A law against Islamophobia is a terrible idea
To kill people in their place of worship is particularly revolting. It takes advantage of their peaceful assembly in order to take their lives. It identifies people who are praying as the enemy to be destroyed, simply because they are praying. It deliberately terrorises everyone, everywhere, who shares their faith.
So it is only natural that some reacting to the appalling massacres in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, have called for a law against “Islamophobia”. It is important to explain immediately why such a law would be a disaster.
Those advocating a legal definition of Islamophobia argue that it is the same as anti-semitism. It is not. Jewishness (except in the rare case of conversions to Judaism) is what you either are, or aren’t, by birth. Islam, however, is a religion.
Like Christianity, but unlike Judaism, Islam is a proselytising religion. It seeks to convert the whole of humanity. Therefore – again like Christianity – it inevitably enters the world of controversy in which its beliefs and practices are challenged. Muslims believe, for example, that Jesus was not crucified, and some call Christians cross-worshippers. Christians believe that Mohammed is not the last and greatest prophet of God. They have different scriptures. They can’t both be right, therefore they are bound to disagree. For both, their faith is, in principle, more important than life itself, so they will sometimes disagree passionately. Atheists think that both faiths are nonsense, so they want to argue too. None of this is “phobic”.
It is fatal, in our modern, plural civilisation, to seek to prevent or punish these disagreements. The art is to take the sting out of them. This does sometimes happen. Protestants and Catholics have long ago given up trying to kill one another about whether Christ is really present in the Eucharist. Neither side has abandoned its views, but both now realise that their hatreds over the issue were unchristian.
Christians have come to think more about what follows from believing in the same God, less about their differences. I believe this can happen – though it is harder – in the case of Judaism, Islam and Christianity. All three worhsip the same deity – the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob – although they dispute the interpretation.
When you define a “phobia” against a religion, and punish it by law, you may think you are protecting it and its followers from insult. In fact, you will provoke worse. According to the all-party parliamentary group chaired by Lady Warsi, “Islamophobia is rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness.” This false doctrine can turn almost anything into an offence. Think how it might be applied. A school tries to prevent Muslim girls coming to school with their faces completely covered. It does so, not because it has any view about Islam, but because it wants teachers and fellow pupils to be able to know the girls, and because it shares the modern Western view that boys and girls should be treated equally. It could, under the sort of law proposed, be accused of Islamophobia. The career of the head could be ruined. So could the education of all the pupils, veiled or unveiled. You can imagine similar confrontations breaking out about mixed-sex swimming, dietary issues, dancing or singing classes, science teaching and so on. Such rows are already sadly common.
With good will, the great majority of these issues can be managed. If you drag in the law, good will vanishes. You also empower those people who consider themselves the gatekeepers of their communities. This works against the values of an open society. There is a wide range of views within Islam about the “Muslimness” of women’s clothing, and no absolute rule about headwear. But, of course, it is not the moderate believers who make the most noise.
If the authorities allow “Islamophobia” to be outlawed, they will have to define what is Islamic. Since they will be incapable of doing so, they will turn to self-appointed authorities, who, given the current worldwide ferment within Islam, will usually be militant. Our daily life will then have to be negotiated with self-appointed Muslim leaders. The freedoms of all will be curtailed. The resentment which breeds extremism will grow.
An important problem is the likely fate of Muslims brave enough to challenge such leaders who claim to speak in the name of their faith. I recently had a conversation with a remarkable person, who lives in Berlin. She is called Seyran Ateş, and she is the imam and founder of what she calls an “inclusive” mosque. It has no denomination. It admits both sexes to pray together, “every legal sexuality” and people of all faiths and none. She hopes soon to open a “university of contemporary Islam”.
Seyran is fighting the trend by which mosques in Germany are coming under the control of the Muslim Brotherhood, the main engine of militant, political Islam, and are in league with, and funded by, President Erdogan of Turkey. Both are trying to organise German Muslims against the values of the society in which they live.
Needless to say, Seyran is often threatened with death. She has been under police protection for the past 12 years. How would such a brave woman fare in a country which ceded control of Muslims to their militants? I bet she’d be labelled Islamophobic.
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