Islamismophobia
Support Islam. Oppose Islamists
This timely article is probably the hardest, most important one I’ve written this year—maybe in years. I might not get it all right, so I look forward to your comments and corrections. If you believe it can help heal society, please share it.
“Muslims are violent and try to impose their beliefs on others! We should send them all back to their countries!”
“That’s just islamophobia! You’re a bigot!”
Both of these are not just wrong: They’re blurring concepts of freedom, equality, immigration, race, and politics at such a fundamental level that they’re threatening the foundations of our society. Today, we’re going to try to make sense of it all. By the time you’re done, you should be able to see a conflict related to Islam in the West on the TV, on social media, or on the street, and have a better sense of what we should do about it and why.
At the heart of this is the mixing of two concepts: Islam and Islamism.
Islam vs Islamism
Islam is a religion followed by 2 billion people in the world, ~25% of the population. It is a personal belief, protected by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Like in most religions, most adherents of Islam are kind, welcoming, peaceful, and productive. You can witness it yourself traveling to places like Turkey, the UAE, Malaysia, and Indonesia, where this was certainly my experience.
Islam has over 1,300 years of history, and has produced some of the most distinguishable aesthetics.
Its position in between the biggest world civilizations allowed it to preserve knowledge from older empires, increase the exchange of knowledge across civilizations, and produce fundamental new contributions.
But within Islam, there’s a problem of Islamism: a political movement that says Islam should influence politics because it’s superior to liberal democracy, capitalism, and any other alternative. Islamists want Sharia (the law derived from Islam1) above civil law, they want it to apply to non-Muslims, they seek pan-Islamic political unity, and the creation of Islamic states. So by nature, it’s not individual and persuasive, but social and coercive in its attempts to spread. That’s why the European Court of Human Rights declared Sharia incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy. It’s why Turkey banned the leading political party in the late 1990s: Its Islamism went against democracy and the country’s secular constitution.
There is a blurry line between Islam and Islamism. It’s crucial to understand it though, so let’s take specific examples.
I hope the difference is clear: Islam whispers to the soul; Islamism shouts on the street. Islam wants believers to get on their knees, Islamism wants you to get on yours. Islam breeds pilgrims, Islamism conquerors. Islam saves souls, Islamism drafts laws. Islam wants the freedom to believe, Islamism wants obedience.
Islam is a personal religion, a set of personal beliefs. Moderate Muslims respect that others don’t share the same beliefs. This is protected by the Universal Human Rights. Islamism is a political movement that tries to impose its views on others. This is against Universal Human Rights.2
Islam is protected by Universal Human Rights, Islamism is against them.
If you want a test to differentiate between Islam and Islamism, here are seven questions you can ask:
Is it voluntary or coerced? If it’s voluntary, it’s consistent3 with Islam. If it’s coerced, it’s consistent with Islamism.
Is it just for the believer (consistent with Islam), or also for others (consistent with Islamism)?
Is civil law supreme (Islam), or is Sharia (Islamism)?
Are all citizens equal (Islam), or do Muslims prevail (Islamism)?
Is it persuasion (Islam) or intimidation (Islamism)?
Does it make room for dissenters inside the community (Islam) or not (Islamism)?
Is the same standard applied to all religions (Islam), or does Islam have privileges (Islamism)?
Now, these are extremes. As we saw in this article, in the West:
About 20 – 50% of Muslims are moderate Muslims
About 15-20% are Islamists
In between, about 10-50% are Conservative Muslims. They might, for example, think that the precepts of Islam should apply to all, but they might use persuasion instead of coercion to achieve this goal.
If we were to draw this:
The best way to understand the difference between each extreme is to dive into each separately.
The Moderate Muslims
They believe in Islam, and they also tend to think that:4
The Quran is not the literal word of God
There are many ways to interpret Islam
Democracy is above Islam, and they’re compatible
Men and women are equal
Homosexuality should be accepted in society
Jews don’t have too much power, they can be trusted
Israel has a right to exist
School should be secular and mixed genders
It should be legal to show a picture of Muhammad and burn the Quran
Halal food is not necessary everywhere
If you’re a Westerner and you know Muslims, odds are higher that they belong to this group. That’s been my experience: I’ve had friends and colleagues from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, and probably more that I can’t remember, and every single one of them was kind, fun, tolerant, and hard-working.
These Muslims know and understand the threat posed by Islamism. They think:
Islamism is a problem
Political violence is never acceptable
Jihad in general, and organizations like ISIS, Hamas, Hezbollah, or the Muslim Brotherhood are bad
Moderate Muslims would want nothing more than the elimination of Islamism.
This goes to the highest levels of several Muslim countries. For example, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, the UAE, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Libya have all outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, in most cases designated it a terrorist organization.5 Many prolific Arab commentators agree.
Here is Mohamed Bin Salman, ruler of Saudi Arabia, about Islamism:
We want to go back to what we were, the moderate Islam that is open to the world, open to all the religions. We want to live a normal life. We represent the moderate teachings of Islam and the right is on our side. We will eradicate the rest of extremism very soon.
Here is the UAE’s Foreign Minister in 2017, talking about Islamism in Europe (a bunch of additional quotes follow. If you get the gist, you can move on):
There will come one day when we’ll see far more radical extremists, and terrorists, coming from Europe, because of lack of decision-making, trying to be politically correct, or assuming that they know the Middle East, or they know Islam far better than we do. That’s pure ignorance.
Mosab Hassan Yousef, son of a Hamas founder, was so repelled by the organization that he defected to Israel, and later to the US, and has been criticizing it ever since. Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan have banned the organization.
Here is the a Lebanese Shia Muslim preacher:6
We need to review Islam from beginning to end. The human being no longer has value in this religion. You [Islamists] have distorted the true image of Islam. You have made us feel that Islam is only gunpowder, rockets, killing, and crime. There is the silence of one and a half billion Muslims across the globe. Silent about all this destruction. Silent about the massacres. Silent about killing in the name of God. Every crime committed is being accompanied by the slogan “Allahu akbar.” We can no longer leave Islam as a playground for these so-called Islamists, these criminals, these terrorists.
The whole world has come to hate Islam and Muslims. Campaigns of hatred against Muslims and Islam are rising because of the behavior of Muslims, and because of the behavior of Islamic leaders who remain silent about crimes and justify them. How is the far-right Christian movement rising in Europe? Because it has become afraid of you as a Muslim. What are you offering to break this stereotype? What are you offering so you can say to him: “No, that isn’t true”?
All our calls are calls to violence. All our calls are calls to killing. All our calls are calls to exclusion and eradication. I do not feel peace. I want to feel peace. There has to be a corrective movement in the Islamic world. I want the Islam that came and opened this message with: “In the name of God, the Most Merciful, the Most Compassionate.”
We Arabs from the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf the original heart of Islam don’t tolerate extremists in our countries. Our societies are genuinely tolerant. We welcome people from all backgrounds whether they’re different in race or religion.
The real hardliners and extremists run away from our region and head straight to Europe, America, Japan, & places like that. They take advantage of your freedom of speech in the worst way possible and try to tear down your customs, your culture, & your way of life. Sadly, you keep giving them that space & then later you blame Islam for the mess.
Here is the Emirati commentator AQ Almenhali:
A friend of mine travelled to the West recently and went to pray at a mosque there. He told me the [sermon] started normal, then slowly became political and started talking about jihad. He literally said: “I can see how people here get radicalized hearing this stuff.” He got up and left halfway through.
This is exactly why the UAE and other GCC countries regulate mosques through Ministries of Awqaf. It’s not about “controlling religion”, it’s about stopping religious spaces from turning into political recruitment centers.
The Muslim Brotherhood mastered this years ago: mix religion with politics, build grievance narratives, then slowly create ideological loyalty.
The West keeps viewing this as “freedom of speech”. Gulf countries view it as national security.
And Amjad Taha, Emirati expert in Middle East politics:
Why does Britain today have more extremists than the Middle East, and more rapists rivaling the Islamists of Port Sudan in Africa and Pakistan? And why does the UK system protect Islamist jihadist thugs and rapists instead of protecting its own people? We fear visiting London, it is no longer safe. Your people deserve better. Your streets are crowded with 300,000 homeless in London alone, yet while poverty grows, the Muslim Brotherhood, banned in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, is free to run your streets.
Here is the Gazan Arab Muslim Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib:
The "pro-Palestine” movement refused to acknowledge the criminality of hostage-taking & killing innocent Israeli civilians, condemn Hamas’s actions including against Gazans, call for the terror group to step down, or engage in pragmatic activism and targeted demands for specific outcomes that actually help Palestinians [... It] will forever be looked at as the pinnacle of embarrassment, failure, and wasted opportunities—all while the people of Gaza suffer horrendously.
Maliq, another Muslim commentator:
Truth be told: The #1 cause of Islamophobia isn't outsiders. It's us Muslims. Our resistance to reform, silence on extremism, and victim mentality. If we fix ourselves, the fear will fade.
And:
One thing I absolutely hate about us Muslims is our dishonesty. ISIS, Taliban, Boko Haram, they name their groups "Jihad" and "Sunnah", wave the Quran, scream "Allahu Akbar" during attacks, force hijabs on captives, and forcibly convert people at gunpoint. Yet we still rush to say "They're not real Muslims!" Bro, we can say they don't represent Islam. That's fair debate. But pretending they have zero connection to the faith while they quote our books and use our slogans? That's pure denial. We can't keep lying to ourselves and the world forever. The truth isn't Islamophobia. It's honesty.
UAE commentator Majed, on the rapes of several thousands girls for decades in the UK, in what’s called the Grooming Gangs scandal, of which allegedly7 a majority of perpetrators were Pakistani men and a majority of victims White British:8
To imprison a 13-year-old girl, drug her, and abuse her for profit is pure evil. Predators like this do not deserve the name of men. They are monsters who prey on the innocent. What’s even more shocking is the so-called “justice” in the UK. Six years? Nine years? A child’s life has been shattered forever, yet these criminals will walk free while their victim is still young. If this happened in our region, the punishment would have been swift and merciless.
Another take:
I hope this gives you a good grasp here: There are many moderate Muslims—20% to 50% of Muslims in the West, as I mentioned.9
And many moderate Muslims very publicly decry the radical Islam speech and behaviors that have been festering, especially in Western countries. How is this happening? Who are these Islamists? What do they say?
The Islamists
In the previous article, we saw that about 15% of Muslim immigrants in Europe are Islamists.10 What does that mean?
Islamist Speech
The best way to understand Islamism is through the eyes of the imams who preach it.
The Imams
Here’s a cut of some imams in the US
These are examples of Islamic viewpoints that are consistent with human rights:
The goal is to make sure Islam is well established in society. To integrate Islam in the USA.
You dedicate yourself to establish justice in the world. That’s what Allah created you for.
Allah mentions he has sent the prophets to establish justice on Earth.
Allah teaches us that there is one purpose: Establishing justice on Earth.11
I haven’t sampled mosques, but I assume this type of message to be the majority. The following are Islamist though, inconsistent with human rights:
We’re supposed to bring Islam to regulate society according to divine law and purpose.
Allah made it obligatory upon the Muslims to change society.
You need to completely replace the system with an Islamic system.
When we say America will be an Islamic country some day, that’s our goal.
Islam has a second round, where Islam will rule the world again.
Here are some other examples of imams sharing Islamist positions in the West:
California: “Islam will enter every household in the US.”
California (San Diego): “America will be a Muslim country, Russia will be a Muslim country. We have to be part of that change. Never apologize, never compromise.”
Again San Diego: “We must understand Islam as a comprehensive way of life, which includes political influence. In Medina, at the beginning, Muslims were a minority. For some it took weeks, months, years to accept Islam, but Muhammad taught us how to build that power.”
Texas: “Mamdani as the mayor of New York is a victory for the Ummah, and if you don’t understand this, you don’t understand the role of civilizational strength. Everyone has a role to play. (Muslim) politicians have a role to play. [...] Across the Western world, Muslims are rising to the point it’s terrifying them. Sweden, Oslo, 10% Muslim. Vienna is 10% Muslim, the Ottomans Turks tried for 200 years and couldn’t do it.”
Colorado: “We’re still fighting Jihad, just not with swords.”
Detroit: “For Muslims, it’s an obligation to prepare against your enemies. The first obstacle is the Wordly life: When you are too attached to it, you’re not prepared to sacrifice. They say ‘You’re too few, just 1%, you can’t do anything, overpower the military.’ But how many times have small groups of dedicated believers overcome groups far more powerful than them?”
UK: “The first blow to the US was Afghanistan. Now we can give our final blow to America. It’s the opportunity to project Islam as an alternative world order. Now is the time to put the final nail in the coffin of Western liberalism.”
UK: "No integration, no multiculturalism, no diversity, no tolerance. You have democracy, we have Sharia."
England, UK: “We (Muslims) have to be Allah’s solution to England.”
Northampton mosque (UK):12 “Victory to Islam. Destroy the enemies. Bless the Mujahideen (holy warriors). Heal from the usurping Jews and every enemy of Allah. Count them and kill them, leave none of them alive. Make them war booty for the Muslims.”
Dublin (Ireland): “Many of the major problems in the Western world today are because women do not know the status of men in Islam. Since we live in the Western world, women prefer to think that men are equal to them. In Islam, the man is the master of the woman, and the woman obeys the man. The man is the master of the woman. A woman should not raise her voice against her husband. A woman should not leave her house without her husband’s permission.
Germany:13 “Is it permissible to stone someone for adultery? Yes. Obviously, here in Germany you cannot stone someone for adultery. But if there were an Islamic state, then it would be the duty of its ruler to enforce these rulings of the Quran."
More here, here, here, here, here, here,14 here, here, here, here, and here.
Why is this Islamist rhetoric so widespread? Among other things, because it’s politically pushed in the West by Islamist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood (MB).
The Muslim Brotherhood
The UAE, France, the UK, Spain, and Austria have recently published reports on how it’s organized and how it pushes Islamism by penetrating all levels of society from the bottom.15
It avoids using its own name in the West, keeps membership secret, establishes front organizations and umbrella groups.16 It builds parallel societal structures like schools, nurseries, or funeral homes. In France, it operates over 60 schools. It trains imams across Europe and organizes activities for children. It promotes political candidates in national and local elections and actively lobbies police.
It actively isolates Muslims in the West to preserve its ultra-orthodox views. It created an organization17 to issue religious rulings specifically tailored to Muslims living in Europe, which often promote segregation, discourage assimilation, and push a literature of victimhood of Western societies.
It funds itself with tens of millions of dollars.18 Its biggest donor is Qatar.19 It also has a network of NGOs that host large-scale fundraising events, concerts, and dinners that attract Muslims far beyond their base, thereby expanding their influence, and gather the Zakat (charity). In the UK, charities have found to be important infrastructure for the MB and the terrorist group Hamas. The MB also engages with politicians to secure public funding.20
The proliferation of Islamist speech in Western countries, enabled by these Islamist organizations, is one21 of the reasons why, in some of these countries, next-generation Muslims are actually more radical and more Islamist than their parents.
This, then, finds its way into Western politics.
Islamism in Western Politicians
Elected officials in Belgium intended to implement aspects of Sharia Law in the country. This is very direct Islamism in action.
Chaudhry Sarwar, former Pakistani politician,22 previously UK MP for the Labour party, and father of the current Scottish leader of the Labour Party, stated: “Time will come that there will be a law all over the world that there can be no disrespect to our beloved holy prophet. Any disrespect of the Quran will be inacceptable, intolerable.”
Here is Zul Mohammed, a Muslim who ran for Mayor of Carrollton, Texas:
No vet has made any sacrifice. I want to make that clear. I do not support the US military. No, I do not support the United States. I look down on both entities.
These are politicians!
Unsurprisingly, the head of the German domestic intelligence agency has warned that Islamists were deliberately trying to influence German parties to change the state and society.
Islamism in Everyday Life in the West
Obviously, this trickles into education. In Canada, 11 teachers of North African descent were suspended for teaching “Islamist religious concepts” to elementary school children.
It bleeds into political rallies, like this one in NY:
There is nothing more glorious than a martyr. The Western world is a lie. The members of Congress will be prosecuted, all over the world. Let’s remind the mainstream media that Goebbels was going to stand trial before he shot himself, and we intend to prosecute every media outlet.
And it bleeds into interviews of the public, like this one:
We’re not here to take part, we’re here to take over.
Or this one:
We’re here to take over your country. You can’t stop us. We’re here to uphold Sharia Law.
Or this one:
“As a Muslim, I don’t really identify with British values. I’m Muslim first, second, and last. I’d like to see Britain governed by the Sharia. I believe it’s far superior to democracy.”
Or this one:
INTERVIEWER: Would you undermine the German constitution if you could?MUSLIM INTERVIEWEE: Absolutely. We are commanded to take over Germany.
INTERVIEWER: How do you intend to establish Sharia here and create an Islamic state?
MUSLIM INTERVIEWEE: When Muslims are the majority, and if needed, by force.
Or this example, which I shared in my previous article:
INTERVIEWER: How satisfied are you in Germany?
MUSLIM INTERVIEWEE: Zero. Mainz [German city] belongs to us foreigners.
INTERVIEWER: Would you fight for Germany?
MUSLIM INTERVIEWEE: I wouldn’t do anything for Germany. Just marry a German woman, get a German passport, and I’m all set. [...] I’m from Kurdistan. I have no country, They can’t deport me. [...] Germans out, foreigners in.
You can see more examples here and here. You get the picture.
All of this is speech, and if it remained as such, it would be OK. But it doesn’t.
Islamist Behavior
The worst, of course, is terrorism, which we discussed here.
Terrorism
Over 80% of terrorist attacks in the world are carried out by Islamists—groups like Islamic State, Al-Shabaab, Hamas, JNIM23, etc.
This is also true in the West.
We’re unfortunately used to men killing people while yelling Allahu Akbar, with several dozens of such attacks in the last 10 years. The last Allahu Akbar attack was one just a few weeks ago in Switzerland.
Crime
Terrorism is unique in its impact, but also in the ease of proving its causality. It’s very clear when a terrorist attack has been caused by Islamism. It’s less clear in everyday crime. As a reminder, there is an overrepresentation of Muslims in crime statistics in the West, but is that due to Islamism? Or the age of people? The specific culture in some origin country? Islamism is certainly not at fault in all cases. But in some.
Last week, an MP in the UK Parliament read testimonies of some of the British girls who were raped by the Grooming Gangs I mentioned earlier—some of them by several hundred men. The testimonies are graphic, so I won’t repeat them all, but you can watch them here.
Here are the relevant ones for this article:
“Comments were constantly made suggesting that White girls, that Christian girls, were viewed as having fewer morals, or lower values, whereas Muslim girls were described as having dignity and higher moral standards. These comparisons were used to justify the way I was treated, and to further humiliate and control me.”
“Race did play a part and motivated the selection and demographic of the victims. Throughout my exploitation, the other girls I encountered or who were abused alongside me were almost exclusively White.”
“Things would escalate around Eid [the festivity at the end of Ramadan] and holidays, parties got bigger, got worse, got more violent.”
“The main clash that I had with the religion side of it was I grew up as a Christian. I would wear my cross because it was something really special to me. It was just used as a way to break me down. They said: ‘Where is your god now? Has your god forsaken you?”
“It was all of the White girls in every home that I went to. I remember a man that went to the back of a van, and I saw 15, 20 girls locked in dog cages.”
Of course, these crimes were most likely not perpetrated to further Islam, but they’re frequently the result of a mindset in which the Muslim in-group is protected and the out-group attacked, given the most common national heritage of the perpetrators, the fact that sometimes hundreds of them were involved,24 the nature of the victims, and the quotes above. The most likely read is that this is downstream of the Islamism we mentioned before: Many of the perpetrators shared an Islamist belief where the law of the land was less important than the protection and advancement of the community.
This, however, would have been impossible without abetting from the rest of society—again, because of Islamism
The Deliberate Fudging of Islamophobia and Islamismophobia
In the Rotherham case (~1,400 girls raped):25
Several [council] staff described their nervousness about identifying the ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction from their managers not to do so.
There was a widespread perception that messages conveyed by some senior people in the Council and also the Police, were to 'downplay' the ethnic dimensions of CSE.
This fear of being called racist is relevant, as this is in fact a consistent accusation from Muslim organizations. Many times, these are valid. Islamophobia is real, and has serious consequences. Muslims in the West have been shot, run over, and stabbed because of it. They have faced discrimination in employment, housing, and schooling, and suffer from insults and harassment. It is right to decry it.
Other times, however, the criticism is not of islamophobia, but of islamismophobia. It’s not against Islam, but against Islamism. Yet many Muslim leaders purposefully fudge these two, to protect Islamism under the umbrella of Islam.
"Islamophobia" is the password Islamists whisper to walk past the gates.
For example, something stunning happened in Australia last year. A few Muslim nurses boasted that they had killed Israeli patients, and that they would do it again.
In that situation you’d expect the moderate Muslims to decry them. Over 50 Muslim organizations or leaders came out to defend them!26
Let’s lay out the problem clearly:
There are some normal Islamic behaviors and some Islamist ones.
The Islamic behaviors get improperly criticized (islamophobia). The Islamist behavior gets properly criticized (islamismophobia).
Islamist leaders purposefully fudge the two and call both “islamophobia”.
Since Western leaders don’t know how to differentiate between islamophobia and islamismophobia, and they want to treat people equally (human rights), they start policing each other to eradicate islamophobia. Inadvertently, they also shut down islamismophobia.
This opens a path for Islamism to grow.
The key points above are 3 and 4. Let’s take examples of them. First, how Islamist leaders fudge islamophobia and islamismophobia, like in the case of the Australian nurses.
An Islamist group created the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which the UK government has said consistently opposed programmes by successive Governments to prevent terrorism. For example, it opposed naming 21 Islamist organizations (including Al Qaeda) as terrorist.27 The MCB spent 80% of its charity budget on the Center for Media Monitoring, or CfMM, whose entire goal is to monitor British media to accuse them of islamophobia. This could be a great goal if, indeed, it called out only islamophobia. It doesn’t.
The CfMM called a report of “a knife-wielding man yelling Islamic slogans” islamophobic.28 It called the reporting on the grooming gangs “shoddy science underpinning a narrative favoured by the media.” A coordinated takeover to islamize state schools, proven by the government? According to the CfMM, it was a hoax. It recommends eliminating the terms Islamism and Islamic extremism: If they don’t exist, you can’t accuse people of them, and thus any criticism must be islamophobia!
This would not be a problem if the CfMM was an obscure organization without repercussions. Alas, it has engaged with over 1,000 journalists, editors, regulators, and policy makers, including the BBC29, the Sun, the Express, the Daily Mail… It organized feedback sessions for the BBC and fed into its terminology book. It was instrumental in developing the press regulator’s guidance on the reporting of Islam.30 It has trained journalists from The Standard, The Independent, and Scottish TV. It pressured the BBC to withdraw an inconvenient interview clip (the BBC caved). It recommends flooding newspapers with complaints when they report negatively on Islamism:
If they don’t verify what they are reporting, they are going to get flooded with people emailing them and complaining. And that will discourage them from doing it in the first place, because it costs them, in effect, money, because they have to pay their staff for every hour that they are looking at corrections and looking at complaints.
Let’s move on to another organization. Still in the UK, the National Association of Muslim Police (NAMP) represents the most Muslim police officers. This should immediately heighten your senses, because it’s precisely the type of organization where Islam the religion can translate into Islamism the political movement. As such, you should expect them to be extremely thoughtful in separating Islam and Islamism. Yet last year, it published this document, Confronting anti-Muslim hatred and Promoting Human Rights. The entire document tries to claim that Islam is always good, that what bad people do in the name of Islam is therefore not Islam, and so we should completely remove the concept of Islamism. Of course, if Islamism doesn’t exist, any criticism of Islamism must be… Islamophobia. Here are some excerpts.
Terms such as 'Islamist' blur the distinction between extremism and the peaceful practices observed by the majority of Muslims, perpetuating anti-Muslim hatred and casting unwarranted suspicion over the entire religion.
See what they did? They say calling people “islamist” is racist! Absolutely not! It’s the exact opposite! Terms like Islamist allow us to separate between extremism and peaceful practices!
The following passage is also informative:
Islamic teachings advocate for peace, compassion, and fairness, principles diametrically opposed to the motivations behind religiously justified violence. Media, policymakers, and society at large must exert concerted efforts to distinguish between the distorted political or violent interpretations of religion and the genuine practices of its followers.
Later, it tries to erase the word “Islamist”, and replace it with words like “right-wing terrorist”31. In other words, it’s trying to hide the fact that the extremist religious beliefs behind political Islamism cause Islamic terrorism! And then blame these instances on the right! This represents the police speaking!32
You can see the pattern here. First, Islamism is too broad, it doesn’t represent Islam, let’s not use the term. Then, call criticism to Islamism islamophobia. Accuse the authors, and train the media in avoiding any criticism altogether.
What is the result of all this effort? What is the attitude of Western leaders about criticising Islamism? Reporters have said that accurate stories were not published for fear of being branded islamophobic, that the CfMM and other activists would be able to use any official definition of “Islamophobia” to suppress their reporting, that a newspaper discouraged a journalist from writing about Muslims because the CfMM complained he wrote too many stories about Muslims…
This fear of being called racist, xenophobic, or islamophobic33 has enabled what The Telegraph reported on the Telford Grooming Gangs:
Aware that taxi drivers were offering children rides for sex, in 2006 [the council] suspended licensing enforcement for drivers, allowing high risk drivers to continue practicing, “borne entirely out of fear of accusations of racism; it was craven”.
Senior council staff were terrified that the abuse of children “had the potential to start a ‘race riot’”. The result was stasis, despite officials acknowledging in at least one case that abuse by Asian men had gone on for “years and years”.
A senior police officer allegedly said the abuse had been “going on” for 30 years, adding “with it being Asians, we can’t afford for this to be coming out. Politicians were terrified [of the impact on] community cohesion.
As a result of this combination of factors, the council went to great lengths to “cover up information and silence whistle-blowers”. In the words of witnesses, “if you want to keep your job, you keep your head down and your mouth shut”.
The police, the council, and the entire community failed to stop behaviors downstream of Islamism because of their fears to be called islamophobic. Here are other examples of anti-Islamist actions stifled by the fear of being labeled islamophobic:
In the Islamist Manchester Arena bombing that killed 22 people and injured over 1,000, a security guard didn’t stop the perpetrator before the attack for fear of being branded racist.
After a French teacher was beheaded by a Jihadist over the false accusation of a student34, the response from the state and the media was not supportive enough, and now 40% of French teachers say they self-censor on sensitive topics.
According to the UK government, “fears of being accused of being racist, anti-Muslim, or culturally insensitive may inhibit Islamist-related referrals”.
Channel 4 had a documentary about grooming gangs ready to air in 2004, but didn’t “over fears that it could lead to race riots”. Grooming gangs would continue for over a decade.
The South Wales police has been told to log every event where a person is accused of islamophobia, therefore leaving a public record against critics of Islam and Islamism. No other religion has anything like that.
On New Year’s Eve of 2015, over 1,000 women were sexually assaulted in Germany (especially in Cologne) by large groups of North African and Arab appearance. The police originally labeled the night as “Cheerful mood—celebrations largely peaceful”. A later report included the word rape, which a minister’s office allegedly35 asked to remove. Newspapers had to apologize for covering them up
An Islamist who killed 14 people in California in 2015 was not reported by neighbors for suspicious activity because she didn’t want to profile him.
Denmark has made it illegal to burn the Quran, to placate Islamists.36
So that’s the mechanism by which Islamists stifle freedom of speech, which then prevents the West from calling out its problems. And that bleeds into day to day coercion.
Daily Crime and Coercion
This Sikh had to close his restaurant because of Pakistani harassment when he said he didn’t serve halal food:
This debate ended when a Muslim student stood up to threaten a Jewish student and then repeatedly yells “Allahu Akbar”.
This is a Church being desecrated in the UK:
I’m reminded of the behavior of pro-Palestinians in New York a few years back:
Apparently37, this video depicts girls in Antwerp, Belgium, being verbally attacked and groped on a bus for not wearing veils, and for showing too much skin.
These women were harassed on the street because of what they wore:
The poster, an Iranian journalist, added:
“When I say that Germany has its own “morality police,” I am referring to the so-called “Sharia Police,” self-appointed enforcers of Sharia law. I have received direct messages from many Iranian women sharing their concerns about morality enforcers in European countries, who are often silenced and labeled Islamophobic, anti-immigrant, or right-wing.
Whether we like it or not, these Sharia or morality police known as “Amr bi al-maruf”, a collective duty of Muslims to encourage righteous behavior and discourage immorality, exist in many European countries. Often linked to mosques, they impose their version of religious law, targeting women and girls for not wearing the “proper hijab.” This mirrors the experiences of women in Iran. In Iran, when Sharia Police violently harass women for not covering their hair, officials often mislead the world by claiming these are just religious groups, not the official police.
Sources in the Muslim community in Germany report that these so-called Sharia Police have appeared in cities like Wuppertal and Berlin, harassing women under the guise of promoting hijab and Sharia laws. This issue extends beyond isolated incidents, with moral enforcers emerging in schools and neighborhoods with Muslim majorities.”
Here’s another woman harassed by this local Islamist policing.
This Spanish girl had to leave the beach because of sexual harassment by North Africans. She didn’t want to be racist and sat nearby. She didn’t report it for the same reason.
Going to a beach and pointing fireworks at beachgoers while screaming “Allahu Akbar” should not be allowed.
This man is saying that blasphemy deserves death.
This guy harasses girls and old men, but is not in prison because people don’t report him, and they don’t report him because police, the media, or society might call them islamophobic.
Another example here.
Just to be clear, all these behaviors are not just anti-social. They’re illegal: coercion and harassment. Their erosion of public life might not be ideological (these people are not trying to impose Islam) but they’re fueled by Islamism in two distinct ways.
The first is impunity. These acts exist because reporting them, policing them, or naming the pattern carries a social cost, the cost of being called racist or islamophobic, which is precisely the cost the organizations described earlier work to manufacture.
The second is the imposition of an Islamist world view: a woman's visibility is a legitimate object of male policing, blasphemy is an injury that warrants force, burning a church’s door is acceptable because Christians don’t fight back, screaming Allahu Akbar scares people… all of these are downstream of a political project that taught the Islamist script. An ideology works most powerfully once it stops looking like an ideology and becomes simply how things are.
This is how the universal human rights for which Western societies have shed so much blood die a slow death.
So what can we do about it?
My Message to Conservatives, Liberals, Politicians, and Moderate Muslims
As we said, Islamophobia is real and many Muslims suffer from it as a result. It’s bad because it attacks a religion and the people who follow it.
But it’s also bad for the islamophobes themselves. The more islamophobia there is, the more Muslims feel bundled as a whole, rejected by their religion. They get radicalized, or don’t stop the extremists anymore (they’re in the same bundle, at the end of the day). That galvanizes Islamism, which then promotes actions that fuel further islamophobia, in a terrible vicious cycle.
But also, the examples in the previous chapter are not an expression of Islam. They’re an expression of Islamism, and Islamism is a threat to human rights that can’t be tolerated.
To break the cycle, we must differentiate between islamophobia and islamismophobia.
Moderate Muslims are islamismophobic too. They are as appalled as you or me by these behaviors. They want them to end. And they can only end when we call them out for what they are: Not isolated incidents, but the expression of Islamism, the political side of Islam that tries to coerce others into the religion or face consequences, which means it’s against universal human rights.
So here’s my message to each group.38
To Moderate Muslims
You’re in a difficult position. You have your personal, legitimate faith, which on one side, Western society pressures you to abandon, and on the other, Islamists push you to radicalize. When these two sides clash, you’re caught in the middle.
You can help solve this problem by drawing a clear line between yourselves and Islamists. That way, you can blame the problems on the true cause (Islamists), and not on Islam.
Always keep that narrative in mind. If there’s a terrorist attack? You can say: “These are Islamists. Islamism is a political ideology that tries to impose Islam on others. It’s a scourge and we need to get rid of it. This does not represent me, nor a majority of Muslims. I defend human rights.”
If you do that, it will be clear that you are on the side of human rights, and you are enemies of Islamism. It will be much easier to fight it.
The harder fight might be on a day to day basis. When somebody decries islamophobia that is islamismophobia, we should all correct them, but your voice carries more weight than anybody else’s. When somebody coerces, harasses, or erodes civil life, we should all call them out, but if the perpetrator seems to be Muslim, it’s even more important and valuable that you do.
Some conservative Muslims might prefer to fudge the line between Islam and Islamism, but it’s important that you help them clarify it. There really are only two sides to this: Either you’re in favor of human rights, or in favor of Islamism. There isn’t an in between. Islam is compatible with human rights; Islamism is not. As conservative Muslims’ strongest connection to the rest of Western society, it’s important that you help them see that.
To Western Conservatives
Stop conflating Islam and Islamism.
It’s OK to want to eat halal.
It’s OK to want to wear a hijab.
It’s OK to abide by Sharia Law for yourself, as long as you also respect civil law.
It’s OK to build a mosque.
It’s OK to sound a call to prayer in public.
It’s OK to pray in public, when your creed tells you to.
It’s OK to disapprove apostasy and blasphemy.
It’s OK to be a Muslim immigrant.
It’s OK to open a new mayoral term with a Muslim prayer.
It’s OK for Western schoolchildren to go to the mosque to learn about Islam.39
It’s OK to celebrate a specific Islamic event in public.40
All of these are Islamic, and they’re OK. You should not denounce them. That’s Islamophobic. You should be able to differentiate them from Islamism, for four reasons.
First, if you don’t, you’re against the universal human value of freedom of religion, a core bastion of the Western values that you claim to respect.
Second, when you attack a legitimate religion, you attack all of its members. More specifically, you alienate the 20–50% of moderate Muslims who are also fighting the Islamists, because you’re putting both in the same bucket, so they’ll want to defend themselves together. The more Islamophobic you are, the more you’ll radicalize Muslims.
Third, you also alienate the left, who will have a legitimate beef with you.
Fourth, by eliminating your islamophobic thoughts and remarks, you can leave only islamismophobic ones. Every time somebody accuses you of islamophobia, you will know they’re wrong, and you’ll have a good opportunity to educate them on the very important difference between Islam and Islamism.
To Western Liberals
It’s important to call out islamophobia, and any other type of discrimination.
It’s equally important to make the distinction with islamismophobia, because Islamism is quite common. Otherwise, you’ll be unwittingly abetting Islamism, losing your moral clarity, and undermining the human rights that are so important to you.
Islamism is against some of the most important rights you’ve fought for: those of women and LGBTQ+ people. But they’re also against other very important rights: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, animal rights (dogs). Virtually everything Liberals fight for is against what Islamism wants.
Finally, the Left allied with the Islamists in Iran in the 1979 revolution. As the Islamists took power, they turned against the Left. The alliance between Left and Islamism is a one-way relationship.
So first, realize that one of your biggest enemies is Islamism.
When you see a behavior that triggers your concerns about islamophobia, stop for a moment and think about whether you’re actually seeing islamismophobia. If it’s against Islam, you should decry it as islamophobia. If it’s against Islamism, you should join the criticism.
This also means you have to stop the knee-jerk reaction of labeling everything as far-right islamophobia or racism. For example, the head of a French extreme-left party called a law against the Muslim Brotherhood islamophobic. It’s not, it’s islamismophobic. He's enabling Islamism. Banning another Islamist organization has also been called islamophobic.41
To Western Politicians
Politicians who want to do the right thing are also in a tough spot:
Right-wing politicians conflate Islam with Islamism to stoke hatred and call for the expulsion of all Muslims and immigrants
Left-wing politicians call any reaction to Islamism “islamophobia” and use racism to incite conflict with the right
Emotions garner votes, so moderate parties bleed voters on both sides
It’s not always easy to tell what should be acceptable and what shouldn’t.
But I believe the vast majority of people are reasonable. They want Islam and don’t want Islamism. So here’s what politicians should consider:
Is an action consistent with a personal belief? Then it’s OK.
Is it consistent with Islamism (or any other politically extremist view that tries to undermine universal human rights)? Then it should be fought.
This has ramifications for many policies to fight both islamophobia and Islamism, such as policing, free speech, and immigration. We’ll cover these and more in the next article.
Takeaways
Islam is personal and persuasive. Islamism is communal and coercive.
If you’re in favor of human rights, you’re in favor of freedom of religion, and you’re in favor of Islam.
If you’re in favor of Islamism, you are supporting a political movement that is trying to eliminate other religious beliefs and individual freedoms. You’re against human rights.
So it’s crucial that we differentiate between Islam and Islamism. If you want to do that, you can ask questions like:
Should civil law always be above Sharia law?
Are women equal to men?
Is homosexuality acceptable?
Should people be allowed to have dogs?
Should it be legal to eat pork?
Should it be legal to leave the Muslim faith?
Should it be legal to burn the Quran and draw the Prophet Muhammad?
A moderate Muslim would answer yes to each.
A conservative Muslim might say: “I disagree with these personally, but I respect the rights of others to do and think these things.”
An Islamist would say no to some or all of them.
This will highlight the bright line between Islam and Islamism, drawn by universal human rights.
Judaism and Islam emerged from pastoral societies, where the state was weak. As such, they both proposed rules that cover spirituality and state law. They give plenty of details on what you should and shouldn’t do, and what the consequences are for each action. Meanwhile, Christianity emerged under a very strong state, the Roman Empire, and so it purposefully focused on morality and spirituality, avoiding the state’s role in shaping law. This is why Jesus said “My kingdom is not of this world.” These roles quickly blurred (Christianity became part of the Roman Empire, Islam created states), but the original influence explains this divergence we see nowadays. The result for Islam is much more prescriptive on people’s day to day life, from what to eat, how to dress, who to marry, how to divorce, how to deal with foreigners, etc. This law is not always clear in the Quran, so the Hadiths tried to interpret it a few centuries later, based on what was written in the Quran, and what was known at the time from the living memory passed down over generations, including reports about Muhammad’s sayings, actions, approvals, and conduct. Since the Quran is frequently ambiguous, the Hadiths were much later than the Quran, and the process to gather them was highly political, there are different Hadiths, who differ in substantial aspects. We can see the interpretability of these texts through the Shia / Sunni gap, which emerged immediately after the death of Muhammad, and was cemented over the following centuries, including through Hadiths: Each school follows different ones. From then, there has been a scholarly evolution of interpretations of Quran and Hadiths, which have led to very different interpretations of what Sharia law should be. This means that there’s not one single Islam, that legitimate Islamic beliefs can differ widely from each other.
The Islamism table above is doing two things at the same time: It’s bundling within Islamism coercive behaviors and, sometimes, speech. This is purposeful, because Islamism is not a behavior, it’s a system of thought. That thought is against universal rights and can sometimes translate into behavior. But shouldn’t free speech be protected, including Islamic speech? Otherwise, isn’t that specifically targeting a religion? This is what this article is about.
“Constistent” doesn’t mean that all Islam says this. It just means that Islam can be consistent with the views on the left of this series of questions, while Islamism will tend to be consistent with views on the right. Traditional interpretations of Islam (like those of other religions) are in some areas tolerant, in others less so, depending on who you ask.
Notice this is slightly different from what I said before on the Islam column. There, I mixed moderate and conservative Muslim views, but excluded Islamist views. Here, I’m highlighting moderate positions.
Note crucially that Turkey and Qatar have not.
From here, transcribed with Turboscribe, translated with ChatGPT
The national data in the UK is not good enough to tell. There are four Grooming Gangs that are known, though. In those, the perpetrators were usually Pakistani. In some cases, also North African or East African. The victims nearly all White. The reports consistently showed that authorities suppressed action in fear of being called racist. When you look at lists of convicts, the individual names of perpetrators include Asad, Ajmal, Mohammed, Ahmed, Taukeer, Mohsin, Javid, Haroon, Zahir, Wajid…
Case in point, Pakistan just condemned two men to death for raping a French tourist woman in front of her children.
And dozens and dozens of moderate Muslim organizations. From ChatGPT: UK: British Muslims for Secular Democracy; Muslim Women’s Network UK; Inclusive Mosque Initiative; Nisa-Nashim; The City Circle; Muslim Youth Helpline; Ahmadiyya Muslim Community UK.Germany: Liberal-Islamischer Bund; Ibn Rushd-Goethe Mosque; JUMA — jung, muslimisch, aktiv; HEROES Germany; CLAIM; Muslim Jewish Leadership Council.France: Musulmans Progressistes de France; Lallab; Homosexuel-le-s Musulman-e-s de France; Coexister; Les Bâtisseuses de Paix.Netherlands: Stichting Maruf; Femmes for Freedom; Al Nisa; Yoesuf Foundation; European Queer Muslim Network.Belgium: Merhaba; Kif Kif; BePax; European Muslim Network; European Queer Muslim Network.Denmark: Democratic Muslims; Exitcirklen; Sabaah; KVINFO-affiliated Muslim women’s initiatives.United States: Muslims for Progressive Values; Muslim Reform Movement; American Islamic Forum for Democracy; Muslim Public Affairs Council; Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity.Canada: Canadian Council of Muslim Women; Muslims for Progressive Values Canada; Noor Cultural Centre; Canadian Muslim Vote; Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama’at Canada.Australia: Muslim Women Australia; Australian Muslim Women’s Centre for Human Rights; Islamic Council of Victoria women’s initiatives; Together for Humanity.
This is a simplification. Depending on the country and questions, this estimate is going to be 10-20% for radical Islamist positions, with a large group of 20–50% additional people who hold conservative views that might bleed into Islamist attitudes.
With the caveat that, sometimes, the word “justice” is used as a stand-in for Sharia, especially when
All Arabic is transcribed by TurboScribe, translated by ChatGPT (shared when ChatGPT allows), edited by me for length to focus on what I consider the Islamist positions.
Transcribed by Turboscribe. Translated by ChatGPT.
This is not an imam but the leader of the MB in the UK
All the data below is extracted from these reports, through NotebookLM. It might contain some mistakes, but I spot-checked and didn’t see any.
In the UK they established the Islamic Society of Britain (ISB), dominated the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB), and played a critical role in establishing the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which successfully sought dialogue with the UK government. In France, the movement built a solid network over 40 years around a central umbrella structure, Musulmans de France (formerly the UOIF), which currently manages 139 affiliated places of worship (about 7% of all mosques in France). Across Europe, they established the Federation of Islamic Organisations in Europe (FIOE)—now the Council of European Muslims—to act as a massive umbrella for MB-linked groups across the continent. They also created the Forum of European Muslim Youth and Student Organisations (FEMYSO) to mobilize youth and conduct political lobbying.
European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR)
There’s no data on this, and the MB is a broad umbrella anyway, but if you add up all the money uncovered by different reports from different countries, it can easily reach that number, and probably higher.
The Qatar Charity NGO has poured millions into Europe to finance MB mosques and projects through its "Ghaith" program. In Spain alone, Qatar Charity funneled approximately 17 million euros by 2015 to construct and expand MB-linked hubs, including the Islamic Cultural Center of Catalonia in Barcelona.
The Islamic Cultural Center of Valencia (CCIV) became so active in local integration and youth issues that they successfully secured hundreds of thousands of euros in public subsidies from regional governments and city councils. They even established partnerships for sociocultural projects with private entities like the Obra Social Caja Madrid.
It is not the only one. For example, countries with a lot of immigration that settle in enclaves will be living among peer immigrants, and the pressure to integrate will actually be weaker than that of the previous generation, which was a smaller minority so suffered more pressure to integrate.
Governor of Punjab until 2022.
Jama'at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin
How can you find hundreds of people willing to participate in such a crime if they are not all willing to protect each other?
This mixes religion, immigration status, race, and government action, so it’s out of full scope for this. I will cover it more in another article.
Here’s the original letter, here’s a transcript. Here’s exactly what it says about the behavior of the nurses: “Healthcare should be provided justly to all. [...] We recognise the importance of professionalism and ethical responsibility within healthcare and that the nurses' actions breached the codes of conduct for health professionals. The statements made by the nurses regarding "killing Israelis" were clearly emotional and hyperbolic, as supported by subsequent investigations. Healthcare professionals are bound by their duty to treat and care for all individuals.” If you pay attention, there is zero condemnation. The rest of the message is about how this is manufactured outrage to cover uphide the deaths in Gaza.
Just to give you more examples. Here you can see it claimed 45% of all hate crime offenses targeted Muslims. But in fact it’s only 45% of religious hate crimes. It was 2.2% of all hate crimes. It probably purposefully mixed denominators (religious hate crimes instead of all hate crimes) to make the stat look shocking. It has continued making similar claims
The section is introduced as: “Certain articles are embellished with extraneous details to the story and don’t provide any further context to the incident being reported on. The purpose of their inclusion seems to be targeted at portraying Muslims and/or Islam in a negative manner.” Among others. Many more examples in the link. Table 13, page 104.
The CfMM met with the director general (who was “very impressed”) and the managing editor of the BBC (who called the CfMM a “powerful machine”).
The only religion for which this was done
It also proposes Irhabist, which is Arabic for terrorist, and Anti-Western Terrorist
There are a few more examples in this document:
These certainly overlap a lot, as over 30 countries are over 90% Muslim. As a result, grooming gangs that were completely Pakistani were also completely Muslim. Sometimes, it’s hard to tell the difference, and they blur. This can lead to either racism, xenophobia, islamophobia, or a combination of them. Here, I am focusing on the impact of Islamism, trying to disentangle it as much as possible. But it’s impossible to do perfectly given the correlations.
She claimed he had expelled Muslim students from a freedom of speech class in which he was going to show a picture of Muhammad. This didn’t happen, and the girl wasn’t even in class that day.
Officers said the state interior ministry's control centre wanted the word 'rape' deleted from an internal report. The minister denied he had mandated that.
Another: In the UK, there are more right-wing terrorism reports than Islamic terrorism ones, despite the Islamic terrorists being much more active and dangerous.
I can’t get the transcription to work, so I’ll rely on the text in the tweet, which might in fact be a mislabel. There were no community notes though.
These aren’t perfectly described groups, but I think they’re good enough.
Same as Muslim children should go to churches to learn about Christianity, but since they already live in a majority-Christian society, they get more exposure than the other way around.
Here’s an interesting example of an NYPD officer who wears a hijab. I think it’s OK to wear a hijab at work. But also, police is a public job, so it should be treated as religiously neutral. Overall, I think it should be possible to wear one as a police officer, but I also respect that other countries might have a different position on this. If they don’t want to allow a hijab though, then no other religious symbols should be allowed, like in France of Quebec. The principle must be the same for all.
Another example: US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib used the term “From the River to the Sea”. This is a slogan traditionally used to say that the entire region of Palestine (present-day Israel, Gaza, and West Bank) will become Muslim. This is considered Islamist, as it promotes the political expansion of Muslim rule over what is today not Muslim rule. She was censored for it. The censoring was called Islamophobic. I think this example is a bit muddier, because it’s arguable whether the entire logic here is valid. Maybe actually Tlaib didn’t mean that, and maybe that’s a contentious edge case of Islamism. But for the same reason that it’s unclear whether her statement is Islamist, it’s unclear whether her censuring is islamophobic.The movement Queers for Palestine legitimately worries about the plight of Gazans, but it should note that ~95% of Gazans don’t accept gay relationships, that the ruling Hamas is supported by a large share of Gazans, and that Hamas is a terrorist Islamist organization.
Simple question: was Mohammed an exponent of Islam or Islamism? Did he slaughter those who opposed him or even spoke against him? Did he wage wars of conquest and force his enemies into conversion or submission?
Tomas, this article changed my perspective. Drawing the distinction between Islam (a personal religion) and Islamism (a coercive political ideology) is a powerful light that clarifies the entire debate. It helps defend moderate Muslims and fight extremism without falling into the trap of Islamophobia. Thank you so much for this very important work.