There are many organizations throughout the world that have been formed under different names and belong to various religions. Organizing, expanding, spreading one’s ideas to build a network, carrying out lobbying activities, providing benefits to people within an organization or undertaking activities that increase their commitment to it are perfectly normal and natural rights almost everywhere in the world and under international law. These rights apply to everyone and to the followers of every belief.
But what happens when three people come together somewhere in the world and regard everyone else as an enemy; obtain unlawful profit and advantages, exploit people, claim the rights of those outside their organization as their own, and consider themselves entitled to attack those who are different from them?
We are speaking of a structure that attempts to make everything different resemble itself and become dependent upon the organization’s mentality; that disregards human rights, women’s rights and children’s rights; and that believes its members bear no moral responsibility and that the organization’s interests must always take priority.
Can the existence and actions of an organization that considers seizing other people’s property permissible and sacred, and that regards arming itself, attacking, killing and capturing as legitimate, be accepted as a right? Does being an organization, having large numbers, possessing a book and having a leader grant you the right to do all these things?
This is precisely the point I wish to reach.
There are, of course, ordinary organizations that carry out the activities I listed first. However, in order not to fear an organization, structure or belief system predominantly represented by Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, ISIS, Hezbollah, Boko Haram, the Houthis and the Iranian regime, one must either be foolish or more powerful than they are. In order not to oppose such a structure, one must either belong to them or belong to those who control them.
Standing against such a structure and such an interpretation of belief can never be a crime.
What is called “Islamophobia” is one of the most natural and predictable fears in the world. This is because these structures and radical organizations continually produce fear and aggression. As long as organizations exist that constantly keep the world in conflict, carry out armed attacks, disregard women’s rights, human rights and children’s rights, and consider themselves entitled to behead, destroy and rape those who do not belong to them, no one on Earth can be accused of being Islamophobic. People have more than enough reason to experience this fear.
If they attack, then I am forced to place myself in a position that excludes them, keeps away from them and hates them. I cannot be naïve enough to paint a rosy picture and say, “Only some of them do these things; they are not all the same.”
Because the book is there for everyone to see.
Because the actions of the person they accept as their guide are there for everyone to see.
If their leader could have sexual relations with a nine-year-old child, how can we claim that his followers do not possess the potential to do the same? Can it be a crime to acknowledge that such a potential exists among them?
I naturally place in a separate category those who have been kept ignorant, who have been unable to receive an education or find an opportunity to learn, those who belong to Islam merely because they inherited it from their families, and those who are good people.
Yet there are so many people who see and know what has happened, who become radicalized by claiming that all of it is legitimate, and who grow even more brutal the more they read and learn, that it becomes impossible not to feel fear or hatred.
Phobia is not directed toward the innocent.
Phobia is directed toward murderers, criminals and those who consider themselves entitled to attack others.
And it should be!