Taking the fear out of islamophobia

There are many different types of phobias. We have all heard of claustrophobia (fear of confined spaces), acrophobia (fear of heights), agoraphobia (fear of public spaces), arachnophobia (fear of spiders), aquaphobia (fear of water) or mysophobia (fear of germs).

These are all fears of something. Most of these phobias are actually mental disorders stemming from trauma or an experience which has led to an unfounded fear of something.

But to fear a religion, is actually illogical and unacceptable for a society. For instance, you would not fear Christianity (Christophobia) or Buddhism (Buddhophobia), or Hinduism (Hinduphobia) or Sikhism (Sickophobia). Its never heard of.Likewise, up and till about 20 years ago we had never heard of Islamophobia. I still, to this day never understood how we as a community accepted this term. The term was first coined in the 1990s, but it really became popularised with the advent of social media and was regularly referred to incidents of discrimination and bigotry towards Muslims.

So, its not Islam that people fear, but Muslims. And only the type that are overly religious and especially those who are extreme in their practice. It should be, if anything Musliphobia. But that brings us back to the same problem, we don’t fear Christians, or Buddhists or Jews so why should we have a special category for Muslims.

Such words are created because they intentionally marginalise the other, they place Muslims on the outer and try to normalise Islam as antithetical towards democracy and peace.

This is a deliberate ploy, which the Muslims have swallowed hook, line and sinker.We have even created a ‘symbol’ of this to legitimise the term, calling him an Islamophobia envoy, handpicked by the Prime Minister. We have our own website tackling the issue, urging others to report cases of Islamophobia and we do research and write papers about Islamophobia. There are literally dozens of academic papers on the topic.

The fact of the matter is that the term Islamophobia employs to diametrically opposed ideas. The fear of peace. Islam is peace, Islam is a way of life that espouses strong moral values and practices, it promotes compassion, care of the needy and the destitute, it underscores the values of human rights, free speech and freedom of movement, it admonishes lewd behaviour, it teaches respect for parents and the elderly and it looks at spiritual enlightenment and the attainment of becoming one with God. As a Muslim you stop doing what you are doing five times in a day to do your ritual ablutions, and to pray or connect with your Creator, to reflect on your own condition and your surrounds.It is the only religion that advocates 30 days of strict fasting, teaching empathy for the poor and to abstain from sinful acts during your fast.Islam embodies a peaceful existence, and it teaches peaceful co-existence by showing respect to “people of the book”.

So why would you fear it?

Islamophobia is similar in concept to Anti-semitism, we know that the Jews created this term to shame those who hate Jews.The Jews have a long history of persecution; They were enslaved by the Babylonians and taken to Babylon in 586 BC, ironically it was the Persians who allowed them to return to Jerusalem.The Romans crushed a Jewish revolt in 66 AD, many Jews were expelled from Palestine by Pagan Romans.During the Crusades in the 11the century, Jews were mercilessly slaughtered along with the Muslim inhabitants of Jerusalem, by the Christian Crusaders.

Nazi Germany demonised Jews, and tried to eradicate them, to do this they painted the Jew as a virus, as sub-human, who needed to be wiped out before they infiltrated the whole world with their evil and demonic ways. This was a deplorable stain on the German people’s history, but it wasn’t just the Germans. Christian societies all over Europe have had long histories of persecution of Jews, anti-Jewish pogroms took place throughout Europe over the past 2000 years.

Even before the term was coined Anti-semitism existed. But today the term is widely used and any form of anti-semitism is seen as vile and against humanity. In some countries it is against the law to spruik anti-semitic ideas.

This is starkly contrasted against the way Muslims treated Jews throughout history, where in general, they lived harmoniously in Cordoban Spain, in Muslim Bosnia-Herzegovina, in Ottoman Turkiye, in Morocco, in Palestine under the Caliph Omar and all the way up until the British carved up of Palestine, Jews were treated well, given equal rights and even special privileges, as people of the Book.

However, prejudice towards and hatred of Muslims, has had a very different history, what is known as Orientalism existed in Europe throughout the 1700s onwards, whereby Islam was ridiculed and demonised by the Christian West. The Muslim was seen as infidels, and it was believed that they practiced debauched and heathen like culture, against superior Christian values.

However, Muslims were not persecuted in the same way Jews were, of course there are incidents of massacres, that occurred as mentioned during the Crusades, in times of conflict, and the well-known example after the Christians conquered Spain in 1492.But by and large the Christian Europe owed a lot to the Muslims. The Renaissance itself, was a direct result of Islamic sciences infiltrating into Europe through Andalusia (Spain) and Ottoman Turkiye.

So, Europeans secretly understood the value of Muslims (especially their scholars and their discoveries and inventions), there was some level of admiration for them. After the Crusades right up to the end of the dying Ottoman empire, a staunch rivalry developed, and through Oriental writers the ‘Saracen’ or the ‘infidel’ was demonised and grossly misunderstood.

In its present context and use, Islamophobia refers to the fear and disdain towards Muslims living in the West. To refer to it as Islamophobia implies a fear, rather than discrimination as we see in Anti-semitism.

In the past 24 years in Australia and across the globe in the US and Europe there has been a rise in hatred and discrimination towards Muslims. In the US, after 911, there was an immediate backlash, in Australia it was felt by many Muslims, especially after it was compounded by the Bali Bombings and the Lebanese gang rapes. The media heightened the anxieties and fed into the narrative that Muslims were not here to integrate but rather to change our way of life to fit into theirs.

In the past 2 years since the onslaught in Gaza, there has been another spike in anti-Muslim incidents. This time we have seen Muslims pitted against Jews or Pro-Palestinian versus pro-Israel.As a knee-jerk reaction we created an Islamophobia envoy to make it seem fair as the government had just appointed an anti-Semitism envoy and they had to make it seem fair that they were addressing both issues. Of course, we know that much more effort and funding has been put towards tackling anti-Semitism. In fact, the islamophobia envoy has been seen largely as impotent and redundant.

The reality is that Australians have no substantiated fear of Islam. Australia has a history of racism, and just like the way they treated Aborigines, and the way they treated the Irish, the way that they treated Greeks, Italians, Vietnamese and Chinese, they have treated different cultures and ethnicities with contempt, Muslims are no different. This could be categorised under one broad term of racism.But Muslims want their own particular brand, like the Jews have. We want to be acknowledged for the discrimination we experience.

To be accurate, we should be using the term anti-Muslim. This is more accurate. But the fear of Islam to me does not make sense, and only perpetuates the Orientalism of the 18th century in Europe. It normalises fear and non-acceptance, it marginalises Muslims and keeps them on the periphery, ready to ridicule them at every opportunity.

In the end we need to take the fear out of Islamophobia, and love and embrace Islam, Islam is the only light left in this world. Snuff it out and we will be doomed, and inevitably, return to a world of slavery and damnation.