“What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?”
This 2016 tweet from the late comedian Norm Macdonald isn’t just a perfect example of his trademark dry wit. No, it was a deeply prophetic analysis of what the West is becoming: a feckless society drowning under the obsessive worship of multiculturalism. Long gone are the days of good-hearted acceptance of others under a system of Western values. They’ve now been replaced by a naive society that pretends all cultures are equal, resulting in a potentially terminal failure to preserve our own civilization out of fear of being labeled “Islamophobic.”
There are people among us who would have you believe that you cannot and must not speak out against rape gangs in the United Kingdom, sexual assault sprees in Germany, or Islamic State-linked terrorism in the United States, or else risk being tarred-and-feathered as an Islamophobe who endorses some sort of inevitable backlash against nonradical Muslims.
Even the truth is being held hostage by radical Islam.
Of course, two things can be true at once. It is possible to condemn radical Islam without engaging in anti-Muslim bigotry against individual Muslims, or even Islam generally. But this reality is being ignored, allowing the phrase “Islamophobia” to be wielded as a rhetorical weapon to squash any criticism of radical Islam.
Ask yourself: Why are both examples of disgusting bigotry and thoughtful condemnation of Islamic terrorism lumped under the umbrella of “Islamophobia”? The answer is simple. The term “Islamophobia” has been deliberately selected to take full advantage of the same weakness satirized by Macdonald in 2016.
It’s not enough to reject any criticism of Islam, valid or invalid, as bigoted. It must be rejected as proof of a mental disorder, of craziness, of an irrational fear. Why? Because the irrational don’t deserve any attention.
When people categorize any and all criticism of Islam, an ideology that should be open to criticism in the same way as any other ideology, as a phobia, criticism is rejected without question. After all, when someone refuses to drink water because of hydrophobia, refuses to wash because of ablutophobia, or refuses to go outside because of heliophobia, do we waste our time trying to understand why water, bathing, or sunlight is actually dangerous?
It’s also no coincidence that radical transgender activists have employed the same strategy with “transphobia.” And like the label of transphobia, this goes far beyond an effort to stifle academic debate. Unlike the label of transphobia, however, “Islamophobia” is about one thing: rhetorical terrorism.
For radical Islamists, physical terrorism is but one of many arrows in their quiver. In many ways, rhetorical terrorism, the kind that keeps people silent out of fear of reprisal, is cheaper, cleaner, and far more effective.
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Unless we wake up and free ourselves of this fear and embrace a willingness to defend Western culture while rejecting actual bigots who seek to promote their own despicable hate of Muslim individuals, then Western culture has already lost, and we’ve been relegated to the sidelines as we watch the slow death of our own civilization.
Don’t let Macdonald’s joke become our reality.
Ian Haworth is a columnist, speaker, and podcast host. You can find him on Substack and follow him on X at @ighaworth.