As I have noted before on Freedom and Reason, Islamophobia is a propaganda term that functions to portray critics of the ideological system called Islam as bigots who discriminate against Muslims based on their beliefs. I have had Muslim students in class, I have appeared at public meetings and conferences with Muslims, and I have been in the presence of Muslims at dinners and parties. I have never discriminated against a Muslim nor do I or would I support discrimination against Muslims.
I am a civil libertarian, an ethical system that defends the right of individuals to their own beliefs and conscience. My belief aligns with Thomas Jefferson’s, expressed in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Church, that government can only reach actions; opinions are the reserve of the individual. Cognitive liberty demands this right.
I am well known as a defender of the right to free speech. Free means no costs. Human beings are entitled to say what they will given restrictions that protect that same right for others. This also means human beings cannot be made to say things they find objectionable.
This freedom means that I can say without fear of discrimination that I find Islam to be an irrational ideology that is, like many other ideological systems, e.g., Bolshevism and Nazism, responsible for widespread human misery and requires as such sustained criticism and resistance to its spread throughout the institutional structure of a free nation. The right of the Muslim to his religion is at once my right to be free of his religion. His ideology cannot rule my actions.
Islam cannot therefore be allowed to corrupt our government, colonize our culture, determine the education of our children, or circumscribe our freedom. If resistance to a pernicious ideology is declared to be Islamophobic, then we have confirmation that it is what I said it is: a propaganda term designed to prevent citizens of a free nation from keeping their nation free by shaming them into silence.
The same is true for the smear of transphobia. See this thread for a concrete example of the smear of transphobia being used to dismiss the concerns of individuals regarding the misogyny of gender ideology:
Transphobia is propaganda term that functions to portray critics of the ideological system called transgenderism—a doctrine in a larger ideological system called gender ideology or queer theory—as bigots who discriminate against trans identifying individuals based on their beliefs.
Regarding my interactions with Muslims listed above, all of this can be said with respect to trans identifying individuals. My civil libertarianism remains at strongly in place with respect to such individuals as it does with respect to those who subscribe to Islam. A trans identifying person is entitled to his or her opinion. They are not to be discriminated against based on that opinion.
As with religious belief, government can only reach those actions that may be based on ideological beliefs that affect the freedom and wellbeing of others. We do not, for example, permit men to enter spaces reserved for women, whether they are men who identify as Muslim or men who identify as women. Keeping men out of women’s spaces is not discriminatory action because it does not police such spaces on the grounds of ideology but on the basis of objective reality—that is, authorities and citizens police those spaces despite an ideology that rationalizes the presence of men in those spaces.
To be sure, Islam forbids men from using women’s toilets and observant Muslim women (as well as Orthodox Jewish women) will not use those toilets if they suspect men are or may be present. Those who subscribe to queer theory believe men should be allowed to use women’s toilets. However, this belief does not trump the enforcement of single-sex facilities. No ideology can compel women to be around men in female-only spaces. It doesn’t matter if queer theory asserts that trans identifying men are women. That is an ideological assertion that, especially in the light of the fact that trans identifying men are not women, cannot negate the right of women to single-sex facilities.
The right of the individual to subscribe to gender ideology and describe themselves either as a trans identifying person or a cisgender person is his choice, but it does not entitle that person to expect that anyone will or must accept his self-designation. Muslims have terms for themselves and for non-Muslims. I do not use them. Likewise, queer theory has terms for transgender and non-transgender people. I do not use those terms, either. I don’t not use these terms because I do not subscribe to these ideologies, which is my right as detailed above. Moreover, I oppose these ideologies because of the harmful effects they have on others in practice.
It is troubling to consider the reality that queer theory, which has corrupted our government and colonized our culture, as well as infiltrated institutions of public instruction, now enjoys in nations across the West the force of law—administrative, judicial, and legislative—to determine our speech and our actions according to its lights. The present situation is directly analogous to a situation where Islam assumes the powers of the state and the influence of a nation’s culture to compel others to behave according to the lights of Islam. This is contrary to the fundamental law of the United States of America and constitutes a state of unfreedom.
freedom and reason 