What’s Islamophobia, and Do I Have It? [View all]

http://www.religiondispatches.org/archive/atheologies/6729/what_s_islamophobia__and_do_i_have_it/
December 31, 2012
An answer in eight parts
By HAROON MOGHUL


At a rally in New York city in 2011. Image courtesy flickr user asterix611

Haroon Moghul
Associate Editor Haroon Moghul is a Fellow at the New America Foundation and the Center on National Security at Fordham Law. He is a doctoral candidate at Columbia University and the author of a novel, The Order of Light (Penguin 2006). Haroon has been a guest on CNN, BBC, NPR, Russia Today, The History Channel and al-Jazeera.

A closed mind is a terrible thing to behold. But it’s a far worse thing to have to engage. And yet we must. This Saturday, the woman who murdered a complete stranger by shoving him into the path of an arriving subway train was arrested. Her name? Erica Menendez. Her target? Hindus and Muslims. Why? Because of 2001.

More than eleven years after the terrorist attacks, and the alleged murderer not only could not distinguish between a Muslim and a Hindu, but held both collectively responsible for the actions of a few—there are 2.5 billion Muslims and Hindus in the world. This is clear, cut-and-dried bigotry, of the typically ignorant kind.

You’d think recent events only further prove Islamophobia’s dangerousness. But on the night of Erica’s arrest, the usual cohort of anti-Muslim voices persisted in their denial of Islamophobia, considering it a “neologism” used by the left to silence their fair criticisms of Islam. Reality, as always, begs to disagree.

Islamophobia is anything but rational, fair, or grounded. Like climate change denial, it masks real threats and makes it harder for us to deal with them. America deserves a better conversation on Islam. One that has the room to acknowledge real threats and challenges, but also enables us to make smarter choices, and deal with Muslims as we are: Human beings.

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