“Islam is a belief system, not a race”. Exactly and thank you for another excellent article. Free speech is currently under threat on numerous fronts but I’d say that this one and gender ideology pose the greatest threats to free speech and in the case of gender ideology, our freedom of belief as well. I suggest that everyone joins the Free Speech Union. We’re going to need its support if we’re going to defend our hard won freedoms….what’s left of them.
It’s remarkable, in a country where Big Brother and Room 101 are long-established staples of popular entertainment, that Orwell’s warnings about the subversion of language by government are not better understood. It’s obvious what they’re doing and you call it out brilliantly, but there are still idiots - among politicians as well as the people - who unthinkingly bandy about terms like Islamophobia and transphobia as if they’re catch-all responses to points of legitimate debate.
Thank you for a Friday night dose of sanity. Now for an evening with Julie and Kathleen, wine and pizza. I don’t know how I’d survive without the regular input from sane people.
It's clear that the authorities in the UK know they can't control Islamists, the political end of extremist Islam. If they were just honest, we could start to address the problem, it certainly seems to be quite a pressing topic all things considered.
Instead they're policing those who are risking their lives standing up to it. Iranians in the UK are being targeted by the Iranian regime, Islamists of all stripes and white western cowards. This is an insufferable state of affairs and I'm ashamed of my country for it.
It strikes me that there is a madness sweeping through Western society like a slow burning virus that has the effect of making people see unreality as reality. As it increasingly infects political, social, educational and legal systems it captures more and more minds that unquestionably accept the pseudo-reality and become antagonistic and hostile to those that don't until they surrender and embrace the new truth. If this were a Hollywood movie, they might call it "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"!!!!!!
Have you read Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy Inc? She makes a persuasive case about how the autocracies around the world support each others’ messaging and how Putin and others are impacting what is seen as reality in the west. There are useful idiots from both the left and right willing to unthinkingly repeat and amplify disinformation.
A phobia is a fear. Are we surprised that islamophobia exists when a large minority of the followers of Islam are bent on massacring us?
Let us respect the majority of Muslims who are humane, but we have to fear the large minority who are anything but. It would be nice if the law could take away our fear but it cannot. If islamophobia is to cease the good Muslims must put in end to the terrible and barbarous deeds of their fellow Believers.
What particularly concerns me is that we are being encouraged to respect, even to defer to, a religion that believes it is God's will that they should put to death anyone that offends them or their religion. Christians on the other hand, if they ever believed this, and never with the fanaticism of the Islamists, gave that idea up hundreds of years ago. Bearing in mind that Mohammed lived several hundred years after Christ, we can reasonably expect the Muslim fanatics to abandon their primitivism and barbarity and become fairly civilised in due course, can we not?
Superb analysis! That APPG “definition” is a gobsmacker, an almost straight-up borrowing from the gender woo language guide playbook: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
"Muslimness" is clearly an invented term, modeled on "whiteness" or "blackness." I never even heard this word before. The idea of a "Muslim" race is the creation of Western white people, the race identitarians who see everybody in their own image. We live in an upside down world in which white-centered people obessesd wih everybody' s skin colour accuse everybody else of being racist. There is no "Muslimness." There are people who practice the religion of Islam, and they are called Muslim. They can be white, brown, black, whatever. Nothing to do with race.
As a Terf, free speech is essential but it is essential to all of us if this is really a democratic society and not turning into an authoritarian state.
Lord Justice Sedley in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions [1999] EWHC Admin 733:
'Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having. What Speakers' Corner (where the law applies as fully as anywhere else) demonstrates is the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear.
From the condemnation of Socrates to the persecution of modern writers and journalists, our world has seen too many examples of state control of unofficial ideas.'
And then there's "gynephobia," another completely meaningless word, which is why we don't use it. We call it violence against women (VAW) and misogyny. It happens every hour of every day in every country. Why should we privilege as a class its biggest perpetrators?
“Transgender rights are human rights” I would suggest is representative of transphobia.
What the expression ignores is that women’s rights are also human rights. Ditto for any other human. Rights are linked to responsibilities - if you want to drive a car you must first pass a test and conform to the Highway Code and avoid infringing other motorists rights to safe use of the road. Transgendered individuals must respect the rights of women . as must men. Should trans want their own equivalent spaces, fair enough and society must provide them without infringing on other’s spaces.
If we’re going down the blasphemy route to prevent hurty words, surely this has to capture all religions not just protect the Muhammad-ins. Off the top of my head, Christianity given that’s our national religion and rock bed of our culture, tradition, laws, etc., or say Judaism given the persecution they have and continue to receive from elements of the “British citizens” amongst us.
Hear, hear. I constantly have to call out this conflation of belief and race. I also remember a column by Matthew Parris about "Islamophobia" in which he wrote: "religious and political ideas are too important to be denied the public square". His piece ended "I fart in your general direction".
“Islam is a belief system, not a race”. Exactly and thank you for another excellent article. Free speech is currently under threat on numerous fronts but I’d say that this one and gender ideology pose the greatest threats to free speech and in the case of gender ideology, our freedom of belief as well. I suggest that everyone joins the Free Speech Union. We’re going to need its support if we’re going to defend our hard won freedoms….what’s left of them.
It’s remarkable, in a country where Big Brother and Room 101 are long-established staples of popular entertainment, that Orwell’s warnings about the subversion of language by government are not better understood. It’s obvious what they’re doing and you call it out brilliantly, but there are still idiots - among politicians as well as the people - who unthinkingly bandy about terms like Islamophobia and transphobia as if they’re catch-all responses to points of legitimate debate.
Thank you for a Friday night dose of sanity. Now for an evening with Julie and Kathleen, wine and pizza. I don’t know how I’d survive without the regular input from sane people.
It’s like an exorcism isn’t it?
What about Hinduophobia or Sikhophobia? I'm sure these folk get a fair amount of racial abuse too.
It's clear that the authorities in the UK know they can't control Islamists, the political end of extremist Islam. If they were just honest, we could start to address the problem, it certainly seems to be quite a pressing topic all things considered.
Instead they're policing those who are risking their lives standing up to it. Iranians in the UK are being targeted by the Iranian regime, Islamists of all stripes and white western cowards. This is an insufferable state of affairs and I'm ashamed of my country for it.
It strikes me that there is a madness sweeping through Western society like a slow burning virus that has the effect of making people see unreality as reality. As it increasingly infects political, social, educational and legal systems it captures more and more minds that unquestionably accept the pseudo-reality and become antagonistic and hostile to those that don't until they surrender and embrace the new truth. If this were a Hollywood movie, they might call it "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"!!!!!!
Exactly. I spend each day in a state of bewilderment wondering what’s going on.
Have you read Anne Applebaum’s Autocracy Inc? She makes a persuasive case about how the autocracies around the world support each others’ messaging and how Putin and others are impacting what is seen as reality in the west. There are useful idiots from both the left and right willing to unthinkingly repeat and amplify disinformation.
A phobia is a fear. Are we surprised that islamophobia exists when a large minority of the followers of Islam are bent on massacring us?
Let us respect the majority of Muslims who are humane, but we have to fear the large minority who are anything but. It would be nice if the law could take away our fear but it cannot. If islamophobia is to cease the good Muslims must put in end to the terrible and barbarous deeds of their fellow Believers.
What particularly concerns me is that we are being encouraged to respect, even to defer to, a religion that believes it is God's will that they should put to death anyone that offends them or their religion. Christians on the other hand, if they ever believed this, and never with the fanaticism of the Islamists, gave that idea up hundreds of years ago. Bearing in mind that Mohammed lived several hundred years after Christ, we can reasonably expect the Muslim fanatics to abandon their primitivism and barbarity and become fairly civilised in due course, can we not?
Superb analysis! That APPG “definition” is a gobsmacker, an almost straight-up borrowing from the gender woo language guide playbook: “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness.”
"Muslimness" is clearly an invented term, modeled on "whiteness" or "blackness." I never even heard this word before. The idea of a "Muslim" race is the creation of Western white people, the race identitarians who see everybody in their own image. We live in an upside down world in which white-centered people obessesd wih everybody' s skin colour accuse everybody else of being racist. There is no "Muslimness." There are people who practice the religion of Islam, and they are called Muslim. They can be white, brown, black, whatever. Nothing to do with race.
Great piece, Andrew.
As a Terf, free speech is essential but it is essential to all of us if this is really a democratic society and not turning into an authoritarian state.
Lord Justice Sedley in Redmond-Bate v Director of Public Prosecutions [1999] EWHC Admin 733:
'Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having. What Speakers' Corner (where the law applies as fully as anywhere else) demonstrates is the tolerance which is both extended by the law to opinion of every kind and expected by the law in the conduct of those who disagree, even strongly, with what they hear.
From the condemnation of Socrates to the persecution of modern writers and journalists, our world has seen too many examples of state control of unofficial ideas.'
Have cross posted
https://dustymasterson.substack.com/p/this-is-ripley-signing-off
Dusty
And then there's "gynephobia," another completely meaningless word, which is why we don't use it. We call it violence against women (VAW) and misogyny. It happens every hour of every day in every country. Why should we privilege as a class its biggest perpetrators?
Andrew, you are a people-who-like-to-use-thought-terminating-cliches-ophobe!
“Transgender rights are human rights” I would suggest is representative of transphobia.
What the expression ignores is that women’s rights are also human rights. Ditto for any other human. Rights are linked to responsibilities - if you want to drive a car you must first pass a test and conform to the Highway Code and avoid infringing other motorists rights to safe use of the road. Transgendered individuals must respect the rights of women . as must men. Should trans want their own equivalent spaces, fair enough and society must provide them without infringing on other’s spaces.
If we’re going down the blasphemy route to prevent hurty words, surely this has to capture all religions not just protect the Muhammad-ins. Off the top of my head, Christianity given that’s our national religion and rock bed of our culture, tradition, laws, etc., or say Judaism given the persecution they have and continue to receive from elements of the “British citizens” amongst us.
Hear, hear. I constantly have to call out this conflation of belief and race. I also remember a column by Matthew Parris about "Islamophobia" in which he wrote: "religious and political ideas are too important to be denied the public square". His piece ended "I fart in your general direction".