I am suffering from Islamofatigue. By Brendan O’Neill. The Telegraph, October 14, 2013.
O’Neill:
Behind
these wild exaggerations of both the hatred for Muslims and the threat posed by
Islamists, there lurk political agendas. Islam has effectively been turned into
a proxy for the expression of ideas that might otherwise prove difficult to
articulate. Among Leftish Islamophiles, ratcheting up panic about rampant
Islamophobia has become a PC way of expressing fear of the masses, particularly
the tabloid-reading white working classes. Claims that Muslims are constantly
at risk from ignorant haters is just a more acceptable way of expressing
prejudices about the volatility of the uneducated mob. And among the
Right-leaning panickers about Islamism, bashing extremism is a cop-out from
having a serious debate about the state of enlightened, reasoned thinking in
Britain. How much easier it is to wail “The Islamists are undermining our
values of free speech and tolerance!” than to examine the various homegrown trends, from environmentalism
to multiculturalism, that are really mauling the enlightened, universalist
outlook.
