Islamaphobia: Fear verses Love

Islamophobia is a new term, invented in the twentieth century to describe unreasoning prejudice or fear of Muslims. That's right; we need to invent new vocabulary to describe "an outlook or world-view involving an unfounded dread and dislike of Muslims, which results in practices of exclusion and discrimination." 

Yet, every Sunday morning at my church we begin service with our welcome message. The welcome message is a call and response that verbally says who we mean by all when we say all are welcome. The fourth call and response says: “Leader: You are welcome here if your people are from this place, or a different place. Congregation: For our God is both here and everywhere.”

Today, as Christians we need to live into that call even more powerfully.

I often don’t want to be called a Christian because of what that word can mean to many people, words that I certainly am not. Words like anti-gay, money hungry and judgmental. And now, Islamophobic.

Following the 9/11 attacks, Islamaphobia made its appearance and is once again in full force with the rise of ISIS. Some people associate ISIS with all people of the Muslim faith. That is a stereotype that is far misguided. The internet and social media now make it difficult to stop Islamaphobia because it gives a “voice” to those opinions. It is considered freedom of speech because there are no laws that prevent religious hatred.

The fear of Muslims is generated by ISIS using the media to promote its message.  The fear they encourage then generates hate. But hate does not solve anything, it just creates more hate. And they do it because fear works.

As a Christian pluralist, I believe we can only fight fear with love. 1 John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love.” We can search for more answers, but to put it simply all God asks of us is to love. And God means everyone. Though it may seem simple, it is not. Because everyone means the people that are not like you, that do not think like you and do not believe the same things you believe. 1 John 4:21: “The commandment is we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.”

The good news is there is still love in the world.

Earlier this month Tasnim Nazeer, a Muslim freelance journalist wrote an article about how she was encouraged by a Canadian social experiment. The experiment consisted of two actors who were secretly being recorded at a bus stop doing a scene where the Islamophobe actor was asking the Muslim actor to not get on the bus because he might have bombs strapped to him. The other people came to the actor’s defense telling the man that he couldn’t judge someone by their clothes, religion or nationality. The social experiment ended with the Islamophobe actor getting punched in the face by a Canadian sticking up for the Muslim actor. 

Now, punching people in the face is not the best way to express one's defense to the persecuted. We need to be passionate defenders, without the violence, in order to turn our societies around. 

As a Christian, it is my job to speak up for justice; would you?