Equality Before The Law

We need to make a distinction between the believer and what he believes. It is wrong for me to discriminate against Jewish people or to act in a hateful way towards them. But I ought to be allowed to say what I please about the beliefs of Judaism. I can point out for instance that I doubt that God parted the Red Sea or created the world in seven days.

So too it would be wrong for me to discriminate against Hindus or to express hatred towards them. But I ought to be able to say what I like about the Bhagavad Gita.

While it would be sectarian if I expressed hatred towards Catholics, I ought to be able to say what I like about Catholicism. It is not sectarian to criticise the doctrine of transubstantiation or to doubt the infallibility of the Pope.

No one thinks it is antisemitic, anti-Hindu or sectarian to criticise and speak freely about the religious beliefs of Jews, Hindus or Catholics.

The problem with the concept of ‘Islamophobia’ is that it goes beyond this. While it is clearly wrong to discriminate against Muslims and to express hatred towards them simply because they are Muslims, it ought to be possible in the same way as Judaism, Hinduism and Catholicism to criticise Islamic texts and beliefs. But it isn’t.

What (some) Muslims want is not merely that we don’t express prejudice against them or act towards them in a hateful way. They want also that we refrain from saying anything critical or indeed hateful towards Islam.

But this is quite different. There is no such thing as Judaismphobia, Hinduismphobia or Catholicismphobia, and adherents to these religions are quite happy for everyone else neither to follow the rules of their religion nor to be respectful towards it. I can hate Judaism, Hinduism and Catholicism with impunity so long as I don’t hate Jews, Hindus and Catholics.

I can burn a copy of the Torah, the Bhagavad Gita or the New Testament and no one will pay much attention. I can mock God, Moses, Krishna, Vishnu and Jesus and depict them in a satirical way, and no one will call it a phobia. But if I do the same with the holy books of Islam or if I make even respectful pictures of the prophet (let alone satirical ones) Muslims want to call this Islamophobia.

This is the danger of this concept to our shared society, where equality before the law is so vital. Muslims don’t want to be equal, they want their religious beliefs to be protected in a way that no one else’s are. You cannot have equality before the law if one group and one group only has rights that no one else has.

Muslims like everyone else ought to have freedom of religion, but they cannot demand that non-Muslims must follow Islamic laws and duties. Jews do not demand that everyone else follows Jewish rules regarding the Sabbath, diet, or clothing. But Muslims demand that the Muslim rules of not depicting the prophet or the respectful treatment of the Quran apply to non-Muslims. If we don’t follow these rules, we are Islamophobic.

But this is like saying if I don’t go to Church on Sunday I am being Christianityphobic, or if I don’t wear a kippah I am Judaismphobic.

We must make a sharp distinction between the believer and the belief. While not being prejudiced against Jews, Hindus and Catholics, I ought to be able to say what I like about the history of these beliefs or indeed how believers act today.

It is not Judaismphobic or indeed antisemitic to be critical of Israel, so long as I don’t apply a standard of criticism to Israel that I apply to no one else. So too it is not Hinduismphobic to be critical of Hindu nationalism or the government of India. I should be able to say what I like about the history of Catholicism and how Catholicism is expressed in Catholic countries.

But it is just here that Muslims demand something that no one else has. If I express criticism of the history of Islam or how Islam is expressed in Saudi Arabia or Iran, I am liable to be called Islamophobic.

This is intellectually dishonest and makes free speech impossible. While the sacred texts of Christianity have been criticised and while the history of the spread of Christianity has often been condemned as colonialism, while Zionism and the process by which Jewish people moved to the Middle East is condemned, there is no similar criticism of the spread of Islam. There were after all no Muslims nor Arabic speakers in Palestine prior to the prophet.

It ought to be possible for British people to be critical of Islamic texts and Islamic history. It ought to be possible for us to mock and satirise Islam in just the same way as we do with Christianity. But if anyone were so foolish as to do so, he would be liable to arrest by the British police if indeed he survived long enough to be arrested.

It is not Muslims who need to be protected with regard to free expression about Judaism, Hinduism or Christianity. They can say what they wish about these religions, and they will neither be arrested nor threatened. It is non-Muslims who need to be protected to speak freely about Islam. Here the threat is so real that merely showing a picture of the prophet to a class sends a teacher into hiding, while no one who threatens him is sent to jail.

It is quite reasonable for this teacher to feel Islamophobia because he is indeed threatened. In this case the fear is well grounded as was the fear of danger that Salman Rushdie felt, which eventually saw him lose an eye in an attack which he was lucky to survive.

If I lived in Iran I would live in a theocracy. If I were a homosexual secretly living there or if I secretly brewed alcohol, I too might feel Islamophobia on the grounds that if I were caught, Islamic laws would punish me severely.

Living in Britain I should not have any reason to feel Islamophobia. Indeed, until the 1950s I might quite happily have lived my life knowing next to nothing about Islam let alone fearing it.

Sadly, many British people now view the continuing spread of Islam as something that brings with it new fears.

The concept of Islamophobia demanding special privileges and protections did not exist in Britain prior to the arrival of large numbers of Muslims. As these numbers continue to increase these privileges and protections are liable to increase also, but it is no doubt Islamophobic to fear that this will happen. We must continue to believe that Britain won’t change at all, even as we witness the transformation before our very eyes.

Effie Deans writes at Lily of St. Leonard’s here. To support her writing, payments are welcomed here.

This piece was first published in Country Squire Magazine, and is reproduced by kind permission.

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