gwaan

says...

Rushdie's knighthood was at best undeserved and at worst a stupid mistake. For a start, apart from 'Midnight Children', the man's contribution to literature has been small - love or hate 'The Satanic Verses' it is not a great work of literature! Furthermore it is a work which caused great offense to many Muslims. By giving the knighthood to Rushdie they have provided fuel to the hardliners at the same time as alienating the moderates.

Condell is right to point out that some Muslims and Islamic Organisations - including the Muslim Council of Britain - are always the first to point the finger of blame at the West and scream about Islamophobia, without ever condemning hatred and intolerance in the Islamic world. Condell is also right to distinguish between moderate peaceful Muslims and extremists (a distinction which he later forgets when he attacks all Muslims as irrational idiots). But it is the failure to make this distinction which is instilling a very real and a very dangerous phobia of everything Islamic in the hearts and minds of many people in the West.

It is very easy to poke fun at the idea of Islamophobia when you are not subject to the hostile actions which such a phobia has produced. And let me be clear what I mean by hostile actions. I'm not talking about the verbal abuse and threats of violence which many peaceful Muslims - including myself - have been subject to. Nor am I referring to the aggressive media reports - particularly in America - which seek to tar all Muslims with the same brush. I'm talking about an irrational fear of the whole Islamic world and the Islamic peoples - not just the extremists - which created popular support for America and Britain's aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East and the wider Islamic world - including the blind and unobjective support of Israeli aggression against Palestine and Lebanon. I'm talking about a fear of everything Islamic which has been behind America's continued support for tyrannical secular dictatorships throughout the Islamic world - simply because the main opposition parties in those countries happen to be Islamic. I'm talking about the fear which leads to support for reactionary domestic terrorism legislation which erodes essential civil liberties which we have held dear for centuries.

If Condell was just condeming extremists I would support him. But his simplistic rants against Islam - which, even when they distinguish between extremists and moderates, always end by abusing all Muslims (and religious people in general) as irrational fools who aspire to a creed of hate - just help to engender an irrational fear of everything Islamic. The irrational Islamophobia which Condell himself suffers from and likes to teach others just creates more hatred, more misunderstanding, and more unobjective support for misguided foreign policy.

http://www.videosift.com/video/Richard-Rubenstein-Understanding-Islamophobia