Islamophobiaphobia

For several decades, the Left has loved coining new words which make conservative positions sound like mental diseases.  Over all of human history, homosexuals have been seen as perverted, but now if you feel that way, you're a "homophobe" who ought to be locked up in a padded cell.

This strategy has been so overwhelmingly successful that the Left has extended it beyond the irrelevant to the directly contrary, with the ludicrous word of "Islamophobia." Supposedly, anybody who notices that almost every Muslim country is a veritable hell on earth which Muslim immigrants bring with them almost everywhere they go has an irrational fear of the religion which drives their barbarism.  This is preposterous on its face - it is perfectly rational to fear a deadly threat.

In fact, it's insane if you don't.  Which is why we want to return the favor and create our own derogatory word, one which has the virtue of being accurate:

Islamophobiaphobia: the irrational fear of fearing Islam.

A Ticking Time Bomb

We could ask for no better illustration of Islamophobiaphobia than the recent contretemps surrounding 14-year-old student Ahmed Mohamed.  As CNN reports:

When Ahmed Mohamed went to his high school in Irving, Texas, Monday, he was so excited. A teenager with dreams of becoming an engineer, he wanted to show his teacher the digital clock he'd made from a pencil case.

The 14-year-old's day ended not with praise, but punishment, after the school called police and he was arrested.

"I built a clock to impress my teacher but when I showed it to her, she thought it was a threat to her," Ahmed told reporters Wednesday. "It was really sad that she took the wrong impression of it."

Let us be perfectly clear: Young Mohamed did not, in fact, create a bomb.  He did indeed make a harmless digital clock.

That is why he was released from the police station later that same evening, after some level-headed cops took a good hard look at the hardware and realized there was nothing to be worried about.

But teachers are not professional bomb experts; that is what we have police departments for, among other things.  The teacher took a look at Mohamed's creation and called for expert advice, as teachers are trained to do, particularly when on school premises.

Tick, tick, tick...

You don't have to take our word for it.  Take a look for yourself: If someone sidled up next to you bearing this device, would you think nothing of it, or would you freak out?  We tend to pride ourselves on our steady mind, but unless we knew what this was in advance, it would have us running for the exit for sure.

You Have to Be Carefully Taught

The officials of Mohamed's high school are being castigated for profiling him as a Muslim with their reaction.  It's possible that there is some truth to this: if the inventor had been blond Betty Sue McGraw, or even Wei Long, the handcuffs probably wouldn't have been employed, though there certainly would still have been pointed questions.

That's the wrong comparison.  While people of every race and religion can commit monstrous crimes, traditional American and Chinese citizens are not noted for teaching this sort of thing.

The right comparison would be if a kid named Adolf Hitler Jackson brought this device to school!  What would the reaction be then?

Of course this horrifically-named kid has committed no atrocities at his age.  It's entirely possible he will grow up to be a law-abiding, peaceful citizen, but the bare fact of his name suggests - does not prove, but certainly suggests - something deeply worrying about the way he has been brought up.

Is that reason enough to throw him into prison?  Absolutely not - and we note, the Irving police didn't throw Mohamed in prison either.

No, they simply did their job: they investigated a suspicious event, found it to be perfectly harmless, and sent everybody home.

The question here is not, is it OK to lock people up for being Muslim?  Because that's not what happened here, as much as the media would like to claim that it is.

The real question is, is it logical, rational, reasonable, and fair to be just that little bit more suspicious of people of obvious Muslim backgrounds, given the history of the past forty if not the past 1300 years?

The only sane answer must be a resounding Yes!  And that is why Islamophobiaphobia, the irrational fear of being afraid of Muslims, is a major threat to America today.

It's not only a threat to our mental health, it's also a threat to life and limb as three thousand people discovered abruptly 14 years ago.  Remember these fateful words from the poor soul at Portland airport who checked in the 9/11 hijackers for their flight:

I got an immediate chill in my stomach as soon as I looked at him.  I said to myself, if this guy doesn’t look like an Arab terrorist, nobody does. He had a look on his face of contempt, and palpable anger.

In fact, Mohammed Atta was indeed an Arab terrorist of the worst sort.  But no, we can't be biased against people just because of their appearance... and three thousand innocents died.

Ahmed Mohamed has not killed anyone, never meant to kill anyone, and probably won't ever kill anyone.  If we aren't even allowed to investigate suspicious behavior anymore, a great many others will.

Islamophobiaphobia kills.  Fight back!