The Prophet (ﷺ) said, “If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.” (Sahih al-Bukhari, Hadith 3017)
In August 2024, three children were brutally murdered by Axel Rudakubana, a 17-year-old male of Rwandan descent, in Southport, England. Given the countless jihadist atrocities that have been committed on British soil over the past 20 years, before the attacker could be identified, many people concluded that this was the latest case of Islamic terrorism. Armed with this understandable (though as yet unproven) assumption, these aggrieved Britons promptly took to the streets to express their anger. Regrettably, these protests would soon spiral into mindless violence – including attacks on mosques and asylum centres, which we at the Alliance of Former Muslims fiercely condemn.
In response to this, the newly-elected Labour Government reiterated its plans to enshrine an official definition of “Islamophobia” in English law, and announced that it was considering adopting the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims’ controversial definition. This should be of extreme concern to apostates from Islam, critics of Islam, counter-extremist activists, secularists and anyone who believes in freedom of speech: for since its inception, the term ‘Islamophobia’ has been used to silence criticism of Islam and Muslim behaviours by equating such criticism with racial abuse. The proposed legislation constitutes a serious threat to the lives of ex-Muslims, who are already in a precarious position in the United Kingdom.
Consider the case of Nissar Hussain, an ex-Muslim convert to Christianity and a father of six. In 2015, when it became known in Bradford that Nissar had renounced Islam for Christianity, members of the Muslim community began violently threatening him and his family. After months of this abuse from the disciples of Islam – including staging mock executions in full view of his home – in November 2015, they set upon him with a pickaxe and a baseball bat as he was exiting his car, beating him half to death. In the end, Nissar and his family were forced to permanently vacate their Bradford home and leave the area under armed police escort. In a VICE documentary on the dangers of leaving Islam, Nissar shares his thoughts on this horrific attack:
Another Ex-Muslim who has faced persecution is Hatun Tash, a Christian preacher. Tash regularly debates Islam at Speakers’ Corner and frequently suffers for it. During one exchange in July 2021, she was brutally stabbed by a man wearing a black Islamic robe who was aiming at her neck. In June 2022, Hatun had her copy of the Qur’an stolen at Speakers’ Corner; yet the police arrested her and not the thief. As Hatun was frog-marched into a police van, the mob of Muslims mocked her and chanted “Allahu Akbar”. After being strip-searched, questioned at 4am and detained for 15 hours, Hatun was finally released without charge. To quote Tim Dieppe, writing for Spiked, on this obscene injustice and the two-tier policing that it betrays:
The problem here is that the police seem to think that Tash offending a certain group of people is more of a crime than assault or robbery. In the name of protecting Muslims from offence, the police seem only too happy to stomp all over freedom of speech – even at Speakers’ Corner, a site associated with freedom of expression for over two centuries.
Given that Tash is frequently arrested for her speech, while those who assault and abuse her are treated as victims, it’s difficult not to see this as yet more evidence of two-tier policing. Not that more evidence is needed. Since October 7th, the reality of two-tier policing has become all too clear. We have seen police look the other way while anti-Israel protesters call for jihad or chant antisemitic slogans. Yet in recent years we’ve seen multiple examples of Christians being arrested merely for preaching gospel truths.
The cases of Nissar and Hatun illustrate the dangers facing ex-Muslims in the U.K. By seeking to criminalise “Islamophobia”, the Government threatens to exacerbate our suffering. While Lord Khan, the new Faith Minister, has recently warned that the APPG’s definition of Islamophobia is “not in line with the Equality Act 2010, which defines race in terms of colour, nationality and national or ethnic origins”, the threat persists: for given the rampant Islamophilia within the Labour Party (it continues to embrace the repugnant Naz Shah, MP for Bradford, who apparently endorses silencing victims of Muslim rape gangs), it is entirely possible that the Government will revise the Equality Act 2010 in order to extend the definition of race to religion.
If “Islamophobia” becomes a criminal offence, ex-Muslims like me could be prosecuted for sharing our stories of abuse from the Muslim communities we grew up in, while historians could be prosecuted for writing about Islamic imperialism. From the pulpit to Parliament, Islamofascists are absolutely determined to silence criticism of their religion. Thus, if we wish to preserve our fundamental freedoms, then we simply cannot afford to be complacent. To quote Benjamin Jones of the Free Speech Union:
By far the most dangerous threat on the horizon for ex-Muslims (and many other people besides) is the definition of ‘Islamophobia’ being advanced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims. This definition, among other things, brands as Islamophobic anyone who makes “mendacious, dehumanising, demonising or stereotypical allegations about Muslims”.
How does that leave the ex-Muslim who draws a link between the treatment he or she suffered and the treatment suffered by tens of thousands of others? Would drawing an adverse inference about the entire religion from this overwhelming data be branded as Islamophobic on the basis of stereotyping? If translated into law, as seems possible under a new Government, ex-Muslims’ strident criticisms of Islam and elements of the Muslim communities they grew up in could well be criminalised as hate crimes.
The definition would also prohibit “claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword”. Which again, if translated into law, could easily criminalise Iranian dissidents who celebrate and mourn pre-Islamic Persia, or mainstream historians like Tom Holland who have written about the early Islamic conquests and the wars of Muhammad’s followers against the Eastern Roman Empire. …
Ex-Muslims are in the unenviable position of being canaries in the coal mine for the rest of us: if ex-Muslims cannot speak freely then none of us can. If they cannot criticise or satirise religion, nobody else is safe to. Their warnings should be heeded most urgently.
According to the APPG’s definition, as stated on the Labour Party’s website, “accusing Muslims of being a fifth column” constitutes Islamophobia. But the fact is that there are groups of Muslims in the West who intend to overthrow democracy and enforce Sharia law. Many of these groups make their intentions explicitly clear. Take a look at this recent recording of Muslims in Germany, openly stating that when Muslims become the majority, they will take over the country by force:
This article is a rebuke to Islamophiles in the U.K. Government and to all those who perpetuate the sinister myth of “Islamophobia”. This includes the Irish Government, which has only just backed down from its five-year long crusade to criminalise “hate speech” – a revival of the blasphemy laws abolished in 2018. This article is also a rallying cry for all those who believe in democracy and human rights to resist the threat of Islam – a violent, totalitarian, supremacist ideology. Let us rediscover the confidence to defend Western civilisation and protect it from the barbarism of Sharia while we still can. To quote Alan Johnson, editor of Fathom:
Fear of being called “Islamophobic” trumps almost everything in the U.K.: see: Rushdie, Rotherham, Amess, this [Muslim antisemitism]. And Labour’s upcoming Blasphemy-Law-under-another-name will make everything even worse. It’s as if we have lost that basic confidence in ourselves, that core self-respect that would allow us to effectively defend our liberal democratic values, our sense of “the way we do things here” without terrifying ourselves that we must be bad people for doing so.
Phobias and Fallacies
In today’s world, it is scarcely possible to speak out against the jihadist threat without being accused of “Islamophobia”. In recent months, we have witnessed many high-profile cases of this. Let us run through them, beginning at home.
In August 2024, army chaplain Father Paul Murphy was stabbed multiple times in County Galway by a 16 year-old male, who was apparently radicalised online by ISIS. Fortunately, Murphy managed to survive this vicious attack. Unfortunately, the response of the Irish Government and media to this terrorist incident has not been to address jihadist elements in Ireland, but to caution against “Islamophobia” and to attempt to shift the blame to the far-Right. To provide but one example of this appalling cowardice, in an article for the Irish Times on the attacks, Conor Lally mentions the far-Right several times, but never once mentions Islam.
In the U.K., merely identifying the Islamic nature of proscribed terrorist groups gets you charged with “Islamophobia”. In February 2024, for his entirely accurate description of Hamas as “Islamist murderers and rapists”, Lord Ian Austin was accused of Islamophobia and subsequently suspended as chair of Midland Heart, a Birmingham-based housing association, which has since held meetings to “discuss his removal from the board”. The former Labour MP’s post on X rightly ridiculed the United Nations Relief and Works Agency’s (UNRWA) preposterous claim that it was unaware of the Hamas operations centre beneath their offices in Gaza, saying:
Everyone, better safe than sorry: before you go to bed, nip down and check you haven’t inadvertently got a death cult of Islamist murderers and rapists running their operations downstairs. It’s easily done.
In the same month, then Conservative MP for Ashfield Lee Anderson accused Sadiq Khan, the current Mayor of London and Labour MP, of being controlled by Islamists. This charge wasn’t wholly without foundation: Khan has long been associated with individuals and groups known to be involved with Islamic terrorism. In fact, the evidence for Khan’s extremist ties is so extensive that I must reserve it for a separate article. For now, let us content ourselves with just two examples.
In 2003, Sadiq Khan shared a stage with Sajeel Abu Ibrahim, a member of the proscribed group Al-Muhajiroun and a convicted terrorist, who ran a camp in Pakistan which trained Taliban militants and the Al-Qaeda 7/7 bomber Mohammad Sidique Khan. Also speaking at the same event was Yasser al-Siri, a terrorist who has been sentenced to death in absentia by Egyptian authorities for the attempted assassination of then Prime Minister Atef Sedki, which left a 12 year-old girl dead.
In 2008, it was revealed that Khan consulted for the legal defence of convicted 9/11 plotter Zacarius Moussaoui. While Khan may not have been involved in the court trial or the defence during the sentencing phase, he was absolutely part of Moussaoui’s legal defence team early in the case. Moussaoui was ultimately extradited to the United States, where he plead guilty to conspiring to kill citizens as part of the 9/11 attacks. He is currently serving six life sentences without parole.
Despite these facts, political commentators and MPs from all major parties rushed to accuse Lee Anderson of “Islamophobia”. He promptly had the whip removed by then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, and now sits as an MP for Reform U.K. in Parliament.
In March 2024, Michael Gove was accused of “Islamophobia” for listing the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), CAGE and Muslim Engagement and Development (MEND) as examples of extremist organisations. In reality, MAB is closely associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, a fascist organisation which has committed atrocities against Coptic Christians in its pursuit of a new Caliphate; CAGE has a history of defending individuals accused of terrorism, such as Jihadi John (Mohammed Emwazi), whom CAGE director Asim Qureshi has praised as “a beautiful young man”; and MEND has hailed the “impressive performance” of the Taliban, ignoring its brutal oppression of women in Afghanistan – including public floggings and stonings.
Later in March, the Muslim news presenter Mehdi Hasan labelled Richard Dawkins as an “Islamophobe” for stating his preference for Christianity over Islam. (This is the same paragon of virtue who has likened non-Muslims to animals and gay people to paedophiles.) However, Dawkins is absolutely right to favour Christianity over Islam: for whereas the former only became violent and imperial after it was made the official religion of the Roman Empire, the latter has been violent and imperial from day one. Muhammad adopted the ancient Arabian bloodsport of the razzia (caravan raids) as his primary means for spreading Islam; he rallied his followers under this banner (jihad) to fight for world dominance. To quote the historian Efraim Karsh at length:
Styling himself the “Seal of the Prophets”, sent by God to pass his ultimate message to humankind, Muhammad expanded Islam from a purely Arab creed to a universal religion that knew no territorial or national boundaries. He also established the community of believers, or the umma, as the political framework for the practice of this religion in all territories it conquered; and he devised the concept of jihad, “exertion in the path of Allah”, as he called his god, as the primary vehicle for the spread of Islam. Muhammad introduced this concept shortly after his migration to Medina as a means to entice his local followers into raiding the Meccan caravans, developing and amplifying it with the expansion of his political ambitions until it became a rallying call for world domination. As he told his followers in his farewell address: “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah.’”
In doing so, Muhammad at once tapped into the Middle East’s millenarian legacy and ensured its perpetuation for many centuries to come. From the first Arab-Islamic empire of the mid-seventh century to the Ottomans, the last great Muslim empire, the story of Islam has been the story of the rise and fall of universal empires and, no less important, of imperialist dreams. Politics during this lengthy period was characterised by a constant struggle for regional, if not world mastery in which the dominant power sought to subdue, and preferably eliminate, all potential challengers. …
It is true that this pattern of historical development is not uniquely Middle Eastern or Islamic. Other parts of the world, Europe in particular, have had their share of imperial powers and imperialist expansion, while Christianity’s universal vision is no less sweeping than that of Islam. The worlds of Christianity and Islam, however, have developed differently in one fundamental respect. The Christian faith won over an existing empire in an extremely slow and painful process, and its universalism was originally conceived in purely spiritual terms that made a clear distinction between God and Caesar. By the time it was embraced by the Byzantine emperors as a tool for buttressing their imperial claims, three centuries after its foundation, Christianity had in place a countervailing ecclesiastical institution with an abiding authority over the wills and actions of all believers.
The birth of Islam, by contrast, was inextricably linked with the creation of a world empire and its universalism was inherently imperialist. It did not distinguish between temporal and religious powers, which were combined in the person of Muhammad, who derived his authority directly from Allah and acted at one and the same time as head of the state and head of the church. This allowed the prophet to cloak his political ambitions with a religious aura and to channel Islam’s energies into its instrument of aggressive expansion, there being no internal organism of equal force to counterbalance it.
Whereas Jesus spoke of the Kingdom of God, Muhammad used God’s name to build an earthly kingdom. He spent the last 10 years of his life fighting to unify Arabia under his reign. Had it not been for his sudden death on June 8th 632, he would have most probably expanded his rule well beyond the peninsula. Even so, within a decade of Muhammad’s death, a vast empire, stretching from Iran to Egypt and from Yemen to northern Syria, had come into being under the banner of Islam in one of the most remarkable examples of empire-building in world history. Long after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the abolition of the Caliphate in the wake of World War I, the link between religion, politics and society remains very much alive in the Muslim and Arab worlds.
If Christendom was slower than Islam in marrying religious universalism with political imperialism, it was faster in shedding both notions. By the 18th century, the West had lost its religious messianism. Apart from in the Third Reich, it had lost its imperial ambitions by the mid-20th century. Islam has retained its imperialist ambition to this day.
While critics of Islam are accused of harbouring the worst prejudices, its mainstream proponents unabashedly proclaim its violent and imperial nature. Here is Mohammed Hijab, a prominent Muslim influencer, making it plain for all the world to hear:
In August 2024, in the wake of the civil unrest following the murder of three children in Southport, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was quick to blame social media for whipping up violence. Not content with accusing the rioters of “Islamophobia”, Starmer urged the state authorities to prosecute people for saying supposedly inflammatory things online. As a result, a man was jailed for 18 months for chanting “Who the fuck is Allah?”, thus implementing Islamic blasphemy laws by proxy.
To ex-Muslims and other victims of Islamic oppression, it is quite bizarre that criticism or ridicule of Islam should be considered phobic, for a phobia is an irrational fear of something. It is anything but irrational to fear Islam, which mandates death for blasphemy, homosexuality (through burning or stoning), adultery (including pre-marital sex), and of course, apostasy. Sharia law dictates that if an individual merely changes one’s mind about Islam, he or she must be put to death:
Furthermore, the Qur’an demonises non-Muslims as “the worst of creatures” and mandates war against them until they either convert to Islam or pay the jizyah – that is, to pay protection money to their Muslim conquerors or be killed. These evil ideas are precisely what underpin the murder of Christians and suspected blasphemers in Pakistan. Take a look at this video from Sargodha in May, in which a furious Muslim mob attacks the home of a Christian man having already killed him moments earlier:
In September, a self-righteous Muslim mob in Bangladesh lynched a 15-year-old Hindu being detained at a police station for allegedly making blasphemous comments about Muhammad on social media. In the video below (warning: graphic), the baying crowd intimidates the boy before spilling his blood, with the police doing nothing to stop them. After killing him, the mob celebrates their victory, chanting “Allahu Akbar”. This is Islam in action, and there is nothing “phobic” about fearing this:
Neither is it “racist” to fear or dislike Islam, for Islam is a religion, not a race. To criticise Islam, therefore, is not a comment on any race. Islam is an idea, not an immutable characteristic; and like all ideas, it must be open to criticism, if we are to properly evaluate it and make progress. Indeed, it is impossible to separate the cultural and economic stagnation of the Muslim world from the calcification of Islam over the past thousand years. In the ever-sensible words of Richard Dawkins:
A religion is something you can convert to, or opt out of. Your race isn’t like that. You can’t convert to a race or leave it. (That’s if race is a meaningful concept at all.) … The fact that you can’t leave your race means that, if Islam is indeed a race, apostasy is literally impossible. Yet apostasy has to be possible in Islam or it couldn’t be punishable by death. So the statement that Islamophobia is a form of racism is more than just incorrect. It contradicts a fundamental, and incidentally obnoxious, tenet of Islam.
To characterise criticism of Islam as racist, dear reader, is to suggest that Muslims are inherently bound by it, as if it were in their blood. This is not only objectively false, as the existence of ex-Muslims proves, but profoundly bigoted itself, for it assumes that Muslims have no agency; it assumes that Muslims are too uncivilised to rise above the misogyny, homophobia, antisemitism and supremacism of Islam. To quote the once-sane Maajid Nawaz on the racism of judging minorities by a lower standard:
It’s what I call the racism of low expectations: to lower those standards when looking at a brown person if a brown person happens to express a level of misogyny, chauvinism, bigotry or antisemitism and yet hold other white people to universal liberal standards. The real victim of that double standard are the minority communities themselves because by doing so we limit their horizons; we limit their own ceiling and expectations as to what they aspire to be; we’re judging them as somehow that their culture is inherently less civilized; and, of course, that we are tolerating bigotry within communities and the first victims of that bigotry happen to be those who are weakest from among those communities.
That fearing Islam is perfectly rational is not difficult to understand. Why then has the charge of “Islamophobia” become so ubiquitous? Why does it immediately follow the mildest criticism of Islam or Muslim behaviour? Simply put, because the term is an extremely useful political and ideological tool for bad faith actors. This is perfectly encapsulated in its definition by the late Christopher Hitchens: “Islamophobia: a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
Indeed, the term ‘Islamophobia’ is an invention of Iranian fascists, designed to silence criticism of Islam and Islamic fundamentalism by implying that such criticism is analogous to homophobia or xenophobia. When the likes of Mehdi Hasan accuse Richard Dawkins of “bigotry towards Islam“, they are deliberately conflating criticism of Islam with bigotry towards Muslims, as though the two are the same. The ultimate goal here is to criminalise blasphemy against Islam in the West.
At the same time, spineless and self-serving politicians use the term ‘Islamophobia’ to prove that they aren’t racist, to court Muslim votes and to avoid offending (and thus being killed by) jihadists. We have witnessed this in Ireland: when two gay men were murdered in Sligo by jihadist terrorism in 2022, the response of the Irish political establishment was to deny that this was related to Islam. To quote the writer Lee Kern on the cowardice and stupidity of these snivelling politicians:
Admit you are cowards. You’re scared to talk honestly about Islamism because you’ve seen Islamists act like the most disgusting scum on Earth and it has bullied you into craven compliance. From 9/11 to Salman Rushdie to the atrocities committed by Hamas – you are doing everything you can to avoid offending them and having the spotlight turn on you. It’s pathetic and totally misplaced. The spotlight is on you. It’s always been on you because they despise and hate you for not being a Muslim. Stand up for yourself – and stop endangering the rest of us with your cowardly laundering of Islamist tyranny tactics.
To understand how the term ‘Islamophobia’ is designed to silence criticism of Islam, let us examine the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims’ definition of it. In 2018, the APPG produced a report in which it claimed that ‘Islamophobia’ includes “claims of Muslims spreading Islam by the sword or subjugating minority groups under their rule”. As the historian Tom Holland said at the time, “most Muslims, for most of history, would have been fine with these claims”. He continued:
The definition of Islam we are being given is of a liberalised, Westernised Islam – but Islamic civilisation is not to be defined solely by liberal, Western standards. Military conquest and the subjugation of minority groups have absolutely been features of Islamic imperialism.
We risk the ludicrous situation of being able to write without fear of prosecution about the Christian tradition of crusading or antisemitism, but not the Islamic tradition of jihad or the jizya.
In effect, if we were to accept the APPG’s definition of ‘Islamophobia’ and do our best to eradicate it, we would have to shut down every Islamic Studies department in Britain’s universities. It is plainly absurd, yet when the Muslim Council of Britain called for an investigation of “structural Islamophobia” in the Conservative Party, it had this definition in mind, which includes anyone saying anything that could conceivably fuel hostility towards Muslims, regardless of whether or not it’s true.
According to this definition, any journalist covering the murder, rape and forced conversions of Christians by jihadists in Ethiopia and their mass slaughter in Nigeria (over 8,000 killed in 2023 alone) is guilty of ‘Islamophobia’, as is any newspaper reporting that the majority of the men prosecuted for child sex offences in the Rotherham scandal are Muslims. But of course, it is precisely because these rapists view non-Muslim women as kuffar that they prey upon them, as this clip from BBC Newsnight makes clear:
Of the three major monotheistic groups, it is actually Christians who are the most oppressed, not Muslims. But the term ‘Christianophobia’ does not function – and that’s a good thing. If criticism of Christianity were considered phobic or racist, then Europe would probably still be in the Dark Ages. The term ‘Islamophobia’ serves to keep the Muslim world stuck in the seventh century and to gaslight non-Muslims who are concerned about the jihadist threat. In the words of fellow apostate Nonie Darwish:
While mainstream mosques and Muslim leaders across the globe are shouting jihad, death to America, death to the Jews, and encouraging Muslims to take over the West, our children are told that if you fear such threats, you are an “Islamophobe”. When Muslim schools and universities teach that apostates must be killed and that jihad is a permanent war institution against Jews, Christians and pagans, we are told to never dare interpret this as encouraging violence.
In a rebuke to the chronic Islamophile Anneliese Dodds – now Minister for Women and Equalities – Kemi Badenoch suggested using the term ‘anti-Muslim hatred’ to describe bigotry against Muslims, rather than the APPG’s ‘Islamophobia’, which exploits this bigotry to introduce blasphemy laws by the back door. Indeed, there is a fundamental difference between hating Islam – a supremacist ideology – and hating individuals who happen to follow Islam. To quote radicalisation expert Paul Stott:
Never conflate the concepts of ‘anti-Muslim hatred’ and ‘Islamophobia’. The first refers to an immoral and illegal discrimination against Muslim individuals because of their faith and identity; the second aims to censor any criticism of Islam as a system of tenets – many of which, in their orthodox interpretation, are incompatible with liberal democratic rules and values.
Complementing the APPG’s definition is the dubious but quasi-official ‘European Islamophobia Report 2022’ – a sample study of how the term is used by Islamists to discredit anyone who opposes their sinister agenda. Let’s take a look at some examples of this.
1. According to the report, it is “Islamophobic” for European history textbooks to examine the violent and oppressive nature of the Ottoman Empire, which occupied parts of Europe for 600 years between the 14th and early 20th centuries. In Bulgaria, for instance, which was occupied by Islamic imperialists for nearly 500 years, the authors complain that “history textbooks regarding the Ottoman period still preserve most of their Islamophobic characteristics”.
2. Concerning Finland, the report claims that it is “Islamophobic” for students to be required “to speak only Finnish at school”. But of course, in order for people to understand each other and build trust, it is vital that they share a common language. Islamists do not wish for their children to integrate with non-Muslims, whom they regard as wicked kuffar – that is the true reason for their objection. They do not want their children to befriend the kuffar, and thus object to them learning the native language.
3. Regarding France, the report asserts that it was “Islamophobic” for President Emmanuel Macron – whom the authors brand as “the world leader of Islamophobia” – to initiate a crackdown on political Islam, which seeks to abolish liberal democracy and the secular state and replace it with Sharia and an Islamic state.
4. Concerning Greece, the report contends that it was “Islamophobic” for the Greek Government to publicly state that “slaughtering animals without anaesthetising them is unconstitutional and should be forbidden”. To anyone acquainted with the barbaric and needless cruelty of halal slaughter, this is beyond absurd.
5. When it comes to Ireland – arguably the most Islamophilic country in Europe, given the popular support for Palestine – the report claims that it is “problematic” for Irish media outlets to “co-locate” the terms ‘Islamic’ and ‘terrorist’. The authors ought to read Rumiyah, the official magazine of ISIS, in which the terrorists clearly and logically explain the Islamic basis of their killing of Christians. (Essentially, Christians can be killed because they are guilty of shirk, i.e., idolatry; they can only save themselves via a dhimmah contract, paying the jizyah to live in subjugation.)
6. Concerning the Netherlands, the report alleges that job applicants who mention on their CV that they are active on the boards of Islamic organisations “have a reduced chance of getting invited to a job interview”. But of course, it is perfectly reasonable for employers to raise an eyebrow at applicants who sit on the board of fascist or proto-fascist organisations. All too often, Islamic mosques and ‘charities’ in the West are found to be promoting supremacist violence or financing terrorism. Take a look at this clip from the Al-Furqan Islamic Centre in Manchester, a registered charity, in which the speaker declares that Muslims can take married women who are “captured” in war as sex slaves, if they are disbelievers in Islam.
7. Finally, the report claims that the Russia-Ukraine war has “exposed double standards and racism” in the treatment of refugees. The war has shown “that Slovenia and the European Union have more sympathy and more political will to ensure the protection of those fleeing from Ukraine than for refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other crisis hot spots around the world”. But for the sake of social harmony, it makes sense for European countries to prioritise those refugees who are more aligned with their values – particularly after the surge in violent crime (including rape) following the mass intake of Syrian refugees into Germany in the late 2010s.
None of these are manifestations of “Islamophobia” or racism, but common sense. Alas, Islam is the great destroyer of sense. Take a look at this slice of wisdom from Kashf al-Asrar by the Ayatollah Khomeini, in which he provides commentary on the Qur’an. Expounding on verse 4:23 (“Forbidden to you are your mothers and daughters, your sisters”), Khomeini cautions his fellow Muslims against self-exertion and the use of reason, urging them to surrender to Sharia without question:
The allusion in this verse is that the Shariah is built on making oneself a servant, not on self-exertion; the canon of the religion is transmitted, not rationally derived; and the basis of the Sunnah is surrender, not looking for reasons.
Surrender is an easy road, its domicile flourishing, its goal the approval of the All-Merciful. Self-exertion and self-determination are a difficult road, their domicile in ruins, their goal unwholesome. Watch out! Jump away from the road of self-exertion and cling to surrender. Avoid self-determination and looking for reasons. Whatever the Shariah has declared forbidden, consider it forbidden – a consignment by the Desire, built upon the Will.
Conclusion
Speech, dear reader, is the vocalisation of thought. Attempts to control speech, therefore, are attempts to control thought. As George Orwell put it, “There is no swifter route to the corruption of thought than through the corruption of language.” In its deliberate blurring of anti-Muslim hatred and criticism of Islam, the term ‘Islamophobia’ is pure Orwellian propaganda. By bombarding us with it, the aim is to make us unable to discern the inconvenient truth about Islam. Thus, it is high time that we expunged this sinister term from our vocabulary. To finish with a succinct quote from philosopher Hannah Arendt on the nature of totalitarianism:
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.
Hitchens warned us!
Kareem Muhssin is lead writer and spokesman for the Alliance of Former Muslims, a support group for ex-Muslims based in Ireland. This article was first published on the alliance’s website.
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