The Very Real Threat of Islamophobia

Today, I’d like to do something I’ve been wanting to for a while. We’re going to go through a list of recent quotes on Arabs and Islam and replace them with the words “Jew,” “Jews,” and “Jewish.”

Most quickly springing to mind is the latest line of tripe from Anne Coulter. While you are (unfortunately) probably already familiar with some of Coulter’s statements (see: “It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact.” or “[Canada] better hope the United States doesn’t roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent.”), you may not have heard Coulter’s recent assertion that the wife of one of the Boston Bombers should ““Be jailed for wearing a hijab” (right after saying “I don’t care if she knew about this [bombing]”- just so you know it’s about religion, not justice).

Now I really shouldn’t have to replace any wording there for you to get how utterly repugnant that is. Nevertheless, for the overall point I’m going to be making, here’s the altered version (with gender reversal, since most Jewish women don’t cover their heads):

“The Boston Bomber’s husband should be jailed for wearing a yarmulke.”

I know it sounds weird, but bear with me here.

Moving on we have some gems.

Commentator Eric Bolling demands to know “Should the FBI be allowed to now go into mosques synagogues and wiretap and surveil? … I think this is a great case for opening up that.” Bolling goes on to argue as follows:

“How many Muslims Jews in the world, anybody? … 1.57 billion … Let’s just say 10% dislike us or hate us. … That means 157 million Muslims Jews hate us.  If 5%, 10%, 1% are radicalized and would kill us, you know how much that is?  That’s one and a half million people who are radicalized to the point where they would want to kill you, kill us Americans.”

(Muslims and Americans being two categories that never overlap, apparently)

Another commentator, Robert Beckel, asserts that “We really have to consider… that we’re going to have to cut off Muslim Jewish students from coming to this country for some period of time.”

Of course, those are just some of the more televised opinions. On comment boards across the internet we have things like this:

“Too bad the government can’t tax rage. There are slightly under 3 million [Jews] here in the US. And they feed on rage. They love it. They exhibit it. They propogate [sic] it. Then, they act on it. We could cut our deficit if that could be taxed.”

“The term “radical Islam  Judaism” is a misnomer. Islam Judaism is evil, and the terrorists we term ‘radical’ are simply extremely devout and following the basic tenets of an ideology masked as a religion, as invented by a criminal (tinkle be upon his shoes).Most mussies kikes agree with these terrorists, and many probably rejoice privately, but they keep their mouths shut and bide their time while the poison spreads.”

“No mosque synagogue at ground zero!”

Now let’s just add up those handful of statements:

That person should be jailed just for wearing a yarmulke. We should consider wiretapping synagogues. We should ban Jews from entering into the country. We need to understand that a dangerous percentage of Jews waiting to kill Americans are already in this country. Jews are inherently angry and waiting their chance while their poison spreads.

Exactly. If this was what was being stated on television, the radio, and in the news, you’d probably think you were in Nazi Germany. If even half of these comments came from a single organization, you’d be out in the streets demanding that these blood-libel spewing anti-Semites be fired and drummed out of the business entirely.

But these comments weren’t about Jews, they were about Muslims, and so we’re still waiting on the righteous outrage.

Now this isn’t to play into some stupid Jewish-media-conspiracy-theory-BS. The simple fact of the matter is that the West, having perpetrated the worst racist campaigns against the Jews, is now highly sensitive (and rightly so) to racist comments against the Jewish community. John Galliano, former lead designer for major fashion companies Givenchy and Christian Dior called down a hell storm of anger upon himself when he drunkenly harassed a couple in a bar with anti-Semitic comments. Galliano was promptly fired and universally condemned.

Imagine if that same treatment was given to people who made similar statements about Islam, Arabs, or Asians- as Evan has pointed out on more than one occasion, films like Red Dawn and Olympus Has Fallen have resulted in waves of racist comments and outright threats against Asian-Americans (as if Manzanar wasn’t enough).

Again, if these comments were about the Jewish community (or to a lesser extent, the black community), alarm bells would be going off across the nation. You would be worried, if not outright terrified, at the prospect of this wave of unchallenged bigotry. Racism is racism, people, and bigotry is bigotry. If you’d be concerned for the safety of your Jewish family, friends, and neighbors if these comments were directed at them, you must be just as concerned if they’re directed at someone else.

So for what it’s worth, here’s our own line in the sand. We here at the CWR join in with other sane people in communicating this simple message to the community generating these statements: