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Slander, Blasphemy & Censorship

Hamas-Linked CAIR Wants to Treat Islamophobia as a “Public Health Issue”

If a social environment impacts a group’s mental, emotional and physical well-being, Christians, Jews and other minorities living under Sharia law are hardest hit.

BY Bruce Cornibe · | September 27, 2016

Many people have heard the popular Biblical verse, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil…” but apparently for Islamists like the Hamas linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) all evil stems from ‘Islamophobia.’

As we have seen from the ‘Islamophobia’ report released this past summer by CAIR and UC Berkeley’s Center for Race and Gender– not only is the ‘Islamophobia’ narrative an attempt to silence criticism of Islam but also their pseudo definition of ‘Islamophobia’ includes rational fears (“real Muslim threat”). Therefore, national security policies that seek to counter jihadi Muslims from slaughtering innocent American civilians could be considered Islamophobic under their definition.

With this all-inclusive definition which contradicts what a phobia really is, an irrational fear, it’s pretty easy to label just about anything Islamophobic. Furthermore, this allows ‘Islamophobia’ to be linked with just about anything Islamists or their sympathizers perceive as against Islam or bad in general. This is how ‘academics’ like Goleen Samari, a postdoctoral research fellow, can connect ‘Islamophobia’ to things such as health issues. This is why she wants ‘Islamophobia’ to be treated “as a public health issue.” Yes, you heard correct, and it seems like CAIR is on board with the idea too (tweet below).

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When Samari tries to make her case on why ‘Islamophobia’ is a problem in the U.S. she interestingly lists how “Muslim charities have had their assets frozen[.]” One wonders if she thinks that it’s ‘Islamophobic’ for the government to take proper actions against Muslim charities that have been discovered with ties to terrorist groups like Hamas or Al Qaeda (ex. Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, Global Relief Foundation, etc.)? Pretty sad if so. Samari’s rationale for this linkage of ‘Islamophobia’ to public health is explained in an excerpt in her article published in The Dallas Morning News:

…Structural forms of discrimination, forms such as media coverage or political campaigns that call for a ban on Muslims, help normalize discriminatory attitudes and create the institutional system of discrimination.

A system of discrimination can lead to differential access to fundamental determinants of health such as education and employment. Moreover, when people are targeted based on their identity, the persistent exposure to discrimination has a pervasive, negative effect on health. Being a victim of Islamophobia can be traumatizing, with severe and lasting health impacts.

Members of stigmatized groups have greater stress, strained social relationships and unequal access to resources or medical care. Social marginalization increases the physiological response to stress. Discrimination against Muslim Americans has been linked to paranoia, psychological distress and reduced happiness as well as high cholesterol, obesity and other health problems.

So, essentially what she is saying is that factors like news clips showing the threat of Islamic jihad in the media and Donald Trump immigration speeches are contributing to the actual physical, psychological and mental health of Muslims. Wow.

Not only does this kind of rationale seem politically motivated, but it is also baseless (no evidence). Furthermore, other groups that perceive to be “stigmatized” could use the same logic. For example, Bible believing Christians not only get labeled as narrow-minded bigots by much of the media and academia (directly or implicitly), but also have to face a work environment that is getting increasingly hostile to their beliefs. Or how about Jewish people who had more than three times the amount of hate crimes than Muslims in 2014, according to FBI statistics? Furthermore, Jews have to face all kinds of conspiracy theories directed toward them, Holocaust deniers, and groups determined to wiping them off the face of the earth (ex. Muslim jihadists). So, where are all of the articles linking actual hatred of Christians and Jews to health issues? Or how about the mental health of individuals who constantly live in fear of being harmed by Muslim jihadists (has a lot more legitimacy)? This is just another example of how Islamist activists and their sympathizers use spurious correlations (or weak correlations at best) to build their political narratives.

Samari should apply her same standards to minorities living in Muslim-majority countries where severe systematic discrimination actually happens because of Sharia law.

Take a look at a recent example in Pakistan where a teenage Christian male (Nabeel Masih) has been arrested and accused of blasphemy – the “crime was ‘liking’ a supposedly sacrilegious picture of the Kaaba, a black cube-shaped structure at the center of Islam’s holiest mosque in Mecca, on Facebook.” The Pakistan Penal Code is allegedly very harsh on insults to religion/Islam. According to the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), “Section 295 punishes injuring or defiling a place of worship, with intent to insult the religion of any class, with two years’ imprisonment, and 295-A punishes deliberate and malicious acts intended to outrage religious feelings of any class by insulting its religion or religious beliefs with ten years’ imprisonment.” Of course, religion can essentially be substituted with Islam. Not only do countries like Pakistan have serious legal barriers for non-Muslims, but also attitudes of everyday citizens contribute to the intimidating Sharia climate. For example, look at how the teenage boy’s friends betrayed him:

The charges stated that Nabeel’s Muslim friends visited his Facebook page and found that he had “liked” and shared the sacrilegious photo—a photo that had originally been posted by someone else. The Muslim friends alleged that Nabeel “had done a great injustice to us by badly hurting our religious feelings.” This landed Nabeel in prison, while his family and fellow Christians fled the area for fear of reprisals.

If anyone can say a hostile social environment greatly impacts a group’s mental, emotional, psychological and physical well-being its Christians, Jews and other minorities living under Sharia law. The ‘Islamophobia’ narrative is a façade used to cover the real injustices of the world. It’s time for media outlets and institutions of higher learning to expose this nonsense instead of giving them a platform to spout their propaganda.

 

 

Backgrounders

UN Resolution 16/18

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation and the Obama administration have joined in endorsing a heckler’s veto on freedom of speech in violation of America’s most deeply-held political principles.

Slander in Islamic Law — What You’re Not Allowed to Say or Know

In sharia, the word translated as “slander” is the Arabic word ghiba. It means to say anything about someone that they do not like, even though it is true.

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