Islamophobia Concerns are Attempts to Silence Critics of Muslim Antisemitism

By Jonathan Tobin, JNS

It’s possible to argue that anything the Biden-Harris administration does in its final weeks in office is irrelevant and may soon be overturned by President-elect Donald Trump once he is sworn in next month. That may well apply to the announcement last week of a “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia and Anti-Arab Hate,” issued by the White House. It is nonetheless noteworthy because it reinforces the myth about an American epidemic of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab hate that is routinely published and broadcast by the mainstream media. Equally important, it gives the imprimatur of government approval to a false analogy to the very real problem of antisemitism about which Biden and Harris also issued a “National Strategy” paper last year.

Any discussion of Islamophobia in America must be prefaced by an acknowledgment that hatred directed against racial, ethnic and religious minorities exists. And like any form of prejudice that leads to discrimination or violence, it is deplorable.

Even as we condemn any act in which an Arab or Muslim-American is targeted because of their ethnicity or faith, it is essential to understand that the attention given to Islamophobia is not being driven by anything that could accurately be described as a crisis. Rather, it is part of a false narrative that seeks to divert us from an unpleasant but vital fact about the subject. Most of what those who promote this issue consider Islamophobia is not anti-Muslim or anti-Arab hatred but merely criticism of Muslim and Arab hatred of Jews.

A fake problem

So, while the lame duck administration’s report may be considered a pious affirmation of opposition to prejudice, it doesn’t deserve even the tepid applause it has received. On the contrary, it is a conscious effort to balance a genuine problem with one that is bogus. And in doing so, it undermines the minimal and largely ineffective efforts undertaken by the government to address the very real surge in Jew-hatred that has been building in recent years and then exploded after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

The notion of an Islamophobia crisis in the United States dates back to the aftermath of the terror attacks carried out by Islamists on Sept. 11, 2001. Seeking to build a broad international alliance against Muslim extremists, President George W. Bush took pains to differentiate what he described as a “war on terror” from a war against Islam. At every possible opportunity, he always described Islam as a “religion of peace,” emphasizing that the efforts to destroy Al-Qaeda and the subsequent military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq were not a civilizational clash between the West and Islam. This was technically accurate about the nation’s post-9/11 foreign policy and security goals as well as a reflection of the basic decency of both Bush personally and America’s modern political culture that opposes religious prejudice.

But the harping on the “religion of peace” line tended to obscure the fact that Islamist terrorism was not just the bad behavior of a tiny minority. It was rooted in a widely popular, though not universally supported, version of that faith that had mainstream support in much of the Arab and Muslim world.

There were real-world consequences of this effort. After 9/11, American corporate media and the nation’s cultural institutions prioritized a message that seemed to treat American Muslims as victims. That meant Hollywood largely avoided showing Muslims or Arabs as the bad guys in films or television shows—the opposite of what usually happened in the past when America was at war. It also buttressed the claim that there had been a post-9/11 backlash against them in the United States, despite the complete absence of any objective study or statistics that might have backed up that assertion.

Indeed, when plans (that eventually fell through) for the building of a Muslim community center and mosque in the footprint of the fallen World Trade Center towers were announced in 2010, any objections about the insensitivity and bad taste of the idea were deplored as a form of vile prejudice.

At the time, it was pointed out that the FBI’s statistics about religious hate crimes debunked the idea of such a backlash. Throughout the decade after 9/11, attacks on Muslims were dwarfed by those against Jews. Though the numbers have moved up and down to some extent in the nearly 15 years since then, antisemitic crimes continue to vastly outnumber those that can be connected to Islamophobia. Nevertheless, this fact has consistently been condemned by much of mainstream liberal opinion as wrongheaded, if not prejudicial. Groups that continued to promote the idea of a backlash, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), continued to gain influence rather than being dismissed for being the source of misleading propaganda that aimed to silence critics of Islamic Jew-haters.

False moral equivalence

That became obvious when CAIR was tapped as an official consultant to the Biden-Harris effort against antisemitism, though no Jewish groups were asked to give similar input to the Islamophobia strategy. That this happened despite the group’s origins as a political front for fundraisers for Hamas terrorists and its embrace of antisemitic positions was shocking. But to an administration seeking re-election that regarded Muslims and Arabs as part of the Democratic Party’s base, it was simply good politics. Like Bush’s “religion of peace” mantra, Biden and Harris never seemed able to mention the explosion of antisemitism that happened on their watch without reflexively including a mention of Islamophobia.

After the barbaric atrocities that occurred when Hamas and other Palestinian terrorists infiltrated Israel on Oct. 7, the administration’s obsession with Islamophobia could no longer be dismissed as either meaningless or routine partisan politics.

As the report on Islamophobia that is part of the new national strategy makes clear, Biden and Harris bought the CAIR line that treated the situation on American campuses after Oct. 7 as one in which both Jews and Muslims were at risk. But there is no moral equivalence between the rights of Muslims to advocate for the genocide of Jews with the rights of Jewish students to be able to get to classes and other areas on campus without being blocked, harassed or even subjected to violence.

The situation of Jews and Muslims during the last 14 months is not one of two groups experiencing discrimination or threats. It’s the exact opposite, where the Jews have become the victims of religious and ethnic harassment and assaults. And it is Muslims—along with non-Muslim students, faculty and school employees who subscribe to the toxic beliefs of intersectionality and critical race theory that label Jews and Israelis as “white oppressors”—who are attacking them.

Despite the seemingly innocuous claims of opposition to religious prejudice in the Biden-Harris strategy paper and those who applaud it, the whole point of the exercise is not what it seems. It’s about silencing criticism of Muslim and Arab antisemitism, and treating support for the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet and the genocide of its population as a reasonable point of view rather than an expression of deplorable hatred that deserves condemnation.

A new backlash myth

Groups like CAIR that purport to represent Muslims and the Biden-Harris strategy paper both seem to be putting forward a new myth about a post-Oct. 7 backlash against Muslims that is even more shameless than the one about 9/11. Whereas the previous myth merely promoted a false claim about Americans targeting Muslims, this new one is actively seeking to deny the reality of a surge in Jew-hatred among Muslims and Arabs while implicitly minimizing or even denying the reality of a surge in antisemitism.

America is not yet like the Netherlands or elsewhere in Europe where anyone, even government officials, who point out that Jew-hatred is mainstream opinion in the Arab and Muslim world can be subjected to prosecution for committing a hate crime. But that is the ultimate goal of the discussion about Islamophobia. The notion that Muslims are under siege when, in fact, they are the ones engaging in hate speech and hate crimes, is problematic. It inevitably leads to efforts to censor or sanction those who point out that those who cry the most about Islamophobia are generally the same people who defend or rationalize antisemitism.

Indeed, in addition to propping up the myth—unsupported by any real data—of Muslims and Arabs facing widespread prejudice, the Biden-Harris document also sounds an ominous note about silencing critics of Islamism. It specifically calls for social-media platforms to “de-rank and stop recommending” content that Muslim groups oppose. In most cases, that references efforts by Jews and others to highlight the way Muslims and Arabs have been promoting antisemitism. That’s a throwback to the way this same administration colluded with Silicon Valley oligarchs to de-platform critics of their repressive and largely useless COVID-19 pandemic policies.

At this point, the clamor about Islamophobia is no longer a politically correct, harmless talking point. It is now part of a general effort to shut down discussion of the engine of the all-too-real uptick in antisemitism.

President-elect Trump has a strong record of support for Israel and opposition to antisemitism on college campuses, as well as Islamist terrorists, and has been falsely branded as a hate-monger by the left for doing so. But like any president, his second administration will be eager to win over critics and voters of all kinds and might be vulnerable to pressure to kowtow to the Islamophobia myth in order to demonstrate that he wants to protect all Americans. That would not only be wrong but would undermine his plans to root out the woke diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) catechism that is at the heart of the left’s war on American history and Western civilization.

The Islamophobia myth needs to be rejected not only by the federal government but by all institutions and persons that claim to oppose the Jew-hatred that it seeks to cover up. There is no moral equivalence between antisemitism and Islamophobia. Anyone or any group that is truly willing to fight against anti-Jewish prejudice must understand that such a stand is incompatible with efforts to promote a false narrative about Muslims being the true victims of 9/11 or 10/7.

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate). Follow him: @jonathans_tobin.

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