Call Me an Islamaphobe

By Michael McBride
Saturday, May 19, 2007

Phobia, as described by Webster... “an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation.”

Foxnews.com picked up on an Arab News story coming out of the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC) in Islamabad, Pakistan on Thursday that describes Islamaphobia as “the worst form of terrorism” and the OIC was asking for steps world wide to curb it.

The OIC describes Islamaphobia as the “deliberate defamation of Islam and discrimination and intolerance of Muslims.” The OIC alludes to Islamaphobia as a concern well before 9/11…“Islamophobia became a source of concern, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, but the phenomenon was already there in Western societies in one form or the other…” They offer no specific examples.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that the variety of the world’s non-Muslim countries cultures’ mix with Muslim culture like water and oil, but prior to 9/11; in spite of dozens of aircraft hijackings and the murders associated with many of them, in spite of the 1972 Olympics; in spite of the Achille Lauro (1985), in spite of the first WTC bombings (1993), in spite of the bombings of the Khobar Towers (1996), in spite of the indiscriminate killing of hundreds in the US Embassy bombings (1998), in spite of the USS Cole (2000), Muslims were able to live peacefully throughout the world without fear, harassment, nor threat of persecution.

In fact it is nearly impossible to directly associate any link between 9/11 and an increase in crimes against Muslims in the US. The best accounting I can find is here at religioustolerance.org, where the outrageous attacks on Muslims after 9/11 translates to 3 dead, one beaten, some threats made, and some property damaged.

Seems pale in comparison of the carnage that lies in the wake of motivated Muslims…twelve innocents dead in Munich, one innocent dead on the Achille Lauro and dumped into the sea, six dead and over 1000 injured in the first WTC bombing, twenty dead and 372 injured in the Khobar Towers bombings, over two hundred dead and 4000 injured in the US embassy bombings, seventeen dead in the USS Cole attack. Add in 2973 dead in the 9/11 attacks, 191 killed and 2050 injured in the Madrid bombings in 2004, Theo van Gogh murdered in the streets of Amsterdam 2004, fifty-two dead and 700 injured in the London bombings of July 2005, several killed and property damage worldwide in the aftermath of the Danish cartoon scandal of 2006. By my count that is nearly 3500 innocent people killed by those purporting to be believers in the religion “of peace.”

Sorry if I am more afraid of Muslims than I am of, let’s say, you run of the mill yokel who made some anti-Muslim remarks on 9/12. Those serving the Prophet have a much higher kill ratio than the Christians, the secularists, the atheists, the agnostics, the Jews, and the Wiccans combined.

I am at a loss to figure out how being afraid of Muslims, because they happen to be the world’s largest generator of terrorists, is a greater form of terror than the actual terror than that which is being perpetrated by Muslims extremists on the rest of the world’s population nearly everyday of our lives. This is like castigating an assault victim for being afraid of their attacker.

The OIC is clearly engaging in a classic “desensitivization” and “relativism” spin in trying to compare the brutal savagery committed by Muslim Jihadists over the past 35 years to the actual fear generated by those attacks. They are attempting to carve inroads into and place limitations on, our rights to free speech. And they are seeking an exceptional governmental deference towards their religion. All of which flies in the face of logic when compared to the body count that extreme Islamic Jihadists have racked up. Muslims need to be held accountable for those murders, not venerated as victims.

Is it irrational to fear shoe bombs, dirty bombs, homicidal bombers, homicidal hijackers, anonymous Muslim car bombers, armed kidnappers, video-taping beheaders, truck bombers, airplane crashers, hotel bombers, train bombers, subway bombers, ship bombers, when all of these terror methodologies have been used or attempted in the recent past?

The OIC needs a little perspective. As the second leading inter-governmental organization, behind the UN, it needs to understand that by condemning “discrimination and intolerance,” but not condemning murder and terror, they prove themselves the second biggest hypocritical inter-governmental organization in the world, also still behind the UN. It is inconceivable that an organization supposedly speaking for 57 nations and various other interested parties, can berate other countries for discrimination, while providing no proof or significant harm, but then fail to mention in the least the devastation that has been wrought on the rest of civilized by society by Muslim extremists.

To have murderous behavior defended by oblique attacks on the societies that have been victimized by such attacks is ludicrous in the extreme. Moderate Muslims, if they are who they claim to be, cannot put the loathing of terror and it perpetrators in the same category of wonton murder and terror upon innocents.

If fearing terrorists, Jihadists, wahabists, etc. and et. al., because of their brutal and indiscriminate killing sprees, makes me irrational AND an Islamaphobe…then, I guess I am one.

And sorry OIC…the worst form of terrorism is indiscriminate murder, not “defamation and intolerance.”