The news that the US has appointed an observer to the Organization of the Islamic Conference probably shocked many Muslims. After all, the general view across much of the Muslim world is that the US is riddled with Islamophobia. Many will therefore question Washington’s intentions, seeing the appointment not a move “to promote mutual understanding between the US and Muslim communities”, as the Americans claimed, but rather a deception, simply to pretend that is the case.
It is a sad fact that Islamophobia is growing worldwide — and the meeting of Muslim foreign ministers in Senegal this week prior to the current Islamic summit was right to warn of the surge of prejudice and bigotry against Islam. It is there in the outrageous Danish cartoons; it is there in the planned Dutch film attacking the Qur’an; it is there in firebomb attacks against Turks in Germany; it is there on attacks on mosques. But while Islamophobia is on the rise and thus rightly a key issue for the summit, it is not rampaging across the non-Muslim world. The foreign ministers themselves pointed it out on Tuesday. The Muslim world, they said, is “confronted by hatred and bigotry of radical marginal groups who believe that it is only through insulting Muslims and their religious symbols that they can demonstrate their commitment to freedom of speech”. The key word there is “marginal”. The gratuitously insulting film being planned in the Netherlands is not the doing of the Dutch government nor in tune with Dutch public sentiment. It is the work of a far-right member of Parliament who hopes that by stirring up trouble he can gain political power. But if the Dutch were genuinely anti-Muslim they would vote the far right into government rather than swing against it as they did in the last election.
As to Islamophobia in the US, there is a great deal of ignorance and misunderstanding there about Islam — although American Muslims tend to feel less marginalized than their European brothers and sisters. But ignorance is a very different thing to Islamophobia. Yes, there is Islamophobia in the US — but if it were rampant, how come a second Muslim was elected this week to Congress? The truth is that Muslim convert and Democrat Andre Carson was elected to serve not because he is a Muslim but because the overwhelmingly Christian electorate in Indiana believes he is the right person for the job.
That does not mean we are not seriously worried about Islamophobia. We are — and equally worried and repulsed by any instances of Christianophobia or Jewophobia in parts of the Muslim world. Such bigotry twists the truth and poisons relations between Muslim and non-Muslim. But Muslims must not play the Islamophobes’ game. We must refuse to rise to the bait of those who are out to drum up anti-Islamic sentiments for their own political ends. Violent demonstrations against instances of Islamophobia may release pent-up anger but they only help the Islamophobes spread the lie that Muslims are intolerant.
Talking, explaining, communicating, exchanging ideas — these are the weapons to defeat Islamophobia. That is why the appointment of a US observer to the OIC has to be welcomed rather than regarded with suspicion. Dialogue is the answer — the only answer.
