Whilst last week saw a lack of professional courage to highlight the growing Islamophobia in the UK by researchers tasked to survey British social attitudes, this week has been defined by several academics and intellectuals choosing to manifest their growing boorishness in a feast of public declarations of Islamophobia.
It started with Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics, speculating in his Psychology Today blog, "Whats Wrong with Muslims", was followed by the declaration from African Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka that Britain is a "cesspit" of Muslim fundamentalists and was topped off by the prominent philosopher Roger Scruton expounding his belief that Muslims needed to start drinking wine in order to become more liberal.
What was astonishing was not so much that these statements were made, but the way in which these individuals chose to support their assertions given that they are widely acknowledged to be terribly clever and have a veritable alphabet of letters decorating the space behind their names. These attempts can only be described as crude and flimsy affairs, full of errors and inaccuracies, that were more at home down at The Dog and Duck Pub, shared between bleary-eyed red necks after one too many pints of pale ale, than the ivory tower of academia from which they emanated.
For example, Satoshi Kanazawa's essay is just a collection of jumbled stereotypes and personal prejudices orbiting around a central core of misconception without anything akin to an informed argument populating the vacuum of his intellectual universe. Instead, he chooses to borrow and quote verbatim from the poison ous Islamophobe Thomas Friedman, and then demonstrates his own woeful ignorance of Islam and Muslims with howlers such as:
"...most Muslims speak the same language – Arabic – but not all; neither Indonesians nor Chechens speak Arabic..."
Oh, just the Indonesians and Chechens then, eh?
It may surprise Kanazawa that only 15% of Muslims are native Arab speakers!
Kanazawa then indulges in some extremely dodgy extrapolations. He fuses Friedman's deluded allegation that 50% of Muslims are basically lying in wait to murder the good folk of the West with research showing that 81% of British Muslims hold to their faith so dearly that they consider themselves Muslims first and British second; and adds to this strange mix the Muslim population of the world to come up with a bizarre "statistic" that there are 120 million Muslim suicide bombers waiting to kill him.
In short: no evidence, no arguments and a disgracefully sycophantic attitude to Friedman. The London School of Economics obviously is not what it once was if it chooses to maintain the contract of this nasty ignoramus. D minus Kanazawa. Google harder next time.
Next up the pronouncements of Nobel Prize winner Wole Soyinka, who felt so aggrieved by the US's denouncement of Nigeria for supporting terrorism that he chose to attack England as being a "cesspit" for breeding and training fundamentalists, and accused Islam of "preach[ing] apocalyptic violence".
In attempting to dissect the laureate's logic one would assume Soyinka to at least have some understanding of Nigerians, the history of their troubled country, and their present corrupt and ineffectual political establishment. Although the government blames what it euphemistically calls "sectarian" violence for incidents such as those occu rring in southern and central Nigeria over the last few weeks, the facts are that between 300–500 mainly Muslim Hausa speaking people were butchered at the hands of their fellow Christian neighbours.
Therefore, for Soyinka to accuse Islam of preaching "apocalyptic violence" is not only illogical, but quite perverse given the actions of his former co-religionists and countrymen. Moreover, in a week that saw so many Nigerians butchered, to not condemn the actions of their killers or at the very least offer a few words of sympathy for the victims reveals a callous disregard for their humanity. Furthermore, in offering no evidence for his illogical allegations regarding the UK, he relegates them to being cowardly cheap shots aimed at besmirching the name of Islam taken from behind the cover of acceptability that his Nobel Prize in Literature has afforded him. It would seem that he is under the misapprehension that being black and in possession of a Nobel Prize makes his intellectual rigour and moral steadfastness unquestionable – Barak Obama take note.
As for Roger Scruton's ridiculous advice to Muslims to drink wine in order to become tolerant, I would urge him to recall during a sober moment that France is the largest consumer per capita of wine in the world and we have all been sooooo impressed of late with their various demonstrations of tolerance! It may also be more pertinent at this point to mention the link between early dementia and alcohol intake, but one just does not have the heart to elaborate any further on the 64-year-old Scruton's comments.
So this week we had a vanguard of intellectuals adding their names to those who view Islam as the scourge of the West. Whilst it is easy to ignore the attacks on Islam by rabid football hooligans like the English Defense League, it is a bit more taxing to walk past a headline that announces "Nobel Prizewinner says Britain is a cesspit of fundamentalist Muslims" because of the widely held perception that people in these positions in our society must be educated and informed, and therefore have developed the ability to abandon their prejudices at the gates of whichever lofty university they are employed in, and to be able to see past pettiness.
This sadly, appears not to be the case.
From Kanazawa's sycophantic propagation of Friedman's vile theories, to Soyinka's cynical piggybacking of his own prejudiced view of Islam on the back of the fame he received with his Nobel Prize, to Scruton's advice which is condescending and idiotic in equal measures, we have seen here how Islamophobia seems to penetrate every facet of society.
Perhaps Muslims should take some cold comfort in their ability to produce such a wave of solidarity between so many different aspects of society, whilst this uncomfortable realisation may leave Muslims in the UK caught in a vice of bitter defensiveness, hunkered down in our ghettos, behind a psychological fortress of suspicion and acrimony. Insha-Allah, this should not be our final destination, as another factor exists in British society that seems to transgress all social, gender, class, ethnic and educational boundaries – the slow seep of Britons inexorably drawn to the religion of Allah despite the negative press, misconceptions and prejudices.
It is not the goose-stepping Muslim juggernaut that Islamophobes like Douglas Murray and Melanie Phillips scaremonger about but rather the quiet tread of travellers coming home, finding peace, warmth and contentment after a long time off the beaten track.
One of the 99 names of Allah is Al Muqallib, "The Turner of Hearts". We can see this attribute in action when we read about how the Mongol Golden Horde in 1258 destroyed the grand palaces, universities and libraries of Baghdad and killed 1,600,000 of its citizens. A mere 80 years later due to the conduct of ordinary sincere and honest Muslims who had complete certainty in their faith and did not forget the importance of sharing it with others, the Golden Horde completely embraced Islam.
More recently, we can see this with the news that a Swiss community councillor and member of the political SVP party that ran the minaret ban campaign has embraced Islam. The link is to a German language site which has interviewed Daniel Streich who says that he had been Muslim for 2 years and has only publicly declared his faith now as he is disgusted by what he calls the witch-hunt against Islam that his party seems to be carrying out. SubhanAllah. May Allah give him help and strength.
This story highlights an important issue and it is not the strange sense of personal vindication that we as Muslims often feel when one hears that someone "important" has become Muslim. Whether or not Daniel Streich had announced that he had become Muslim, the only impact it should have on us is that it should remind us of what our most important role is in the West – being righteous and upright examples of Islam bearing witness to one and all. We must tread the path that dictates that we must avoid feeling hatred towards those who oppose Islam even as we dislike the disbelief present in them because it is Allah who places and removes Islam from our hearts and our role is only to pass on the message of Islam.
So may Allah place the love of His deen in the hearts of Islamophobes everywhere, from the members of the English Defence League to luminaries like Satoshi Kanazawa, Wole Soyinka and Roger Scruton.
Shahr Bin Hawshab said: "I asked Umm Salamah (Radhiallaahu Anhaa) what was the du'aa that Rasoolullaah Sallallaahu Alayhi Wa Sallam used to make the most when he (Sallallaahu Al ayhi Wa Sallam) was by her.
"She said: 'The du'aa he (Sallallaahu Alayhi Wa Sallam) used to make the most was:
يَا مُقَلِّبَ الْقُلُوبِ ثَبِّتْ قَلْبِى عَلَى دِينِكَ
Yaa Muqallibal Quloob Thabbit Qalbee ‘alaa Deenik.
"Oh(Allah)Turner of hearts, make my heart firm upon Your religion."'"
(At-Tirmidhi)
By Karima Hamdan
