In defense of 'Islamophobia'

This week a self-described fascist murdered 50 people in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In the aftermath, President Erdogan of Turkey attributed the atrocity to a global Islamophobia that had been allowed to spread unchecked. His implication was that something should be done to check or suppress it. Denunciations of Islamophobia and white nationalism have filled the weekend, naturally enough. Ironically enough, they echo the American protests against the 2001 terror attacks on the U.S. In both cases, bereaved groups claimed that people were being targeted more for who they were than for what they might have done. To a certain extent that's correct, since each case was to a great extent a revenge attack.

The Christchurch shooter apparently claimed revenge for a motive in a manifesto, claiming a right to avenge the victims of Muslim terrorists and criminals in Europe, just as the September 2001 hijackers claimed to avenge the Muslim victims of American foreign policy. By the logic of revenge, if you can call it that, anyone who shares an identity with actual killers and oppressors is liable to revenge, whether they consciously endorse or collaborate in oppression or not. Osama bin Laden theorized that all citizens of a democracy can be held accountable for the democracy's actions. Likewise, the Christchucrh shooter feels entitled to avenge crimes carried out in the name of Islam on anyone who espouses Islam. And just as anti-imperialists in the west insisted on a historic context for the 2001 attacks that included numerous provocations and apparent injustices, so it can be argued that the Christchurch massacre did not occur in a vacuum occupied only by someone's irrational or innate hate.

In neither case, of course, did innocent people deserve what they got, and in each case it should be indisputable that the victims were innocent.  Few Americans wanted to hear about American misdeeds in 2001, but that gave them no right to suppress anti-imperialist or simple anti-American opinion. Likewise, today is no time for a blanket suppression of "Islamophobia," or to confuse it with ethnic bigotry. While some people want Islam or any religion to be treated as a form of identity entitled to the respect of civil society, it and all religions are collections of value judgments and quasi-factual assertions that remain subject to critical appraisal from any thinking person.  At a minimum, civil society should allow people to claim that Islam or any other religion is fundamentally false -- to deny that Muhammad received a revelation from God, or that there is a god. Religions are also subject to criticism in their particulars, though critics should be careful to do more than read scriptures in isolation if they want to understand how religions actually function. The modern resurgence of what might best be called shariaism after 20th century experiments with secularism has complicated matters, since the shariaists have succeeded in convincing much of the non-Muslim world that Islam inherently tends toward political tyranny when in fact the necessity of political government by sharia remains hotly debated by Muslims themselves. Educated people of all viewpoints can take part in that debate, which should not be inhibited by fear of either hurting violent people's feeling or inspiring other violent people to commit mass murder. We don't need to write off the Christchurch shooter as some lone madman in order to affirm that his crimes are his alone. We don't really want anyone saying Muslims should be killed wherever they're found, but we should not equate all criticism of Islam with incitement to murder. If people push too hard or too far against "Islamophobia" they'll probably only generate more of it.