“Islamophobia”: An Insidious Term

Prejudice and bigotry against Muslims certainly exist, but, writes Jeffrey Tayler, the term “Islamophobia” both obscures Islamic realities and serves as a cudgel to silence discussion about Islam itself. Indeed, those who decry “Islamophobia” often direct their ire at reformers who are themselves Muslim:

Those who deploy the . . . term “Islamophobia” to silence critics of the faith hold, in essence, that Muslims deserve to be approached as a race apart—not as equals, not as individual adults capable of rational choice, but as lifelong members of an immutable, sacrosanct community, whose (often highly illiberal) views must not be questioned, whose traditions (including the veiling of women) must not be challenged, and whose scripturally inspired violence must be explained away as the inevitable outcome of Western “interventionism” in the Middle East or racism and “marginalization” in Western countries.

Fail to exhibit due respect for Islam—not Muslims as people, Islam—and you risk being excoriated, by certain progressives, as an “Islamophobe,” as a fomenter of hatred for an underprivileged minority . . . and, most illogically, as a racist. Islam, however, is not a race, but a religion. . . .

No better evidence of this strain of illogical, muddled intolerance of free expression exists than the suspicion and ire that regressive leftists reserve for former Muslims and Muslim reformers working to modernize their religion. In a moving 2015 . . . address, Sarah Haider, who is of Pakistani origin, recounts being called everything from “Jim Crow” to “House Arab” to native informant by American liberals for having abandoned Islam—by, that is, the very folk who should support women, regardless of their skin color, in their struggle for equality and freedom from sexist violence and chauvinism.

Read more at Quillette

More about: Islamophobia, Moderate Islam, Racism, Religion & Holidays

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF