On the Islamophobia Myth

We have every reason in the world to be greatly concerned about political Islam:

In case you missed it, the International Day to Combat Islamophobia was just observed this past Sunday. Not surprisingly, this “Day” was established by the UN General Assembly – on March 15, 2022. All the usual suspects have gone along with this hoax: woke wonders, lefties, Jew-haters, Islamophiles, and vote-seeking politicians.

Consider one such example of a politician going all gaga over the day. He said this:

There is no place for racism. There is no place for hate. There is no place for Islamophobia.

Today is the International day to combat Islamophobia. Today and everyday. There is no place for racism. There is no place for hate. There is no place for Islamophobia.

Hatred and hostility towards Muslim Australians is wrong and we must call it out wherever we see it. Like every Australian, they have the right to feel safe, to be proud of who they are, and to practice their faith freely.

Our diversity makes our country stronger.

And who was that? Jason Clare. And who is he? You guessed it, a Federal Labor MP who represents the Division of Blaxland in Western Sydney. Oh, Western Sydney you say? Yep, the place where most of Australia’s Muslims reside, and the place with plenty of Labor seats. And the place where Labor politicians will do anything and say anything to get and keep the Muslim vote.

So let’s get real here and unpack this term and see what it is really all about. First note, as David Horowitz and Robert Spencer remind us in their 2011 booklet, Islamophobia: Thought Crime of the Totalitarian Future, that the term “was invented in the early 1990s”. They explain:

Abdur-Rahman Muhammad is a former member of the International Institute for Islamic Thought. He was present when the word “Islamophobia” was created, but now characterizes the concept of Islamophobia this way: “This loathsome term is nothing more than a thought-terminating cliche conceived in the bowels of Muslim think tanks for the purpose of beating down critics.” In short, in its very origins, “Islamophobia” was a term designed as a weapon to advance a totalitarian cause by stigmatizing critics and silencing them.

And the term has been used to great effect by the Islamists and their supporters. Consider just one newspaper headline going back some years now: “Canadian school CANCELS event with ISIS survivor Nadia Murad because her harrowing description of torture and rape ‘would be offensive to Muslims and foster Islamophobia’” (The Daly Mail, November 27, 2021). https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10247301/School-CANCELS-event-ISIS-survivor-Nadia-Murad-saying-visit-offensive-Muslims.html

Bear in mind a few more inconvenient truths. Over its 1400-year history, Islam has been responsible for the deaths of at least 300 million people. That is far more than all the people killed by two other evil ideologies, Communism and Nazism combined.

And those who know even a little bit about Islam will understand how this makes perfect sense. Islam is a political ideology that is spread by the edge of the sword, and all kuffars (unbelievers, infidels) are fair game: they must either convert to Islam, become dhimmis (second-class citizens), or be killed.

Here are just three articles where I spell all this out in some detail:

https://billmuehlenberg.com/2013/09/30/jihad-muhammad-did-it-the-koran-says-it-so-muslims-do-it/

http://www.billmuehlenberg.com/2004/11/25/a-closer-look-at-religion-and-violence/

http://billmuehlenberg.com/2015/01/18/it-is-time-to-get-real-islam-begets-terrorism/

In light of this historical reality, people have every right to be a wee bit concerned about Islam and what its followers do in its name. As Walid Shoebat put it in his 2013 volume, The Case for Islamophobia: “A ‘phobia’ is an irrational fear. Fear of Islamic terrorism or creeping Sharia law is not irrational at all. It is actually very rational. . . . Criticism of Islam is no more a sign of Islamophobia than criticism of Nazism is a sign of Nazi phobia. Both fears are rational, which necessarily means they are not phobias.”

Former Muslims get this reality. Just yesterday I penned a review of the very important new book by Danny Burmawi who converted to Christianity in 2007. See my piece on Islam, Israel and the West here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2026/03/17/clarity-on-islam-and-israel/

He is well worth quoting when he speaks to the myth of Islamophobia:

In the modern Western lexicon, Islamophobia has become a weapon – designed, refined, and deployed to neutralize criticism of Islam before it can even begin. The term doesn’t simply mean “hatred of Muslims” as its defenders claim. In practice, it means that Islam as an ideology is placed off-limits for scrutiny. That is its true function. (p. 128)

He goes on to show how Westerners feel the need to support the ‘underdog,’ and by making Muslims appear to be ‘unfairly’ treated, especially in terms of ‘racism,’ then they get plenty of support. As Burmawi explains:

But Islam has no race. It includes Black Nigerians, white Bosnians, Malay Indonesians, Arab Yemenis, and blue-eyed London converts. Yet in Western political discourse, Islam is packaged into a single visual stereotype: brown-skinned, immigrant, hijab-wearing. This is deliberate. The moment a religion is recast as an ethnic identity, it becomes shielded by the moral firewall that protects minorities from racial prejudice. Once that shield is in place, everything changes. Objecting to Sharia law is no longer a defense of liberal democracy – it’s “punching down” on an oppressed minority. Condemning honor killings or child marriages is reframed as cultural intolerance. Even challenging the idea of parallel legal systems is portrayed as an attack on “inclusion” and “diversity.”

 

The power of this framing is that it inverts the moral high ground. The critic becomes the villain, and the ideology becomes the victim. (p. 129)

He continues:

Consider the double standard: if any other religious or political text today called for the execution of apostates, the enslavement of captives, or the subjugation of all non-believers, it would be banned as extremist hate literature. If any other religion taught that Jews and Christians should be fought until they submit, it would be denounced globally as incitement. The Qur’an and Hadith contain exactly those prescriptions, and yet they are not only protected but revered. Why? Because calling them out triggers the Islamophobia alarm. The conversation ends before it begins, and the ideology remains untouchable.

 

Islamophobia is not about protecting Muslims from hate crimes; laws against violence already exist for that. It is about making you doubt your right to criticise an ideology. It is about training you to see legitimate scrutiny as moral failing, so that you self-censor before you ever speak.

 

The genius of this tactic is that it doesn’t have to outlaw criticism – it makes you police yourself. It doesn’t have to criminalize dissent – it makes dissent socially fatal. It weaponizes your own values – tolerance, pluralism, anti-racism – against you.

 

This is why Islamophobia is the perfect shield. It doesn’t just defend Islam from bigotry; it defends it from scrutiny. And without scrutiny, the ideologies, political ambitions can advance unopposed, under the cover of victimhood. (p. 130)

One other quote is worth offering here – this by the late Christopher Hitchens. While the memorable quote, “Islamophobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons” is wrongly attributed to Hitchens, he did say this about Islamophobia back in 2009:

This is very urgent business, ladies and gentlemen. I beseech you. Resist it while you still can and before the right to complain is taken away from you, which will be the next thing. You will be told you can’t complain because you’re Islamophobic. The term is already being introduced into the culture as if it was an accusation of race hatred for example or bigotry whereas it’s only the objection to the preachings of a very extreme and absolutist religion.

 

Watch out for these symptoms. They are not just symptoms of surrender very often ecumenically offered to you by men of God in other robes, Christian and Jewish and smarmy ecumenical. These are the ones who will hold open the gates for the barbarians. Barbarians never take a city till someone holds the gates open for them.

 

And it’s your own preachers who will do it for you, and your own multicultural authorities who will do it for you. Resist. Resist it while you can. And if you wonder what will happen if you don’t, look and see how a cricket team in Middlesex in England had to change its name by force last week because it was called and had been for years, the Middlesex Crusaders. Look and see how stories about little pigs can’t be taught to children in English schools anymore lest offense be taken by the religion of peace. Resist it while you can. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKolqNdSesQ

Needless to say, I did NOT celebrate this lousy UN day on Sunday. I hope you did not either.

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