Israel Matzav

Islamophbia?

Of course we all know what a phobia is — an irrational fear. It comes from the Greek phobos, meaning “fear” or “morbid fear.” Common ones are acrophobia (heights) and agoraphobia (crowds).

With very minor exceptions, I have seen little irrational fear of Islam in our society. What I have seen is a lot of serious and justifiable dislike of the religion for its ideology — notably its heinous treatment of women and homosexuals and its opposition to the separation of church and state, all codified by its all-encompassing Sharia law that seeks to legislate all facets of existence while instituting a global caliphate.

Nevertheless, soi-disant liberals and progressives or whatever they want to call themselves accuse those who dislike Islam for those reasons of irrational fear. That’s like having an irrational fear of totalitarianism. Ironically, it could also be construed, according to those same progressives, as an irrational fear of their own professed liberal values.

Crazy, no? La vie a l’envers. Life upside down.

We are back in the days of the ACLU defending the Nazis marching in Skokie, except the situation is quite different. In those times, the number of Nazis in Illinois was minuscule and the likelihood of a return to the Third Reich remote. Today there are 1.5 billion adherents of Islam, 21% of the world’s population. Achieving a global caliphate is not entirely unlikely. Irrational fear or ideological battle?

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 4:14 AM