Greater Surbiton

The perfect is the enemy of the good

Between Islamophobia and Islamofascism
In a well known Bosnian joke, the Bosnian Muslim
Suljo is walking in the hills around Sarajevo, when he comes upon his neighbour Mujo and his wife
Fata. He is puzzled to note that Fata is walking several paces in front of Mujo.
My dear neighbour Mujo, why is your wife walking in front of you ?, Suljo asks, Surely, the
Holy Koran commands that a wife walk behind her husband, not in front ?
My dear neighbour Suljo, replies Mujo, When the Holy Koran was wrien, there werent any
landmines.
This is a joke thought up by Muslims, about Muslims. It humorously illustrates the essential truth
about Islam and other religions: that they are interpreted by dierent individuals and
generations to suit their own particular needs. The ctional Mujo could be described either as an
Islamic conservative or as a progressive, upholding the Korans message about the subordination of
women to men, but accepting that the precise rules needed to be modied to suit modern purposes.
Mujos interpretation of Islam is no more or less valid than anyone elses; with the Prophet dead,
nobody can say for sure exactly how the Koran should be interpreted, or what God really wanted.
Yet there are plenty of individuals, on opposite sides of the contemporary debate about Islam, who
assume the mantle of the Prophet, and try to tell the rest of us that their own version of Islam is
the only valid one. The irony is that apparently bier political enemies Islamophobes and
Islamofascists have an identical interpretation of true Islam. Islamophobia and Islamofascism
feed o each other they are two sides of the same coin.
In her brilliant autobiography, Indel (hp://www.amazon.co.uk/Indel-Life-Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali/dp
/074329503X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/202-1625720-7939058?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194817369&sr=8-1),
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the Somali intellectual and Muslim apostate Ayaan Hirsi Ali argues that Osama bin Laden, in
his murderous injunctions about slaughtering Jews and other indels, is simply interpreting the
Koran correctly. She writes that the fallacy has arisen that Islam is peaceful and tolerant, while in
reality: True Islam, as a rigid belief system and a moral framework, leads to cruelty. The inhuman
act of those nineteen hijackers was the logical outcome of this detailed system for regulating human
behaviour. (Indel (hp://www.amazon.co.uk/Indel-Life-Ayaan-Hirsi-Ali/dp/074329503X
/ref=sr_1_1/202-1625720-7939058?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194898218&sr=8-1), p. 272). She
strongly implies that Islam is inherently more problematic than other religions such as Christianity
or Judaism. Hirsi Ali has got into a lot of trouble because of these and other observations. She has
been denounced as an Enlightenment fundamentalist (hp://www.signandsight.com/features
/1146.html#a2)and become a bee in the bonnet of various representatives of wishy-washy
left-liberalism. And she has been portrayed as an Islamophobe (hp://www.islamophobia-
watch.com/islamophobia-watch/2006/5/21/more-on-ayaan-hirsi-ali.html).
Hirsi Ali is not an Islamophobe. A phobia is dened by the New Oxford Dictionary of English as
an extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something. There is no evidence to suggest that
Hirsi Ali is afraid of Islam; indeed, all the evidence suggests that she is much less afraid of it than
the vast majority of Western intellectuals. Nor is her opposition to Islam an aversion or irrational;
we are not talking here about an instinct or emotion that wells up from her subconscious, nor of a
blind and ignorant prejudice, but of an entirely calm and rational position born of extensive
scholarly research and reection. There is nothing extreme about Hirsi Alis position; she does not
argue that Islam should be banned, nor that its followers be persecuted. She simply sees it as a
problem, and wants to free Muslim women from the abuse inicted upon them in the name of
Islam. So Hirsi Ali does not qualify as an Islamophobe on any count.
Contrary to myth, Hirsi Ali is very well aware that there is nothing in the Koran that sanctions
genital mutilation; she simply points out that the name of Islam, as interpreted by traditional
societies, is upheld to justify such abuses. And the Koran really does appear to sanction other
abuses such as wife-beating: Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one
superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. Good women are
obedient. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom
you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and beat them (The Koran,
4:34). In pointing this out, Hirsi Ali is simply indicating a very real problem: that the abuse of
women in Islamic societies is underpinned by religion. Hirsi Ali is a principled and courageous
individual who deserves full solidarity in her campaign against the abuse of women and against
those who would silence her. Nevertheless, she goes slightly too far.
Of all the countries in Nazi-occupied Europe, the single best record in the rescuing of Jews from the
Nazis was achieved by Muslim-majority Albania (with the possible and I stress the word
possible exception of Denmark). In the words of Mordechai Paldiel (hp://www.bonkm.com
/com_reader.php?c=9656), Director of the Department for the Righteous at Israels Yad Vashem
(hp://www.yadvashem.org/):
The story of the Albanian rescuers is unique in several ways. Firstly, in that the persons saved were
mostly not Albanian citizens, but Jews who had ed to that country when it was ruled by the
Italians, and now found themselves in danger of deportation to concentration camps when the
Germans took over, in September 1943. Secondly, the rescuers who were overwhelmingly of the
Islamic faith felt a religious obligation to assist and save those who had sought refuge in their
country and were unjustly persecuted; in other words, it was a behaviour motivated by the Islamic
religion, as wisely interpreted by the rescuers.
In Bosnia-Hercegovina during World War II, when the Croat fascists, or Ustashas, began a
genocidal persecution of Orthodox Serbs, Jews and gypsies, they were opposed by Islamic religious
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gures across the country. One Muslim proclamation, whose list of signatories was headed by ve
imams, opposed the crimes of the Ustashas on the grounds that For hundreds of years the Bosnian
Muslims have lived in unity and love with all Bosnians regardless of religion, just as exalted Islam
commands. The proclamation appealed to the Bosnian people: Let religion not divide us, let it
rather unite us by acting benecially upon all of us to be, above all, people who do not permit that
they be ruled by the awaked animal instincts of killing and plundering, which a cultured person
should restrain. This and other similar appeals inspired by Islamic and other sentiments were
made, it should be remembered, under a genocidal dictatorship that was entirely ready to and
did murder Muslims for acts of disobedience.
Nobody should suggest that these Albanian and Bosnian Muslim heroes were not proper Muslims,
and that the real Islam is represented by Osama bin Laden. To do so would be wrong both in
principle and in practice. In principle, because everyone is free to interpret what Islam really
means, and nobody has any God-given authority to insist that theirs is the one true version. And
in practice, because opponents of Islamism would thereby be making propaganda on al-Qaedas
behalf. If one tells young Muslims that the Koran, correctly interpreted, does indeed command
them to slaughter Jews and other indels, it is unlikely to persuade them to become atheists. It is at
least as likely to persuade them to become jihadis.
Muslim Albanians have been staunch allies to Britain and the US in the War on Terror. Bosnias
Muslims have been victims of genocide at the hands of genuinely Islamophobic Christians, but
have nevertheless entirely resisted joining the international Islamist-terrorist movement. The
moderate-Islamic Justice and Development Party in Turkey has promoted democracy while
ghting fundamentalism and pursuing EU membership. So it is simply untrue that belief in Islam
makes people automatically fundamentalists or fascists. Anyone who has spent any time in cities
like London, Sarajevo or Istanbul, where large numbers of secularised Muslims live, knows very
well that this is nonsense. It would be extremely stupid to alienate decent, moderate Muslims by
demonising them and equating them with the fundamentalist minority do we really want more
Muslim enemies ?
It has been argued that Islam is uniquely aggressive and expansionist. We could perhaps draw up a
score sheet comparing the crimes of Muslim and Christian conquerors: the great massacres of
Timur; the expansionism of the Ooman Empire and its violence against its subject peoples,
culminating in the religiously catalysed Armenian Genocide; set against the Christian enslavement
and extermination of the native Americans; the massacres of Muslims and Jews by the crusaders;
and so on. The Christians would undoubtedly come out as the quantitatively worse oenders,
simply because they occupied a larger portion of the globe. But only a truly self-hating guilty
liberal genuinely believes that Islam = good Christianity = bad; the point is that these religions
are fundamentally similar. So too is Judaism when the Jews nally got their own modern nation-
state, they behaved exactly the same as most Christian and Muslim nations do which is to say, not
very well. As Benjamin Lieberman shows in his book Terrible Fate: Ethnic cleansing and the
making of modern Europe (hp://www.amazon.co.uk/Terrible-Fate-Ethnic-Cleansing-Making
/dp/1566636469/ref=sr_1_1/202-1625720-7939058?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194901897&sr=8-1), in
their propensity to carry out atrocities, Christians, Muslims and Jews resemble nothing so much as
each other.
Christopher Hitchens (hp://www.city-journal.org/html/17_1_urbanities-steyn.html) correctly
points out that the term Islamophobia has been used to stie criticism of Islam. He is absolutely
right to draw aention to the indiscriminate use of the term by paranoid, self-pitying Muslims and
guilt-ridden, self-hating Western liberals. But he is wrong to describe the term Islamophobia itself
as a stupid neologism. Islamophobes exist they are people who have an extreme or irrational
fear of or aversion to Islam. They view with suspicion, fear and revulsion even ordinary
expressions of piety on the part of practising, non-fundamentalist Muslims. They see even such
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moderate Muslims as dangerous and unwelcome. This form of bigotry is arguably not quite the
same as bigotry directed against someone because of their ethnicity or skin colour. Yet if it results in
violence against innocent individuals, it is in the last resort just as bad. Anyone who doubts where
this can lead should visit the city of Banja Luka, in Bosnias Serb Republic, and try to nd the
beautiful Ferhadija mosque that once dominated the city centre. The destruction of mosques across
Bosnia, by both Serb and Croat Christian fascists, was directed against a Muslim community that,
as indicated above, had provided many brave, religiously inspired opponents of genocide and
fascism in World War II.
As an atheist, I sympathise with the view of the Marquis de Sade (on this question, at least), who
wrote that One must rst have lost ones mind to be able to acknowledge a God, and to have gone
completely mad to worship such a thing. I consider the idea of a God an aront to my intelligence,
and the idea that one should worship a God simply beyond comprehension. The point is, while
religion is ultimately ridiculous from an intellectual standpoint, it is not necessarily evil. In a
pluralistic society, we are all free to hold ridiculous beliefs. Muslims and Christians are equally free
to consider atheism ridiculous if they so wish, which they presumably do; we are free to ridicule
their beliefs, and they ours. The division is not between Muslims and non-Muslims, but between
those who respect diversity of belief and freedom of expression and those who do not.
Islamophobes do not respect Muslim freedom of conscience; Islamofascists do not respect the
freedoms of non-Muslims, or indeed of anybody; less extreme Muslim bigots are not fascists, but
nevertheless feel their religion should be above criticism. But moderate Muslims are the natural
allies of moderate Christians, Jews, Hindus and others in the struggle against the fundamentalists
of all creeds.
Tuesday, 13 November 2007 - Posted by Marko Aila Hoare | Islam, Political correctness
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About
A blog devoted to political commentary and analysis, with a particular focus on South East
Europe. Born in 1972, I have been studying the history of the former Yugoslavia since 1993, and am
intimately acquainted with, and emotionally aached to, the lands and peoples of Croatia, Bosnia-
Hercegovina and Serbia. In the summer of 1995, I acted as translator for the aid convoy to the
Bosnian town of Tuzla, organised by Workers Aid, a movement of solidarity in support of the
Bosnian people. In 1997-1998 I lived and worked in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Hercegovina. In 1998-2001 I
lived and worked in Belgrade, Serbia, and was resident there during the Kosovo War of 1999. As a
journalist, I covered the fall of Milosevic in 2000. I worked as a Research Ocer for the
International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 2001, and participated in the drafting
of the indictment of Slobodan Milosevic.
I received my BA from the University of Cambridge in 1994 and my PhD from Yale University in
2000. I was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow of the British Academy in 2001-2004, a member of the
Faculty of History of the University of Cambridge in 2001-2006, and am currently an Associate
Professor at Kingston University, London. I live in Surbiton in the UK.
I am the author of four books: The Bosnian Muslims in the Second World War: A History (Hurst
and Oxford University Press, London and New York, 2013), The History of Bosnia: From the
Middle Ages to the Present Day (Saqi, London, 2007), Genocide and Resistance in Hitlers Bosnia:
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The Partisans and the Chetniks, 1941-1943 (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2006) and How Bosnia
Armed (Saqi, London, 2004). I am currently working on a history of modern Serbia.
Marko Aila Hoare
markohoare AT hotmail DOT com
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