Am I Islamophobic?

There’s a meme that’s made the rounds for years. It’s a quote, falsely attributed to Morgan Freeman (who seems to be challenging both Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde for most misquoted guy on the interwebs), about homophobia: “I hate the word ‘homophobia.’ It’s not a phobia. You’re not scared. You’re an asshole.”

Mr. Freeman didn’t say it, but I quote it here as a way of opening an exploration into the meaning of terms that incorporate “phobia” and “phobe,” and how certain people, who enjoy manipulating language and redefining terms, have conflated fear and hate with terms like “homophobia,” “transphobia,” etc. This piece will tackle the term “islamophobia.” Is it always hateful or bigoted to be islamophobic, or is it sometimes—in today’s increasingly unstable world, which seems on the brink of a global holy war—logical?

For the record, I agree with whoever wrote the quote misattributed to Mr. Freeman. The word “homophobia” has always troubled me as it is widely considered the defining term for anti-gay hatred. Now, do some people—especially, say, certain straight men—fear gay people? I think so, but it depends on what one means by “fear.” In the case of homophobia, it seems to me, fear manifests as disgust.

I’ve been attacked right here on Substack, when writing about issues affecting me as a gay man, by histrionic bible-thumpers who brand me as a “sodomite,” pruriently fixating on anal intercourse, condemning me and all others who might engage in such sin to an eternity in the flames of hell. As in this previous Cornfield piece in which I address such vitriol from anonymous commenters, I tend to view these condemnations as a bit of “the lady doth protest too much, methinks.” Reducing people to sex acts seems to indicate a disproportionate obsession with same. The point I’m making here is that, sure, maybe those who hate gay people fear them, but I think the fear is more about the possibility of having their anuses penetrated—or perhaps, as I’ve posited, they fear their secret, repressed desire to experience it. Fear of one’s own impulses, and the disgust and self loathing that engenders, might explain the hatred certain people bear toward gays—but I will leave such things to Dr. Freud.

Do we invariably hate that which we fear? Do we need to fear in order to feel hatred, and act upon that hatred? Are the two things inextricably linked? Religious folk, especially certain devout Christians, who consider themselves rational and reasonable modern people, will tell you that they “hate the sin but love the sinner.” They parse their disapproval of gay people by declaring that it’s not the gayness they object to—not the identity part—but the acting upon the impulses; the implication being that gay people who remain chaste and don’t get up to any sodomitic shenanigans are A-OK with The Almighty. It’s the behavior they hate, not gay people themselves. This always seemed a bit disingenuous to me, if not dangerous—look at the sexual repression amongst the Catholic priesthood and its terrible consequences…but I digress. Let’s talk islamophobia.

If one is branded “islamophobic,” does this mean one hates all Muslims, and does an islamophobic person fear Muslims? If it is fear, what inspires that fear? Is it the behavior of certain Muslims which evokes disgust and trepidation? Those we might label as extremist, or radical, or fundamentalist; those we might define as “islamist?” I think it is. It’s not difficult to fear people whose religious zealotry inspires them to throw gays off of buildings, or to educate their children from birth to hate all Jews and to seek their destruction, promising martyrdom and eternal glory to those who kill Jews.

There’s no “love the sinner, hate the sin” at work there—it’s all hate, all the time—against gay people, Jews, Christians, Americans…women. Certainly, such attitudes and activities inspire disgust as well as fear, do they not? But, where does hate enter the picture? At what point do perfectly understandable fears and feelings of disgust render someone hateful and bigoted? Is it possible to reject and actively combat destructive ideologies and fundamentalist extremism, coming from a particular sect or segment of a religious community, without being branded a hater of all who practice a particular faith?

The leftist, intersectionalist, antiracist, social justice warrior progressives would shout an emphatic NO. Of course, these same people are perfectly comfortable condemning Zionists whilst brazenly attempting to convince us (and themselves) that they’re not antisemitic. Hate the Jewish State but not the Jews. Hate the sin, not the sinner. Hypocrisy aside, there is a kind of skewed logic there. After 9/11, there was a massive cultural conversation about the difference between good, peace loving Muslims and radical, violent Islamists and Jihadis. Of course the anti-Zionists don’t take into account the fact that half the world’s Jews—an already tiny global minority—reside in Israel, or that Jews are more than a religious sect; we’re a race. I won’t go down that rabbit hole here—I’ve written about these distinctions in depth in another piece.

Last week, 22% of registered voters in New York City voted in the primary (come on New Yorkers—VOTE, dammit!) and ranked Zohran Mamdani as the Democratic candidate for mayor, squashing the ambitions of Andrew Cuomo, and all but guaranteeing Mamdani a victory in November against incumbent Eric Adams, who has been an utter failure in the job (I’ve been a New Yorker for 32 years—believe me, Adams has been a disaster for the city). Mamdani is a socialist; a dyed-in-the-wool wokester, an anti-Zionist/pro-Palestine activist (see: antisemite/pro-Hamas), seeking the mayorship of the city that’s home to America’s largest Jewish community—25% of all Jews in the U.S.) and, of course—a Muslim.

I encourage you to take a deep dive into Mamdani’s qualifications for NYC mayor—or lack thereof—and his absurd and potentially disastrous socialist policy proposals for a city still crawling back from the economic devastation of the covid lockdown. I also encourage you to acquaint yourself with his antisemitic rhetoric, including his refusal to disavow the phrase “globalize the intifada.” There are reporters and commentators who have laid out all of this far better than I could. What I’m interested in sharing and exploring, for purposes of this piece, is the maelstrom of condemnation I experienced on social media from my progressive friends, when I expressed my view that a vote for Mamdani should be unthinkable for any New Yorker who, as I did, lived through 9/11.

I was thoroughly trounced by outraged Facebook “friends” for this sentiment—roundly accused of islamophobia, and bigotry against all Muslims. “Mamdani was nine years old on 9/11! What did he have to do with that?” “You just hate him because he’s a Muslim!” My retort to these accusations (accompanied by a vow never again to post anything political on social media) was that Mamdani has had every opportunity to condemn and distance himself from slogans like “globalize the intifada” and the anti-Israel, anti-American, antisemitic sentiments that accompany them—the poison that has infected colleges like NYC’s Columbia University, and which has made the streets of our city dangerous for Jewish citizens. He refuses to do so.

Mamdani was indeed a child on 9/11, and his young progressive base of support is comprised, in part, of 20-something adults who weren’t even alive on that horrific day. But many of us older NYC residents were, and if you think that this islamic extremist terror attack on our home ground didn’t inspire in me a fear and a hatred of the fundamentalist Muslim ideology that inspired these atrocities, you’d be wrong. I defy anyone who lived through that time to deny that they felt something similar, even if they wouldn’t say so.

Mamdani and his supporters—people who loudly advocate the principles of wokeism, namely the awareness of and resistance to injustice; the acknowledgment and honoring of the trauma of marginalized communities—somehow seem blithely indifferent to the PTSD we New Yorkers, and, indeed, all Americans who were alive on that horrible day, still experience twenty-four years later. Mamdani is utterly indifferent to the legitimate fears of those, like me, who fear having a Muslim mayor who refuses to distance himself from radical Islam and the maniacal terrorist threat it presents, not just to New York, but to the world. He’s gone so far as to appear on camera, choking back tears, bewailing the islamophobic abuse he and his family have endured during his campaign, claiming victimhood. But he won’t reassure us that he’s not aligned with Hamas or Hezbollah or the rest of the Muslim brotherhood. He won’t assuage the fears of New York’s Jewish community, reassuring us that he does not seek the destruction of the Jewish homeland; that he rejects antisemitism. Sins of omission, that inspire fear and trepidation in many of us contemplating what a Mamdani mayorship might mean for our safety. So do we “love the sinner, and hate the sin?” Or do we speak out, even if it means being labeled bigots and islamophobes by fellow New Yorkers who support Mamdani and the ideologies he appears to champion?

So. Am I islamophobic? Perhaps I am. If being islamophobic means fearing radical islamic terrorism; if it indicates a disgust of fundamentalist Muslim hatred of Jews and gays—two communities of which I am, by birth and by nature, a part. Am I islamophobic for fearing that New York might meet the same fate as London, a city with a Muslim mayor which has experienced a massive influx of Muslim immigration that’s brought with it rape gangs, knife attacks, and the disintegration of long standing communities within and without the metropolis, due to a lack of integration and assimilation by these new immigrant populations? Do I hate all Muslims because of the actions of violent and destructive elements within the Muslim community? No, I don’t. But it’s not islamophobic, bigoted or hateful of me to demand that the future mayor of New York City—the city that was a haven for my immigrant Jewish ancestors fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe, the city of my mother’s birth, and the city I’ve made my home for 32 years—unequivocally and definitively repudiate and disavow these elements, reassuring the Jewish community that he has our backs? I say no.