The moral evasion of “Islamophobia”

The story of the Hamline University professor who was fired for showing Muhammad’s painting in her classroom has a new development.

According to the New York Times, Professor Erika López Prater sued the university “for religious discrimination and defamation.” Consequently, the university and the Muslim activists—who accused her of Islamophobia—have walked back their comments.

A central element in this saga is the deployment of the widely misused and misunderstood term “Islamophobia” as a weapon to silence thinkers or to advance Islamic preferences.

A brief background of the story is crucial, before we evaluate the term and its bizarre usage.

Art history adjunct lecturer López Prater took many sincere precautions before showing a classic painting of Muhammad in her class, but a Muslim student complained anyway: “As a Muslim and a Black person, I don’t feel like I belong, and I don’t think I’ll ever belong in a community where they don’t value me as a member, and they don’t show the same respect that I show them.”

In response to the Muslim complaint, Hamline University’s president declared that respect for Muslim students “should have superseded academic freedom,” while its vice president claimed the teacher’s action was “undeniably inconsiderate, disrespectful, and Islamophobic.” This lamentable position was shared by Muslim activist Jaylani Hussein, the executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), who believed that “showing the image was Islamophobic.”

The university’s president reacted to the criticism, and López Prater was fired.

However, many Muslims and non-Muslims alike believed the university’s decision was wrong and the accusation of Islamophobia bizarre, because the medieval painting was commissioned by a Muslim ruler and accomplished by a Muslim historian. Furthermore, many medieval paintings of Muhammad are accessible in Islamic countries. If “Islamophobia” is fitting here, were the Muslim ruler and the historian Islamophobes?

López Prater sued the university, which rushed to save face by changing its position, declaring that using the term Islamophobia was “flawed” and that respect for Muslim students should not have superseded academic freedom. This drastic change of position shows that the university officials don’t really know what they are doing. They react to social pressure without a firm conviction and solid position.

Similarly, the Muslim activists of CAIR had to walk back their initial indefensible position, after many Muslim thinkers affirmed the professor’s action as completely legitimate. CAIR’s national headquarters issued an official position, reversing what its Minnesota executive director stated and affirming that the academic study of Muhammad’s paintings “does not, by itself, constitute Islamophobia.” To ensure the initial CAIR position doesn’t resurface, the statement insisted that this new position is “the sole official and authorized position of the organization. Any past comments which contradict the statement do not represent CAIR’s position.”

The accusation of the teacher with Islamophobia—and its complete reversal—shows abysmal confusion on the part of the university and bias on the part of Muslim activists. This demonstrates how the term “Islamophobia” is often used by non-Muslims to virtue signal and by Muslims to shield Islam against any critical evaluation.

But what actually would constitute Islamophobia? By definition, it’s a phobia of Islam, meaning, an “irrational fear” of Islam as a set of teachings and claims. However, most people don’t really have an irrational fear of the religion or its people, but a rational concern of what it teaches and how literal application of its commands can harm Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

In recent years, the world witnessed the killing of innocent non-Muslims in the hands of terrorists insisting to have been following Islam’s teachings. We saw the abduction of non-Muslim girls then sold as sex slaves by Islamist groups in Syria, Iraq, Somalia, and Nigeria.

When people call these horrific atrocities evil, they are not phobic of Islam. They are actually sane and rational. Rather than phobia, it is a sincere concern for one’s life and survival.

All those who rushed to stigmatize the teacher as an Islamophobe thought they had an easy target, only to be shown as ridiculous and unfair.

In the West, the term Islamophobia acts as a castle and weapon—shielding Islam against rational assessments and piercing anyone who dares to question it. One can arguably criticize any ideology or religion, but not Islam.

Our world isn’t helped when “Islamophobia” is used as a weapon to silence open discussion and debate.