1st January 2013
Imagine a political analyst in 1940 who studied the low opinion that Americans had of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany, and concluded that the problem was not the genocidal anti-Semitism, the international aggression, or the vile racist ideology, but bad press. Imagine further another analyst who pointed out that the bad press that Hitler and the Nazis got was a just result of their own words and actions, and that if they wanted to improve their public image in America, they should clean their own house and stop giving decent people so much cause to oppose them.
Finally, imagine that the second analyst, the one who ascribed the public’s low image of Nazis to the actions of Nazis themselves, was derided as a “hatemonger” and “bigot” who simply had an irrational hatred of Nazis and Germans in general. Would that be absurd? Of course. Outrageous? Undoubtedly. Morally inverted? Absolutely. Yet this little thought experiment encapsulates the prevailing sentiment regarding Muslims and “Islamophobia” today.