Ali Siadatan: Don’t let ‘Islamophobia’ accusations silence criticism of Islam

Canada needs to re-learn a distinction: anti-Muslim bigotry is not the same as criticism of Islam.

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That distinction is no longer just academic. In the 25 years following 9/11, Canada has spent a lot of time building official machinery around the word “Islamophobia.” A Canadian Press report marking the anniversary this week argued the country has fallen behind, pointing to Ottawa’s decision to fold its Special Representative on Combatting Islamophobia into a broader advisory council.

Asmaa Malik, a journalism professor quoted in the piece, called that decision a step toward “dismantling the concept of Islamophobia” altogether. Canadians should refuse anti-Muslim bigotry without qualification. They should refuse, just as firmly, to let “Islamophobia” become the official lens through which one religion is placed beyond the reach of ordinary scrutiny.

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I was born in Iran, a country culturally shaped by Islam and the birthplace of the Islamic Revolution of 1979. My mother attends mosque faithfully every Friday and is deeply committed to her faith. My uncle left his graduate studies at UCLA, tore up his green card and returned to Iran to join the revolutionary fervour.

The conversation about Islam is therefore not foreign to me. It runs through my family and my country’s history.

Yet what drew my family, along with millions of other immigrants, to the West was precisely its protection of freedom of religion, speech and conscience. These liberties are secured not only by law but by a cultural tradition that allows people with radically different beliefs to live together.

That tradition depends upon a vital distinction: people must be protected from persecution, but ideas must remain open to scrutiny.

Anti-Muslim bigotry targets Muslims as people. It appears as hatred, discrimination, intimidation or violence directed at individuals because they are Muslim. It has no place in a free society.

Criticism of Islam is something entirely different. Islam, like Christianity, Judaism, Marxism, nationalism or secular liberalism, makes claims about God, morality, law, history and the proper ordering of society. Christian sects the world over await the second coming of Christ and the culmination of history. Religious Jews await the descent of a third temple. Such claims inevitably enter the public square, and none of them, Islam included, can claim immunity from examination.

Indeed, the greater the claim an idea makes over human life, the greater the public’s right to examine it.

That scrutiny is nothing new to Islam itself. Muslim scholars have debated their own tradition for 14 centuries: school against school, reformer against traditionalist, one reading of the Qur’an against another. Treating Islam as too sensitive for outside examination flattens that tradition into a single untouchable claim.

That machinery did not build itself. Debate has given way to prescription: citizens are told which conclusions about religion are acceptable, and which questions may not be asked. Canadians who read a religious text for themselves, or hear it from an influential cleric online, and then voice concern, risk being told they have committed “Islamophobia.”

Here lies the paradox: enforced this way, “Islamophobia” can suppress legitimate criticism of Islam and, in doing so, contribute to the very anti-Muslim bigotry it claims to prevent.

When prominent clerics and Islamic movements proclaim the eventual triumph of Islam over other religions and societies, the message travels the world. Yet when people respond or defend their own beliefs, they risk being accused of hatred.

Islam has never confined itself to making claims about Muslims alone. In the seventh century, the Qur’an revisited the prophets and scriptures of Jews and Christians, presenting itself as their divine correction. The Jesus of the Gospels became the Isa of the Qur’an: not God incarnate, not the crucified and risen redeemer, but a prophet within Islam’s own account of history.

Christians and Jews were placed on the theological defensive from Islam’s beginning. The Qur’an has every right to make those claims in a free society, but Jews and Christians have the same right to answer them. No free society can accept an arrangement in which one religion may challenge all others but cannot itself be challenged.

Suppressing debate does not make disagreement disappear. It drives it underground, where frustration, fear and resentment accumulate. Instead of confronting particular doctrines, texts or political claims, people may begin to direct their hostility toward Muslims themselves. The effort to prevent offence can thereby help create the conditions for genuine bigotry. Debating those disagreements openly does the opposite: it drains the tension that bigotry feeds on.

Canada is now witnessing both anti-Muslim hatred and an alarming rise in antisemitism. Communities can trade statistics over who has suffered more. But beneath these conflicts lies a broader failure: a weakened culture of serious debate.

The Canadian answer is to restore the social contract of open debate: citizens free to question, challenge and rebut each other’s rival claims about God and history, while still owing each other basic decency. Pretending those claims are all the same, or all private, only forces a false peace. A Muslim’s person, property and freedom to worship must be protected. So must the freedom of Jews, Christians, atheists and others to examine and dispute Islamic teachings.

The constitutional tradition Canada inherited from Britain was built through centuries of painful conflict over religion, authority and conscience. That tradition did not end disagreement. It gave Canada something more durable: the capacity to hold disagreement without persecution or violence.

That inheritance inspired millions of immigrants to come here and breathe the air of freedom. We should not surrender it now.

The way forward lies neither in hostility toward Muslims nor in silence about Islam, but in a renewed commitment to a simple principle: protect people, scrutinize ideas.

Bigotry against Muslims must be opposed, without exception. “Islamophobia,” treated as an official paradigm for governing how Canadians may discuss Islam, must be refused just as firmly. Criticism of Islam, its theology, history, texts and political claims, must remain part of legitimate public debate.

Muslims have the right to speak. So do those who disagree with them. That reciprocity is freedom.

National Post

Ali Siadatan is a fellow at the Ideological Defence Institute and the head of education at Tafsik. Follow him at @AlispeaksX.

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