The Biden administration recently announced the U.S.’s first “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia.” It will aim to “counter the scourge of Islamophobia and hate in all its forms,” said press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
The ongoing Arab/Israeli conflict was cited as ushering in this latest wave of “Islamophobia” in America.
But is that really the case? Are temporal circumstances and developments the true culprits behind Islamophobia, defined as “unfounded fear of and hostility towards Islam”?
For example, for the longest time, it was assumed that the terror strikes of 9/11 were the root cause of Islamophobia in America. As an Al Jazeera article titled, “Decades after 9/11, Muslims battle Islamophobia in US,” asserts: “The September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States ushered in a new era of hate crimes, racism, and xenophobia against Muslims.”
In reality, aversion to Islam is as old as Islam itself. In this sense, the claim that Islamophobia is an actual phenomenon is accurate: non-Muslims have always feared Islam; but there was — and is — nothing irrational about this fear as the word “phobia” implies.
From the very start, Western peoples, including many of their luminaries, portrayed Islam as a hostile and violent force — often in terms that would make today’s “Islamophobe” blush. There’s a reason for that. In 628 AD, Muhammad summoned the Christian Roman emperor, Heraclius, to submit to Islam. When the emperor refused, a virulent jihad was unleashed against the Western world. Less than 100 years later, Islam had conquered more than two-thirds of Christendom and was raiding deep into France.
While these far-reaching conquests are often allotted a sanitized sentence, if that, in today’s textbooks, the chroniclers of the time made clear that these were cataclysmic events that had a traumatic impact on Europe.
But it wasn’t just what they personally experienced at the hands of Muslims that developed this ancient “phobia” of Islam. As far back as the seventh century, Islam’s scriptures became available to nearby Christians, such as John of Damascus (b. 675), one of history’s earliest “Islamophobes.” Based solely on these primary sources of Islam, Christians concluded that Muhammad was a (possibly demon-possessed) false prophet who had very obviously concocted a creed to justify the worst depravities of man — for dominion, plunder, cruelty, and carnality.
This view prevailed for well over a millennium throughout Europe, and it was augmented by the fact that Muslims were still — well over a millennium after Muhammad — invading Christian territories, plundering them, and abducting their women and children. The United States’ first conflict with Islam — indeed, its first war as a nation — came not after Sept. 11, 2001, but in 1801 as a response to jihadist raids on American ships for booty and slaves.
A minuscule sampling of what Europeans thought of Islam throughout the centuries follows:
Theophanes, important Eastern Roman chronicler (d.818):
He [Muhammad] taught those who gave ear to him that the one slaying the enemy—or being slain by the enemy—entered into paradise [see Koran 9:111]. And he said paradise was carnal and sensual—orgies of eating, drinking, and women. Also, there was a river of wine … and the women were of another sort [houris], and the duration of sex greatly prolonged and its pleasure long-enduring [e.g., Koran 56: 7-40, 78:31, 55:70-77]. And all sorts of other nonsense.
Thomas Aquinas, one of Christendom’s most influential philosophers and scholastics (d.1274):
He [Muhamad] seduced the people by promises of carnal pleasure to which the concupiscence of the flesh urges us …. and he gave free rein to carnal pleasure. In all this, as is not unexpected, he was obeyed by carnal men. As for proofs of the truth of his doctrine…. Muhammad said that he was sent in the power of his arms—which are signs not lacking even to robbers and tyrants [i.e., his “proof” that God was with him is that he was able to conquer and plunder others]…. Muhammad forced others to become his follower’s by the violence of his arms.
Marco Polo, merchant and world traveler (d.1324):
According to their [Muslims’] doctrine, whatever is stolen or plundered from others of a different faith, is properly taken, and the theft is no crime; whilst those who suffer death or injury by the hands of Christians, are considered as martyrs. If, therefore, they were not prohibited and restrained by the [Mongol] powers who now govern them, they would commit many outrages. These principles are common to all Saracens.
When the Mongol khan later discovered the depraved criminality of Achmath (or Ahmed), one of his Muslim governors, Polo writes that the khan’s
...attention [went] to the doctrines of the Sect of the Saracens [i.e., Islam], which excuse every crime, yea, even murder itself, when committed on such as are not of their religion. And seeing that this doctrine had led the accursed Achmath and his sons to act as they did without any sense of guilt, the Khan was led to entertain the greatest disgust and abomination for it. So he summoned the Saracens and prohibited their doing many things which their religion enjoined.
Alexis de Tocqueville, French political thinker and philosopher, best known for Democracy in America (d.1859):
I studied the Quran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction that by and large there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as that of Muhammad. As far as I can see, it is the principal cause of the decadence so visible today in the Muslim world and, though less absurd than the polytheism of old, its social and political tendencies are in my opinion more to be feared, and I therefore regard it as a form of decadence rather than a form of progress in relation to paganism itself.
Theodore (“Teddy”) Roosevelt, 26th president of the United States and an accomplished student of history (d. 1919):
Christianity was saved in Europe solely because the peoples of Europe fought. If the peoples of Europe in the seventh and eighth centuries, and on up to and including the seventeenth century, had not possessed a military equality with, and gradually a growing superiority over the Mohammedans who invaded Europe, Europe would at this moment be Mohammedan and the Christian religion would be exterminated. Wherever the Mohammedans have had complete sway, wherever the Christians have been unable to resist them by the sword, Christianity has ultimately disappeared.
British statesman Winston Churchill (d. 1965):
Individual Moslems may show splendid qualities—but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
In short, fear of and aversion to Islam has been the mainstream position among non-Muslims for nearly 1,400 years — ever since Muhammad started raiding, plundering, massacring, and enslaving non-Muslims (“infidels”) in the name of his god. And it is because his followers, Muslims, continue raiding, plundering, massacring, and enslaving “infidels” that fear of and aversion to Islam — what is called “Islamophobia” — exists to this day.
So yes, Islamophobia is real: non-Muslims have always feared Islam, and rightfully so. The lie is that this fear is irrational and therefore in need of being ameliorated by “measures” like Biden’s new “National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia,” which no doubt will be dedicated to more of the usual: suppressing uncomfortable truths and propping up feel-good falsehoods.
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