Mick Hartley: Conflating criticism of Islam with racism

Nick Cohen on Alom Shaha's Young Atheist's Handbook:

Shaha explains that he is against all forms of racism, including religious discrimination. How, given his experience of Paki-bashing in the south London of the 1980s, could he be otherwise? But he adds that he was driven to write because "people often unfairly conflate" criticisms of the ideology of Islam with racism. "As a believer in human rights and justice, I find this abhorrent." It tells you much about Britain that he needs to spell this out.

Of course this is written, as Nick makes clear, not just as a review of two recently-published books from British writers brought up as Muslims (the other one is Maajid Nawaz's Radical), but as a direct counter to Jonathan Freedland's unfortunate CiF piece from last week about the "progressive prejudice" of those naughty people who criticise Islam for its treatment of women and its homophobia.

Freedland, in other words, buys into the whole Islamophobia thing: criticism of Islam is, basically, racism. Here's what I wrote a couple of years back:

A fundamental principle of Western thought is the separation between a person and their beliefs. This is not a fundamental principle of Islamic thought. Quite the contrary: born a Muslim, you die a Muslim. The notion that you might change your mind is so alien that the punishment for apostasy - in theory, if not necessarily in practice - is death.

The charge of Islamophobia deliberately obscures that separation between a person and their beliefs. It accepts the Islamic vision of an immutable union of person and religion. We should refuse to accept those terms....

The aim should be, at least for those Muslims resident in the West, that they feel as free to abandon the faith of their parents (or not to, of course) as Christians, atheists, and all the rest of us are free now to make our own choices. As long as Islamophobia is accepted as a legitimate term of criticism, we won't start making any progress.

With books like the ones Nick reviews here, we can hope that progress is being made - with no help from the likes of Freedland.