The Islamophobia Phobia of Islamoleftists
The Fifth Column Lance Fairchok, Featured Writer
December 13, 2007
In 2006, the FBI reported that hate crimes against Muslims numbered 156 or about one for every two million people, which is certainly unfortunate and tragic for the victims, but hardly an epidemic of hate against Muslims. After 9-11 and two ongoing and brutal wars against Islamic fanatics, Americans are remarkably tolerant, well-behaved and eminently multicultural. Yet, groups like the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) want you to believe Muslims in America are afraid to leave their homes for fear of violence, and their allies on the far left want you to believe that an Islamophobic epidemic is sweeping the nation, equal to the violent Jewish persecution of Nazi Germany.
However, in perspective, hate crimes against Jews numbered about 967 and for Christians, 135, though with the terrible attacks on churches and Christians this last week that number goes up to 137. Not one Muslim has been murdered by anti-Muslim fanatics, Christian or Jewish. If you tally all the reported hate crimes against all other religions (not Islam); the grand total is 1299 or one in every 231,000 people. Most of those are against property. Americans seem to take freedom of religion seriously and despite ample fuel for the ignorant, the reactionary or the deranged, we let Muslims live their lives and prosper in peace. This fact is not reciprocated in many Muslim nations, where Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists and Baha’I suffer continual persecution, injustice and violence.
The Daily Kos, a far left web site that features some of the most absurd and outrageous tinfoil hat diatribes to be found, has decided to jump on board the “stop Islamophobia” bandwagon with a series of articles written by Amad at MuslimMatters.org (one guess who inspired their web site).
His first installment entitled “Islamophobia Part 1: It Exists,” lays out his belief that anti-Muslim bigotry and prejudice is rampant in America. Here is a quote that I found particularly nonsensical:
“It is important to recall that once the dust settled, unfavorable opinion of Islam actually dipped due to the efforts of people in politics and the media, as well as Muslim organizations, to prevent large-scale retribution and revenge-motivated assaults on Muslim life and property (which nevertheless still occurred). However, once past this, Muslims slept while the neocons and the right-wingers launched a campaign of Islamophobia that continues to resonate today.”
Now, I am a curious and well-read person, who follows the news and events in the world. I seem to remember just one; yes, I am sure, only one incident of anti-Muslim violence after 9-11. Ironically, it was directed at a non-Muslim, an unfortunate hardworking Sikh murdered by a toothless alcoholic drifter because he wore a turban. Over 300 million people live in this nation and, after the greatest attack we have ever experienced, a brutal act against civilians, and that was the backlash. There was no “large scale retribution” and no “revenge motivated assault.” Amad apparently has different facts, which he fails to cite. He uses holocaust imagery, insinuating there are historical parallels between 1930’s Germany and the US now.
He has another observation based on a few polls revealing an increase in unspecified negative feelings towards Muslims, which he equates to murderous intent. This one is as absurd and paranoid as his previous one and a clear example that Amad just does not know America or her people:
“Consider then, which should not come as a surprise, that a large percentage of Americans are ready and willing to strip the Muslim minority of America of its constitutional rights for what they perceive as their own safety.”
Amad is long on accusation and short on facts as he lives in an Islamoleftist world of illusion, the world where neo-cons, the right wing, talk radio and conservative bigots spread lies about Islam in a campaign of disinformation in preparation for an American version of Kristallnacht.
I canvassed my group of neo-con rightwing associates and found no plans to deny Muslim Americans their constitutional rights, no plans to round them up and destroy their businesses, no movement to put them into camps and dehumanize them. What I did find was a realistic understanding of just who civilizations enemies are.
Americans do have very negative feelings about murderous Jihad and those who apologize for it. Americans do not think charities that funnel money to terrorist organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah should be allowed to do so from American soil. Americans have noticed that since 9-11, thousands of terror attacks have taken place worldwide, carried out by Muslims in the name of their religion, attacks primarily against innocent men, women and children. Horrific attacks so diabolical and so alien to our way of life that we cannot help but recoil in shock, even as desensitized as we have become because of their frequency. Nevertheless, we have citizens, legislators and national leaders, which are vocal advocates for the perpetrators of these atrocities, defenders of their human rights and protesters for their humane, even kindly treatment at Guantanamo Bay. It is part of our national debate and an example of our innate humanity that we agonize over our morality even when staring into the face of profound evil. Our soldiers and civilians receive no such consideration when they are captured, tortured, dismembered and beheaded.
Over the last few weeks car bombs killed 60 people in Algeria. A suicide bomber drove his car into a school bus in Pakistan. A Muslim immigrant to Canada strangled his daughter to death for not wearing her Hijab. In Indonesia the men who beheaded 3 young Christian girls on their way to school got 8 – 12 years, and the perpetrators of the Bali bombings that killed hundreds get out of prison for barbecues at their jailors homes. Muslim youths in France rioted and shot dozens of police officers, torching libraries and schools after two Muslim teenagers where accidentally killed in the course of a theft. Muslims rioted in Holland when a policewoman shot a Muslim man who stabbed her multiple times. In Iran teenage boys and girls are hung for “moral crimes” and in Egypt Coptic Christians are murdered with impunity. The list goes on and on.
But, Amad misses all this and spins silly fantasies about American anti-Muslim bigotry. He has no condemnation for the chief inspiration of Western fear of Islam and its adherents, the actual xenophobia, bigotry, misogyny and violence of the Muslim world. He does not take responsibility for the inescapable facts of his belief system and the hateful ideologies it spins off. He does not address them at all.
Every hateful act against Muslims in America, every intemperate word and every prejudice great and small multiplied one hundredfold is the merest drop in the ocean of hatred that exists in the Muslim world. Amad knows this. So why does he construct a fictional narrative? Why does he avoid the issues of radicalism and violence that are central to the issue? Because Islam’s response to any criticism is loud and strident, it shouts down what it cannot deny or defend, it changes the topic, it shifts focus and it perpetually looks for allies in an “enemy of my enemy is my friend” fashion.
The credulous American left has become the perfect stooge. Images of leftist protestors holding signs proclaiming, “9-11 was an inside job” and “Muslims didn’t do it” and unbelievably “Gays for Palestine” are part of that collaboration. Are they really so naive? Can they really be so ignorant? Apparently so, sadly so, and they have a loud voice in the ranks of the Democrat party.
And so, the Religion of Peace theme moves on. We are after all a country that believes in a fair shake, on judging a man by his actions. We don’t condemn Islam because of the actions of a minority, even such a sizable minority. We wish Muslims well overall, but we wonder why they always seem to blame their own shortcomings on us. Sometime after 9-11, we realized we needed to be cautious, to “trust but verify” and to be suspicious of glib promises and dissembling. Some of us actually read the Koran and the Hadith and listened to what Islamic preachers said in the mosques when they thought the unbeliever, the kaffir was not present. We see that Islam is a faith with two hearts; one beats loudly with the sound of conquest, of hatred and murder, and the other, the peaceful one, cannot be heard at all.
The Daily Kos is inconsequential really, an adolescent echo chamber without reason or intellect, a sounding board for leftist delusion and fantasy. Amad is a propagandist, an agent of disinformation, a conduit for turn-speak, a voice that turns truth upside down and attempts to convince us that somehow this problem of Islam is our fault, our responsibility. He probably even believes it. Too many people who should know better, who should have the intellectual capacity to uncover the truth, believe it also. Their political ideology blinds them as much as religion blinds Amad, and in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.
Lance Fairchok is a Featured Writer for The New Media Journal. He is a retired Air Force Intelligence professional with many years of service in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. His travels left him fascinated by the wide differences in human cultural perceptions and how ideas spread in diverse populations. He writes and does research on a variety of subjects to include totalitarian ideologies, radical Islam and press accuracy. He currently teaches and writes on the Emerald Coast of Florida.
