On Islamophobia: A Phillippic

We must, before anything else, agree that “Islamophobia” is entirely the wrong term. Americans do not fear Islam (phobos [φόβος] means “fear” in Greek); rather, we despise it.

• We see women who are not allowed to show their faces in public, and we are disgusted.
• We see countries which make possession of the Bible a capital offense, and we are offended.
• We see women who have suffered clitoridectomies to ensure that they will never have any pleasure from the sexual act, and we are appalled.
• We see the casual mutilation of (alleged) criminals and the grotesquely cruel execution of others (by decapitation, crucifixion, stoning, throwing down from high places, burning) – always to the cheers of crowds of Muslims, and we are shocked.
• We see an entire religion, half of the adherents of which fervently believe that leaving that religion should be punished by death, and we are incensed.
• We see that the only countries which still countenance slavery – and slavery of black Africans, at that, in, e.g., Mauritania and the Boko Haram–controlled areas of Nigeria – are Muslim, and we are outraged.
• We see cultures which use Islam as the justification for men to sodomize young boys, and our anger is overwhelming.

And all these atrocities are committed in the name of Allah and his Prophet. So what else can we conclude but that this is the sum total of Islam? There is nothing else; nor can anyone deny it. Islam is based on nothing other than violence and sexual slavery (what Nietzsche called the “Will to Power”) – it has no, and never has had any, other claim to our attention: no metaphysics, no love, no mercy, no good works, no science (save that which they stole from Greeks and Hindus), no engineering (save that which they have been given by the West), no philosophy, no theology, no law, no justice, no economic successes (again, save the questionable gift of petroleum technology from the West); at best, a few acceptable works of poetry and some calligraphy – from the time of its (false) prophet, who raped a nine-year-old “wife,” Aisha, to the present.

Stated simply, there can be no faithful Muslim – that is, one who believes that the Koran is the infallible Word of Allah – who does not enthusiastically endorse all manner of sexual perversion and violence. Make no mistake: the horrific crimes perpetrated by Muslims in Rotherham and throughout the world – especially in areas controlled by ISIS and other “radical” Muslim groups, but even in the great cities of Western civilization – are exactly what every Muslim man wishes to do everywhere, and would, were it not for the fear of punishment, which our oh-so-enlightened and politically correct leaders – in America, in Europe, and throughout the world – work tirelessly to shield them from.

Am I wrong? I would like to be wrong. But there is no evidence that any Muslim anywhere speaks against these inhuman abuses in the languages of the people guilty of them. And who can blame them, really? Writing something like this phillippic in Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, or Urdu would be a death sentence for anyone unfortunate enough to be a resident of a Muslim country. Some will point out that much lip service is paid to Western sensibilities in Western languages, and this is true, of course. But this can only be seen as a part of what Muslims call taqiyya: the idea that it is a moral good for Muslims to deceive the infidels. This is a fundamental part of the Muslim “faith,” if it can, indeed, be so called. And the prominence of taqiyya in Islamic thought does raise important questions for us – if we dare to face them – as we in the West deal with Islamic states and peoples.

But, nevertheless, we Americans are not afraid.

Instead, as John Sexton writes vis-à-vis ISIS, we long for a president, a government, and a culture which will make them afraid of us.