From Jonathan Tobin, at Commentary, "After Garland, Don’t Change the Subject to Islamophobia":
Almost immediately after the news of last night’s shooting in Garland, Texas broke many in the chattering class started to blame the intended victims of the attack. The group that had sponsored a contest to draw pictures of the Prophet Muhammad and two of the controversial speakers at the event were quickly depicted as having invited violence by their willingness to offend Muslims. But whether or not you agree with Dutch politician Geert Wilders or American activist Pam Geller, the failed attempt to slaughter them or those who chose to hear their words illustrated one of their main contentions. You can offend any other religion with impunity but dare to speak rudely or even truthfully about Islamist intolerance and you’d better pay for heavy security and/or hope the police are doing their job (as, thank Heaven, they were in Texas). That, and not whether or not Wilders or Geller are right about some things or even anything, remains the only question to discuss when it comes to talk about Islamophobia.Keep reading.
Let’s specify that not all Muslims, especially here in the United States, are violent or intolerant. Most are hard working, decent people and deserve the same respect as any other American.
But there is a reason why humorists fear to skewer Islam or its holy book the same way they do Catholics or Mormons. You can mock Christian symbols, call it art and then expect cultural elites to lionize you and denounce those who are offended as fascists. You can stage an opera rationalizing Palestinian terrorism and the murder of Jews and be lionized as a courageous defender of artistic freedom and call those who denounce your bad taste Philistines. Write a play wittily trashing the Mormon faith and you can become immensely rich. None of those activities are particularly commendable but they are safe. But speak ill of Islam and you take your life into your hands.
Talk about Islamophobia in the United States is misleading since there is little or no evidence that the years that followed 9/11 or even now after the rise of ISIS that Muslims have suffered discrimination or violence. To the contrary, anti-Semitic attacks have always far outnumbered those despicable incidents in which Muslims were targeted. But the attempt to distract us from Muslim intolerance also misses the point.
You may say it is bad that some people are drawing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad specifically to offend Muslims who believe such drawings are forbidden. But the problem is that unlike other faiths that have learned to express outrage about those who show them disrespect without violence, a great many Muslims throughout the world still take it as a given that they are entitled to kill those who commit what they call blasphemy. The attacks on the Danish newspaper that first thought to publish Muhammad cartoons and then Charlie Hebdo illustrated this distorted principle...
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