Douglas Murray - Islamophilia

In Britain, the US and other parts of theEnglish-speaking world, many people appear to have succumbed enmasse to a strange cultural disorder. When it comes to the subjectof Islam, they give vent to a star-struck adoration and suspensionof criticism which they apply to no other religion, institution orcause.

The savage murder of Drummer Lee Rigby by two Islamic fanaticsin a street in Woolwich, south London, brought a new level ofhorror and perplexity to a Britain which had thought itselfhardened to numerous acts of terrorism over the years. To generalamazement, the killers who had first run over with their car andthen hacked to death the off-duty soldier waited calmly for thepolice to arrive in order to attack them too, one of the killersstanding with bloody hands clutching the cleaver he had used.

Many British politicians and commentators insisted, however,that although the killers had cited the Koran to justify what theyhad done and had sworn that by Allah they would kill moreunbelievers, this was merely a crime rather than a terroristattack, it had nothing to do with religion and even that it wasnothing to get too excited about.

This is not a book about Islam, Muslims or terrorism. It isinstead about those utterly ridiculous public figures includingmovie stars, literary giants, pop idols, army generals, bishops,museum curators and politicians who, through an epidemic loss ofcultural nerve and the terror of losing their reputation infashionable circles, have succumbed to the debilitating afflictionof Islamophilia.

Douglas Murrays book is savagely, jaw-droppingly,laugh-out-loud funny. It also provokes a sharp intake of breath.Radical Islam seeks to make the free world submit to itsdomination. You wont read a more timely or important work thatsheds such brilliant light on the way the Wests finest seem to bedoing their damnedest to bring that about.

In recent years the world has heard agreat deal about Islamophobia. We are told of the existence ofIslamophobic books, films, cartoons and, of course, people. Butit is very hard indeed to nail down what makes somethingIslamophobic. Is it Islamophobic to refer to something bad inthe Koran? Can a Muslim be Islamophobic? Of the many downsides toIslamophobia, not the least among them is that nobody seems surewhat it means.

The word is applied to anything which could be deemed offensiveto any Muslim, anytime, any place, anywhere. Personally, I thinkthe word is a crock for a lot of reasons, but not least amongthem that a phobia is an irrational fear. There is nothingirrational about fearing parts though certainly not all ofIslam.

For example, it would be rational to be phobic of the 7/7bombers and the 9/11 hijackers. It is rational to be phobicabout Islam if you are a Dutch film-maker, or an Americanambassador in Benghazi or, as we now know, a soldier in southLondon. The perpetrators were all people who acted in the name ofIslam. They may have been right in believing this, or they may havebeen wrong. But being phobic of such things is a perfectlyrational instinct indeed, one might call it a survivalinstinct.

Anyhow, this book is not about that much overused word. It isabout something else. It is about a word which you hardly everhear, which is a far more useful term and an infinitely morewidespread phenomenon Islamophilia. And it has gripped theWestern world.

It could be defined as the expression of disproportionateadoration of Islam. I dont say because I dont think thatIslam has no redeeming features or that the religion has achievednothing. But it seems strange to me that so many people today canbe quite so asinine and supine when it comes to the religion. Noother religion in the world today receives the kind of pass thatIslam gets. Most religions currently get a hell of a time. ButIslam does not. And people express their resulting feeling for itfor a number of reasons.

First, there are those who just think Islam is wonderful. Thisencompasses a huge range of people. For instance, some of them canbe on the left/liberal side of the political divide while otherscan be right-wing conservatives. Some see in it the answers totheir own religious desire without ever wanting really to jump intoit themselves. Others see in it a wonderful tool to poke and prodthe traditions they come from or newer traditions they just do notlike. Others perhaps a declining number have a Lawrence ofArabia-like love of the allure of the desert. These are the peoplewho watched Frys Turkish Delight television commercials too oftenin the early 1980s.

But most people who begin to express wildly over-the-top praiseor love of Islam do so whether or not they feel it. They do itbecause they either think they ought to or they feel they have to.Some of them probably think it makes them liberal-minded, fair orotherwise decent. Others genuinely see Muslims in a beleagueredlight and think they should give them a bit of a gee-up. But aproportion and as we shall see, quite a large proportion express an adoration of Islam that jars and comes across strangelybecause they dont express it for any political or spiritualreason. Many of the Islamophiles we will come across in this bookare Islamophiles because they dont want to be thought to beIslamophobes. Or because of another reason: they are very, veryscared and decide that the best way to avoid something scary is topraise it and hope it will feel satiated.

Islamophilia can, as we will see, come in a whole range ofpeople. It can be uttered by world leaders, diplomats andpoliticians. It can be expressed by academics or scholars who loseall critical distance when it comes to the subject of Islam. It canimbue best-selling books and Hollywood films. And it can come in awhole range of styles. It can be smug and complacent. Or tentativeand uncertain. It can even come perhaps especially in a stateof terror, or quasi-terror, by people who are persuaded that ifthey dont show their philiac adoration of Islam they mightsuffer one of those brutal ends that the extremists are so good atmeting out.

It can be found across every stratum of society and across allpolitical viewpoints. It is strangely prominent among Westernpoliticians. And as though to prove that supposedly clever peoplecan be among the stupidest of all, it is also rife among collegeprofessors and others once described as the intelligentsia. Andof course the media is awash with sufferers. This debilitatingcondition has as we shall see even entered the highest ranks ofAmerica and Europes armed forces, security and intelligencecommunities.

Sufferers include people who may, for instance, pride themselveson being free thinkers. They include people who either claim tobe or are believers in another religion entirely. Adoration ofIslam can be manifested by atheist or agnostic, Christian or Jew.Whoever the person, whatever the manner or the state of mind, thecondition is shared by large numbers of non-Muslims around theworld. But it is especially prevalent in Western Europe and NorthAmerica.

If it exists at all, Islamophobia is a hard thing to pinpoint.But Islamophilia, on the other hand, can be identified with greatease. Before getting to the whys and the necessary andnecessarily enjoyable naming of names, it is worth remindingourselves of a crucial fact.

So many things are Islamophobic now thatfor Islamophobic people (which has the potential to be allnon-Muslims) it is hard to speak or move let alone leave thehouse without committing a whole slew of Islamophobichate-crimes. You can be an Islamophobe if you attend the wrongopera (a production of Idomeneo in Germany), watch the wrongplay (Voltaires Mahomet) or read the wrong book (such asThe Satanic Verses or the gag-inducing