Europe lurches to the Right

[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.