Ignorance, laziness or hidden agendas are behind the use of the term ‘Islamophobia’. This is because there are sound culturally defensive reasons to resist the proliferation of mosques; we are entitled to defend our own culture, and our own culture gives way when another gains ground in Britain. There is no reason why defending our culture implies an irrational fear of Islam; there are plenty of rational reasons to oppose mosque building, and Islamic encroachment.
The term has cynical uses. The Left uses it to demonise any Briton who resists multiculturalism and the spread of Islam, while Islamists use it to claim a sense of victimhood and therefore the sympathy of the more gullible members of our society; this is used to create the space for the pursuit of their agenda.
It is repeatedly argued that opposition to mosques or the spread of Islamic culture within Britain, and Europe, is motivated by ‘Islamophobia’.
Definition
The term ‘Islamophobia’ is defined as an irrational fear and hatred of Islam (or Muslims). The problem with arguing that this is the motivation for opposition to mosque building is that it excludes motivations that are based on rational objections that are motivated by cultural defensiveness. Opposition to Islam can be rational because it can be based on reasoned conclusions about the religion itself or the effects that it is having on the cultural landscape in Britain.
The term is often used automatically for any perceived hostility towards Muslims, without any actual research into the causes of any hostility. It assumes that Muslims are victims without asking whether non-Muslims, especially the native majority, are victims in a particular case.
Arguments for the ‘phobic thesis
Arguments that claim that Islamophobia is the basis of any perceived opposition to the spread of Islam are false; they merely assume without any logical or factual basis.
There are those who argue that Islamophobia is expressed whenever any non-Muslim feel that their values are under threat from Islam. Why is this irrational? Such sentiments are defensive because they are reacting against a perceived threat. Such perceptions are rational because there are many Islamic organisations in Britain, and around the world, that are in no way implicit about the their intentions towards non-Islamic values. Islam4UK, or whatever name they go by at any particular time, are an example in Britain.
In Tower Hamlets, nearly half Muslim, the mayor, Lutfur Rahman, has been connected to an organisation called Islam For Europe which intends to Islamicise Europe, as its name suggests. The funding, and planning permission, for mosques are reputed to come from a multitude of shadowy groups; their intentions therefore remain a mystery.
It would be inaccurate, therefore, to portray any threat to our values as non-existent, as in the imagination of ‘Islamophobes’. To assume otherwise would be complacent because why shouldn’t we be on guard in terms of preserving our values? We cannot guarantee that anyone else would. It is often said that the majority should be ‘sensitive’ to minority cultures; this in fact means deferential. However, this is not necessarily reciprocated because expecting minorities to be sensitive to the majority, according to many Leftists, is ‘oppression’.
Thus, when a mosque is proposed, any opposition is deemed to be discriminating against the Islamic community rather than as an indigenous population upset about their culture and history being under threat. No sensitivity deemed necessary in this case presumably. It is not deemed to be important if the Christian majority are upset about a church being converted into a mosque, because it is deemed hateful to object to giving way to another culture if you are Christian or indigenous European. Why this is the case is not convincingly explained.
There are absurd attempts to connect any motivation to defend our way of life with fascism. The problem with this argument is that it assumes that one minority can be inserted into the place of another minority in any narrative. This wrong because minorities are not units, they are different and have very different histories. For example, worries about the effects on our culture by mass immigration is not the same as believing in a worldwide Jewish conspiracy. The latter were, or are, conspiracy theories; Muslims are objectively building mosques at a fast rate and, as a share of the population, are growing. While I am not advocating these as reasons to hate Muslims, only to worry about our culture, or to hate at all, but fears of the spread of Islam have a objective basis, they are not conspiracy theories; it is not necessarily the case that someone has it in for the Islamic community because they oppose the conversion of a Grade II listed building into a mosque.
The Muslims-are-the-new-Jews argument is also wrong because it connects worries about our way of life with fascism and the far-right. While the far-right do campaign on threats to our culture, it does not follow that everyone who worries about the survival of our culture is on the far-right or that these threats do not exist. After all, it would be expected that the far-right would react to such threats. If you are concerned about far-right motivations then adopt the cause for yourself with your own allegedly more benevolent motivations.
We should not attempt to discredit any worries about threats to our way of life just because the far-right may adopt those threats as central to their campaigns. We may spite them if we did, but this way of life, and our culture in a more historic sense, belongs to all Britons whether dead, alive or yet to be born. We would only spite ourselves. So if any far-right group objects to a mosque it is not to say that we should adopt a contrarian position and support a mass mosque building program; we should defend our culture because our culture gives way when mosque are built. We have a right to our own culture in our own country.
A rational reaction to uncertainty could be at the root of any hostility to the spread of mosques. Sayeeda Warsi has argued that it is bigotry to divide Muslims as ‘moderate’ or ‘extremist’. This is wrong; it is not bigotry, it is a reaction from a population feeling under siege from a rapidly growing immigrant population, amongst whom there are significant amount of individuals and groups hostile to the majority population and culture. We need to know who the threats are; division between moderate and extremist is way a of trying to identify the threat.
This is a situation where victimhood is misplaced. Warsi at least acknowledged that the Muslim community can do more. After all, what are we to do? It has been reported that when some young Muslim men went to Pakistan for terrorist training their families brought them back, or at least tried. The thing is that they did not say anything to the authorities. This begs the question of how many people in that community knew and would not have tried to do anything about it. This could be mistaken for complicity, if it is not actually complicity. What are the rest of us supposed to think?
When there is hostility towards the majority population, and the real extent remains hidden from us, then of we are entitled to react defensively and protect our culture. After all, it is better, without absolute certainty, to assume that it is under threat because that way we at least have a chance of defending it. Complacency would leave it, and us, defenceless; it is logical. Opposition to mosques should be viewed within the context of a native majority defending our way of life, not as a ‘phobia’.
Motivations that are not irrational or prejudiced in nature
Opposition can be based on cultural defensiveness. This is not irrational in nature, or necessarily driven by hatred. There are indigenous cultural identities in Europe; these are non-Islamic, so whenever Islam cultural establishes itself on European soil, it is most likely that an indigenous cultural identity is displaced. Therefore the building of a mosque represents the displacement of a European culture by an alien one, which Islam actually is.
Those who are of a Left-wing disposition, or otherwise in thrall to political correctness, would probably cry ”racism!” at this point. However, it is an objective fact that Islam is alien to Europe because it is entirely Middle Eastern. Some would argue that Christianity is Middle Eastern, and this is true when you talk about pure Christianity, but what we have in Europe is Christianised paganism since this was the only was the only way that indigenous Europeans could be persuaded to formally adopt Christianity. This is what gives way when mosques are built; why shouldn’t native people object to their culture giving way?
There would not necessarily be any hate involved here; only love of ones own culture. Defensiveness, not aggression.
Our own culture has value. Why should our own culture be subordinate to immigrant cultures? In too many areas, and too often, our own culture is expected to give way when another one wishes to expand. There are those that would argue that the host country should adapt to immigrant cultures and immigrants. Why? Why not the other way round? Surely our own culture, since it was here first and has been established for so long, should come first.
Minority cultural groups, including Muslims, may not particular like the idea of a majority host culture, but we were here first; then again, the ones who are most shrill about apparent minority discomfort in face of the majority culture tend to be left-wing members of the majority culture who do not tend to meet many minorities. Perhaps the Muslim community, on coming to and living in a non-Muslim country, should respect the host culture even if they do not agree with it. Muslims should not cry foul when parts of the indigenous population object to a mosque that would be more at home in Saudi Arabia; how many Muslim countries would allow skyline dominating cathedrals to be built there? Rather than being Islamophobic this country, in fact, is too generous for its own good.
There is a good in favour of being less generous. Burke argued that the culture of a nation is a partnership between ancestors, the living and those yet to arrive. This is the trust argument. If we allow our own culture to lose ground within our cultural landscape then we will be unjustifiably robbing future generations of a chance to appreciate their heritage; imagine if our ancestors failed to preserve all those cultural icons that we currently enjoy. We would be doing this to future generations. A mosque may be seen as a local matter; however their proliferation is of a national problem.
There are sound reasons for opposing the proliferation of mosques, and the spread of Islam, within Britain because wherever Islam gains ground, our own culture gives way; there is value to our own culture, and we have a right to defend it.
The use of ‘Islamophobia’ as a cynical tool
Prominent Muslims, such as Mehdi Hasan, often use the term Islamophobia to escape scrutiny. For example, when the barbaric practice of honour killings are carried out or when Westerners criticise attitudes to women amongst the more conservative elements of the Muslim community, the word ‘Islamophobe’ is directed at the individual, or individuals, making the criticism. But, surely criticising honour killings does not mean that that person has an irrational fear of Islam; only reacting to behaviour that one finds distasteful, behaviour that has a cultural basis within, usually in Britain, rural conservative Pakistan. Why should such behaviour escape criticism?
Islamic fundamentalists use the term Islamophobe in order justify their murderous actions and intentions. In the case of Lars Hedegaard, the Danish writer whom was the victim of a murder attempt by an Islamic nutcase, and an amateur judging by the point-blank miss, he was blamed for bringing it upon himself. It was argued by some on the Left that his ‘Islamophobia’ was the cause of the murder attempt; blame was not attached to the homicidal maniacs who tried to murder Hedegaard for practicing his democratic right to free speech.
This is clearly cowardice; this is why the Left side with Islamists. This is also why they tend to demonise those Britons who practice their democratic rights, and patriotic duty, and oppose mosques designed to impose on our cultural landscape. It is part of an attempt to facetiously create a direct connection between Islamophobia and opposition to mosques.
The Left has its own agenda, that it shares with its Islamist allies; the cultural destruction of the West. Islam is seen as one means of undermining Western countries. If indigenous Europeans successfully resisted Islamification then the West could survive. Using the ‘Islamophobia’ as a smearing tool the resistance could be undermined. This is because we have gotten used to an easy life; being associated with an ‘ism or ‘phobia could make it a lot more difficult. We have to learn the art of sacrifice once more otherwise we will lose our whole way of life, not just the comfortable little niches we have created for ourselves.
It is not only Islamic fundamentalists who use the term Islamophobia in order to justify their hateful beliefs. There are many left-wing commentators, or sometimes even right-wing ones, at least the more spineless ones, that try to argue that the whole phenomenon of Islamic terrorism is due to ‘Islamophobia’. This basically means that Muslims become radicalised because we have not been very nice to them; if we were nicer, and allow the Muslim community, and any shadowy organisation, to build as many mosques as they want then the terrorist problem will decline.
This is nonsense; even if that was the case, then how is defending our culture being nasty? Surely expecting us to give way is not particularly nice. To argue, or to imply, that our ‘aggressive’ or ‘racist’ behaviour causes Islamic terrorism is false because the issue can be related to the ideological basis of Islam itself. It also turns the causal link, to the extent that it is actually sound, on its head. If there is the extent of hostility to Islam that there is supposed to be, then can it not be caused by terrorist problem in the first place?
Accusations of ‘Islamophobia’ are cynically used to prevent criticism of Islam and multiculturalism and ensure compliance.
Could Islam pose a threat?
Is Islam as fluffy and misunderstood as its defenders claim?
Islam rests on the basis that it is the sole message of God, or Allah. This implies therefore that any other philosophy is inferior since men are subordinate to God since no other philosophy is divine, or perfectly so. This would therefore mean that there is a necessary strand of supremacism running through it.
There are those who argue that not all Muslims are supremacist and tolerate other cultures. I am not claiming that all Muslims are supremacists out to destroy other cultures, but when you see devout Muslims in robes and long beards building mosques then there is good reason to assume that our culture will not be respected. There is nothing irrational here; reaction to this would be defensive, not aggression.
Our own culture has value too. It is assumed that any attempt to defend it is racist; racist is a word used interchangeably with Islamophobia even though Muslims and Islam are not races. The former are a religious community that can comprise every race and the latter contains values. In the same way that someone can oppose an ideology because opposition to or revulsion of its values, so someone can oppose a religion, or view it as dangerous, including Islam, on a rational basis.
There other misconceptions. It is often assumed that anyone who does not view Islam as peaceful believes that all Muslims are suicide-bombers, or at least treated as such. It is seemingly beyond that understanding of such people that being aware of the more militant and intolerant aspects, or basis, of Islam is different from assuming that all Muslims are homicidal. Even though the followers of Islam are called Muslims, to talk about the religion is not necessarily to talk about the people; Muslims do not consciously become Muslims, they are, generally, born into it. It is undeniable that when terrorists cite aspects of Islam as justifications for their actions they are generally accurate in doing so. For example, some of these bombers, and those manipulating these gullible fools, claim that anyone who dies in the service of Islam will go to paradise.
This goes back to their prophet’s time; he is said, when establishing his earthly empire, to have told his followers that anyone who dies for the religion will go to paradise. He also encouraged his followers to fight unbelievers; unfortunately too many have followed his command. A minority have of course, or at least in actually fighting if not in a metaphorical sense, followed this command. This is on the basis that any alternative religion, or system of values, could pose a threat to Islam; this is at the basis of Islamist claims that the West poses a threat to the Islamic world and its, supposedly pure, values.
Thus, those who claim that Islam is harmless, and that anyone who portrays it as a threat is an irrational, paranoid, Islamophobe, are, at worst wrong; at best, complacent.
The Empirical case
In Pakistan Christians are persecuted by a significant number of the Muslim majority. It is claimed that Islamic blasphemy laws are used by fundamentalist elements of the Muslim majority to persecute on the basis of a crime against Islam; accusations can be made against members of the Christian community in the same way that accusations of witchcraft were made in Salem. This can be deadly.
In a recent case hundreds of Christian homes were burnt down on the basis that one Christian, a 14 year old girl, was allegedly discovered with burnt remains of the Koran in her bag; this was found to be false. These accusations were based on rumour that was started by a local fundamentalist in the (successful) hope of starting a campaign against the local Christian population.
This has even led to the campaign for a separate Christian province in Pakistan; clearly things must be bad for the Christian minority if they want to go to the effort of campaigning for a chunk of the country to themselves. Things are unlikely to change because few politicians in Pakistan, whether Christian (4% of the population) or Muslim, are willing to take the risk of doing so; Salman Taseer, the governer of Punjab, was assassinated in 2011 because he wanted to reform the blasphemy laws in order to prevent them being used for vendettas against Christians.
The Christian population has plummeted in the Middle East. A century ago Christians made up 20% of the population; today it down to about 5%. The majority of Egyptians in Europe are Coptic, although they only make up 10 per cent of the population in Egypt. Life for Coptic’s in Egypt is clearly intolerable; this is a problem that can get worse under the Islamist President, Morsi, after the fall of the secular regime of Mubarak, who protected the Coptic population along with other populations within Egypt. Why would non-Muslims want to risk living in an Islamic majority country?
There are cases in this country. (Generally Pakistani) Muslims in this country are known for establishing ghettoes in British cities; these are part of these cities that become entirely Muslim, and unofficially become forbidden to non-Muslims. These exist in cities and towns such as Bradford, Luton and Oldham. Many deny their existence, preferring the illusion of a functioning multicultural Britain. Michael Nazir-Ali, an influential member of the CofE clergy and of Pakistani-Christian extraction, was criticised for mentioning these no-go areas.
The perpetrators of the sex grooming scandal in the North of England, where Muslim gangs preyed on vulnerable young white girls, were connected to these communities. They were products of conservative Pakistani cultural that did not need to integrate into modern Britain because of multiculturalism that encourage different communities to live parallel lives. According to multiculturalism every community in Britain has a right to preserve their culture- except the indigenous population.
These girls were therefore seen as fair game because they did not live up to the moral standards that these Muslim paedophiles claimed to uphold. Plying vulnerable young girls with drink and drugs in order to sexual assault them, and pass them around your mates like toys, is a strange definition of morality. This is sort of ‘morality’ should stay in Pakistan if that is where it came from. The more blind, or stupid, ‘liberals’ would probably say ‘who are we to judge, it is their culture’. This answer is simple. The British people. It is also up to us whether we want our country full of mosques.
However, Muslim women would be less likely to be treated that way because the Koran makes a distinction between Muslim and non-Muslim. You can do things to non-Muslim women that you cannot do to Muslim women. It has been claimed that, in Muslim societies, Muslim women are second class citizens, while non-Muslim women are third class. If you are non-Muslim women then you have rational reasons to oppose a growing Islamic influence in multicultural Britain.
It is not just women; non-Muslims in general are treated as second class citizens in many Muslim countries, and are treated as unequal by Islam. Historically this has always been the case. According to Islam non-Muslims, or dhimmi, should pay a jizya; this is a tax paid to the Muslim rulers, by non-Muslims, in order to be allowed to practice their religion, albeit in private. The basis of this was to compensate Muslims for having to live in the company of non-Muslims since non-Muslims have traditionally been seen as a source of potentially corrupting, or impure, influence. Nowadays, most Muslim countries do not levy this tax; they just make it difficult to practice different religions openly. Some provide more leeway than others. Muslim majority countries with secular, or reasonably secular, constitutions allow greater freedom, but this depends on particular regimes. There is nothing about Islam that would grant equal status to non-Muslims.
Overall, although this article is not intending to claim that all Muslims are violent, there is undoubtedly a fundamental problem with violence towards non-Muslim minorities within Muslim countries, or where Muslims numerically dominate. The Gatestone Institute, a civil liberties organisation, runs a website that is very informative of this problem. I do not have sufficient room in this article to give a comprehensive list of such cases, but Gatestone has quite a few from many different countries.
Thus, there are empirical examples to base genuine concerns as to how a future non-Muslim minority would fare since Islam treats non-Muslims as unequal. Nothing is entirely certain, but why give up our own culture in order to take the risk?
Tags: indigenous British culture, Islam, Islamophobia, Multiculturalism, spread of Islam, The Left
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