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December 10, 2008
The Truth Phobia
Matthias Kuentzel, author of Jihad and Jew-Hatred, has an article in the Wall Street Journal about the troubling lurch into moral equivalence by Berlin’s Centre for Research on Antisemitism, which has equated Jew-hatred with Islamophobia. The Berlin centre is but the latest body to fall into this trap. People who are concerned about prejudice in all its forms, including many Jews, often make the false equation between the two – as Suzanne Reyto described here – without realising that the intellectual laziness and moral sloppiness involved lead directly to both a downgrading of real prejudice and a demonisation of the truth in order to bring about the suppression of that truth. Kuentzel writes:
The Berlin center adopts the neologism ‘Islamophobia’ without any reservation. This term is misleading because it mixes two different phenomena – unjust hatred against Muslims and necessary criticism of political Islam – and condemns both equally... It is right that the past obligates us to combat all racism. But the experience of the Holocaust contains a second lesson: It obligates us to combat the temptation of ‘truthophobia’ – fear of the truth – and to take literally the proclamations of anti-Semites, however crazy they may sound.
Certainly, there are people who are prejudiced against Muslims, just as there are people prejudiced against all kinds of “others.” Such prejudice should of course be vigorously combated. But as Kuentzel writes, that is not the same as criticising people who are waging holy war and the religious beliefs that fuel such murderous ambitions. A phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothing irrational about fearing the Jihad. There is nothing rational about fearing the Jews. Prejudice is based on lies. Telling the truth can never be a prejudice. Jews don’t go round deliberately blowing up innocents and attempting to overthrow secular rule by theocratic despotism. Islamists do; and furthermore, the Muslim world itself pumps out daily the vilest and incendiary Jew hatred, with Iran openly threatening a second Jewish genocide while denying the existence of the first. To equate all this with “Islamophobia” is not only to invert reality but effectively to diminish and even deny the existence of the true prejudice against the Jews.
Not surprisingly, therefore, it is being promoted by those who are guilty of Jew-hatred in order to silence discussion about that very phenomenon. Thus the global campaign being waged by the Organisation of the Islamic Conference to criminalise as ‘Islamophobic’ all criticism of Islam, sharia law or any deeds committed in their name, leading the UN to adopt resolutions calling for the prosecution of anyone making such criticisms and prohibiting any discussion in its own proceedings which could similarly be construed.
This is not only an explicit attempt at censorship through intimidation – it is also an example of totalitarian mind-bending. The fact that a number of Jews themselves along with other “progressives” and “anti-racists” have fallen for this exercise in manipulative malice just shows once again that, in the cause of evil, there is no limit to the supply of useful idiots who can be relied upon to assist.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributor Melanie Phillips is the author of the powerful and frightening “Londonistan” which can be purchased here, and she blogs at The Spectator.
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