Commentators have recently pointed out two things: that anti-Muslim hatred is still hatred (Gary Farber, Bjørn Stærk); and that criticism of Islam isn't necessarily Islamophobic (Polly Toynbee, Marc Cooper). Both of these claims seem to me to be true, but it's the second that has a particularly interesting logic, one which also applies to other matters.
The concept of Islamophobia, like that of racism, makes an implicit appeal to ideas about rationality and fairness. The kind of hostility, or differential treatment, which constitutes Islamophobia is irrational or unfair hostility, irrational or unfair differential treatment. So what would protect a criticism of Islam from being irrational or unfair? The most obvious defence is that of truth: surely if a criticism of Islam is true, it can't be unfair or irrational to voice it, so how could it be Islamophobic? Very often it won't be, and this is what Toynbee and Cooper are rightly concerned to point out. However, there do seem to be circumstances in which even truthful criticisms can be unfair or irrational. If Islam is criticised for features which other belief systems also have, then concentrating solely on the Islamic cases and denying the other ones is unfair. If Muslims are blamed for activities which others also engage in but are excused from, then again it seems that the criticism is unfair. And if Muslim misdeeds are noticed and excoriated when worse misdeeds of others are not, then it looks as if double standards are operating, and this is enough to ensure irrationality as well as unfairness. Criticisms of this kind seem to be candidates for being Islamophobic: at the very least, the onus is on the critic to show why the selective attention she is paying to Islam's failures is in some way appropriate. But in those cases where such true criticisms do turn out to be genuinely Islamophobic, we still have to remember that that doesn't erase their truth, which has to be acknowledged even as we object to the Islamophobic elements in the voicing of them. And, of course, not every criticism of Islam is ipso facto unfair in this way. The point has to be established on a case by case basis.
These considerations, however, apply also to other parts of the political battlefield. Many people want to say that criticism of Israeli activities doesn't amount to anti-Semitism. And right enough, sometimes it doesn't. But for the kind of reasons I've set out, the matter is more complicated. Criticism of Israel for activities which are excused in others; criticism of Israeli misdeeds when far worse ones, committed by others, are passed over silently; hostility towards Jewish nationalism when other forms of nationalism are tolerated or lauded, all run the risk of being unfair and/or irrational. At the very least, the onus is on the critic to show why the selective attention she is paying to Israel's failures is in some way appropriate. Because when we look for an explanation of this kind of unfairness and irrationality in people who otherwise tell us that they're very committed to being fair and reasonable, the likeliest answer seems to be in terms of the critics' prejudice. Anti-Semitic prejudice has been around for a very long time, in Europe and elsewhere. Our supposition that the horrors of its orgiastic climax in the middle of the twentieth century had led the world to purge itself of that vileness was, as we increasingly see, naively optimistic. Although an unfair prejudice against Israel needn't amount to fully-paid-up anti-Semitism, it sometimes manifestly does so, and it also might do so when it's not so very evident. Moreover, unfair prejudice against Israel, even when not motivated by anti-Semitism, can be as dangerous and damaging to a large sector of the Jewish population as anti-Semitism itself, especially where it takes the form of calls for the forcible destruction of the Jewish state.
Concerns that we may have about unfair criticism of Islam are going to apply also to unfair criticism of Israel. The logic of Islamophobia and that of this other contemporary phobia are remarkably similar. This should surprise nobody, since unfair prejudice is a human constant, the battle against which is unlikely to be won in any of our lifetimes.
What should surprise people - it certainly surprises me - about the current political landscape is that more care is being taken on the liberal-left to steer clear of the one phobia (Islamophobia) than to steer clear of the other. (Eve Garrard)