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A great article (long, so won't post it all here) on the politics of Islamophobia and the myths which underpin the Islamophobia. It defines what Islamophobia is (not the same a critical view of Islam) and looks at the history of the myths which Islamophobes have to use to justify their Islamophobia.

Here are some quotes from the article as a taster.
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The myths that he tackles are given as:

Three myths inherited from the era of the Crusades constitute the core of Islamophobia today: Muslims are inherently violent, Muslims want to take over the world, and Muslims can’t be trusted.

And he shows why these are myths.

He also brings out early on the curious fact that the surge in Islamophobic rhetoric came at a time when actual Islamophobic attacks were on the decrease:

Similar mythmaking continues today. The recent surge of Islamophobia in the United States has drawn strength from several extraordinary substitutions. A clearly Christian president has become Muslim in the minds of a significant number of Americans. The thoughtful Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan has become a closet fundamentalist in the writings of Paul Berman and others. And an Islamic center in lower Manhattan, organized by proponents of interfaith dialogue, has become an extremist “mosque at Ground Zero” in the TV appearances, political speeches, and Internet sputterings of a determined clique of right-wing activists.

This transformation of Islam into a violent caricature of itself — as if Ann Coulter had suddenly morphed into the face of Christianity — comes at a somewhat strange juncture in the United States. Anti-Islamic rhetoric and hate crimes, which spiked immediately after September 11, 2001, had been on the wane. No major terrorist attack had taken place in the U.S. or Europe since the London bombings in 2005. The current American president had reached out to the Muslim world and retired the controversial acronym GWOT, or “Global War on Terror.”

Islamophobia is, similarly, an irrational fear of Islam. Yes, certain Muslim fundamentalists have been responsible for terrorist attacks, certain fantasists about a “global caliphate” continue to plot attacks on perceived enemies, and certain groups like Afghanistan’s Taliban and Somalia’s al-Shabaab practice medieval versions of the religion. But Islamophobes confuse these small parts with the whole and then see terrorist jihad under every Islamic pillow. They break out in a sweat at the mere picture of an imam.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/11/ ... ontentBody

The Crusaders justified their violence by arguing that Muslims were bent on taking over the world. In its early days, the expanding Islamic empire did indeed imagine an ever-growing Dar-al-Islam (House of Islam). By the time of the Crusades, however, this initial burst of enthusiasm for holy war had long been spent. Moreover, the Christian West harbored its own set of desires when it came to extending the Pope’s authority to every corner of the globe. Even that early believer in soft power, Francis of Assisi, sat down with Sultan al-Kamil during the Fifth Crusade with the aim of eliminating Islam through conversion.

I love how the author compares armed conquest in the name of Islam to peaceful conversions and missionary work of Francis Assis, which the author claims was 'eliminating' Islam.

One wonders the little rant-'n-rave fit the author would have if someone were to claim that Muslims are seeking to 'eliminate' Christianity through peaceful conversions (wait, didn't the author just speak out against the 'vilification' of 'moderate' Muslims a few paragraphs above), let alone through armed conquest.

It seems that Leftist loons are entitled to spew their various crazy beliefs free of repercussion (perhaps because they are loons, and no one cares what they think), but if the highly demonized Robert Spencer, for instance, were to claim that Islam seeks to 'eliminate' other religions through, let's say, peaceful conversion, the victim merchants would come crawling out of the woodwork shrieking about 'Islamophobia' or some other nonsense.

It just goes to show the chasm of what is believed to be socially acceptable to say about Christians or Christianity compared to what is unacceptable to say if the same arguments are used against Islam or Muslims - claiming that those Muslims are seeking to destroy all other religions through peaceful conversions, then suddenly, Houston, we have a problem.

The Crusaders justified their violence by arguing that Muslims were bent on taking over the world. In its early days, the expanding Islamic empire did indeed imagine an ever-growing Dar-al-Islam (House of Islam). By the time of the Crusades, however, this initial burst of enthusiasm for holy war had long been spent. Moreover, the Christian West harbored its own set of desires when it came to extending the Pope’s authority to every corner of the globe. Even that early believer in soft power, Francis of Assisi, sat down with Sultan al-Kamil during the Fifth Crusade with the aim of eliminating Islam through conversion.

Today, Islamophobes portray the building of Cordoba House in lower Manhattan as just another gambit in this millennial power grab: "This is Islamic domination and expansionism,” writes right-wing blogger Pamela Geller, who made the “Ground Zero Mosque” into a media obsession. “Islam is a religion with a very political agenda,” warns ex-Muslim Ali Sina. “The ultimate goal of Islam is to rule the world.”

Anyone notice the irony of these two paragraphs?

BTW, a claim is not shown to be a myth just because the author says so.

The argument is that Islam seeks to 'take over the world'. That's not disputed, unless there are sects of Islam that do not try to convert adherents to other religions. So, the author is clearly wrong on that, Islam does have global ambitions.

The next line, then, is how Islam may seek to take over the world. Critics of Islam (and honest Muslims) point out that Islam as established in the schools of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam have a doctrine of Jihad ('holy war') that calls for or allows Muslim states to raid and invade non-Muslim lands, ultimately with the end goal of establishing Islamic law over non-Muslims.

The author disingenuously does not address this teaching of Islam that is still as relevant to this day as hand chopping or paying Zakat are.

May I just respectfully point out that you quoted an extract paragraph twice in the above reply, and therefore quoted twice the author's direct response to the myth you say he didn't dispel.

By the time of the Crusades, however, this initial burst of enthusiasm for holy war had long been spent.

and may I also re-quote the relevant bit from my first post above:

certain fantasists about a “global caliphate” continue to plot attacks on perceived enemies, and certain groups like Afghanistan’s Taliban and Somalia’s al-Shabaab practice medieval versions of the religion. But Islamophobes confuse these small parts with the whole and then see terrorist jihad under every Islamic pillow. They break out in a sweat at the mere picture of an imam.

I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree over the point of confusion he refers to.


Cheers,
Shafique

Yes, I realize I quoted the same paragraph twice, once to directly address the contents of the paragraph and secondly to compare it to his following comments regarding his beliefs how 'Islamophobes' are Islamophobes because of their portrayal of Muslim 'moderates' such as Tariq Ramadan as, perhaps, extremists, by pointing out his previous portrayal of Christians who peacefully converted Muslims as plots to 'eliminate' Islam.

No word if Muslim groups in the West are seeking to eliminate all other religions by converting non-Muslims to Islam or if even suggesting that would not be met with shrieks of Islamophobia.

I could have also addressed his gutter conspiracy theories that so-called modern 'Islamophobia' is a relic of the Crusades.