What is Islamophobia, Exactly?

May 3, 2024 by Robert Arvay

Islamophobia is a technical word, the meaning of which is of little practical value.  The more colloquial meaning, however, has great impact.  It applies to people who see in Islam a threat.

Juan Williams, a well known liberal commentator on NPR, was fired in 2010 because of it.  His offense was that he told Bill O’Reilly, on national television, that he got nervous about being on an airplane where some of the passengers were identifiable, by their clothing, as Muslims.

Is Juan Williams an Islamophobe?  Does he wish to harm Muslims?  Is his nervousness irrational?  Unfounded?  Of course not.  He seems more likely to protest in sympathy with Gazans than to harm any Muslim out of animosity. 

Islamophobia is not fear; it is caution.  Jesse Jackson once confessed that he was in greater fear of fatherless young black men than he was of young white Christians.  Is he a blackophobe?  Or just realistic?

While the left would portray Islamophobia as a trait of white supremacists, there is one group that fears radical Islamism more than any other.  It is Muslims themselves.  Even in Gaza, a hotbed of Islamic extremism, there are many inhabitants who quietly fear — no, dread is the word — being summoned to a religious court on suspicion, mere suspicion, of having violated any of the myriad rules and regulations imposed by Hamas.  Islamic law is not known for leniency.  Punishments can be draconian, even deadly, for what we in the West consider minor offenses — or not offenses at all.  More Muslims are killed by Islamists than by any other group.

We in the West have foolishly, and dangerously, underestimated the threat that radical Islam poses to us.  In the mistaken notion that immigrants will be grateful to us for our benevolence, we have suffered immensely.  Even after the atrocity of 9/11/2001, we did not learn.  Today, in 2024, we see the ludicrous spectacle of college students marching under the banner of “Gays for Gaza.”  Their denialism would be instantly fatal in Gaza.

Time for a bit of sarcasm.  I feel strangely obliged to point out that “not all Muslims are...” are what?  Suicide bombers?  Even I have been subliminally affected by the fear of being accused of Islamophobia, racism, misogyny, or anti-leprechaunism.  Some of my best friends are leprechauns.

The threat of radical Islam is real, and it is made more consequential by the error of “tolerance” that the left has foisted on us, the error that gives rise to the diversity, inclusion, equity policies that are ruining society. 

While some college presidents defend their antisemitic policies on grounds of “context,” we need to exercise a saner version of contextualism, in the interpretation of our Constitution.  Those who wrote our founding documents, who fought and died for it, did so in the context that freedom is not the same as libertinism.  Freedom is not mere license; it is a heavy responsibility, grounded in faith in our Creator.  As Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson once famously asserted, “The Constitution is not a suicide pact.”

We may not be, specifically, a denominationally Christian nation, but our founding principles are vastly more Christian than they are Islamic, Hindu, or Buddhist.  Failure to recognize that, and to respect it in law and in jurisprudence, is at the heart of our present disunion.

Officially declaring that fact will certainly offend our Islamist neighbors, but it will almost as certainly help preserve our constitutional republic.