Islamophobia?

Some people exercise their right of free speech to oppose the building of a new mega-mosque near the site of the Twin Towers, and some nut stabs a Muslim cab-driver, and this is evidence of "mob hate" and "anti-Muslim hysteria". So says Punkaj Mishra in the Guardian, so it must be true.

Actually, it is simply a projection of the very real mob hatred and anti-Western hysteria in some parts of the Muslim world, constantly aired on TV and reported in the newspapers. In broad historical terms that hatred and hysteria is entirely justified; whether it serves any constructive purpose is another matter.

But, however justified, it is a fact - and the fact that there are people out there who hate me and mine simply because we are Westerners makes them my mortal enemies. Since they want to harm me, I want them stopped before they can do so. A phobia is an irrational fear of something; it is entirely rational to fear people who proclaim their murderous hatred of you. Indeed, it is insane not to do so.

Consequently I do not see any virtue in proclaiming unilateral tolerance towards those whose cultural identity is bound up in smouldering resentment against my culture and society, however historically justified that resentment may be. Nor do I see any justification for treating illegal acts by incomers, however culturally ingrained they may be, any differently to the same acts perpetrated by members of the host population.

At the same time, as an "elder" I cannot deny that it is refreshing to come into contact with members of communities who still show respect for age, despite the modern Western cult of youth, and who still practice modesty, despite the flaunting vulgarity of popular Western culture.  

I seek in my own life to avoid prejudging anyone on the basis of physical or character traits over which they have no control; I may not always succeed, but I have the right to expect that others should at least try to show reciprocal respect for my individuality. We may well find we have nothing in common, but there is an easy solution to that - we can simply avoid each other and get on with our own lives.

But without mutual respect for a common framework of what is and is not permissible, as defined by laws that reflect the historic social development of the country we live in, we must be at each other's throats. If, in macrocosm, liberal imperialism is an act of hubristic cultural arrogance, so also, in microcosm, is it to come to another country and demand that it reject its own historic identity in order to accommodate yours.

I am tolerably certain that first generation immigrants are only too happy to have escaped from their country of origin and are unlikely to make such a demand unless put up to it by the made-in-Britain race hustlers of the Labour party. The second and third generations are another matter, as they will have absorbed British attitudes and some of them will fulfill the requirements of party membership the Grand Master in Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards! (1989):

Let other societies take the skilled, the hopeful, the ambitious, the self-confident. He'd take take the whining resentful ones, the ones with a bellyful of spite and bile, the ones who knew they could make it big if only they’d been given a chance, the ones in which the floods of venom and vindictiveness were dammed up behind thin walls of ineptitude and lowgrade paranoia.

Unfortunately Britain produces more than enough such people without importing the raw materials for more. I wish Western lefties who make a living by denouncing "phobias" might take a look in the mirror. How can you denounce hatred on one hand and excuse it on the other? How can you denounce sexism in all its manifestations and embrace cultures that practice the most brutal patriarchy? How can you, finally, define yourself around an ideology born of hatred while demanding that others should not hate you in return?