A definition of Islamophobia

'If you want a working definition of Islamophobia that rises above the special pleading of religious reactionaries my suggestion would be: 'Islamophobia is a prejudice that dominates western political and media elites and the confused and faintly sinister mind of the Chairwoman of the British Conservative Party. It holds that Muslim women want to be oppressed, that Muslim gays want to be murdered, that Muslims want to have their rights to speak and vote denied, and that Muslim dominated countries want to be ruled by sleazy, life-denying and vicious dictators.'”'

Nick Cohen in The Spectator wrote the above and also wrote this for the Jewish Chronicle:

'A liberal-left that hollers its commitment to anti-racism until it is hoarse is failing to confront one of the barbarous varieties of racism the human race has invented because it regards the Israel-Palestine conflict as the Spanish Civil War of our age; the foreign cause that trumps all others. And just as the left of the 1930s allowed its obsession to blind it to the crimes of Stalin so the left of the 2010s is allowing its idée fixe to blind it to the crimes of the Middle Eastern dictators and the Islamists. Even mild criticism of the suffering Israel’s enemies inflict is bad form; a treacherous diversion from the struggle against the hated Zionist entity.'

Thaks to Harry's Place for the spot.


To my mind a phobia is a suffix used to denote an irrational fear of something. Is there another suffix we can add to the word Islam to denote a well founded loathing of and logically founded opposition to extremist proponents of it?