Europe lurches to the Right

[slave2thewage]

a buzzword created to quell criticism of Islam in any of its applications,

As someone who is actually in Europe, Islamophobia is more of a buzzword for "boo to these brown people with their funny veils and taking all our jobs". It's more racism than a critique of the actual faith.

[Jinsai]

As someone who is actually in Europe, Islamophobia is more of a buzzword for "boo to these brown people with their funny veils and taking all our jobs". It's more racism than a critique of the actual faith.

Nope, it's fucking real: systemic prejudice against people who express Muslim beliefs, and it manifests itself as overt hate speech and violence around the world (certainly in my own country). That's bloody fucking obvious. Islamophobia might be a silly word for this, but what the fuck else would you call it? Racism doesn't capture the specificity of whom it targets, regardless of what part of the world its victims hail from. I guess all of those Muslim people who are persecuted for displaying their faith, who could never try to run for public office or express themselves in the wider social fabric without finding themselves labelled terrorist-sympathizers... should just shut up and stay in their ghettos?

Then maybe people should stop employing it as a shutdown tactic whenever someone criticizes anything awful done in the name of Islam? Or maybe we should stop using buzzwords like this at all? If we're going to shut down a racist who is couching their racism under the guise of a criticism of Islam, then just call them a racist and point out why they're actually being racist.

I'm just sick of seeing people pulling this word out when it is completely insane to use it. I was called an Islamaphobe by a friend (of a friend) recently for talking about how disgusted I was with the fact that they still publicly behead people in Saudi Arabia. I didn't even use a word which referred to the religion. To condense it, I was relaying how horrified I was to hear that several people have recently been beheaded by the government in Saudi Arabia, "one of our allies in the Middle East," for crimes like "sorcery."

Also, @botley, I have to disagree with the primary complaint of that article addressing this phenomenon, especially where it implies that the problem can't be solved because the EU laws restricting freedom of speech aren't sufficient. The very idea that racism of any sort is actually contained by prosecuting people for exhibiting bigoted beliefs is ludicrous. You should be allowed to say whatever insane, hateful shit you want. In response, people should explain why you're being an idiot. It's a free exchange of ideas, and it allows you to identify the really ignorant hateful people. It's a good thing to know who those people are, and they should feel free to expose their ignorance to everyone around them, and face the consequences for it.

The idea that we would even consider creating laws which would protect Islam (or any religion or belief system) from angry criticism should be horrifying.

[botley]

If we're going to shut down a racist who is couching their racism under the guise of a criticism of Islam, then just call them a racist and point out why they're actually being racist.

Fine, but what about all those cases of bigots who AREN'T criticising Islam, but simply insulting people and uttering hateful threats against them for belonging to that religion? The tweets quoted in the CBC piece I linked aren't racist, they're anti-Islamic. They make no comment about the race of the Muslims in the mosque that their writer wants to blow up. That's not a peaceful protest or a rational criticism; it's not speech worthy of protection, but it's not racism either.

The very idea that racism of any sort is actually contained by prosecuting people for exhibiting bigoted beliefs is ludicrous.

Whose argument are you attacking here? The guy in that CBC piece? Nobody is claiming you can legislate bigotry away, but I agree with the op-ed I also linked to from the Guardian: by marking it as socially unacceptable and unwanted, it can be made to wither away. I'll protect your right to criticise what is said, but if you say hateful shit about an entire people grouped together only by their religion, you should be called out on it in a way that matters, from a shared position of social authority, not by some other chump in a comment thread.

It's a good thing to know who those people are, and they should feel free to expose their ignorance to everyone around them, and face the consequences for it.

That's the problem: there are no consequences for it. You can make hateful threats towards Muslims all the live long day and there is no repercussion for you, meanwhile the environment for the Muslims living around you becomes ever-more fearful. People like us argue about whether what it is the bigots are doing is actually a thing or not, meanwhile people are being assaulted in the streets for wearing a hijab or having their windows broken or vandalized with "terrorist" scrawled on them for praying at a mosque. Don't call it Islamophobia, though, I guess?

[Jinsai]

Fine, but what about all those cases of bigots who AREN'T criticising Islam, but simply insulting people and uttering hateful threats against them for belonging to that religion? The tweets quoted in the CBC piece I linked aren't racist, they're anti-Islamic. They make no comment about the race of the Muslims in the mosque that their writer wants to blow up. That's not a peaceful protest or a rational criticism; it's not speech worthy of protection, but it's not racism either.

I feel that every form of speech is worthy of protection (with only some very specific exceptions), no matter how despicable I find it. I'm not advocating it, I'm just saying it should be permitted.

Whose argument are you attacking here? The guy in that CBC piece? Nobody is claiming you can legislate bigotry away, but I agree with the op-ed I also linked to from the Guardian: by marking it as socially unacceptable and unwanted, it can be made to wither away. I'll protect your right to criticise what is said, but if you say hateful shit about an entire people grouped together only by their religion, you should be called out on it in a way that matters, from a shared position of social authority, not by some other chump in a comment thread.

I'm not "attacking" the argument so much as disagreeing with the concept it relays: the implication that certain forms of hateful speech should be policed (in a manner similar to the way that hateful/racist speech is prohibited). A reduction of that would be the implication that banning hateful speech in any way accomplishes a greater good, which is something I just fundamentally disagree with.

The end result of banning this sort of speech, in any kind of legislated way, could easily be confused to create anti-blasphemy laws.

You run into problems when you try to legislate "hateful shit being said about an entire people grouped together only by their religion." If we prohibit that, we lose the ability to call Scientology a brainwashing scam. What constitutes "hateful?" If you imply that Scientologists are brainwashed and that the religion is a money-making scam cult, you are making a sweeping condemnation of the believers in that religion.

And even then, in the UK, they were arresting people for protesting the church of Scientology, actively stopping people from carrying signs which called it a cult. Where do you draw the line, and how is this sort of speech not already impaired in the UK?

That's the problem: there are no consequences for it.

There are many consequences for being a bigot, even if the consequences are not directly enacted by a governing power. For starters, you could easily lose your job and subsequently become unemployable.

You can make hateful threats towards Muslims all the live long day and there is no repercussion for you

But legitimate threats, or even veiled implications of potential violence, are legally prohibited. For good reason.

People like us argue about whether what it is the bigots are doing is actually a thing or not, meanwhile people are being assaulted in the streets for wearing a hijab or having their windows broken or vandalized with "terrorist" scrawled on them for praying at a mosque. Don't call it Islamophobia, though, I guess?

And this is disgusting, and a result of ignorant thinking, and that's a problem. You can call it "Islamophobia" if you feel the term applies, but you cannot deny that it is freely thrown about to criticize people for saying things that are nowhere near the nature of what you're suggesting.
@Sutekh brings up an interesting comparison to the use of the word anti-semite to identify people who hold bigoted hateful feelings towards Jews. He's got a point, but yes, that word gets thrown around a lot to attack people who are not pro-Israel. Even then, at least, it is rarely used to identify people who feel that horribly interpreted Judaism, or to note that some Judaic theocracies are dangerous.

When people attack people using these terms though, to basically disarm a point they might be making, that's the danger. If we want to identify it solely in the sense that you present it, yes, that's a problem that needs addressing. We can call it whatever we want. But the people who are really concerned about that issue should be the first people to defend others against baseless extensions of that accusation, and that's not something I see happening really.