December 21, 2023

Merriam-Webster’s dictionary describes the word “phobia” as “an exaggerated, usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation.” In the wake of recent events, is fear of Muslims, labeled “Islamophobia,” really exaggerated, inexplicable, and/or illogical?

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I’ve concluded that not only is fear of Muslims logical and explicable, but it is by no means exaggerated and, most probably, understated. The deliberately misleading term “Islamophobia” itself amounts to a cudgel used to silence critics of what Dutch Parliamentarian (and possible new Dutch Prime Minister) Geert Wilders has at times characterized as a totalitarian political ideology masquerading as a religion.

I could enumerate just some in the endless litany of recent (and even not-so-recent) violent attacks that radical Muslims have perpetrated in (delusional) Western societies that welcomed and unsuccessfully attempted to absorb and assimilate large numbers of Muslims. However, Raymond Ibrahim has already done so, writing extensively (and magnificently) about historical events that provide countless examples (here and here) of aggressive Muslim behaviors resulting in widespread slaughter. His writings elucidate numerous historical episodes consuming people of all ethnicities and religions, including their fellow Muslims, with particular cruelty reserved for Africans, Armenians, and, of course, Jews.

Image: Salman Rushdie (edited), a “lucky” victim of Muslim violence, for he survived the deadly attack against him. YouTube screen grab.

Why has

  • Geert Wilders been (in his own words) “deprived of a personal life” requiring constant police protection for more than a decade?
  • Salman Rushdie had to spend the last 35 years in fear? (And note that his fear was justified.)
  • Hoover Institute fellow Ayaan Hirsi Ali, now a Christian, who was both abused and mutilated by “Imams” as a child, been living “with round-the-clock security due to her willingness to speak out and her abandonment of the Muslim faith?

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If Islam is peaceful, why do these prominent critics need constant protection?

If we look around the world, Muslims are fighting in many places:

  • Muslim insurgencies are found in the Philippines and Thailand.
  • Numerous Indo (India)-Pakistani Wars have pitted Muslim Pakistan against majority Hindu India, while India’s Muslims regularly launch religious attacks.
  • Muslim Chechens fight Russian Orthodox Christians and send death squads into Europe.
  • Muslim Azeris fight those Armenians who remain from the genocide the Muslim Turks perpetrated against them in 1916.
  • Historical animosity between Turks and Greeks is well documented and continues to this day in Cyprus, split between the Turkish North and Greek South.
  • Orthodox Christian Serb and Muslim hostility dates back 600+ years to the Ottoman Wars.
  • And we have the ongoing Arab/Israeli wars as the most glaring current-day example, during which a fictitious Muslim ethnic group, the “Palestinians” (really, Arabs), perfect modern-day terrorism.
  • Muslim Arab Janjaweed regularly slaughter black Africans in Sudan.

Even the incomparable “Islamophobes” in China, who view any religion as a threat, place particular focus on Islam, which could be why the government maintains a system of “re-education camps” for Uyghurs, containing (for the time being) any potential for Muslim violence.

There also are examples of persistent internecine warfare between Muslims themselves:

Hamas displaced the PLO in Gaza in 2007, fighting door to door. Ironically, few were concerned about civilian casualties then, as Muslims slaughtered each other with impunity.

The Syrian Civil War, pitting Alawite against Sunni, resulted in upward of a half million slaughtered, displacing more than 6 million people and creating the largest refugee crisis since WWII, perhaps forever changing the character of the European continent and society. It also led to the rise of ISIS, whose members cruelly tortured and killed thousands of “impure” Muslims and other ethnicities, most famously Yazidis, until eliminated by US forces under President Trump’s leadership.