#343 — What Is ＂Islamophobia＂？
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
149.96101
Summary
What is Islamophobia? Is it a new form of hatred against Muslims, or is it just another form of racism? Sam Harris explains what Islamophobia really is, and why it's not so different from other forms of hatred, like racism and xenophobia, that are used in the mainstream media and in everyday speech. He also points out that the First Amendment protects freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which are two of the most precious things a person can have in a free and fair society. And he argues that Islamophobia is not an expression of irrational fear, it's a form of irrational ignorance, and that we should be careful not to confuse it with racism and anti-Semitism, which aren't the same thing at all. Sam argues that there's no such thing as Islamophobia at all, and there's only one religion that has made it unsafe for everyone else to criticize it, or indeed for its own members to leave it. And that's only Muslims routinely fear for their lives when they decide to leave their religion, and only Muslims who do so do so in order to honor their religion and their religion's values and practices as a result of fear of their religion being challenged by criticism of it. and what does it have to do with their beliefs and their beliefs? And why is this a problem? Sam explains it, and how it s not a problem at all in this episode of the Making Sense Podcast made by a man who doesn't understand the difference between religion and belief? and religion by a guy who doesn t understand what religion is . a Mormon who does what it means to be a Mormon ? is a good neighbor not a bad neighbor ? and why they should be allowed to poke fun at Mormonism or make fun of it at Mormons so they don t get it? What does it mean it s good neighbors why Mormons don t make good neighbors ? is it safe to poke at Mormonism? Is it safe for them to leave religion? Why is it not? is not a religion that makes them better than everyone else ? What are you supposed to be good neighbors? How do you know what you should do by Mormons ? Why do you need to leave Mormonism ? what are you gonna poke at their religion ? does it make you better than Mormons? And what is freedom?
Transcript
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Someone once said, it's a word invented by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate
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There's no question that the term has been designed to confuse people.
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Its purpose is to conflate any criticism of Islam, which is a doctrine of religious beliefs,
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In fact, it equates secularism itself, the commitment to keeping religion out of our
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And the term is now being widely used in the mainstream media, and making it impossible
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to speak honestly about the consequences of dangerous ideas.
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Let's be clear about what is real here and what is fake.
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There are white supremacists in America, for instance.
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And of course, these imbeciles can be counted upon to hate immigrants from Muslim-majority
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countries—Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, etc.—and to hate them for their superficial characteristics,
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But these people hate non-Muslim immigrants, too—for instance, Hindus from India—and for
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We already have words like racism and xenophobia to cover this problem.
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Islam—inventing a new term like Islamophobia doesn't give us license to say that there's
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Islam is a system of ideas, subscribed to by people of every race and ethnicity.
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Christianity and Islam are both aggressively missionary faiths, and they win converts from
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People criticize Christianity all the time and worry about its political and social influences,
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but no one confuses this for bigotry against Christians as people.
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If you criticize Christianity—and I have written an entire book excoriating Christianity—no
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one accuses you of being a racist against people from Brazil, or Mexico, or Ethiopia, or the
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But even the New York Times will use the term Islamophobia as a synonym for racism against
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There are Christian Arabs, and I could become a Muslim in five minutes just by converting to
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How does the term anti-Semitism differ as a concept?
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Well, we have a 2,000-year-old tradition of religiously inspired hatred against Jews, courtesy
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But for the last 150 years or so, Jews have been thought of as a distinct race of people,
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both by those who hate them, and rather often by Jews themselves.
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So anti-Semitism tends to be expressed as a specific form of racism.
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Anti-Semites are not focused on what Jews believe, or even on what they do on the basis of their
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Modern anti-Semites, like Nazis, care about who your mother's mother's mother was.
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Just like racism, anti-Semitism has become a hatred of people as people, not because of
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their beliefs or their behavior, but because of the merest circumstances of their birth.
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Well, unlike a person's race, or skin color, or country of origin, beliefs can be argued
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And the truth is, we don't respect people's beliefs just because they hold them.
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Beliefs are claims about reality, and about how human beings should live within it.
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So they necessarily lead to behaviors, and to values, and laws, and institutions that
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affect the lives of everyone, whether they share these beliefs or not.
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Honestly criticizing the doctrine of Islam does not entail bigotry against Arabs or any
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It's not an expression of hatred to notice that specific Islamic ideas, in particular beliefs
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about martyrdom, and jihad, and blasphemy, and apostasy, inspire terrible acts of violence.
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And it's not an expression of phobia, that is, irrational fear, to notice that violent
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And while every religion has its fanatics, there is only one religion on earth where even
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its mainstream members seek to impose their religious taboos on everyone else.
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There is only one religion that has made it unsafe for people to criticize it, or indeed
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Only Muslims routinely fear for their lives when they decide to leave their religion.
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If you doubt this, just read some books or listen to some podcasts by ex-Muslims.
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Anyone who wants to draw a cartoon, or write a novel, or stage a play that makes fun of Mormonism
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In the United States, this freedom is nominally guaranteed by the First Amendment.
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The freedom to poke fun at Mormonism is guaranteed by the fact that Mormons don't tend to murder
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They don't start riots and burn embassies in response to satire.
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When the Book of Mormon became the most celebrated musical in the United States, the LDS Church
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protested by placing ads for their faith in the program.
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That might have been a wasted effort, but it was also a charming sign of good humor.
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Yes, there are crazy and dangerous people in every faith, and I often hear from them.
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But what is true of Mormonism is true of every other religion, with a single exception.
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And can you imagine staging a similar play about Islam anywhere on Earth?
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No, you cannot, unless you also imagine the creators of that play being hunted for the
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You also have to imagine Muslims by the hundreds of thousands in dozens of countries going absolutely
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At this moment in history, there is only one religion that systematically stifles free expression
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The truth is, we have already lost our First Amendment freedoms with respect to Islam.
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And anyone who is tempted to cry Islamophobia at this point shares the blame for this.
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And most important, it should be intolerable to Muslims themselves.
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They should be mortified that their community is so uniquely combustible, so uniquely uncivil,
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so incapable of self-reflection and self-criticism, so dangerously childish, so desperate to make
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Some percentage of the world's Muslims, and it's not just extremists, are demanding that
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And while they might not immediately resort to violence in their protests, they threaten
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Carrying a sign through the streets of London that reads,
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Behead those who insult the Prophet, might still count as an example of peaceful protest,
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but it is also an assurance that infidel blood would be shed if the thug holding the sign
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Wherever Muslims have real power, this grotesque promise is always fulfilled.
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To make a film, or stage a play, or write a novel, critical of Islam, in any Muslim-majority
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country, is as sure a method of suicide as the laws of physics allow.
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There is only one religion on earth that has normalized this level of fanaticism.
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And it isn't an expression of bigotry to notice that this is totally antithetical to
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everything that civilized people value in the 21st century.
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The October 7th attacks in Israel changed the way that many of us think about the vulnerability
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They changed the way we think about immigration and failures of assimilation.
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And they revealed a level of moral confusion in our universities and other institutions
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We have people who are ostensibly committed to women's rights, and gay rights, and trans
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rights, mindlessly supporting people who would hurl them from rooftops or beat them to death
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It is not a sign of bigotry to notice this hypocrisy and moral confusion for what it is.
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It really is possible to be critical of Israel and to be committed to the political rights
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of the Palestinian people without denying the reality of Islamic religious fanaticism or the
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threat that it poses not just to Israel, but to open societies everywhere.
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There have been nearly 50,000 acts of Islamic terrorism in the last 40 years.
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There have been 82 attacks in France and over 2,000 in Pakistan during this period.
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You just need more people susceptible to becoming jihadists.
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You just need a wider Muslim community that won't condemn jihadism, but pretends that the
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theology that inspires it will be true and perfect until the end of the world.
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You just need millions of people who will protest Israel for defending itself, or call for the
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deaths of cartoonists for depicting the prophet Muhammad, and yet who will not make a peep about
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the jihadist atrocities that occur daily, all over the world, in the name of their religion.
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When hundreds of thousands of people show up in London to condemn Hamas, or the Islamic
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state, or any specific instance of jihadist savagery, without both sides in anything, then
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When Muslims by the millions pour into the streets in protest, not over cartoons depicting
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the prophet Muhammad, but over the murder of cartoonists, by their own religious fanatics,
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we will know that we have made a modicum of progress.
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The Muslim world needs to win a war of ideas with itself, and perhaps several civil wars.
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It has to transform the doctrine of jihad into something far more benign than it is.
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And it has to stop supporting its religious fanatics when they come into conflict with
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Muslims supporting other Muslims, no matter how sociopathic or insane their behavior.
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If the Muslim community and the political left can't stand against jihadism, it is only
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a matter of time before their moral blindness leads to right-wing authoritarianism in the West.
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If secular liberals won't create secure borders, fascists will.
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And that is a world that none of us should want to live in.