Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Consider Islamophobia

Whoever coined the term "Islamophobia" was quite shrewd. Notice the intellectual sleight of hand here. The term is not "Muslim-phobia" or "anti-Muslimist," it is Islam-ophobia – fear of Islam – yet fear of Islam is in no way the same as hatred of all Muslims. One can rightly or wrongly fear Islam, or more usually, aspects of Islam, and have absolutely no bias against all Muslims, let alone be a racist.

The equation of Islamophobia with racism is particularly dishonest. Muslims come in every racial group, and Islam has nothing to do with race. Nevertheless, mainstream Western media, Islamist groups calling themselves Muslim civil liberties groups and various Western organizations repeatedly declare that Islamophobia is racism.


--Dennis Prager

2 comments:

Craig Fletcher said...

Islamophobia is a big factor on why Christians are not reaching Muslims at the rate that they could or should. Christians are afraid that if they do share the gospel of Jesus they will fall in the line of danger. And for good reason, the Qu'ran and Islamic law command it. Do you think Muslims are afraid for their lives for sharing their faith and views with non-Muslim Americans? Of course not.

I wonder if Islamic leaders will ever be willing to engage in rational, reasonable, and dare I hope for objective analysis of religious and historical truth claims of Islam? If this could happen, there might be hope.

Abu Daoud said...

Indeed, but there is protection, to some degree, for Muslims who leave the faith in the West. We should take advantage of that.

Even a simple advertisement in the local newspaper saying, "Muslims curious about the Christian faith and the Bible are welcome at our church," could really go a long way.