It’s possible to argue that anything the
Biden-Harris administration does in its final weeks in office is
irrelevant and may soon be overturned by President-elect Donald Trump
once he is sworn in next month. That may well apply to the announcement
last week of a “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab
Hate,” issued by the White House. It is nonetheless noteworthy because
it reinforces the myth about an American epidemic of anti-Muslim and
anti-Arab hate that is routinely published and broadcast by the
mainstream media. Equally important, it gives the imprimatur of
government approval to a false analogy to the very real problem of
antisemitism about which Biden and Harris also issued a “National Strategy” paper last year.
Any discussion of Islamophobia in America
must be prefaced by an acknowledgment that hatred directed against
racial, ethnic and religious minorities exists. And like any form of
prejudice that leads to discrimination or violence, it is deplorable.
Even as we condemn any act in which an
Arab or Muslim-American is targeted because of their ethnicity or faith,
it is essential to understand that the attention given to Islamophobia
is not being driven by anything that could accurately be described as a
crisis. Rather, it is part of a false narrative that seeks to divert us
from an unpleasant but vital fact about the subject. Most of what those
who promote this issue consider Islamophobia is not anti-Muslim or
anti-Arab hatred but merely criticism of Muslim and Arab hatred of Jews.
A fake problem
So, while the lame duck administration’s
report may be considered a pious affirmation of opposition to prejudice,
it doesn’t deserve even the tepid applause it has received. On the
contrary, it is a conscious effort to balance a genuine problem with one
that is bogus. And in doing so, it undermines the minimal and largely
ineffective efforts undertaken by the government to address the very
real surge in Jew-hatred that has been building in recent years and then
exploded after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on
Oct. 7, 2023.
The notion of an Islamophobia crisis in
the United States dates back to the aftermath of the terror attacks
carried out by Islamists on Sept. 11, 2001. Seeking to build a broad
international alliance against Muslim extremists, President George W.
Bush took pains to differentiate what he described as a “war on terror”
from a war against Islam. At every possible opportunity, he always
described Islam as a “religion of peace,” emphasizing that the efforts
to destroy Al-Qaeda and the subsequent military campaigns in Afghanistan
and Iraq were not a civilizational clash between the West and Islam.
This was technically accurate about the nation’s post-9/11 foreign
policy and security goals as well as a reflection of the basic decency
of both Bush personally and America’s modern political culture that
opposes religious prejudice.
But the harping on the “religion of peace”
line tended to obscure the fact that Islamist terrorism was not just
the bad behavior of a tiny minority. It was rooted in a widely popular,
though not universally supported, version of that faith that had
mainstream support in much of the Arab and Muslim world.
There were real-world consequences of this
effort. After 9/11, American corporate media and the nation’s cultural
institutions prioritized a message that seemed to treat American Muslims
as victims. That meant Hollywood largely avoided showing Muslims or
Arabs as the bad guys in films or television shows—the opposite of what
usually happened in the past when America was at war. It also buttressed
the claim that there had been a post-9/11 backlash against them in the
United States, despite the complete absence of any objective study or
statistics that might have backed up that assertion.
Indeed, when plans (that eventually fell
through) for the building of a Muslim community center and mosque in the
footprint of the fallen World Trade Center towers were announced in
2010, any objections about the insensitivity and bad taste of the idea
were deplored as a form of vile prejudice.
At the time, it was pointed out that the FBI’s statistics
about religious hate crimes debunked the idea of such a backlash.
Throughout the decade after 9/11, attacks on Muslims were dwarfed by
those against Jews. Though the numbers have moved up and down to some
extent in the nearly 15 years since then, antisemitic crimes continue to
vastly outnumber those that can be connected to Islamophobia.
Nevertheless, this fact has consistently been condemned by much of
mainstream liberal opinion as wrongheaded, if not prejudicial. Groups
that continued to promote the idea of a backlash, like the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), continued to gain influence rather
than being dismissed for being the source of misleading propaganda that
aimed to silence critics of Islamic Jew-haters.
False moral equivalence
That became obvious when CAIR was tapped
as an official consultant to the Biden-Harris effort against
antisemitism, though no Jewish groups were asked to give similar input
to the Islamophobia strategy. That this happened despite the group’s
origins as a political front for fundraisers for Hamas terrorists and
its embrace of antisemitic positions was shocking. But to an
administration seeking re-election that regarded Muslims and Arabs as
part of the Democratic Party’s base, it was simply good politics. Like
Bush’s “religion of peace” mantra, Biden and Harris never seemed able to
mention the explosion of antisemitism that happened on their watch
without reflexively including a mention of Islamophobia.
After the barbaric atrocities that
occurred when Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists infiltrated Israel
on Oct. 7, the administration’s obsession with Islamophobia could no
longer be dismissed as either meaningless or routine partisan politics.
As the report on Islamophobia that is part
of the new national strategy makes clear, Biden and Harris bought the
CAIR line that treated the situation on American campuses after Oct. 7
as one in which both Jews and Muslims were at risk. But there is no
moral equivalence between the rights of Muslims to advocate for the
genocide of Jews with the rights of Jewish students to be able to get to
classes and other areas on campus without being blocked, harassed or
even subjected to violence.
The situation of Jews and Muslims during
the last 14 months is not one of two groups experiencing discrimination
or threats. It’s the exact opposite, where the Jews have become the
victims of religious and ethnic harassment and assaults. And it is
Muslims—along with non-Muslim students, faculty and school employees who
subscribe to the toxic beliefs of intersectionality and critical race
theory that label Jews and Israelis as “white oppressors”—who are
attacking them.
Despite the seemingly innocuous claims of
opposition to religious prejudice in the Biden-Harris strategy paper and
those who applaud it, the whole point of the exercise is not what it
seems. It’s about silencing criticism of Muslim and Arab antisemitism,
and treating support for the destruction of the one Jewish state on the
planet and the genocide of its population as a reasonable point of view
rather than an expression of deplorable hatred that deserves
condemnation.
A new backlash myth
Groups like CAIR that purport to represent
Muslims and the Biden-Harris strategy paper both seem to be putting
forward a new myth about a post-Oct. 7 backlash against Muslims that is
even more shameless than the one about 9/11. Whereas the previous myth
merely promoted a false claim about Americans targeting Muslims, this
new one is actively seeking to deny the reality of a surge in Jew-hatred
among Muslims and Arabs while implicitly minimizing or even denying the
reality of a surge in antisemitism.
America is not yet like the Netherlands
or elsewhere in Europe where anyone, even government officials, who
point out that Jew-hatred is mainstream opinion in the Arab and Muslim
world can be subjected to prosecution for committing a hate crime. But
that is the ultimate goal of the discussion about Islamophobia. The
notion that Muslims are under siege when, in fact, they are the ones
engaging in hate speech and hate crimes, is problematic. It inevitably
leads to efforts to censor or sanction those who point out that those
who cry the most about Islamophobia are generally the same people who
defend or rationalize antisemitism.
Indeed, in addition to propping up the
myth—unsupported by any real data—of Muslims and Arabs facing widespread
prejudice, the Biden-Harris document also sounds an ominous note about
silencing critics of Islamism. It specifically calls for social-media
platforms to “de-rank and stop recommending” content that Muslim groups
oppose. In most cases, that references efforts by Jews and others to
highlight the way Muslims and Arabs have been promoting antisemitism.
That’s a throwback to the way this same administration colluded with
Silicon Valley oligarchs to de-platform critics of their repressive and
largely useless COVID-19 pandemic policies.
At this point, the clamor about
Islamophobia is no longer a politically correct, harmless talking point.
It is now part of a general effort to shut down discussion of the
engine of the all-too-real uptick in antisemitism.
President-elect Trump has a strong record
of support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism on college
campuses, as well as Islamist terrorists, and has been falsely branded
as a hate-monger by the left for doing so. But like any president, his
second administration will be eager to win over critics and voters of
all kinds and might be vulnerable to pressure to kowtow to the
Islamophobia myth in order to demonstrate that he wants to protect all
Americans. That would not only be wrong but would undermine his plans to
root out the woke diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) catechism that
is at the heart of the left’s war on American history and Western
civilization.
The Islamophobia myth needs to be rejected
not only by the federal government but by all institutions and persons
that claim to oppose the Jew-hatred that it seeks to cover up. There is
no moral equivalence between antisemitism and Islamophobia. Anyone or
any group that is truly willing to fight against anti-Jewish prejudice
must understand that such a stand is incompatible with efforts to
promote a false narrative about Muslims being the true victims of 9/11
or 10/7.
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