Benjamin Jones on the The National Secular Society’s blog has done a very effective take down of the much trumpeted report into ‘Islamophobia’ by the BBC and the Demos think tank. In this report the authors, much like the mendacious grievance mongering taqiyya artists of Tell Mama have done, claim that there has been a massive amount of Islamophobia in recent times.
However they then go to to accidentally and inadvertently cast doubt about the concept of Islamophobia itself, by admitting that it is a difficult thing to define. Mr Jones also attacks the methodology of the gathering and collating of the data behind this report, by stating that they authors were mixing together statements of anti-Muslim bigotry with criticism, often justifiable ones about Islam itself. Therefore it is possible that a large number of the claimed ‘7000 Islamophobic tweets per day in the month of July’, may not be direct attacks or threats to Muslims but instead criticisms of Islam per se.
Mr Jones’s article said:
The BBC and Demos have published an accidental case-study in why we should all stop using the meaningless and sinister word ‘Islamophobia’.
The BBC has made much of a report from Demos warning that thousands of ‘Islamophobic’ tweets are sent in English every day. But the researchers, like everybody else who uses the term, have totally failed to define what ‘Islamophobia’ actually means.
The research by Demos into ‘Islamophobia’ was reported by the BBC under the headline “Islamophobic tweets ‘peaked in July'”. From reading the BBC report you might imagine that 7,000 bigoted and anti-Muslim tweets were sent every day in July.
In fact, Demos have inadvertently set out what has been warned of for many years; that ‘Islamophobia’ is a nonsense word with sinister implications.
On reading the report it is clear that the Demos research isn’t just focused on anti-Muslim tweets, or bigotry against Muslims, but, as they define it in their research paper, “anti-Islamic ideas”.
In their report Demos selects some tweets it included in the study, which they presumably think are good examples of their methodology in action. A tweet stating “Morocco deletes a whole section of the Koran from school curriculum as it’s full of jihad incitement and violence The Religion of peace” is treated the same way as a tweet saying “I fucking hate pakis” in their methodology.
One of these tweets criticises an idea. The other is racist. One describes and mocks a belief system, the other (verbally) attacks people. Demos’ methodology treats both of these tweets in the same way.
I have read (an English translation of) the Koran. Saying it contains violence (it does) is in no way comparable to using racist language.
This is an appalling conflation, which creates a false moral equivalence between racism and criticising a set of ideas.
According to Mr Jones assessment of the data in the report, even stating that Islam is not a religion of pace is treated exactly the same by the authors of the report as communications that could be seen by some as threatening.
Mr Jones’s article continued:
Another tweet Demos offer as example reads: “Priest killed in #Normandy today by a Radical Islamic Terrorist yet Hillary says that Islam is peaceful! 1274 attacks this year=peaceful? OK.”
Is asserting that Islam doesn’t seem to be conducive to peace really ‘Islamophobic’?
The BBC apes Demos’ dangerous line, referring not to anti-Muslim, but explicitly to “anti-Islamic” tweets as ‘Islamophobic’.
The Demos research says that anti-Islamic ideas are “possibly socially problematic and damaging.”
He then added:
And how subjective is Demos’ research?
In the methodology section of their paper Demos say “An Islamophobic expression was defined as the illegitimate and prejudicial dislike of Muslims because of their faith.” I would prefer that was labelled ‘anti-Muslim bigotry’, but this alone would be among the least bad definitions of ‘Islamophobia’ you could devise. But Demos go on: “Islamophobia can take on a very large number of different forms, and its identification, especially within Twitter research, was often challenging.”
Here we get to the nub of the Islamophobia con. It is “challenging” to identify and takes a “very large number of different forms” because ‘Islamophobia’ is a nonsense term which accumulates bigotry and threats of violence, with criticism of a religion and a set of ideas; ideas which have no rights whatsoever and which must never be protected in law and ought not to be protected by social convention…………..What they have produced is therefore subjective, as Demos admit: “Ultimately, this research comes down to the judgement of the researchers involved.”
Read the rest of this excellent article via the link below
So there you have it. The BBC is using shaky information from Demos, to promote the even shakier idea of Islamophobia. A working and workable definition of Islamophobia was so difficult to define for the researchers that they had to resort to their own personal judgement. That this report team could not even appear to agree on what Islamophobia was, shows us all just what a dishonest crock of shit the word Islamophobia really is. It is so flexible that it can mean whatever those who use the word want it to mean. More worryingly it is being used, as Demos and the BBC have been using it, to try to de-legitimise valid and necessary criticism of Islam.
‘Islamophobia’ is merely a ‘snarl’ word designed to smear the person it is being used against and to shut down debate about Islam itself at a time when free societies really need to be having an open debate about Islam and also about whether it belongs in our nations at all or should be considered as a threat? We should be able to debate Islam freely just we are able to debate about other ideologies and we most certainly should not be subjected, as some would like, to the imposition of an Islamic blasphemy law via the back door created by the dangerous idea of ‘hate speech’.
