Kenan Çamurcu wrote: Islamophobia literature – 1 | Fear of Islam or scary Islam?

In 1996, during Erdoğan's term as Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality mayor, we invited Gilles Kepel to one of the influential intellectual programs we organized. His book, "Allah'ın Batısında," had just been published, generating the expected buzz given the heated debates of the time. In it, he wrote his observations and theses on Muslims who had become part of the West. It was the best work ever done in this field. It may even be the first book on the subject.

In Algeria, the Islamist (and Salafist) Front Islamique du Salut (FIS) based its campaign in the 1990 local elections on the central idea that "having been physically expelled from Algeria, France must also be expelled intellectually and ideologically, and to this end, we must get rid of its supporters who have sucked its poisonous milk" (In the West of Allah, 1995: 204). This was the second example, after Iran, of the Islamist algorithm for seizing power by polarizing society along religious lines. Polarization, Islamism's doctrine of action, fueled the ongoing conflict in Europe and Turkey throughout the 1990s. They continue to do so, and it works.

Front Islamique du Salut actually means "Islamic Liberation Front." However, due to the connotation of "liberation" as a leftist organization, the Turkish translation "Islami Salvation Front" was chosen. It was intended to evoke Erbakan's National Salvation Party, which was shut down in the September 12, 1980 coup.

When Kepel arrived in Istanbul, he said he wanted to chat with us before the conference about the topics he explores in his book. We hosted him in our office, and as we enjoyed dinner, coffee, and tea, the conversation deepened. Many topics were discussed, but the most important was the Islamists' experience in Algeria. We focused on the fate that awaited the Welfare Party, which was following a similar path. Kepel knew that the Islamists' success in local elections in Türkiye would also bring victory in the general election. But his question was whether the Welfare Party would turn to religious radicalism, like the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS) in Algeria, or to democratization. The participants argued that democratization, increased rights and freedoms, the path of law, tolerance, and dialogue would be beneficial for the religious. They specifically emphasized that religious radicalism would be a dark path.

Kepel reminded us that Muslims view democracy as simply winning elections, and that once they seize power, they retreat into their own world, ignoring others. He cited the Iranian Revolution as an example. When the FIS followed suit in Algeria, the system reacted with a coup, and things spiraled out of control.

The Algerian example was repeated in Türkiye in 1997 and in Egypt in 2013.

Morsi, elected with 26 percent of the total voter turnout in Egypt's boycotted 2012 elections, ignored this crisis of legitimacy and set about conquering the country from day one. Despite facing mass protests similar to those during the February 2011 Revolution, he ignored the objections and demands. As tensions mounted, the army staged a coup in 2013, with disastrous consequences.

During the Welfare Party's experience in local and central power in Turkey, despite Erbakan's lack of support or hope for religious radicalism, the military's coup on February 28, 1997, was attempted to be justified with the doctrine of a "preemptive attack (or strike)" to prevent Turkey from becoming Algeria. Therefore, despite being ousted from power, it was openly stated that Erbakan and his National Vision were not the real target.

In Algeria, where the FIS, flush with victory, was striving to become the sole ruler of the country, the old-style ideological regime was certainly not a good one, but the Islamists wanted to achieve the same thing by dominating their own worldview. In the conversation, Kepel likened the Islamists to "hijackers who boarded a plane as ticketed passengers but hijacked the plane." When I explained that, despite these views, we, representing the municipality, were confident enough to invite him and believed in democratization, he blurted out, "The politicians you're speaking on behalf of may not think like you; don't be so trusting."

If anyone encounters Kepel, please pass on my message: You're right, Gilles. It turns out the Islamist politicians I spoke on don't care about democratization, freedoms, human rights, the rule of law, or anything else. Their agenda is pure despotism. They'll do anything to ensure and protect their personal well-being. Complaints about the victimized and oppressed of the religious are the prelude to establishing religious despotism. The accusation of Islamophobia, now branded as anti-Islamism, is actually a strategy to eliminate obstacles to oppression, subjugation, and domination.

It's true that they did all this while boarding as ticketed passengers on a democracy plane. Ours, however, was a misplaced and unnecessary romanticism about democracy.

Why are Muslims so eager to flaunt their piety? Calling it "propagation"? Prayers in the streets of European cities, loud recitations of the Quran from loudspeakers, demonstrations of power in sanctified attire, and so on? The reason is simple: In their perception, Islam is not a religion where one can improve themselves, cultivate themselves, and become a good person. Despite dozens of verses in the Quran to this effect. For them, religion is merely a tool for political ends. In this world, it's an identity to be fought for. The ideology of oppressing others, conquering countries, and establishing dominance, rather than transforming oneself into a good person, is the result of this neurotic belief. This is why they cannot adapt to democratic values in Europe.

Because law, human rights, freedom of thought and expression, equality, justice, and morality carry no meaning in their world, they are constantly at odds with the standards of the countries they reside in. They are angry because they can't behave as they please in traffic, because they can't drown the city in bloodshed during Eid al-Adha, because they can't litter the streets, because they're subjected to Christmas with all its symbols, because they see pork, alcohol, joy, and entertainment everywhere, but they can't interfere. Therefore, those places are hell for them, while their own country, where they can freely enjoy the lawlessness, is heaven.

What can various Muslims with zero scores in democracy, human rights, freedom, and law offer the world? Far from offering a good alternative to the West they criticize, they are a century behind even that level. Yet, a century ago, Muslim reformist elites were neck and neck with the West, spearheading constitutional and constitutional movements. Islamists never consider how they can contribute to improving the quality of social life, cultural and intellectual development, or political perfection in their respective countries. They have no such concerns. On the contrary, they seek shortcuts to survive on social assistance without working. Some see no harm in vulgarizing themselves to the point of having children to receive financial support from the state.

As of 2023, approximately 1.8 million of the 6.4 million people receiving Hartz IV unemployment benefits in Germany were foreign nationals. 70 percent of these were Muslim immigrants. Because the benefits are provided until a job is found, these are the ones who continue to receive social assistance while rejecting government-offered jobs on fabricated grounds such as incompatibility with their personality, physical inadequacy, and so on. Naturally, in a civilized environment, with a legal framework and a commitment to human rights, they can't just say, "Then go back to your country." Freeloading immigrants, on the other hand, see this strong legal requirement as a weakness of the state and society, and their arrogance and shamelessness know no bounds.

In regions like Basel and Geneva in Switzerland, up to 70 percent of social assistance spending goes to Muslim immigrants. In some districts of Malmö and Stockholm in Sweden, the rate of social assistance provided to Muslims is between 60 and 70 percent. In Denmark, the labor force participation rate for Muslim immigrants is only 28 percent. In contrast, the social assistance rate is 60 percent. And so on. The data is more or less the same across all developed Western democracies.

Muslim immigrants in Europe, living off social assistance from taxpayer funds, are unashamed as they happily consume the taxes that Europeans toil and pay. The rights of others, the lawful and the forbidden, are irrelevant when it comes to Western societies. On the contrary, they take pride in the fact that they cunningly consume the money of "infidels." Working immigrants have developed a belief that they are owed more than they deserve because they are "serving the infidel," and they don't neglect similar shortcuts. When this personality disorder is not tolerated and taxpayers object, they immediately pull out the "Islamophobia" banner.

It is documented with sufficient examples that the camouflage of “Islamophobia” is the name given to conceal the evils of the world of religious tyranny.

There's a perverse belief in Muslim perception that the earth belongs to them. They have a sacred right to conquer wherever they wish. Because they represent God and are authorized to seize, appropriate, invade, and occupy any land, realm, country, or community to implement His law. This psychopathological state, from "Jerusalem is ours," to Andalusia, Spain, and ultimately to conquering the entire world, is a claim that condemns the current rulers of these lands.

It is believed that God, who created the universe and is merciful, compassionate, and compassionate to everything and everyone in it, wants Muslims to occupy countries, plunder their wealth, and dominate their inhabitants in the name of conquest. This is the belief in God.

A prominent mullah cries out: "Palestine, from river to sea, belongs to Islam; it must be reclaimed. But that's not enough; Spain belongs to Islam too. When we reclaim it, Rome will be next, and it will be conquered like Constantinople. Thus, Muslims will subjugate the entire world."

What they call "Palestine from the river to the sea" is a baldly anti-Semitic target of deportation, extermination, and destruction. It's a plan to purge Judea and Samarra, as it was historically known. They're already openly expressing their dream of completing what Hitler left unfinished. And on the streets of Germany, London, Paris, and other cities where memories of the Nazi invasion are still vivid.

This is the ideological basis for jihadists' desire to subjugate the entire world to Islam through every means, including terrorism. The outcry of "Islamophobia" that erupts the moment Western developed countries declare this unacceptable is, of course, strange, bizarre, and surprising. Doing evil for the sake of God is called jihad.

Europeans living prosperous and high-standard lives in Europe, but are outraged by the sight of radical "Sharia" advocates who want to turn those places into Afghanistan, are absolutely right. The undisguised ambition of the whiny and insidious "Islamophobia" narrative is to maximize the economic and social benefits of European cities while likening daily life to the dystopian, dark, and primitive visions of their own world. Therefore, anti-immigrant political groups, no matter how inconsistent, criminal, or criminal they may be within their own ideological universes, do not distort the truth when they propagate that refugees or settlers are not fleeing the uninhabitable conditions in their countries of origin to seek refuge in the good life in the West, but rather are entering a kind of occupation.

Islamists' assertion that adhering to Western laws is incompatible with Islam has consequences on the ground. According to 2022 data, 15 percent of Muslim immigrants in Sweden were involved in approximately 30 percent of violent crimes. According to a 2023 report by the German Interior Ministry, 30 percent of criminal perpetrators were foreigners. This rate is particularly high for sexual assault and theft. In Barcelona, Spain, 78.7 percent of arrests made in 2024 were immigrants. The arrest rate for theft was 91 percent and for sexual assault was 73 percent.

According to a 2016 study titled "Attitudes of Young People of Immigrant Descent Towards Republican Values," published by the French National Institute of Demography (Institut national d'études démographiques), Muslim immigrants are very unlikely to embrace French values such as secularism and equality. In other words, Muslim integration into society is close to zero.

A report published by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) and the European Cultural Foundation (ECF) criticized the EU for excluding Muslim immigrants from the "white" aspect of its definition of "Europeanness." This is, of course, a very naive assessment. Even before we get to that point, Muslim theory already includes the rule of "not taking unbelievers as friends." The saying attributed to the Prophet in Bukhari (hadith 30), "I have been commanded to fight against people until they say, 'There is no god but Allah.' If they say this, they will protect their blood and their wealth from me," normalizes the principle of hostility towards all non-Muslims.

So was the Swedish deputy prime minister wrong when he warned that such Muslim beliefs and practices were destroying the country , saying, "Islam must adapt; those who cannot adapt must leave the country"? Would the West be blamed when the imam of the Via Jacopo di Paolo mosque in Bologna, Italy, was deported from Italy, where he had lived for 30 years, for supporting Hamas' armed violence and calling on Muslims worldwide to wage jihad? Would Turkey be violating rights if the same treatment were applied to the women and husbands of ISIS uniforms, whose horrific criminal records and frightening lifestyles in Syria and Iraq have been parading through the streets of Turkey, harassing everyone left and right?

Muslims, who react to Westerners with accusations of Islamophobia, disrespect for Islam, and hatred of Muslims, expect their peculiar worlds of thought and belief to be respected in the West. They accuse Westerners, who defend values such as law, human rights, and freedom of criticism, thought, and expression, and who claim such things are impossible, of creating Islamophobia.

Islam exists in a religious universe that claims that all people of other religions, beliefs, and ideologies are heretical, that only Islam is right and valid, and that expects this certainty to be confirmed by everyone. A political piety that believes it can achieve the democracy, human rights, and freedoms that Europe achieved after three centuries of intellectual debate, three civil wars, two of which escalated into world wars, a revolution, and conflicts large and small, without critically examining its history and culture. A toxic wasteland that quickly transformed even the city the Prophet named "Medina" and ushered in civilization into its own image.

Countries where Muslims constitute a massive majority and where oppressed, diverse cultures cannot be publicized are socially and politically depressed, unhappy, joyless, and claustrophobic places. Those who migrate to the West from these countries bring this baggage with them, clinging tightly to that culture to preserve their identity in the countries they migrate to. Islamophobia is a tired excuse; that's the real issue.

Let's not forget that the Islam that is being criticized in the West is the Islam that Muslims preach, defend, and believe in. In other words, Westerners recognize Islam as a religion that believes that Islam is superior to all faiths and that Muslims are superior to all people, that a little girl of 6 or 9 was married to the Prophet, that God gave men the right and authority to discipline their wives, that non-believers can be killed wherever they find them, that Muslims who abandon their faith have the right to kill them for apostasy, that 70 (or even hundreds, thousands) of little girls (houris) await a devout person in Paradise who dies fighting non-Muslims, and so on. Those who try to explain this are not heard amidst the chaos and chaos. Perhaps it's not in the interest of Western extremists to listen to voices that claim the truth is different.

While living a prosperous and high-standard life in the developed cities of Western civilization, Muslims insult the society, faith, and country of those with the means, yet they both feel entitled to this vile behavior and yet demand respect. For example, in Türkiye, the sociology representing political Sunnism either stabs inflatable Santa Clauses in full view of the state on the anniversary of Jesus Christ's birth, stands guard against him emerging from a chimney with guns, or spreads Christmas-hating propaganda in the streets. Why would anyone understand radicalism, which, when non-Muslims participate in Muslims' holiday celebrations, publishes headlines boasting of its own religion and terrorizes the courtesy of their participation with cries of "Muslims do not celebrate Christmas."

We learn from the verses in the Quran about the ascriptions and characterizations of the Prophet by Meccan pagans (polytheists). Today, this is a type of Islam that is on the alert and in ambush to assassinate anyone who utters or writes these same characterizations. It legitimizes this with the lie that the Prophet ordered assassinations.

In a separate article, I will explain the fabricated narratives portraying the Prophet as a ruthless killer who instigated the murders of a blind, elderly Jew, an elderly woman, and a poet, all under a cunning and treacherous guise. These fabricated narratives, fabricated to tarnish the Prophet's character, are used to whitewash Islam's record of terror, intimidation, and vandalism.

A white supremacist Christian terrorist attacked a mosque and cultural center in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019. Fifty-one people were killed and 49 injured in the act. New Zealand rose to its feet. Actually, it's more accurate to say the Western world rose to its feet. Israel called it a "brazen act of terror." All New Zealand officials fully attended the commemoration ceremony for the attack. Thousands of New Zealanders, both believers and non-believers, including Maoris, were deeply saddened by the event.

I will come to the point later on that while Muslim terrorists are massacring Christians in different parts of the world, or killing Jews, Arabs, Druze, and Circassians in Israel, there is not a single example of such sensitivity among Muslims.

At the ceremony held in memory of those killed in the Christchurch attack, everyone on stage, except Muslims, shared their grief, expressed their sorrow, their reactions, and their protests. Muslim representatives, even survivors, did not fail to capitalize on the tragedy. They believed that such an attack, with their loved ones dead and themselves injured, would serve as a platform for collective awareness of violence in all its forms, and that instead of condemning the killings of Christians and Jews by Muslims around the world, they saw the moment as a unique opportunity to preach Islam live on world television. Through melodic verse recitations, and so on.

They believe that those who come to share the pain or watch on television will be influenced by the verses they recite and the speeches they deliver, and will become Muslims en masse. Despite their shaved mustaches and long beards, symbols of Salafi terror, and their traditional, local attire, it's clear they hope to create such an impact. They don't wear those clothes with folkloric joy; on the contrary, they do so to avoid being like the "infidel" society they live in, to separate themselves from it. Because they have a hadith regarding dress: "You belong to the people you try to imitate" (Abu Dawud 4031). To avoid being like the "infidels," they must dress differently. They demonstrate this difference through clothing inspired by their own local culture. This is a requirement of Islam. They are also so provincial, ignorant, indifferent and uninterested in truth, and disconnected from the real world.

Yet, New Zealand, where they live, owes its status as the world's freest country to its secular nature. If they were to hand this country, which ranks at the top of the world by all standards and criteria, over to these ignorant Salafists who have made shaving off mustaches and growing beards their religion, they would turn it into the most miserable place on earth in the blink of an eye.

While Christians and Jews reacted so strongly to the one-man terrorist attack targeting Muslims in Christchurch, why haven't Muslims worldwide staged mass protests against the systematic massacres and massacres perpetrated by their own terrorist organizations? In 2019, the year of the Christchurch attack alone, Muslim terrorist organizations reportedly killed 4,136 Christians. Open Door and Pew have confirmed numerous other attacks.

According to a 2023 Vatican News report, Boko Haram and Fulani militias killed over 52,000 Christians between 2009 and 2023. The systematic massacres of Muslims against Christians continue in Sudan, Nigeria, Egypt, and now Syria. Yet, the Muslim world fails to take to the streets in protest of these tragedies, to share in the suffering of Christians, or to lead the global response. On October 7th, when Hamas massacred 1,200 innocent people—old, young, and children—in Israeli settlements in a matter of hours, and took 250 people hostage, including a 10-month-old baby, they failed to even address the tragedy.

The commemorations in New Zealand for the 51 Muslims that shook the world are not being held in Muslim countries where massacres of Christians took place. But most importantly, while Muslims cry "Islamophobia" when they stumble, Christians, despite suffering such immense losses, do not cry "Christianophobia."

Islamophobia is actually aligned with antisemitism and anti-Christianism, but Muslims suffering from Islamophobia are sensitive to neither antisemitism nor anti-Christianism. Islamists enthusiastically and enthusiastically share a video of an antisemitic restaurant owner refusing to serve a Jewish family. The restaurant owner blamed the family for the Netanyahu government's Gaza policy and kicked them out. The family may be anti-Netanyahu. They may be among the thousands of Israelis who, in an atmosphere of democratic freedom unparalleled in Muslim countries, have been knocking on Netanyahu's door, calling for his resignation. But in the restaurant owner's world, they are the only Jews and deserve nothing less than extermination. Islamists, in fact, love this judgment. That's why, during Britain's mandate, London-appointed Mufti of Jerusalem, Hussein al-Amini, swore allegiance to Hitler at his feet and formed a Nazi brigade of Palestinians.

Now, what would have happened if the restaurant owner in question had treated a Muslim family from Türkiye in the same way he deemed a Jewish family worthy, for example, because of Erdoğan's Syria policy? Of course, we would have heard cries of Islamophobia and Turkophobia.

For example, during Ramadan, Islamists are angry when those who aren't fasting eat openly, and if the target is weak, they immediately resort to violence. They say we must respect those who are fasting. They have a strange understanding that turns respect into a duty. Yet, respect is an individual, emotional thing. It's civilized behavior. There's no defined form of respect. A certain level of respect cannot be imposed on anyone. But during Ramadan, they don't hesitate to demonstrate how respectful it is by using violence against those who eat openly. Every Ramadan, we witness various examples of vandalism. Muslims never respect others' sacred things, yet they constantly expect respect from others. Moreover, they force it. They even consider being closed to criticism as respect. Westerners are respectful when they don't criticize Islam and Muslims, but when they do, they become disrespectful and Islamophobic.

Closing down primitiveness to criticism by claiming it's a cultural difference is a typical Muslim defense. When Western civilization, which has reached its current level through countless mental and physical hardships, reacts to this primitiveness, it's ready to whine about victimhood and phobia.

The dismantling of criticisms of Islam and Muslims, the accusation of orientalism. It's a refined version of the Islamophobia campaign that ensures immunity from criticism, filtered through social sciences.

In contrast to Western civilization, which has discovered that democratic pluralism can only be established by linking intolerance to certainty, Islam believes its survival is possible through dogmatic certainty. Therefore, it can happily exploit the West's relativism as its weakness. When the West is shamed by accusations of Orientalism, it will be easier for it to conceal and conceal all the peculiarities of Islam, which has made refusing to abandon certainty a matter of identity. This way, they can legitimize appearing always the victim and always right.

There's a strong culture of repentance in the West. Repenting in church every week, or more often as needed, has become a form of self-criticism in political and social life. Repentance has a name in Islam, but it lacks a culture. The "self-accusing, self-condemning," the self-critical, self-critical self praised in the Quran, holds no meaning for practicing Muslims. They don't look at themselves; they always blame others. This is undoubtedly closely linked to a sense of psychic deficiency, complex, inferiority, and inadequacy.

Migrants and Palestinians—those groups whose very mention automatically evokes feelings of victimization and pity—apparently don't realize that they represent a means and opportunity for political groups in the West to defend them. Or perhaps they are well aware, and they exploit this opportunity to their heart's content. As a result, any evil committed by migrants and Palestinians becomes a trivial matter. They are excused in advance; they can do whatever they want. They have the assurance that the Westerners who pity them will not consider their evil deeds.

We shouldn't be angry at Westerners who find the wretched state of a backward, feeble, rotten, corrupt, and hollow culture, which has rejected critical thinking, sympathetically and tolerantly embraces it by embellishing it with the phrase "local culture." Unless Middle Easterners come to terms with their own culture, they richly deserve this treatment.

Compared to developments in the West, the problem with Islam can be summarized as the metaphysicalization and dysfunctionalization of religion, and the inability to escape the stupor of romanticism. Critical historical readings are ineffective, and theories are insufficient. The only exception is the glorification and sanctification of an imaginary past. A state of schizo-cultural morbidity.

Why don't Muslim societies change over the generations? Because this is a matter of neuroplasticity. The environment, education, social interactions, religious culture, dogmas, and absolute beliefs they inhabit, but which they don't change, not only reinforce memorization but also lead to physical changes in the brain. For example, like the development of a taxi driver's spatial center in the brain related to the city he works in. Constantly stimulated by jihad, war, conflict, struggle, wariness of others, hostility, and so on, the synapses for harmony, peace, compromise, and negotiation close in the brain. Therefore, Muslims who fail to change their environment, culture, and education will always be moody, nonconformist, and conflictual, and this assessment has nothing to do with racism. Racism is the essentialist view that sees an ethnic group, faith community, or culture as inherently inferior, deficient, or guilty, even if these factors change.