On Islamophobia

Does God Hate Women? Chapter 7, pp: 153-157

...[A]ccusations of ‘Islamophobia’ are increasingly being employed in an attempt to defuse and silence criticism of Islam. Although there is no generally accepted definition of the term - which is hardly surprising given that its primary use is rhetorical – there have been a number of attempts to spell out what it involves. Perhaps the most influential is to be found in a Runnymede Trust report titled Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All,which was published in 1997.

According to this report, Islamophobia is ‘an outlook or worldview involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims’, which has the following characteristics: [1]

Islam is seen as a single monolithic bloc, unresponsive to new realities.

Islam is seen as not having any aims or values in common with other cultures, not affected by them, and not influencing them.

Islam is seen as inferior to the West – barbaric, irrational, primitive and sexist.

Islam is seen as violent, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in ‘a clash of civilisations’.

Islam is seen as a political ideology, used for political or military advantage.

Criticisms made by Islam of ‘the West’ are rejected out of hand.

Hostility towards Islam is used to justify discriminatory practices towards Muslims and exclusion of Muslims from mainstream society.

Anti-Muslim hostility is accepted as natural and ‘normal’.

Unfortunately, though influential, this conception is badly flawed. Not least, it pathologises a number of beliefs that are almost certainly true. For example, it is not unreasonable to think that Islam is irrational. Like any religion, it is founded on truth-claims that don’t get anywhere near satisfying the criteria for rational justifiability. Anthony Grayling puts it like this:

Religious belief of all kinds shares the same intellectual respectability, evidential base, and rationality as belief in the existence of fairies.

This remark outrages the sensibilities of those who have deep religious convictions and attachments, and they regard it as insulting. But the truth is that everyone takes this attitude about all but one (or a very few) of the gods that have ever been claimed to exist. [2]

Certainly then most atheists are going to think that Islam is irrational. However, this judgement has nothing to do with prejudice or ‘unfounded dread’, even if it does lead to the further thought that Western societies that confine religion to the private sphere are ‘superior’ to Islamic societies (which do not).

Similarly with the claim that Islam is sexist. Even if one views Islam in its best light - ignoring honour killings, child marriage, FGM, and the like – it is still a long way from espousing sexual equality in its core teachings. Consider, for example, that the Koran contains the following lines (as we noted in Chapter 2):

Men have authority over women because God has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are obedient. They guard their unseen parts because God has guarded them. If you fear high-handedness from your wives, remind them [of the teachings of God], then ignore them when you go to bed, then hit them’. (Koran: 4:34)

It is not necessary to be a particularly radical feminist to think that there is something sexist in this kind of talk. Needless to say, the Islam apologetics industry will dispute the meaning and import of these words. But, in this context, that is neither here nor there. There is plenty of textual, historical and empirical evidence to support the view that Islam is sexist. As we saw in Chapter 2, not everybody agrees that this is what the evidence shows, but presumably very few people will argue that there is no case for Islam to answer. In this situation, it is absurd to think that people are prejudiced simply because they come down on the side of the claim that Islam is sexist (any more than they would be prejudiced if they think that there is evidence to support a judgement that Christianity is sexist).

A similar kind of argument can be levelled against the idea that it is Islamophobic to see Islam ‘as violent, supportive of terrorism, and engaged in “a clash of civilisations”’. Part of the problem here is that it isn’t exactly clear what this means. Clearly if you think that every Muslim is violent and supports terrorism then your views are verging towards the pathological. However, there are other ways of cashing out this statement where it would be much more reasonable to assent. Certainly there is textual evidence – in particular, the distinction between lesser and greater jihad - to support the claim that Islam countenances violence in certain, not clearly defined, circumstances; and there are legitimate worries about Islamic terrorism and the relationship between Western and Islamic countries.

There is some polling data that makes for interesting reading when one considers the issue of Islam and violence. It shows that there is fairly widespread support for suicide bombings amongst Arab and Nigerian Muslims, [3] and also, somewhat paradoxically, that:

Worries about Islamic extremism are pervasive among nations with sizeable Muslim populations. Majorities in seven of the eight nations where this question was asked are concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism in the world today.

Seven-in-ten or more are concerned in Indonesia, Pakistan, Tanzania and Lebanon. And more than half of Pakistanis and Tanzanians are very concerned....

Similar proportions say they are concerned about Islamic extremism in their countries. Majorities in seven of eight countries are very or somewhat concerned about the rise of extremism in their country, and worries are especially widespread in Lebanon (78%), Pakistan (72%) and Egypt (72%). [4]

So the question arises whether non-Western Muslims who are worried about Islamic extremism are guilty of Islamophobia? If they are not, then it would seem perverse to claim that similar fears in the West are necessarily a manifestation of anti-Islamic prejudice, especially since things such as the level of anti-Semitism and support for suicide bombers in mainly Muslim countries are worth worrying about.

There is a counter-argument to these points: namely, that Islamophobia is not identical with a particular set of critical attitudes, but rather is indicated by it (where Islamophobia is defined as an ‘unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims’, for example). However, the trouble with this argument is that the concept simply isn’t employed in this kind of nuanced way. Rather, it is used as catch-all pejorative designed to neutralise any criticism of Islam. Kenan Malik, writing in 2005, makes the point like this:

'Islamophobia' has become not just a description of anti-Muslim prejudice but also a prescription for what may or may not be said about Islam. Every year, the Islamic Human Rights Commission organises a mock awards ceremony for its 'Islamophobe of the Year'. Last year there were two British winners. One was the BNP's Nick Griffin. The other? Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. Toynbee’s defence of secularism and women’s rights, and criticism of Islam, was, it declared, unacceptable. Isn't it absurd, I asked the IHRC's Massoud Shadjareh, to equate a liberal anti-racist like Polly Toynbee with the leader of a neo-fascist party. Not at all, he suggested. 'There is a difference between disagreeing and actually dismissing certain ideologies and certain principles. We need to engage and discuss. But there’s a limit to that.' It is difficult to know what engagement and discussion could mean when leading Muslim figures seem unable to distinguish between liberal criticism and neo-fascist attacks. [5]

In this sense, then, the term ‘Islamophobia’ is employed for its perlocutionary effects; [6] that is, for the purpose of closing down debate, and controlling what can and can’t be said about Islam. In part, this works because people self-censor for fear of provoking Muslim ire. Malik, for example, recalls that he once began an essay on Thomas Paine for the Independent newspaper by quoting from Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, only for the quote to be cut from the final version because it was thought to be too offensive to Muslims. [7] He remarks that the irony of censoring an essay written in celebration of free thought seemed to escape the editor. More recently, Random House cancelled the publication of the The Jewel of Medina - a novel that tells the story of Aisha, Muhammad’s child bride - after Denise Spellberg, an associate professor of Islamic history at the University of Texas, complained that the book was a ‘very ugly, stupid piece of work’, which ‘made fun of Muslims and their history,’ and warned that there was a very real possibility that its publication would provoke widespread violence. [8]

Spellberg’s warning turned out to be accurate. On September 4 2008, Gibson Square, a UK publisher, announced that it had bought UK and Commonwealth rights to the book. Just over three weeks later, the house of the owner of Gibson Square was firebombed, apparently as a protest against the publication of the book. Professor Spellberg, however, deserves no credit for her role in this affair, since if it had not been for her intervention, then likely Random House would have published the book, there would have been no fuss, and no firebomb.

Footnotes

1. The Runnymede Trust, ‘Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All – Summary’, 1997.

2. Anthony Grayling, ‘Believers are away with the fairies’, Daily Telegraph, 26 March 2007.

3. 53% of Egyptian Muslims think that suicide bombings can be justified; 54% of Jordanian Muslims agree; as do 50% of Lebanese Muslims, and 44% of Nigerian Muslims. (The Pew Global Attitude Project, ‘Unfavorable Views of Jews and Muslims on the Increase in Europe’, 17 September 2008, p. 25, http://pewglobal.org/reports/pdf/262.pdf, accessed 18 September 2008.)

4. Ibid, p. 29.

5. Kenan Malik, ‘The Islamophobia Myth.

6. The philosopher J. L. Austin distinguished between the conventional meaning of a speech act – in his terms, the locutionary act – and the effect of a speech act, what he called the perlocutionary act or perlocutionary effect.

7. Malik, ‘The Islamophobia Myth’, op. cit.

8. See, for example, Asra A. Nomani, ‘You Still Can’t Write About Muhammad’, The Wall Street Journal, August 6 2008, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121797979078815073.html, accessed 29 September 2008.

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