Posted: Nov 21, 2013 11:26 am
stevecook172001 wrote:No that's too simplistic. Islam and Muslim culture and politics in some parts of the world are certainly a lot more conflated than religion and the wider culture and state are here in the secular West. However, there is a significant amount of variability in that conflation from country to country and so to lump all Muslims together as hard line Islamists is silly at best and dangerously mischievous at worst. Even those who would define themselves as islamists will vary in the depth and radical expression of that islamism considerably.jez9999 wrote:Simple argument: in order to have a phobia of something, you must have an irrational fear of it. Assuming that somebody being described as "Islamophobic" is not a Muslim, isn't it very likely that that person's fear of Islam is rational? Islam's Quran contains a large number of verses saying that the Islamic god hates non-Muslims and generally implies that they should, at best, be treated as second-class citizens. There is, in short, something to be rationally afraid of in Islam for the unbeliever.
Also, if the term is nonsensical, shouldn't we be trying to stop ourselves using it?
Yeah but this term "Islamist" is itself suspect. I don't really understand how it is different from "Muslim". Look, there may be 1000 ways to interpret the Quran, but each one of them involves hating non-believers. How could you love a god so much He brings you to tears sometimes, and yet be friends with people he hates? It's nonsense. You're not even meant to make friends with dhimmis, let alone marry them or anything.
So it seems to me that, by the objective measurement of whether somebody follows an interpretaton of the Quran, anyone who is a true Muslim does not interact with non-Muslims if possible, and does not make friends with or marry them. Of course there are many pseudo-Muslims who don't follow the Quran fully, but I don't put them into the category of Muslims. Given the category of Muslims that I have defined, the word "Islamist" is basically the same. Therefore, "Islamophobia" is an irrational term because there really is something to be afraid of from Muslims properly carrying out their religious duties; being treated like crap because you don't believe Islam.