Putting this here below, just as a reference. I don't want to link it, coz it goes on to make a kind of morally relativist argument that doesn't hold. That argues that all those on the American right who criticise Islam are racist. When I know for a fact that is not the case. So.. anyway:
Andrew Cummins once said, in a quote often misattributed to Christopher Hitchens, that Islamophobia is “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
It can be that word—we’ve certainly seen the word used as a conversation-stopper in any and all discussions about Islamic theology, and we’ve seen it used as a protective linguistic shield wielded by those who view honest criticism as inflammatory and religion as something untouchable or by various leftist intelligentsia in defense of a community who they implicitly believe are unable to defend themselves.
We’ve also seen it used by Muslim communities who desperately want to protect their faith from the piercing gaze of rationalism. The fascists are those religious and political leaders who wish to impose a kind of intellectual tyranny where certain ideas are immune from criticism; those cowards are the privileged few who would restrain free speech and withhold inquiry for fear of backlash or causing offense; and those morons—well, I’ll leave that one alone, for now.
Me: The "morons" are pretty much all the legacy media types who use the term with abandon, always as a gotcha. And always as a kind of retort or criticism which they seem to think has some weight.
Fact is: the term "Islamophobia" was invented by the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1980s, specifically as a term to discourage any criticism of Islam, while they, the MB, went about their "Grand Jihad of destroying western civilisation from within".
Measured against that aim, the term has been wildly successful.
I argue that it's perfectly fine to criticise Islam and not to worry at all when someone calls you "Islamophobic" for doing so. After all, Islam is an ideology. And any ideology can be criticised. As we criticise Nazism, Communism, Socialism, Atheism, Anarchism. Nor do we mind criticising other religions for fear of being branded Christophobe, or Buddhistophobe, or Mormonophobe. Jainophobe. Hindophobe. Need I go on?
Islam should not be the one and only religion and the one and only ideology that is immune from criticism, because a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood goons decided so 40 years ago.
