The Myth of Islamophobia

I've had a lot of e-mails from people who seem to think that I hate Muslims, when nothing could be further from the truth, not even the official reason for the war in Iraq, which is about as far from the truth as Pluto is from the sun. But this illustrates, I think, a quality we have as human beings; we tend to read into a thing what we want to see there, rather than what's actually there, which is, of course, what makes the so-called holy scriptures so dangerous. Let me make this crystal clear. I have no problem with Islam, with the Islam where people just get on with their lives and pray every day, and don't bother anybody else. Nor do I have a problem with any religion that has the common decency to mind its own business. But that's not the Islam that I'm talking about, and I think we all know this. I'm talking about the repressive, violent, intolerant Islam that considers human rights an insult to God, the Islam that wants homosexuals killed, along with adulterers, and anybody else who thinks they're entitled to a private life. But I don't hate anyone, because hate is for losers. Hate is just fear with attitude. If you hate something you're afraid of it, which makes you nothing but a big ***. And whatever you hate and fear, well, you know you're going to attract it, because if you invest that much emotion in something, it's coming your way. The Islamic fundamentalist, he hates America. America is coming his way. Here in Britain, we hate intolerance. Guess what's coming our way. This week the Queen of England was burned in effigy on the streets of Pakistan. Why? Because she gave a knighthood, a pretty worthless bauble at the best of times, to an author better known for his nuisance value than for his actual writing. It doesn't mean that he has to walk around in a suit of armour, although it might be advisable if he ever goes anywhere near Pakistan, where the government has declared this an insult to Islam. Well, I mean, what isn't these days? I do find it difficult to take seriously this moral outrage in Pakistan, coming, as it does, from a country whose attitude to women degrades the entire human race. The real insult to Islam is the fact that in Pakistan a woman can be murdered for the crime of being ***. The worst thing that can happen to anyone in Pakistan is to be born female. Every year thousands of women in Pakistan are murdered by members of their own family. Yet nobody is insulted by that. Nobody is demanding an apology for that. Instead, what do we get? A deafening silence from Muslims, almost a miracle in itself. According the the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, 80 percent of Pakistani women are regularly beaten by their husbands. Come on, guys, shape up. You can't blame your culture for everything. Yet these are the people who have accused the British government of Islamophobia, and this must really sting the politically correct religious appeasers who run this country, because they've already done so much to accommodate Islamic sensibilities, even legitimising crackpot pressure groups like the Muslim Council of Britain, who recently issued a list of demands that would impose Islamic values on all children in British schools. The Muslim Council of Britain sounds like an official body, but in fact it's just another extremist group of fanatics who want to turn Britain into an Islamic republic. They'd never admit this publicly, of course, any more than the British National Party would admit that they want to repatriate the blacks and gas the Jews, but we all know that's where they're really coming from. And they love accusing people of Islamophobia, a totally made up word, and a blatant lie. A phobia is defined as an irrational fear or dread of something, and it's true that many people fear and dread the growth of Islam, but there's nothing irrational about that when you look at the evidence. In countries where Islam has control there's repression, there's torture, there's precious few human rights, and there's no free speech. And, if the Muslim Council of Britain had its way, this would be one of those countries, and I'd be arrested and tortured for making this video. This is not a belief system that I want to see encouraged, but there's nothing phobic about it; it's just common sense. The real phobia lies with Islam itself, and with all religions, with their pathological fear of reason, which they know can evaporate all their delusions in an instant, because reason to religion is like sunlight to a vampire. That's where the real fear is, and that's where the real hate is. Peace, especially to everyone in the religion of peace.