What is Islamophobia?
Islamophobia is used to justify discrimination and violence against Muslims. Here's what you've been made to think.
Muslims hate our culture, freedom, and progress.
Muslims respect other cultures and expect the same in return, while the groups who manufacture this fear work to threaten Muslim freedom.
Portraying Islam as a foreign, incompatible culture frames Muslims as perpetual outsiders who are intolerant of others and seeking to remove their freedoms. Muslims have never threatened the freedoms granted by the American constitution, unlike other groups who manufacture fear of Muslims. That fear then denies Muslims right to their freedoms and culture.
Muslims are violent, dangerous, and support terrorism.
The portrayal of violent Muslims is used to justify forever wars abroad and excuse poor governance at home.
The image of Muslims as religious zealots with violent agendas excuses violence against them abroad and invasive policies of surveillance and profiling at home.
Muslims want to invade and impose Sharia Law.
Muslims want to contribute to society as equal partners, and portraying their engagement as imposing demotes them to second-class citizens.
Portraying Islam as an invading body frames Muslim participation in public life as manipulation, rather than civic engagement. Muslims are then treated as antagonized minorities and second class citizens who are unable to participate in their own government. Muslims have never threatened American constitutional rights or asked for their suspension, which is something that groups who manufacture the fear of Muslims have done.
Muslim men abuse and oppress women.
Muslim women have had rights and protections over a thousand years prior to Western nations.
The assumption that Muslim men are hostile and Muslim women need saving justifies cultural superiority, meddling in the affairs of Muslim countries in the name of “saving women”, and stereotyping gender roles. Islam protects women, and their protections are not a form of oppression. Denying a woman the protections that Islam gives her is a form of exploitation.
Muslims are blindly obedient to an illogical faith.
Islam does not ask for blind belief or to stop asking questions.
If people believe that Islam lacks spiritual depth or intellectual curiosity, then it assumes Muslims are incapable of reasoned thought, leading to irrational and unnecessary violence. This line of thought is often deployed to support the supposed rational and necessary violence of nation states attacking them. In reality, Islam does not ask for blind belief or to stop asking questions, nurturing a faith that is both spiritual and logical.
Miscellaneous
