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Go Home The Invention Of Islamophobia

THE SPINE JANUARY 10, 2011

The Invention Of Islamophobia

BY MARTIN PERETZ

Anyone who suggests that there is a war being waged by Muslims in their own lands and in the lands in which they have settled—these last, by the way, are the really aggressive “settlers”!—against rationalists and true liberals, traditional conservatives and Islamic dissenters, Christians and Jews is likely to be labeled an “Islamophobe.” I have been, and thousands of you out there, perhaps millions, have been so labeled...or almost. And, at dinner with friends, have anyone of you just raised questions about the tyranny of silence which the “politically so correct” are trying to impose on those who are fearful of the admixture of faith and bombs and then not found yourselves attacked as at least “intolerant” and perhaps even a bigot? Or, yes, even an Islamophobe.

Pascal Bruckner was one of those, then young, nouveaux philosophes, who sprung on the scene in the early seventies and delivered lethal intellectual blows to the radical conformism of much of French thought. As a by-product of this struggle of the minds Jean-Paul Sartre was also unseated as the reigning demi-god of the French mind (and displaced in some way by Raymond Aron, his contemporary and long-time antagonist.) The new philosophers are still writing and speaking against the vulgarities of Sartre’s successors, the most vulgar of whom is Slavoj Zizek but taken on by both Bruckner and my friend Bernard-Henri Levy.

A surgical dissection of Islamophobia, its origins and uses, has been needed for some time. Bruckner, the consummate French essayist, has now done a short and withering one, published in English in after a translation from Liberation.

The entire essay is very much worth reading. But here are three paragraphs of its essence:

At the end of the 1970s, Iranian fundamentalists invented the term "Islamophobia" formed in analogy to "xenophobia". The aim of this word was to declare Islam inviolate. Whoever crosses this border is deemed a racist. This term, which is worthy of totalitarian propaganda, is deliberately unspecific about whether it refers to a religion, a belief system or its faithful adherents around the world.

But confession has no more in common with race than it has with secular ideology. Muslims, like Christians, come from the Arab world, Africa, Asia and Europe, just as Marxists, liberals and anarchists come or came from all over. In a democracy, no one is obliged to like religion, and until proved otherwise, they have the right to regard it as retrograde and deceptive. Whether you find it legitimate or absurd that some people regard Islam with suspicion—as they once did Catholicism—and reject its aggressive proselytism and claim to total truth—this has nothing to do with racism.

...The term "Islamophobia" serves a number of functions: it denies the reality of an Islamic offensive in Europe all the better to justify it; it attacks secularism by equating it with fundamentalism. Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire. It follows that young girls are stigmatised for not wearing the veil, as are French, German or English citizens of Maghribi, Turkish, African or Algerian origin who demand the right to religious indifference, the right not to believe in God, the right not to fast during Ramadan. Fingers are pointed at these renegades, they are delivered up to the wrath of their religions communities in order to quash all hope of change among the followers of the Prophet.

Islamophobia—that is, the word itself—is meant to silence you. It has already silenced President Obama, hasn’t it? He hasn’t even spoken up for his fellow Christians who in recent weeks have been victimized in Iraq (where maybe we still wave some sway), Egypt (our very expensive ally), Nigeria, Pakistan et al.

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It must have been tough for you to be so publicly humiliated at your alma mater this summer. Pity it seems to have had no effect on you, since you persist in writing these nauseating, self-pitying lies. Now, let's see any fact-checkers are reading the comment section: Peretz writes: "He [Obama] hasn’t even spoken up for his fellow Christians who in recent weeks have been victimized in Iraq (where maybe we still wave some sway), Egypt (our very expensive ally), Nigeria, Pakistan et al." Really? Here's what 4 seconds on Google came up with: "Egyptian authorities increased security around churches on Monday as sectarian tensions mounted after a bombing in the coastal city of Alexandria that killed 21 and wounded nearly 100 leaving a New Year’s Mass. [...] President Obama, in a statement, called the attack 'barbaric and heinous.'" http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/world/middleeast/03egypt.html Amazing that you get called out so often and keep making the same mistakes. What incredible self-regard you must have! If only being dishonest, sloppy, and lazy were the least of your offenses.

- npippenger@gmail.com-old

January 10, 2011 at 1:03pm

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Marty - mansfield has caught you dead to rights falsely accusing Obama of silence in the face of violence to Christians in Islamic countries. For the sake of intellectual honesty, if for nothing else, please don't wait until next Yom Kippur to admit your mistake, make a correction, and atone for whatever you think lay behind your blind spot.

- JackR

January 10, 2011 at 1:31pm

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"President Obama, in a statement, called the attack 'barbaric and heinous.'" I Think Peretz probably considers this response insufficiently strident. But it is possible that Obama didn't want to say too much about the victims or the perpetrators since it is still not clear who is responsible for the massacre. Many Egyptians believe it was Israel's Mossad behind the attack and I guess Obama was mindful of their sensibilities. Hence the short and non-committal statement.

- noga1

January 10, 2011 at 1:41pm

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except that Peretz didn't say "hasn't spoken up in sufficiently strident manner", he said "hasn't spoken up" Granted, that he rarely qualifies what he writes, but that's not a virtue if qualifications would be more accurate, as is usually the case.

- miceelf

January 10, 2011 at 3:31pm

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“The new philosophers are still writing and speaking against the vulgarities of Sartre’s successors, the most vulgar of whom is Slavoj Zizek but taken on by both Bruckner and my friend Bernard-Henri Levy.’ Sartre made some vile political pronouncements, but at his best he was head and shoulders above Slavoj Zizek. Zizek is not “Sartre’s successor,” he is a paper Stalin or Tito without their murderous seriousness.

- arnon

January 10, 2011 at 7:07pm

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mansfield only a small minority of faculty/students demonstrated against Mr. Peretz. I know some of them and they are not the best and brightest at Harvard.

- arnon

January 10, 2011 at 7:40pm

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"I know some of them and they are not the best and brightest at Harvard." That may be so, but the damage they did to his reputation and personal integrity is permanent, I fear. It meant nothing to them that Michael Walzer, a man who has spent a lifetime of thinking and working on concepts of decency and justice was walking in friendship and mutual respect right next to Peretz.

- noga1

January 11, 2011 at 9:38am

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While I don't disagree with every point the quoted article made, its assertion that the term 'Islamophobia' was invented by the Iranian fundamentalists at the end of the 1970s is simply false. A quick Google books search shows that Bernard Lewis wrote about the "new phenomenon, sometimes called Islamophobia" in his book "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" in 1953. Nor did Lewis invent the term, as it also appears in an article from the Journal of Theological Studies in 1924. Isn't it great that we now have such convenient tools at our disposal to quickly call authors on their BS?

- gutentag26

January 11, 2011 at 11:22am

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gutentag, The Bernard Lewis book "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" is a collection of essays written over a forty year period. The term in question appears in a post Iranian revolution essay. Islamophobia is a relatively new term. I am not familiar with the Journal of Theological Studies article, do you have a link? It is possible but still unproven that some specialized journal used the term back in 1924, do you have a link? My own google searches traces the word back to the 1980's: "Islamophobia is prejudice against, hatred or fear of Islam or Muslims.[1][2] The term seems to date back to the late 1980s,[3] but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to refer to types of political dialogue that appeared prejudicially resistant to pro-Islamic argument.[4]" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia CAIR itself says that the term came into widespread use after 9/11. http://www.cair.com/Issues/Islamophobia/Islamophobia.aspx

- arnon

January 11, 2011 at 12:24pm

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Not that I remember the events of the 1979 Revolution with perfect recall, or know the ins and outs of the intellectual discussions raging in and outside the country, but it was news to me that "Islamophobia" was invented by Iranian fundamentalists. It would have been useful for Peretz to name at least one of those fundis who coined/used the term. Now it would seem that the term predates the Revolution, and Iranian fundamentalism, by many decades. Of course, the when wouldn't or shouldn't matter, except that Marty appears to suggest that the timing of the invention of the term matters. I find it amusing, in general, that people who holler the most about being shut up by political correctness have no issue, in general, finding an outlet for their hollering. It reminds me of a particularly despicable instance, years ago, when a Canadian law professor decried the political correctness that stopped him from expressing his disordant views on gay marriage - "as soon as you open your mouth, they call you a homophobe", and then proceeded, in 1200 words, to equate gay marriage to bestiality, child molestation and necrophilia in moral terms. When I replied to this idiocy in the same paper (I took no position on gay marriage, but found the "political correctness" argument amusing and the analogies despicable), I heard from the editors of the newspaper that the same professor of law who was so concerned about being shut up by the forces of political correctness, had put enormous pressure on the editors NOT to publish my reply ... go figure. Then, of course, there is the substance of the note above. I don't really like the term "Islamophobe", mostly because of the inchoateness of the content. But when I read comments like,

"Above all, however, it wants to silence all those Muslims who question the Koran, who demand equality of the sexes, who claim the right to renounce religion, and who want to practice their faith freely and without submitting to the dictates of the bearded and doctrinaire."
I have to question the good faith of the author in pressing the incoherence to illogical limits for the sake of making a propagandist point. It is entirely possible that certain apologists for Islamist terrorism use the term to silence fellow Muslims. But it seems to me that they are in the minority. The term, as I understand it, has a specific purpose: to identify those who target the tenets of a faith and all its adherents, without disrcimination and qualification, as somehow less worth of civilised treatment than the rest, for that reason alone. Now, Marty's statements - blanket condemnations - on and about Islam and Muslims are well-known. There are those here who unabashedly condemn Islam and Muslims as "parasitic". This sort of undisguised and unqualified paranoia, hatred or contempt for a faith and its adherents has the same nature as other sorts of social phobias and hatreds (homophobia and misogyny) and so it is not intellectually incoherent to label them in the same way. Peretz does not like to be characterised as an Islamophobe? Well, many people do not like the reality of his overt lack of tolerance.

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 12:25pm

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gutentag26 raises several interesting questions about who gets credit for inventing a new term, someone who may have used it first but whose use of it played no role in its current acceptance, or someone who coined it independently and whose use is causally responsible for current use. I don't doubt gutentag's claim that the term occurs in (Lewis 1953) and (JTS 1934), but the word seems to have been subequently "reinvented". In fact, I note that the word does not yet occur in the OED. Fwiw, according to Wikipedia: "The term seems to date back to the late 1980s, but came into common usage after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States to refer to types of political dialogue that appeared prejudicially resistant to pro-Islamic argument.". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamophobia The entry goes on to say: "In 1996, the Runnymede Trust established the Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia, chaired by Professor Gordon Conway, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sussex. Their report, Islamophobia: A Challenge for Us All, was launched in November 1997 by the Home Secretary, Jack Straw. In this report, Islamophobia was defined by the Trust as "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination." An early documented use of the word in the United States was by the conservative American Insight magazine in 1991, used to describe Russian activities in Afghanistan. Other claims of early use include usage by Iranian clerics in 1979, or its use in 1921 by the painter Étienne Dinet." The entry provides a link to a 2003 (French) article by Caroline Fourest & Fiammetta Venner in ProChoix (http://www.prochoix.org/frameset/26/islamophobie26.html) who argue for the Iranian "origin".

- JPKatz

January 11, 2011 at 12:28pm

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Or, as arnon suggests - the term post-dates the Revolution. I just don't recall it being co-terminus with Khomeini. Iranian fundamentalists and intellectuals coined the term "Westoxification": the way Middle Easterners were enamoured of all things Western. It is a parallel to Said's "Orientalism", I think. At the time, they were not concerned how the West viewed Iran and Muslims, but how Iranians themselves viewed their own culture and through which lenses. At least, this is what I remember being called, as a child of 12, "Westoxified", "Apostate" and "Bourgeois" in school by various revolutionary zealots :) ...

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 12:29pm

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All excellent points, icarusr, and eloquently written. And it's worth noting that Marty's apologists in this thread have offered tellingly flaccid defenses.

- npippenger@gmail.com-old

January 11, 2011 at 12:33pm

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I have tried to find some more information about the real origin of the word 'islamophobia' and its use. As arnon points out, I was incorrect in the date of the Bernard Lewis book. It was published in 2004. For some reason, Google Books has it as 1953. As I have found out since I commented earlier, I cannot trust the bibliographic information from Google. It looks like the second citation I made is still correct, but I cannot confirm it completely. Here is the link: http://books.google.com/books?id=s3ETAAAAIAAJ&q=islamophobia&dq=islamophobia&hl=en&ei=8JcsTaCzIoP_8Aa6t82eCg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEEQ6AEwBzgK There is also a useful tool that I heard about through the NYTimes, where you can chart the usage of terms in literature. Although if Google Books made the mistake with the Lewis text, I am now unsure if this tool can be entirely trusted. In any case, it is here: http://ngrams.googlelabs.com/graph?content=islamophobia&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3 This whole discussion may be a bit semantic, and it does not alter how some people may use the term for political or other purposes. But now that it has begun, I would like to get to the bottom of this.

- gutentag26

January 11, 2011 at 1:00pm

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Peretz need no defense as most of the attacks have been driven by rage and have been short on facts.

- arnon

January 11, 2011 at 3:00pm

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Icarusr unwittingly underscores Pascal Bruckner's point: he defines Islamophobia so inclusively that it becomes a social stigma on a par with hatred of women and homosexuals. But misgivings about a religion, or certain interpretations thereof, should not be equated with contempt for its adherents. One can be repelled by the preachings of some Muslim clerics (e.g., that blasphemy is so offensive to the Divinity that only the death of the blasphemer, or of his would-be defender, can make adequate amends) without assuming that Muslims as a group are moved to action by such preachings. It is important that we recognize, without fear of being branded with diversionary labels, the obscurantist and retrograde character of many strains of contemporary Islam, and their well-documented capacity for wreaking horror.

- lfeinber@email.unc.edu

January 11, 2011 at 5:57pm

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"It is important that we recognize, without fear of being branded with diversionary labels, the obscurantist and retrograde character of many strains of contemporary Islam, and their well-documented capacity for wreaking horror." I don't see how what you have written is in any way contradicted by what I wrote above. Nor do I get your first sentence. I am not talking about misgivings - I have a lot of misgivings about a religion that brands me an apostate and would hang me for my personal life. I was not talking about misgivings or criticism of violent preaching; I was talking about generalised hatred and contempt. I don't see how this is overly inclusive. And, frankly, anyone who does have such generalised contempt for a billion of his or her fellow human beings, deserves social stigma on a par with homophobia and misogyny.

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 7:19pm

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Arnon: could you please indicate where there was any "rage" in my post? If you can't, feed yourself to a woodshredder.

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 7:20pm

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ljach, Icarus was entirely correct. And he never said that one should not question muslim tenets or philophy or culture. He simply said that Islamophobia refers to people who simply hate Muslims. And in case you haven't noticed, there are plenty of these haters right here in the U.S.A. These are not people who make cogent arguments about female equality or whether the religion itself fosters totalitarianism (and in my opinion it's far more complicated than the faith itself being the root of all the Muslim world's troubles), or whether the middle-East wants to brought into the modern world. These are people who stand with signs equating Arabs with Satan or certain ultra-conservative or neo-con writers/"intellectuals" who frequently disparage Muslims--never really distinguishing between terrorists and the rest--you know the other 99.9 percent of 1 billion Muslims. By the way Icarus, I loved your story about the homophobic professor trying to squelch your letter to the editor.

- MOLLYSIMON

January 11, 2011 at 7:22pm

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icarusr "Arnon: could you please indicate where there was any "rage" in my post?" I suppose your subsequent sentence is an indication of a pacific mind. "If you can't, feed yourself to a woodshredder." This says it all.

- arnon

January 11, 2011 at 7:34pm

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Good point, ljach, "It is important that we recognize, without fear of being branded with diversionary labels, the obscurantist and retrograde character of many strains of contemporary Islam, and their well-documented capacity for wreaking horror." Indeed. Some like icarus here seem to believe in " woodshredders" solving the world's problems. What a blood thirsty fellow he is.

- arnon

January 11, 2011 at 7:38pm

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Either Obama remained silent or he didn't. There is no interim stage between remaining silent and making a statement. Once again Marty writes something which is either a sign of complete laziness as a journalist (couldn't be bothered to check) or is a deliberate untruth (he knew it to be false before he published the remark). If one takes Noga's counter-argument on board, that Marty is in some pointlessly oblique way arguing that Obama's response indeed came but was insufficient, then that raises some very difficult issues. As the American president, like it or not, one simply has to be careful not to give the impression that one is speaking as the president of a particular religious group, as the Pope can do, for example. The relationship that the U.S. has with various groups in the Middle East, including Christians, is a complicated one and with no easy options in sight. It may seem like an obvious thing for Obama not only to condemn the attack per se but to condemn it as an Islamist attack on Copts, but sometimes that doesn't help things, as remarks can be and are twisted out of context. Think about the new turn of events in Pakistan, for example, where the popula pro-democracy lawyers of 2-3 years ago are now supporting the Islamist assassin of a secular governor. I'm sure Marty already knows exactly what Obama hasn't said on that one.

- ironyroad

January 11, 2011 at 8:00pm

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"Think about the new turn of events in Pakistan, for example, where the popula pro-democracy lawyers of 2-3 years ago are now supporting the Islamist assassin of a secular governor. I'm sure Marty already knows exactly what Obama hasn't said on that one." I don't know what "ironyroad" is saying? Is he or she saying that it's better for the President not to speak out against the violence of Muslim extremists because that will make them even angrier? It seems to me that if some lawyer is pro-democracy than he wouldn't embrace Islamist assassins. If he does than his former pro-democracy stance was merely tactical.

- arnon

January 11, 2011 at 8:21pm

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arnon: you made a blanket statement about posts above, and I called you on it; you did not, as you could not, actually point to anything I had written above about uncontrolled rage. As for my woodshredder comment - I gather you are new to these posts. It is a running gag, and it is from "Fargo". You still have not pointed to any rage, and you have proven yourself humourless to boot. All I can say is, get a life. (Not literally, of course - in case you will accuse me of calling you dead - but figuratively, you know. I thought I'd spell it out, as you don't seem to be able to get simple things like this.)

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 9:25pm

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"Is he or she saying that it's better for the President not to speak out against the violence of Muslim extremists because that will make them even angrier?" Oh dear God - not only humourless, but also clueless. No, that is not the point. The point is that Obama's "defence" of any particular group in that region will generate a negative reaction among the reactionaries. This does not speak well of the reactionaries, to be sure; but it does mean that at the very least, the President of the United States should exercise a measure of restraint and caution in commenting on any and all acts of political violence here and there.

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 9:30pm

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Molly - I had a great laugh as well, at the time. The editor-in-chief of the paper told the good prof, "you dish it out, be prepared to take it."

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 9:32pm

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icarusr. I didn't have you in mind when I made the comment above. But, if the shoe fits...

- arnon

January 11, 2011 at 9:34pm

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It was unclear - as there were two or three criticisms of Marty, including mine, and none demonstrated any "rage". Just wanted to know where you got the rage from. Of course, the first half of what you just wrote would have been the simple reply - "not you, but xxx". Your rejoinder simply demonstrates you to be the petty person you appear to be.

- icarusr

January 11, 2011 at 10:06pm

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No, that's not what I was saying, arnon. I was saying -- and icarus summed it up already -- that for the president it's not as simple as it is for Marty to make sweeping political condemnations with very specific naming of groups, because his statements can have major echoes in many sensitive situations where U.S. interests in the longer term are at stake. Because he's, you know, the president. I just checked, and ironyroad is a he.

- ironyroad

January 12, 2011 at 3:14pm

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"(Not literally, of course - in case you will accuse me of calling you dead - but figuratively, you know." icarus: this is absolutely the first time that you made me laugh out loud. I hope you don't mind, you know how I feel about your usual sarcastic products. This is good. This is even funnier than "I just checked, and ironyroad is a he." BTW, ironyroad, I am regularly mistaken for a man on the Internet. In fact I even deceived the Gender analyzer, which claims that, by using "Artificial Intelligence" it can "determine if a homepage is written by a man or woman". The result: "We think Noga's blog written by a man (77%)." Apparently I was much more male than Normblog or Mick Hartley.

- noga1

January 12, 2011 at 5:51pm

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Happy to hear it :) ....

- icarusr

January 12, 2011 at 7:42pm

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"...there is a war being waged by Muslims in their own lands and in the lands in which they have settled—these last, by the way, are the really aggressive “settlers”!" http://islamineurope.blogspot.com/2011/01/belgium-shariah4belgium-celebrating.html#more "The radical Islamist organization, Shariah4Belgium, is celebrating the terminal illness of former Vlaams-Belang politician, Marie-Rose Morel. Morel, who is fighting cancer, is currently in the terminal stage of her disease, and is too weak to receive further treatment. "Alhamdulillah, all praise to Allah the Master of the World, who makes Marie Rose Morel suffer to death and will then, inshallah, punish her severely in Hellfire! Allah the Almighty has, because of her campaign against Islam and Muslims, forced her to wear a headscarf [ed: she lost her hair due to treatments], though she's vehemently aganist it!" Vlaams Belang senator, Jurgen Ceder,wants to know when the Centre for Equal Opportunities and Opposition to Racism will act against this form of incitement to hatred. He points out that political difference can be fought out in different way in Belgium, but not by wishing people to die. With such statement "extreme Islam once again shows its backwardness and fanaticism."

- noga1

January 14, 2011 at 3:00pm

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