There can be no excuse for Islamophobia

Islamophobia, xenophobia, racism, the incitement of hatred against people have no excuse. Yet the phobia contained in the word Islamophobia, that is, fear, is in itself inclined to produce this excuse.

They are afraid, therefore they hate.

They are afraid, therefore they attack "preventively."

Fear, which is the real cause of their hatred and aggression, is a psychological state, while phobia is an illness. In every case, it can produce a state worthy of a medical certificate and an excuse.

Yet the Islamophobes are not showing hostility toward Muslims and attacking them because they are really afraid. Looking at the balance sheet, Islamophobes are never killed in the world, never attacked; those massacred by their handiwork are only Muslims. But still, those feared are also the Muslims. Muslims do not fear their own killers, but the killers fear their own victims. Such a strange equation.

Last weekend I mentioned the 2nd International Islamophobia Conference organized by the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) of Istanbul Sabahattin Zaim University. We had spoken of how Islamophobia, which has by now acquired a global character, can appear before us everywhere, because, largely under the influence of a West-centered geopolitics, it can increasingly produce its own excuses and be justified. Countless examples can of course be given for this. But today there is a typical case in point: the dialogue with members of Congress of the Muslim Dr. Muhammed Abu-Salah, whose two daughters and son-in-law were killed in ABD, at the session in which he was called, in recent days, before the justice committee of the ABD Congress as an example of "hate crimes and rising white racism."

The members of Congress... His two daughters and a son-in-law had been brutally gunned down in 2015 in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, by a racist neighbor of theirs who said he could not bear seeing only a headscarf and a Muslim. The grieving father, a doctor, had been called to the committee to tell his story against the danger of "hate crimes and rising white racism," said to be spreading ever more widely in ABD.

But throughout the committee meeting, without even having the chance to share the unbearable pain of being "one of the few fathers, if not the only one, who had to read the autopsy reports of his own children, with those autopsy reports lodged in his memory," he was exposed to the strange questions of the Committee members. The questions suddenly put the grieving father in the strange position of a suspect who had incited, who had forced, people to kill their children, rather than of someone whose children had been killed.

"Did you instill hatred in your children?" asked Morton Klein. While Dr. Abu Salah was recounting "how the bullets entering the heads of Yusor and Razan (his daughters) came out smashing their brains, how their blood and body parts stuck to their headscarves, and how his son-in-law Deah collapsed to the ground from the bullets that hit his chest and shoulders before he fell, how he had lived all this through the autopsy report as if alive," the other was asking "does your religion instill in you hatred against the Jews?"

Even the Democratic Party members of the committee, who had called Abu Salah to recount his striking example experience in the face of the "hate crimes and rising racism" that the Republicans think they are responsible for, make no sound in the face of this disrespect. The insolent Republican Morton Klein, who is also the president of the Zionist Organization of America, goes beyond asking questions to Dr. Abu Salah, whose children had been brutally, vilely killed, and gives advice:

"We really need Muslims who will do what Egyptian President Sisi has done, we need to rethink and reaffirm some parts of the Qur'an. Why one third of American Muslims are anti-Semitic, this needs to be understood... We need to talk about this Muslim anti-Semitism," he said, thereby both showing an excuse for his own hatred of Islam and remaining blind and deaf to the fact that this hatred is another version of anti-Semitism, a much more terrible version. Yet at that moment there was no anti-Semitism before him. At that moment anti-Semitism was only a possibility, but the inhuman savagery displayed by enmity toward Islam was a plain reality.

Not seeing the plain reality in all its striking force, and voicing anti-Semitism, now a remote possibility, especially in such an atmosphere, is of course not merely a matter of simple tactlessness. It is the shamelessness, discourtesy and exhaustion of the sense of mutual responsibility that have thoroughly permeated American politics. This exhaustion also consumes ABD from within, there is no doubt, there is no escape.

Setting aside the cleverness of extracting a profit for anti-Semitism even from a savage, vile, inhuman violence whose victims are Muslims, it is a great impudence to produce from this an excuse for hatred and enmity toward Muslims.

ABD President Trump shows the same impudence by accusing the Black Muslim woman congress member Ilhan Omar of anti-Semitism because she criticized a Republican member of Congress for his remarks and policies. As it turns out, the person criticized for his remarks and politics is Jewish, and for that reason Omar has engaged in hostility to Jews. Just look at how anti-Semitism has turned into a shield of protection, even of aggression.

There is undoubtedly a very great role of these impudent, insensitive and irresponsible approaches of American politics in Islamophobia's becoming a global issue.

It is necessary to keep watching these.

Meanwhile, I follow with attention and congratulations Prof. Sami al-Arian, who founded and directs the Center for Islam and Global Affairs (CIGA) at Sabahattin Zaim University. The center he directs makes very serious, high-quality contributions to our academic and intellectual life with a different but each first-class event every week. Of course the university's rector, Prof. Dr. Mehmet Bulut, should also be congratulated separately for this. It gives hope that universities in Turkey are on a good path. Congratulations and thanks.