Too many of us have taught ourselves to think of “Islamophobia” every time we’re asked a difficult question about Islam, or we don’t get past the job interview we went to wearing a hijab or a full beard, or even when someone raises an eyebrow about human rights in Saudi Arabia.
Words have power, and with power comes the responsibility to use them carefully. When a powerful word is tossed around with ease, there is a risk that its meaning will be devalued. From where I stand, the Muslim community is currently running that risk with the word Islamophobia.
It’s not that Islamophobia isn’t real. It is real, and I recognize that. People close to me have been victims of Islamophobic attacks, as have Muslims around the world. And I’m glad to see conversations about ways to combat Islamophobia happening both on and off-campus.
But as a Muslim, I’m concerned with the blind spots that the Muslim community and its allies against Islamophobia often fail to check when driving down the road toward a protest against irrational fear of a peaceful, productive group of people.
A great way to start checking these blind spots is to develop the habit of asking ourselves two questions whenever Islamophobia comes into the conversation. The first is whether what is being talked about really is rooted in an irrational fear of Islam or Muslims. Because to say that a person, incident, or movement is Islamophobic is to identify intent, and if you misidentify the intent, then you will not address the real cause of the situation. It might not actually be about Islam or Muslims. It might be about a sense of racial superiority, or the state of the economy, or a person’s mental health.
Of course, none of these explanations is an acceptable excuse for treating anyone in a hateful way. But this isn’t your common cold, either. If we base our diagnosis on what we feel are obvious symptoms, we run the risk of prescribing the wrong medicine and the real disease will never be cured.
The second question that needs to be raised, especially within the Muslim community, is whether we’re failing to check a blind spot when we bring Islamophobia into the conversation. It is very easy to get so engrossed in duly criticizing the Islamophobic attacks against you that you are no longer left with any time or energy to look inward and be self-critical. The internal challenges that the Muslim community face are just as pressing and as deserving of our attention as anything coming our way from outside.
This is the model for responding to external threats that I have come across again and again in my research into Islamic history. The best example is that of the early Muslim community under the leadership of Prophet Muhammad, who spent 13 years building up the community from within and then had to spend only 10 years eliminating the Islamophobic industry of their day.
The Muslim community remains a small minority in places where Islamophobia is said to be spreading, such as the United States. We may not have the financial and political muscle to really go up against the Islamophobic industry, but what we do have is the ability to be self-critical, to develop ourselves as a community, and to build strategic alliances.
Making a habit of checking our own blind spots first before thinking about the rowdy driving of others on the road should be our way forward.
Hassam Munir, Sports & Health Editor
?Featured illustration by Hassam Munir
