Thursday, November 2, 2017

Talking About Islamophobia

So I've had this conversation with various people about ten thousand times for the last few years, as to what extent American/Western Muslims should be expected to speak out after each Islamist terrorist attack. Needless to say, most reasonable people don't expect every person to go out in public with condemnations, for obvious reasons. However, this is something that hasn't been said: to the extent that Muslim ORGANIZATIONS or individuals who take it upon themselves to claim to speak for any particular segment of the American Muslim population (or even for all of them), which is... odd, but whatever, choose to make statements on this issue on their own, what really comes off as fake sorrow if they equivocate about condemning the terrorism, by referencing either Israel, US public policy, events in other countries, or in some other way minimize the nature of this occurrence. And a big red flag for me is whenever ANYONE talks about Islamophobia or backlash immediately following the condemnation of the attack. 

The immediate question here is: "What is your real agenda, and who are you actually worried about?". I've seen this all the time. Even if you have any sort of evidence that leads you to believe that there MAY be this sort of backlash, hold that thought until, you know, the day after. Most of the time, however, there is zero evidence pointing towards mass anti-Muslim rampages in this country following such events. It just doesn't happen. So such comments make it clear that the speaker simply tries to divert from the issues by making Americans seem as bad as the terrorist. By the way, non-Muslims who do that, come across exactly the same way. And I see such people as facilitators of extremely dangerous trends. And also, I have yet to see any of these human rights defenders express any strong sentiments concerns after terrorist attacks happen in Muslim countries, and target minority mosques or other central locations. There is no concern about "backlash". Does that mean that only Americans are so hateful and biased that they could be suspected of hating on people they associate with the terrorist? This is sthe sort of thing that deserves the most vocal condemnation, but instead our media, poltiicians, and non-profits encourage this type of utterly hypocritical and unhelpful discourse.

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