Fearing Islam, Is Not Islamophobia

By Piyalechi

Every now and then, I feel compelled to revisit the issue of Islam and Muslims, and these days are certainly qualified as such.

The point, of which, I want to pick a particular bone, has to do with the most abhorrently unjust occurrence in the English phraseology.

I vehemently disagree with the erroneous practice of equating the fear of Islam, and Muslims for that matter, with Islamophobia, as it stands with its associated definition in our common vernacular. If you are a media source who is doing it, stop it, or suffer the consequences of bad Karma therefore.

By Islam, I mean all that which is instructed in the Quran; let’s not, for the sake of expediency in argument, even include in our scope the entirety of what is attributed to Mohammed’s sayings and his reported instructions, aka, the Hadith.

By «Muslims,» I mean the REAL Muslims- i.e., those who strive to the fullest to follow their religious obligations to the letter of their holy book, and believe that sacrificing life for the cause is a most worthy endeavor.

By holy book, I mean the Quran, which proclaims itself to be understandable «without doubt,» and which is held by ‹Muslim scholars,› universally, to possess the highest degree of prosaic clarity, eloquence, and beauty in the Arabic language.

In this argument, however, I am not using the word «Muslims» to refer to the billions of confused souls around the globe who are challenged in establishing their personal identity and life priorities as a human being; the simple folks who don’t understand Arabic, the language of Quran and Islam to any substantially useful level, but who are under the spell of their Islamic ethnicity and nostalgia driven predispositions and inclinations.

As an English word, Islamophobia is a devious misnomer, in my humble opinion, for while it cannot be legitimately justified in its communicative essence and message, it aims to pervert the truth in its misleading construction.

Per written definitions and rule of grammar, the word Islamophobia refers to a mentally diseased state of extreme and irrational fear of Islam, as would whatever-o-phobia mean a mentally diseased state of extreme and irrational fear of whatever.

Then, justly, the question would be: Does Islam, especially as instructed by its ‹holy book,› provide for any justified fear, whatsoever, towards itself?

My reply to that inquiry is a resounding YES, because the so-called clearly written holy book of Islam is chockfull of explicitly clear and horribly harsh instructions as to how a Muslim must treat the non-believers and behave towards them, their lives, their family, and their property.

Please don’t take my words, go research for yourself!

Thus, while existential fear of Islam and true Muslims is very real, and quite justifiably rational for all who possess at least a glimmer of sanity, I strongly maintain that to project that fear as «irrational,» and thus resort to the use of the word «phobia» in construction of «Islamophobia» in order to label people who rationally and justly fear Islam and Muslims for their lives as mentally sick, is the cruelest deceit, to say the least.

Noush…