Islamophobia: Melissa Boigon TED Talk 2013 (America) Appx. 10 Minutes!

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(In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

[czgibson]

Greetings,

I agree with the speaker that the behaviour in the examples she gave is wrong. I have sympathy for Muslims who are suffering attacks or hardship simply for being Muslims. I also have had several good friends, work colleagues and students who are Muslims.

I am also, for various reasons, a critic of Islam. Does this make me Islamophobic?

Peace

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(In the Name of God, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful)

Hey, I'm still composing the PM to you, which I should be finished writing to you today and will be sending to you sometime today as well; keep in mind though I live in U.S. and you are in U.K., which means that that will translate due to time difference for you as tomorrow because it's already 8:59 p.m. right now for you U.K. peeps!

Anyway, in regards to your question, I don't think criticizing Islam in and of itself can be termed Islamophobic, but the objections have to be coming also then from an objective place.

For example, I have heard criticisms of Islam especially on the Internet (which is a gold mine for all the ludicrous things one can find!) including things like "Muslim men are told to beat their wives everyday" (lol, wut?) "Muslim women are veiled because men will otherwise rape them" (ugh no), "Islam says to Muslims to kill all infidels" (yeah, nice, except then how are you still able to be alive?!), etc.

Essentially, a lot of criticisms of Islam in our modern day, especially when I read comments on different media sites in any given article posted about Muslims or Islam, are born from either ignorance or simple prejudice. In that case, yes, those criticisms are Islamophobic.

For example, let's take the issue of FGM that even the left media presents as a "Islamic" problem. Yet FGM is an African practice and you won't find most Muslim-majority countries practicing it. Eritrea has a 90% FGM, yet it's a Christian country. Ethiopia has 75% FGM, yet it is also a Christian country. Then, how is criticizing Islam or Muslims for FGM an honest criticism?

There's a problem with making facile arguments that I see common to many criticisms of Islam or Muslims in our world.

For example, there's even this scare-mongering that goes on about how somehow if "nice" and "peaceful" Muslims are exposed to "real" Islam or Daesh publications or what-have-you on the Internet, then they will turn into violent extremists. That's patently not true. Many Muslims live in Muslim-majority countries, and you'd have to understand that their exposure to Islam is probably more prolific than you or me in Western lands, yet a majority are not violent extremists nor looking to become violent extremists. I myself have been reading Daesh publications for quite some time now - and I'm not going to name their publication here for some Muslim to research or stumble upon online - but suffice to say I've found their publications nothing but an exercise in evil and misanthropy and I've seen Muslims of similar mindset to me criticizing Daesh publications that we've read on another site. And many people on here do not know this on IB, but when I was an atheist researching Islam, apart from learning from Islamic sources, I also used to frequent anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim sites; and I can honestly say that the anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim sites genuinely misrepresent and deliberately demonize Islam and Muslims. So, yes, that type of rhetoric is Islamophobic.

Also, you have to understand that Islam and Muslims have been exposed to criticism not from only some past decades but from 7th century when Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) started calling people to Islam. The Revelation we know as "Quran" itself contains criticism of Prophet Muhammad (peace and blessings be upon him) and Islam and there are responses to those criticisms within the Quran. So, I don't think criticizing Islam itself is the issue; I think the issue is when a person criticizing Islam doesn't have a purpose beyond criticism. Then that criticism isn't constructive.

Greetings,

I agree with the speaker that the behaviour in the examples she gave is wrong. I have sympathy for Muslims who are suffering attacks or hardship simply for being Muslims. I also have had several good friends, work colleagues and students who are Muslims.

I am also, for various reasons, a critic of Islam. Does this make me Islamophobic?

Peace