Islamophobia?

CNN News reports:

"Islamophobia" and the defamation of Islam are the most conspicuous forms of racism and intolerance today, and a global U.N. conference on racism planned for 2009 should come up with practical solutions to deal with them, an Islamic bloc representative told a preparatory meeting in Geneva Monday.

The 2009 meeting is intended to review a U.N. conference on racism, held in Durban, South Africa, just days before 9/11, but the 56-nation Organization for the Islamic Conference (OIC) wants Islam to be high on the agenda.

Hmmmm. The reality is that Western nations have contorted themselves not to offend Islam (think -- the UK’s recent policy against the phrase “Islamic terrorism”). Western media has self-censored in ways that sometimes threaten freedom of speech (think -- the Danish cartoon controversy). Western police have often looked the other way as Moslem “youths” have expressed their “outrage” through violence that has ranged from burned cars (think --Paris) to cold-blooded murder (think--Theo van Gogh). And the general public in Western nations — except for a relatively few incidents in which the perpetrators were arrested and prosecuted for hate crimes (is that ever done in, say Egypt)— has remained remarkably calm in the face of murderous Islamofascist terror attacks and virulently anti-Western speech emanating from Wahhabi mosques through the Western world.

Like many things about our modern world, we encounter another “through the looking glass” moment. Islam is the victim in all of this, and we in the West are the aggressor. And now, Islam expects the UN to do something about it. Yet Islam does absolutely nothing about the underlying actions that make many people uneasy. Business as usual.

Robert Spencer comments:

The coinage of the term "Islamophobia" is an exercise in blaming the victim. If Muslims want to end "Islamophobia" instantaneously, here's how:

1. Focus your indignation on Muslims committing violent acts in the name of Islam, not on non-Muslims reporting on those acts.

2. Renounce definitively not just "terrorism," but any intention to replace the U.S. Constitution (or the constitutions of any non-Muslim state) with Sharia even by peaceful means.

3. Teach Muslims the imperative of coexisting peacefully as equals with non-Muslims on an indefinite basis.

4. Begin comprehensive international programs in mosques all over the world to teach against the ideas of violent jihad and Islamic supremacism.

5. Actively work with Western law enforcement officials to identify and apprehend jihadists within Western Muslim communities.

Do those five things, and voila! "Islamophobia" will vanish. No UN program needed.

We in the West are, of course, guilty of extreme indulgence. No western politician gives Islam tough love, probably the only kind of love that will save it. We tacitly assume that Islam is incapable of reforming itself, and as a consequence people in positions of responsible leadership make relatively few demands of those Moslems who claim that they abhor Jihadist Islam.

Why not ask for more aggressive action within the religion? Why not call organizations such as CAIR what they are—propaganda fronts for Islamofascists, not “moderate” advocacy groups? Why not suggest that free speech trumps religious sensitivity, and a culture of “outrage” does nothing to move Islam into the 21st century? Why not argue that religious education alone will keep Arab Moslems poverty stricken, living in crippled economies with no prospect of improvement?

Why not? Maybe it is Islamophobia after all.