffer because of it. So do unorthodox Muslim sects who teach against all of the evil stuff, such as the Ahmadis, Rifais, Bektashis, Mouridis, Mevlevis, Alevis, and Nizari Ismaili Shí’ahs, as well as, of course, millions upon millions of good, humane Sunnis and Ithna’Asheri Shí’ahs, including many who are devout. Terrorism on the scale of 9/11 and stuff like that is technically against Islamic law according to almost every interpretation, but not all Muslims agree on that, and obviously the problem gets worse when you’re dealing not just with systemic Muslim privilege and supremacy in a society like Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Indonesia, or Somalia, but actual Muslim terrorist groups like Daesh, Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, Hamas, Al-Shabaab, or the Taliban. All of this adds up to some pretty serious human rights catastrophes that I don’t think it should be considered a species of bigotry to speak out against and condemn.
And I think it’s important to talk about the roots of all this hatred, violence, and supremacism in versions in interpretations of the relevant scripture and theology that are widely considered orthodox and normative, because if we don’t, we can’t formulate ways to fight it effectively. Which we have to, because it’s a human rights disaster.
I’m aware that everything I’m saying about this is at least somewhat controversial. But I promise you that I consider true Islamophobia an abomination before God and a grave sin, an evil thing. It’s important to me to both condemn evil interpretations of Islam and work with anti-supremacist Muslim activists who do the same, and condemn any and all true Islamophobia in the same breath. I love Islam dearly, and every good-hearted Muslim who has ever existed is my sibling. I’ll walk the tightrope on this for the rest of my life.