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Islamophobia is racism

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"Islam isn’t a race, it’s a religion."

I recognise this slogan. I know it well. It’s something I used to say a lot. And technically, it’s true. Islam is not a race, it’s a religion.

In the wake of terrorist attacks committed by Islamic extremists, not only in France, but in Nigeria, the topics of religion, extremism, Islam, and Islamophobia seem to be everywhere.

The attacks are truly terrible, unjustifiable, and tragic. It’s hard to make sense of them, to understand why this would happen.

When you hear that the organisers of these attacks claimed to do them in the name of religion, you can be forgiven for blaming that religion, for pointing a finger at it and saying, "well there’s our problem".

Religion can undeniably be toxic. It can undeniably be used to try to justify and spur on truly awful crimes against humanity. As an atheist, I’m the last person who is going to attempt to deny this.

But.

That doesn’t mean Islamophobia is a non-issue simply because "Islam is not a race, it’s a religion".

Let’s talk about who Islamophobia affects, and what it leads to.

For a start, Islamophobia does not only affect Muslims. Instead, it affects people that, to the average Islamophobe, "look Muslim".

In fact, Balbir Singh Sodhi, the very first person to die at the hands of Islamophobia in America after the 9/11 attacks, was not a Muslim. He was just, to quote his murderer, "dark-skinned, bearded, and wore a turban". 

Sikh is a very different religion to Islam, but that doesn’t protect its followers from Islamophobia. The murder of Sodhi was not a random incident.

In fact, after a gunman opened fire on worshippers at a Sikh temple in 2012, leaving seven dead including himself, the Huffington Post created a detailed history of the crimes against Sikhs since 9/11.

Tell me, who do you think is more likely to be searched an airport? A Caucasian Muslim man, or a dark-skinned man who just, like these Sikhs, "looks Muslim"?

So I make this suggestion to you: Islam is not a race, it’s a religion, but Islamophobia does not simply target people based on their religion, it targets them based on their race.

Secondly, Islamophobia affects innocent people who just happen to be Muslim.

Here, I could list thousands of examples, but I will speak specifically of an incident in France, one that, to me, mirrors the Charlie Hebdo attacks.

In 2013, two years after France had banned the wearing of full-face coverings such as the niqab or burka, a 21 year old woman, who was four months pregnant, was assaulted.

The two men who assaulted her tore at her clothes and kicked her in the stomach. She lost the baby.

Her crime? She was Muslim, and wearing a hijab headscarf, which exposes the face and was, and remains, perfectly legal in France. According to her account, her attackers had ripped the veil from her head.

Wearing a hijab is expression. It may not be expression you agree with, but it is expression that is protected under the right to freedom of expression.

By assaulting this woman, these Islamophobic men used violence to try attack her freedom of expression. Just like the men who attacked Charlie Hebdo.

Yet again, this is not one isolated incident. There is a whole Wikipedia page dedicated to Islamophobic incidents in countries around the world.

Finally, Islamophobia leads to the torture and murder of innocent people.

Please do not forget the CIA torture reports. Do not forget what the American government did, in the name of protecting America from "the terrorist threat".

People, whose only crime was to be Muslim, were tortured, even murdered. They were physically, mentally and emotionally abused.

They were destroyed, legally, by the American government, because they were Muslim, and people were afraid of Muslims. Islamophobia.

That torture never resulted in life-saving intelligence. It did not help to protect America in the slightest. All it did was destroy the lives of innocent people.

And yet, when the reports came to light this year, there were still people who are so Islamophobic, their attitude was "Good." "Who cares." "He obviously deserved it."

And that’s the thing. Islamic extremism isn’t the only extremism that kills.

In Africa, Boko Haram are terrorizing people, both Christian and Muslim. In Africa, tens of thousands of Muslims are fleeing Christian militia attacks.

Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered by an extremist patriot. The IRA are Irish extremists. The Inquisition were Catholic extremists. Even something as silly as gaming has extremists who harass and attack people.

Religion, like almost anything, can be toxic. Islamophobia is toxic. Religion, like almost anything, can be used to try justify and spur on truly awful crimes against humanity.

Islamophobia is used to try justify and spur on truly awful crimes against humanity.

Religion isn’t the problem, hatred is. And Islamophobia is hatred.

Follow Laura on Twitter or visit her blog.

Follow Women24 on Twitter or like us on Facebook.

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