It's hard to ignore the current wave of Islamophobia bombarding our eyes and ears from what we see on TV and read on the Internet, newspapers and magazines. From protests against mosques to denigrating Muslims and Islam, there is a growing tide of people and movements devoted to attacking Islam and Muslims under the guise of "freedom of speech" and "awareness".
What has hardly been reported or discussed is the percentage of those who are spearheading the efforts to win the hearts and minds of people to embrace Islamophobic bigotry and hatred. Whether it be clerics, political pundits, mosque protesters, people with Youtube channels to even cartoon artists, one cannot ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of these people are white or at least people who are very fond of Eurocentric culture.
If most of the people on earth are not white and most Muslims live in countries where whites are a minority, why are most Islamophobes white if Islamophobia (or the "criticizing" of Islam) is not based on racism or bigotry?
How do we know that the majority of these people are white and if they are, what does that prove? Is it possible that since most people living in the West are white, it would be normal for the individuals of a particular movement, sentiment, belief, class or orientation to be mostly white as well? Since Muslims [and Islam] aren't a race, what does Islamophobia have to do with racism?
Is criticizing Islam always Islamophobic? Can one criticize Islam without being an Islamophobe?
Observing the reality on the ground, it is not a coincidence that the majority of Islamophobes are white -- and it has nothing to do with race but with history and culture. It would be wrong for anyone to say that being white makes one more prone to being racist; to say so is generalizing and most of all, inaccurate. But it also wouldn't be fair to overlook the fact that a disproportionate amount of Islamophobes are whites and why and how this is the case.
Criticizing a religion doesn't necessarily mean one hates that religion. But when criticism of a religion is coupled with hate and a political/religious agenda, then it no longer becomes just "criticism" anymore. It becomes a movement of hate hiding under the pretext of criticism.
Historically speaking, Europe has had a long but volatile relationship with Muslims beginning from the early history of Islam to now. The attempt to wipe out Islamic rule and Muslim presence from Jerusalem and the surrounding areas during the Crusades has not been forgotten by Muslims -- many of them recounting the atrocities committed by the Crusaders centuries ago as if it were something that occurred recently. Many Europeans, whether they be Christians, atheists, agnostics or otherwise, have held not only contempt for Islam and Muslims, but are totally ignorant of the Islamic religion. Swiss author Roger Du Pasquier eloquently writes in his book Unveiling Islam:
The West, whether Christian or dechristianised, has never really known Islam. Ever since they watched it appear on the world stage, Christians never ceased to insult and slander it in order to find justification for waging war on it. It has been subjected to grotesque distortions the traces of which still endure in the European mind. Even today there are many Westerners for whom Islam can be reduced to three ideas: fanaticism, fatalism and polygamy. Of course, there does exist a more cultivated public whose ideas about Islam are less deformed; there are still precious few who know that the word Islam signifies nothing other than 'submission to God'. One symptom of this ignorance is the fact that in the imagination of most Europeans,Allahrefers to the divinity of the Muslims, not the God of the Christians and Jews; they are all surprised to hear, when one takes the trouble to explain things to them, that 'Allah' means 'God', and that even Arab Christians know him by no other name...
...In general one must unhappily concur with an Orientalist like Montgomery Watt when he writes that 'of all the great men of the world, no-one has had as many detractors as Muhammad.' Having engaged in a lengthy study of the life and work of the Prophet, the British Arabist add that 'it is hard to understand why this has been the case', finding the only plausible explanation in the fact that for centuries Christianity treated Islam as its worst enemy. And although Europeans today look at Islam and its founder in a somewhat more objective light, 'many ancient prejudices still remain.'
Furthermore, in places like the Middle East and India, Muslims were often obstacles in European colonial expansion and conquests. Edward Said details in his book Orientalism the expansion of European colonial power through the acquisition of territories and pacification of the subjects through Christianization:
With regard to Islam and the Islamic territories, for example, Britain felt that it had legitimate interests, as a Christian power, to safeguard. A complex apparatus for tending these interests developed. Such early organizations as the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698) and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (1701) were succeeded and later abetted by the Baptist Missionary Society (1792), the Church Missionary Society (1799), the British and Foreign Bible Society (1804), the London Society for Promoting Christianity Among the Jews (1808). These missions "openly" joined the expansion of Europe.
Nothing can illustrate better the old maxim of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" than the unification of forces devoted to attack Islam and Muslims. Maurice Bucaille, author of The Bible, the Qur'an and Science, explains the "unholy alliance" between the Roman Catholic Church and its enemies:
At a certain period in history, hostility to Islam, in whatever shape or form, even coming from declared enemies of the church, was received with the most heartfelt approbation by high dignitaries of the Catholic Church. Thus Pope Benedict XIV, who is reputed to have been the greatest Pontiff of the Eighteenth century, unhesitatingly sent his blessing to Voltaire. This was in thanks for the dedication to him of the tragedy Mohammed or Fanaticism (Mahomet ou le Fanatisme) 1741, a coarse satire that any clever scribbler of bad faith could have written on any subject. In spite of a bad start, the play gained sufficient prestige to be included in the repertoire of the Comédie-Française."
America -- being founded by people of European descent -- has had a much shorter history than Europe has with Islamophobia, but the European culture was exported to the States and affected the way American culture is. While the overwhelming majority of Americans reject Islamophobia, a growing number of mostly conservatives have embraced it due to the right-wing, McCarthyistic-alarmist propaganda being promoted by certain personalities and organizations, including "news" organizations such as Fox News.
What is also disturbing is religious organizations in America being major proponents of Islamophobia. From organizing protests against the building of mosques to preachers spewing anti-Islamic diatribes from the pulpit, certain Christian groups and individuals have taken up the cause of continuing a neo-Crusade against Islam and Muslims. Although most Christians denounce Islamophobia, the majority of anti-Islam/Muslim Christian individuals and organizations are dominated by whites.
So what about the rest of the world outside of the West? Aren't there countries today in places like Africa, Asia and the Middle East where religious conflict is taking place between Muslims and non Muslims? In these countries that are experiencing violence committed by Muslims, are there a large number of movements and individuals rallying people to join and participate in the cause of Islamophobia?
While there are non-white individuals leading the effort to attack Islam and Muslims, they are relatively small in comparison to their Western counterparts, who are more organized and have dispatched people all over the world from missionaries to politicians. Despite the number of Muslims in the West being fewer than in the East and all the wars and inter-religious conflicts that involve Muslims are also in the East, Islamophobia has its strongest support in the West.
As history as our teacher, we can find parallels between the racism directed against blacks in America and Islamophobia today.
The social, cultural and political climate in America decades ago is different than today in regard race relations. If one were to peruse newspapers and magazines 50 years ago, it was a common practice for the media to identify the race of a black person while a white person's race was hardly ever mentioned. If a white person committed a crime, it was just "a person" but if a black person had done the same thing, "a Negro" or "colored" person was the one responsible.
If a non Muslim perpetrated an act of violence, his or her religion and religious status would almost never be mentioned. But if a Muslim did the same thing, immediately the press would point out the fact that he or she was Muslim, even if it had no religious motivation behind. It is apparent that the history has a habit of repeating itself and many people haven't learned the mistakes of the past, since time and time again it is being repeated.
There seems to be an apparent "transferring" of open racism against blacks (that was common decades ago) and other minorities to Muslims, the perpetrators of such bigotry sometimes doing it with impunity.
Open racism against blacks was more socially acceptable 50 or 60 years ago than today. Since people who are openly racist against blacks have a lot to lose today, they often refrain from expressing their racism in public. But open bigotry against Muslims and Islam has been treated quite differently than racism. Islamophobes have been touted by many as people of conscience, freedom of speech activists, and even won awards and honors given out by government institutions in the West.
Anti-Muslim racists often insist they are not racists because Muslims aren't a race or ethnic group. But the same logic used to justify the hatred and bigotry of a particular ethnic group is the same found in anti-Muslim sentiments and actions.
A rose by any other name is still a rose; racism by any other name is still racism. Although one can have a bone to pick with Muslims from an ideological perspective, there is no justification of Islamophobia at all. It is not an issue of "freedom of speech" when hatred is being promoted and it is not an issue of "raising awareness" when lies are being spread.
