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It’s paywalled, but you can find the full article archived here; it’s titled, “Ministers finalising definition of anti-Muslim hatred.” Here’s an excerpt (for some reason the BBC turns every sentence into a paragraph). I’ve put the draft definition in bold.
The government is considering a draft definition of anti-Muslim hatred which does not include the term “Islamophobia”.
The BBC has seen the form of words from the Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim hatred working group, which the government has taken to stakeholders for consultation.
Free speech campaigners have expressed concerns that protections for “Islamophobia” would mean it would not be possible to criticise the religion itself.
Members of the working group argue the definition protects individuals while avoiding overreach.
A working group was established in February to provide the government with a working definition of anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia.
A working group was established in February to provide the government with a working definition of anti-Muslim hatred/Islamophobia.
They submitted their proposal to the government in October.
The definition will be non-statutory, meaning it is not set in law or legally binding, but will provide a form of words public bodies can adopt.
It provides guidance to the government and other bodies on what constitutes unacceptable treatment of Muslims, aiming to help them better understand and quantify prejudice and hate crimes against this group.
The draft definition is: “Anti-Muslim hostility is engaging in or encouraging criminal acts, including acts of violence, vandalism of property, and harassment and intimidation whether physical, verbal, written or electronically communicated, which is directed at Muslims or those perceived to be Muslims because of their religion, ethnicity or appearance.
“It is also the prejudicial stereotyping and racialisation of Muslims, as part of a collective group with set characteristics, to stir up hatred against them, irrespective of their actual opinions, beliefs or actions as individuals.
“It is engaging in prohibited discrimination where the relevant conduct – including the creation or use of practices and biases within institutions – is intended to disadvantage Muslims in public and economic life.”
In today’s cartoon, Jesus is right: if all religions are protected from hatred and discrimination, there’s no need to single out Muslims, giving them their own special protection that’s identical to everyone else’s. If the government wants to protect everyone equally, they only have to change the draft definition from “Anti-Muslim hostility” to “Anti-religious hostility.” Jesus points this out:
Harvard has simultaneously released its reports about antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias, a prime example of trying to be prefectly balanced ideologically. I haven’t read either yet (they’re long!), but the links are below. What I have read about them suggests that neither is an “analysis” but merely a collection of anecdotes, and the recommendations of the two reports are conflicting (see below)
Rabbi David Wolpe, who spent the year of 2023-2024 as a visiting scholar at Harvard’s Divinity School, reports on the antisemitism he cncountered at Harvard. (He eventually resigned from Harvard’s antisemitism advisory committee because of his perceived pervasiveness of Jew hatred at the University.
But all rabbis, I am most willing to listen to Wolpe because he’s thoughtful and responsive, and even debated Christopher Hitchens, as you can see below (I’ve listened to this, and it’s worth watching). Of course I don’t accept any of Wolpe’s religious beliefs, but if you want to argue with a Jew about their faith, he’s the one to encounter. For one thing, his views about God and Judaism are sufficiently mushy that you find it hard to come to grips with them. (Hitchens, I think, took him apart.)
David J. Wolpe (born September 19, 1958) is an American rabbi. He is Visiting Scholar at Harvard Divinity School and the Max Webb Emeritus Rabbi of Sinai Temple. He previously taught at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York, the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, Hunter College, and UCLA. Wolpe was named the most influential Rabbi in America by Newsweek in 2012, and among the 500 most influential Angelinos in 2016 and 2018. Wolpe now serves as the Inaugural rabbinic fellow for the ADL,and a Senior Advisor for the Maimonides Fund. Wolpe resigned from an advisory group on antisemitism assembled by Harvard President Claudine Gay in December 2023 in response to what Wolpe characterized as a hostile environment to Jews at Harvard.
Wolpe wrote a scary report for the Free Press about his year at Harvard, and although you can dismiss the antisemitic anecdotes told by students because they’re students telling anecdotes, it’s not so easy to dismiss Wolpe’s own experiences. For one thing, he gives links. Of course he can’t recount anti-Palestinian anecdotes, but read the report below for yourself. Click on the title to read it, or find it archived here. I’ve put a link to both reports below.
I’ll just give some quotes about Wolpe’s experiences. He’s a good writer for a theologian/rabbi:
Let’s start the clock with what I saw in the year I was at Harvard as a visiting scholar.
I attended my first Jewish event at the Divinity School on the holiday of Sukkot in the fall of 2023. The ceremony began with a speaker reassuring us, “This is a safe space for anti-Zionists, non-Zionists and those struggling with their Zionism.” In other words: not for me.
That happened one week before the attacks of October 7, 2023.
Hamas leaders have reportedly bragged that they have allies on campus. Who knows if they mean that literally or seriously? What I know, because I saw it myself, was that the Hamas massacre intensified hatred against Jews on an already hostile campus.
In posts on Sidechat, a campus social network, student comments ranged from “She looks as dumb as her nose is crooked” and “We got too many damn Jews in state supporting our economy” to far more sinister comments: “Decolonization is not a metaphor” (with Jewish blood dripping from the text). There were endless references to “Judeo-Nazis,” including by tutors in a student house, and swastikas made frequent appearances.
Students were insulted, shunned, harassed, and hounded in a hundred ways. An Israeli student was mobbed and assaulted at a “die-in” protest days after October 7. “Privilege trainings” for Jewish students were run by the university. Another student, a former soldier in the Israel Defense Forces, told me she was afraid to walk alone to her dorm room. Students were ghosted by longtime friends for expressing sympathy with Israel; one was told by friends it would hurt their careers to “associate with a Zionist.” Professors, in courses on Israel, removed all Israeli sources from the syllabus. Required reading in a Public Health course titled Settler Colonial Determinants on Health teaches that “Zionism manipulated Judaism as a religion to reinterpret history and redefine Jewishness in terms of ethnic belonging.”
So as anxious students flocked to my office, I was shocked but not surprised to see the hostility continue unabated. There was memorably a cartoon posted by a Harvard faculty group on Instagram showing a Jewish hand hanging an Egyptian and a black man—a retread of a cartoon from the 1960s that was condemned at the time by black leaders as antisemitic. This cartoon was, to quote the report, “circulated by groups of pro-Palestinian Harvard students, staff, and faculty on social media.” Faculty! That is Harvard in 2024.
An antisemitic cartoon was circulated by groups of pro-Palestinian Harvard students, staff, and faculty on social media. (via Harvard Antisemitism Report)
. . . . Critically, the report also explains the ideological roots of the abuse. It explains that anti-colonialism has become the ideological battering ram to mobilize a diverse cult of anti-Western sentiments. The challenge to Zionism becomes a first step in turning disillusion with the West into a wholesale indictment of it. The old antisemitism of the Soviet Union had this double purpose as well—destroy the Jews, and you’ve destroyed the root of Western civilization. Harvard is not just a host for this worldview. It is the dominant view on campus.
I taught as a visiting scholar in Harvard Divinity School—which is singled out, as it should be—for special censure. The Religion and Public Life program became “a focal point for concerns about one-sidedness and the promotion of a specific political ideology under the guise of academic inquiry.” Religion and Public Life commenced a six-year program inquiring into Israel-Palestine (since that is the only issue) with no real instruction in Judaism, a Zionist perspective, or Palestinian terror. The only people invited to speak were either explicitly anti-Israel or Jewish professors on the very far left of the Israel debate.
. . . Save a discussion before October 7, 2023, on Zoom with a pastor about forgiveness in our traditions, not once did the Divinity School ask me to present anything. Not once. Meantime, the Religion and Public Life program, an integral part of the Divinity School, was a nonstop parade of anti-Israel speakers without rebuttal.
And some of Wolpe’s conclusions. This first part could also apply at the University of Chicago:
There was also a striking asymmetry of action: Zionist students did not camp out in Harvard Yard; they did not break into classrooms; they did not come with bullhorns (as I myself witnessed) into local restaurants and chant in Arabic, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be Arab.” Their teaching assistants did not offer passes on exams to attend rallies, or attend rallies with them. They did not insist on wearing masks outdoors, so they could yell slogans with impunity. They did not continually yell slogans in the yard after they were understood to be eliminationist.
Another similarity is that the epicenter for antisemitism at Harvard was at, of all places, the Divinity School. Would you have expected that? I would have thought that the atmosphere of love would be greater there, but in fact the atmospher of Jew hate was predominant. This also seems to be true at the University of Chicago. And if this is true, then I expect Divinity Schools elsewhere in America might also be anti-semitic, aligning with “Social Justice” departments. I still don’t understand this phenomenon, and would be glad if readers explained it to me or at least took a guess. To Wolpe, it’s based on factors already in place in Divinity Schools, but he doesn’t explain why those factors are there:
These two reports should not have been issued in tandem; it is an example of “bothsidesism” on steroids.
The antisemitism report has some important recommendations on admission, encouraging a more ideologically pluralistic and tolerant student body, creating rules for protest, and offering ideas for building a genuinely diverse community.
But what the report offers no solution for is that there is a deep ideological commitment among much of the faculty—particularly in the humanities and social sciences—that is anti-Western, anti-Israel, and often antisemitic. The Islamophobia report mentions “donors” (read: Jewish donors) who influence policy, but the antisemitism report does not focus on millions flowing from places like Qatar. The confluence of Islamism, old-line Christian antisemitism, and hard progressive antagonism to the Western and Israel project produced a perfect storm in places like Harvard Divinity School. Without a vast unlearning—among the faculty, not just the students—all the reports in the world will not change the atmosphere on campus. We will only be spraying perfume on a sewer.
I agree that the two reports should not have been issued in tandem. I am eventually going to go through them both, but (and remember my pro-Jewish bias), I suspect that the atmosphere of anti-Semitism at Harvard was stronger than the atmosphere of anti-Palestinianism. (I do deplore the doxing of anti-Israel students by a truck adorned with videos, but that was not done by students or faculty at Harvard.) This dichotomy of atmospheres was certainly true at Chicago, where there was constant broadcast of Israel or Jew hatred from organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine, but the Jewish students limited to themselves to anodyne banners saying things like, “Bring the hostages home.”
But of course I am biased, and you should take my sentiments, like those of Wolpe, with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, when even Harvard’s President said he encountered antisemitism at his school, you have to take that accusation seriously.
On April 29, Harvard released its long-awaited reports on campus antisemitism and anti-Muslim bias.The task forces, convened together by then-interim President Alan M. Garber in January 2024, published initial findings in June 2024, but publication of the final reports were continually delayed.The Department of Human Health and Services’ Office for Civil Rights demanded Harvard turn over the …
First, the strip, in which the Divine Duo immediately break their promise to the barmaid:
And the link: a new report from the National Secular Society (click screenshot to read):
An excerpt:
One in seven local authorities has adopted a definition of ‘Islamophobia’ rejected by the government over free speech concerns, a new Civitas report has revealed.
In 2018, the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on British Muslims defined Islamophobia as “rooted in racism and is a type of racism that targets expressions of Muslimness or perceived Muslimness”. The definition has now been adopted by all major UK political parties except the Conservatives.
The National Secular Society has opposed the APPG definition from the outset on the grounds that it conflates legitimate criticism of Islamic doctrine with racism, thereby creating a de facto blasphemy code.
The Civitas report, authored by journalist Hardeep Singh, reveals over 15% of local authorities in England have now adopted the APPG definition. It also highlights how NSS lobbying successfully resulted in Lancashire and Aberdeenshire councils voting against the adoption of the definition.
As the Civitas report notes, the UK government has rejected this definition of “Islamophobia” because it violates free speech. And it does, at least if you construe Free Speech in the American First-Amendment way. In fact, even if you define “Islamophobia” as it is often (and improperly) used, as “an unwarranted fear of Islam”, that’s still free speech. (If you have an unreasonable fear of Muslims themselves, it should be “Muslimophobia”.)
But the definition adopted by 1/7th of local authorities is worse, because it can easily be construed as “fear of Muslim doctrine”, which, as the NSS points out, is not “racism”, but a form of anti-theism. Since this flawed definition has “been adopted by all major UK political parties except the Conservatives”, I call on the Labour Party in particular to rescind this definition.
We’ve had some discussion about words like “transphobia” and about what they mean. To gender activists, that word may mean anybody who doesn’t want natal men competing as transwomen in athletics, even though those holding that opinion have nothing against transgender people and would defend their civil liberties ardently. That’s why I’ve been called “transphobic.”
Others, like me (and Richard Dawkins below) think that “phobia” means an “irrational fear”, and so a “transphobic” is someone with an irrational fear of trans people. Thus, while I adhere to natal sex separation in sport, I reject the label “transphobic.”
In the article below on his Substack site, Richard Dawkins also rejects the label “Islamophic,” which has been copiously applied to him. Yes he still sees Islam as the world’s most harmful religion, and deems some people like Salman Rushdie as being justifiably Islamophobic.
Click to read. This site is an infinitely better way for Richard to express his views than through truncated and often misunderstood tweets that cause huge Dawkins pile-one:
Some excerpts:
If your belief is indefensible, your ignominious last resort is to accuse your critics of “-phobia”. I have long criticised all religions as irrational, and faiths as dangerous. Most of my attacks have been against Christianity, because I know it best. In spite of this I have never been accused of Christophobia. But I am regularly berated for Islamophobia, and I even had a radio broadcast in California (about a totally unrelated subject) cancelled because of my reputation for “Islamophobia”. Cancelled, mark you, not by Muslims but by American so-called “liberals”.
Phobia is defined as irrational fear, as in arachnophobia, agoraphobia etc. If Salman Rushdie fears Islam, it would not be an irrational fear, it would be eminently rational. At the whim of a nasty, bigoted old man in Iran (in character strongly resembling the Abrahamic God), Rushdie has lived much of his life with a massive bounty on his head. He has recently suffered a religiously motivated stabbing, which has left him blind in one eye. Rational fear is not phobia.
I’m wondering, though, given the characteristics of much of Islam that Richard decries below, if all the separate phobias he lists (I give only a partial list) doesn’t add up to “Islamophobia”. Remember, that’s a fear of a religious ideology, not a fear of Muslims themselves.
I am not Islamophobic. I am certainly not Muslimophobic. Indeed I regard Muslims as Islam’s main victims, badly in need of defence against their own religion. If we temporarily redefine “phobic” not as irrational fear but as rational detestation, then I am phobic about the following:
Throwing gay people off tall buildings or crushing them under a collapsed wall. (CNN, Dailymail, Hindustan Times)
Or publicly caning them (note the laughing glee of the audience, including children (VICE News)
Whipping women for the crime of being raped, or the crime of being seen in public with a man to whom they are not married. (The Guardian, TORONTO STAR)
Stoning women accused of adultery to death. (THE WEEK)
Compelling women to cover their hair and faces, leaving only a slit for the eyes.
Compelling girls to stay indoors, while boys roam free. . .
This list goes on further, and Richard concludes:
If all, or even any, of that list could be laid at the door of any religion, then a profound dislike of that religion could be defended. It certainly is not the case that most individual Muslims would endorse the list – although it has to be admitted that more than a quarter of British Muslims (Harris poll 1989) wanted Salman Rushdie to be killed, and nearly two thirds thought The Satanic Verses should be burned.
It is often pointed out that Christianity used to be just as bad, and it still is just as irrational. But the worst excesses of Christianity now thankfully lie in the past. If only the same could be said of Islam. What is especially galling is those Western “liberals” who think Islam is a race, and are so terrified of being thought racist that they refrain from criticising the above horrors, even those perpetrated against women and gays.
Hitchens often pointed out the past excesses of Christianity when addressing Islam’s present perfidies, and pointed out, like Richard, that only one religion now supports all the oppressive acts listed above. And, in fact, Dawkins ends by quoting Hitchens:
“Islamophobia” is a deeply silly and pernicious abuse of language. And it’s not the only fashionable word ending in “-phobia” that condemns itself as a last-resort substitute for rational discussion. In all such cases, I recommend the Hitchens Riposte: “I’m still waiting to hear your argument.”
I would add that the kowtowing towards the excesses of Islam by many Westerners is craven, patronizing, and evinces “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” How dare Westerners excuse or ignore the behavior of countries that execute gays, atheists, and apostates, oppress women and deny them education, and force women to wear coverings so as not to excite the presumably uncontrollable lust of men, while at the same time demonizing Israel, which does none of these things. It’s because Arabs, even if genetically similar to Israelis, are seen as “people of color”, while Israelis are seen as “white adjacent.” It’s as if implied pigmentation conferred virtue! These differential views of Arab versus Jewish states constitute one of the most pernicious aspects of Authoritarian Leftism and Wokeism.
This story is extremely disturbing as an exemplar of cancel culture. It’s the story about how a woman made a documentary about Muslims who, having been accused of terrorism, were sent from Guantanamo to a “terrorism rehab facility” in Saudi Arabia. The director of the film, originally called “Jihad Rehab” (now named “The UnRedacted”), found four of the “rehabilitated” willing to tell their stories on film, and, according to nearly all accounts, the film is good (it has a 75% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes). It was so well done that it was invited to the 2022 Sundance Festival. That was a great honor for the young director, Meg Smaker.
But then the problems surfaced, promoted by Muslims and the Woke on social media. There were two issues:
1.) Smaker is a white woman. Being white, argued the critics, how could she possibly have the understanding needed to make a film about Muslim men? (It took her 16 months of filming.) She was accused of being a “white savior”.
2.) The film is about Muslim terrorists. Muslims and especially many “progressives” on the Left shy away from that aspect of Islamism. Palestinian terrorism, for example, is nearly always minimized by MSM on the Left.
The result, documented in this longish New York Times piece (click on screenshot below) was that Smaker was canceled in a very real sense—deprived of her livelihood. Although Sundance did show her film, the backlash soon came from social media. The film’s executive director, who had initially called the film “freaking brilliant”, apologized in the most groveling and pathetic letter you can imagine. The letter of apology was written by Abigail Disney, a grandniece of Walt Disney, and you can read it here. It is pathetic, cringe-making, reprehensible, and disgusting. Smaker can’t get her film publicized or shown, and, after being demonized and called an “Islamophobe”, she’s nearly broke.
I recommend reading this article to understand how Progressive Authoritarianism is ruining our culture:
Indented text is from the NYT article.
Smaker’s background:
Ms. Smaker was a 21-year-old firefighter in California when airplanes struck the World Trade Center on Sept. 11. She heard firefighters cry for vengeance and wondered: How did this happen?
Looking for answers, she hitchhiked through Afghanistan and settled in the ancient city of Sana, Yemen, for half a decade, where she learned Arabic and taught firefighting. Then she obtained a master’s from Stanford University in filmmaking and turned to a place Yemeni friends had spoken of: the Mohammed bin Nayef Counseling and Care Center in Riyadh.
The Saudi monarchy brooks little dissent. This center tries to rehabilitate accused terrorists and spans an unlikely distance between prison and boutique hotel. It has a gym and pool and teachers who offer art therapy and lectures on Islam, Freud and the true meanings of “jihad,” which include personal struggle.
Hence the documentary’s original title, “Jihad Rehab,” which engendered much criticism, even from supporters, who saw it as too facile. “The film is very complex and the title is not,” said Ms. Ali, the Los Angeles Times critic.
To address such concerns, the director recently renamed the film “The UnRedacted.”
The United States sent 137 detainees from Guantánamo Bay to this center, which human rights groups cannot visit.
But reporters with The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic and others have interviewed prisoners. Most stayed a few days.
Ms. Smaker would remain more than a year exploring what leads men to embrace groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban.
Saudi officials let her speak to 150 detainees, most of whom waved her off. She found four men who would talk.
The film’s content: It’s mostly interviews, I hear, with no politicizing or twisting of the narrative. The article will tell you more about it, as will the critics’ reviews (link in next line).
Film critics warned that conservatives might bridle at these human portraits, but reviews after the festival’s screening were strong.
“The absence of absolutes is what’s most enriching,” The Guardian stated, adding, “This is a movie for intelligent people looking to have their preconceived notions challenged.” Variety wrote: The film “feels like a miracle and an interrogative act of defiance.”
. . .Lawrence Wright wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11” and spent much time in Saudi Arabia. He saw the documentary.
“As a reporter, you acknowledge the constraints on prisoners, and Smaker could have acknowledged it with more emphasis,” he said. “But she was exploring a great mystery — understanding those who may have done something appalling — and this does not discredit that effort.”
To gain intimate access, he added, was a coup.
I loved Wright’s book, and I wonder why he wasn’t criticized about writing the history of the background to Al-Quaeda, beginning with the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood. Shouldn’t Wright be criticized for portraying some Muslims as terrorists? How can a white man even tackle this subject? I needn’t respond: the answer lies in the nature of art itself.
One more, which you should consider when reading the critics below:
“What I admired about ‘Jihad Rehab’ is that it allowed a viewer to make their own decisions,” said Chris Metzler, who helps select films for San Francisco Documentary Festival. “I was not watching a piece of propaganda.”
. . . Lorraine Ali, a television critic for The Los Angeles Times who is Muslim, wrote that the film was “a humanizing journey through a complex emotional process of self-reckoning and accountability, and a look at the devastating fallout of flawed U.S. and Saudi policy.”
She is dismayed with Sundance.
There are a few negative reviews too, which you can see on the Rotten Tomatoes site, but the public criticism came largely from people who hadn’t even seen the movie. It was performative outrage:
The backlash:
But attacks would come from the left, not the right. Arab and Muslim filmmakers and their white supporters accused Ms. Smaker of Islamophobia and American propaganda. Some suggested her race was disqualifying, a white woman who presumed to tell the story of Arab men.
Sundance leaders reversed themselves and apologized.
. . . Many Arab and Muslim filmmakers — who like others in the industry struggle for money and recognition — denounced “Jihad Rehab” as offering an all too familiar take. They say Ms. Smaker is the latest white documentarian to tell the story of Muslims through a lens of the war on terror. These documentary makers, they say, take their white, Western gaze and claim to film victims with empathy.
Assia Boundaoui, a filmmaker, critiqued it for Documentary magazine.
“To see my language and the homelands of folks in my community used as backdrops for white savior tendencies is nauseating,” she wrote. “The talk is all empathy, but the energy is Indiana Jones.”
She called on festivals to allow Muslims to create “films that concern themselves not with war, but with life.”
Do you really care what color is Ms. Smaker’s epidermis given that the film portrays the four subjects talking and answering questions? And seriously, “white savior tendencies”? In what sense is Smaker a “savior”? (Some say that interviewing anybody in a prison invalidates the film.) The response is in the piece:
“An entirely white team behind a film about Yemeni and South Arabian men,” the filmmaker Violeta Ayala wrote in a tweet.
Ms. Smaker’s film had a Yemeni-American executive producer and a Saudi co-producer.
There’s more, but this will suffice (my emphasis)
More than 230 filmmakers signed a letter denouncing the documentary. A majority had not seen it. The letter noted that over 20 years, Sundance had programmed 76 films about Muslims and the Middle East, but only 35 percent of them had been directed by Muslim or Arab filmmakers.
A parallel: most of those who rioted when Salman Rusdie published The Satanic Verses hadn’t read the book, either. You don’t go rioting, cancelling, or killing over a book or movie or film that you haven’t read or seen. When people do so, it’s clear that the offense is performative. Just read the letter from Abigail Disney!
Smaker’s cancellation:
First, from Sundance:
Sundance officials backtracked. Tabitha Jackson, then the director of the festival, demanded to see consent forms from the detainees and Ms. Smaker’s plan to protect them once the film debuted, according to an email shown to The Times. Ms. Jackson also required an ethics review of the plans and gave Ms. Smaker four days to comply. Efforts to reach Ms. Jackson were unsuccessful.
The review concluded Ms. Smaker more than met standards of safety.
Ms. Smaker said a public relations firm recommended that she apologize. “What was I apologizing for?” she said. “For trusting my audience to make up their own mind?”
And then the inevitable:
Ms. Smaker’s film has become near untouchable, unable to reach audiences. Prominent festivals rescinded invitations, and critics in the documentary world took to social media and pressured investors, advisers and even her friends to withdraw names from the credits. She is close to broke.
“In my naïveté, I kept thinking people would get the anger out of their system and realize this film was not what they said,” Ms. Smaker said. “I’m trying to tell an authentic story that a lot of Americans might not have heard.”
. . .Ms. Disney, the former champion, wrote, “I failed, failed and absolutely failed to understand just how exhausted by and disgusted with the perpetual representation of Muslim men and women as terrorists or former terrorists or potential terrorists the Muslim people are.”
Her apology and that of Sundance shook the industry. The South by Southwest and San Francisco festivals rescinded invitations.
Jihad Turk, former imam of Los Angeles’s largest mosque, was baffled. In December, his friend Tim Disney — brother of Abigail — invited him to a screening.
“My first instinct,” he said, “was ‘Oh, not another film on jihad and Islam.’ Then I watched and it was introspective and intelligent. My hope is that there is a courageous outlet that is not intimidated by activists and their too narrow views.”
Jihad Turk (what a name!) is a brave man!
Finally,
Ms. Smaker has maxed out credit cards and, at age 42, borrowed money from her parents. This is not the Sundance debut of her dreams. “I don’t have the money or influence to fight this out,” she said, running hands back through her hair. “I’m not sure I see a way out.”
The Upshot
Yes, she was canceled to the point where, despite her clear abilities and talents, she can’t find work. Canceled by people who hadn’t seen her film. Canceled by a public who, in their zeal to appear ideologically correct, hurled accusations of “Islamophobia” and “white saviorism” without good reasons. Canceled by a gutless Abigail Disney, whose letter I can’t even bear to quote.You must read it, however: it sounds like one of those signs that the Ideologically Impure had to wear around their necks during China’s Cultural Revolution while wearing paper dunce hats. I don’t know how to help Ms. Smaker, but I suppose I should start by seeing the movie. One could write to Sundance, but that would probably be useless.
Stuff like this pours into my email inbox every day—so much of it that I can write about only a small fraction of what people tell me. And much of the stuff involves the kind of performative activism evinced by Sundance and the critics of Ms. Smaker.
Yes, the termites have dined well—so well that they’ve undermined the foundations of art, of literature, and of scholarship itself. In the end, we’ll be done in by tribalism and cowardice—exactly what happened in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Like China, and with many parallels, we’re having our own Cultural Revolution.
I received a long email from reader Leslie MacMillan, and I suggested that he turn it into a post for our readers. He kindly agreed. I asked him to write me a brief biography, which is below:
Leslie is a retired physician who worked as an academic clinician-teacher and in hospital practice. Now in obscurity, he enjoys dinner with his family at a reasonable hour, playing the piano, and indulging his grandchildren.”
And here’s his contribution:
Canadian Medical Association Journal yields to external religious pressure, censors published letter
by Leslie MacMillan
The Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ, “the Journal”) has retracted a Letter to the Editor following orchestrated religious pressure that accused the Journal and the author of “Islamophobia”.
“Islamophobia” is one of those words hurled at people without a definition of what it means. Unlike many slurs, though, this one does have a definition. “-phobia” means “fear of”. A phobia can be irrational or it can be well founded. Islamophobia, then, indicates only a fear of the implications of the tenets of Islam or the intentions of its adherents. It cannot by the fact alone be equated with hate speech or, obviously, racism. Yet it so often is. Sometimes speakers will say, “tantamount to hate speech”, pulling their punches and evading the implication of an accusation of an offence under the Criminal Code of Canada and some other countries. Fear can be thought of as unease or suspicion that professed views of love and tolerance are not sincere; it is then rational to withhold trust, the trust that liberal societies need to function. If one is accused of Islamophobia, one ought to be able to respond, “Yes, I am. Here’s why.”
For the cover page of its 8 Nov 21 on-line issue, the Journal used this stock photo. There was no contextual link to any one article in the issue. It seems to have been a generic free-standing cover photo in that it appears on the sidebar for each of the articles in the issue.
Dr. Sherif Emil, a senior academic surgeon in pediatrics at Montréal Children’s Hospital and McGill University wrote to the editor of the Journal objecting to depicting such a young child wearing a hijab. He quoted Yasmine Mohammed, a Vancouver activist who has championed equality for Muslim women: “The cover of @CMAJ features a little girl in hijab. How disheartening to see my so-called liberal society condone something that is only happening in the most extremist of religious homes.” Emil then acknowledged his respect for the women he sees in his practice who wear the hijab—mothers and some adolescent patients. He continued (direct quotations indented hereafter):
But respect does not alter the fact that the hijab, the niqab and the burka are also instruments of oppression for millions of girls and women around the world who are not allowed to make a choice. We are currently being reminded of this daily, as we see the tragic return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and its effect on the subjugation of women and girls. Girls as old as those in the picture are being sold into marriage to old men — institutionalized child rape. The mentality that allows this to happen shares much with the one that leads to covering up a toddler. But even in so-called moderate Islamic countries, such as the one I grew up in, societal pressures heavily marginalize women who choose not to wear the hijab. In addition, women in these countries who are not Muslim and do not wear the hijab are often subject to intense harassment and discrimination. I know that because some of these women are in my family. I respect the women who see the hijab as liberating. But we must also remember the women and girls who find it oppressive and misogynistic.
Ironically, the article [which he interpreted the photo as referring to] explores evaluating interventions to address social risks to health. A young girl such as the one depicted in the image is typically also banned from riding a bike, swimming or participating in other activities that characterize a healthy childhood. She is taught from an early age, directly or indirectly, that she is a sexual object, and it is her responsibility to hide her features from the opposite sex, lest she attract them. A heavy burden for modesty is placed squarely on her shoulders. So many women have been traumatized by such an upbringing, which, I believe, frankly borders on child abuse. Is that not a social risk to health? Are these children not a vulnerable population?
This link includes a citation to the tweet by Ms Mohammed quoted in the letter. (Link found and posted by Retraction Watch commenter Andrew.)
The letter appeared in the Journal’s 20 Dec online issue under the heading, “Don’t use an instrument of oppression as a symbol of diversity and inclusion”, a form of words of the editor’s choosing, not the author’s.
Advocacy groups claiming to represent the interests of Muslims in Canada and Québec vigorously protested the publication of the letter and called for its retraction. Dr. Emil received abuse personally on Twitter as well, as noted by Retraction Watch (q.v.)
The CMAJ editor responsible, Kirsten Patrick, apologized particularly for her choice of words in the heading. The uproar, a lengthy happy-talk on why hijab is not oppressive, and the Journal’s efforts at damage control, are reported in a long CTV news article of 20 Dec from which I’ve taken a small snippet:
[Lina] El Bakir [Quebec advocacy officer for the National Council of Canadian Muslims] argues that publishing the letter was irresponsible, especially during a pandemic when doctors who wear a hijab are dealing with prejudices in their daily practice. . . .
A pre-written response to the CMAJ, included on the national council’s website as part of an online letter-writing campaign, cites a few sections in the Canadian ‘Medical Association’s Code of Ethics and Professionalism that medical professionals must adhere to.
“This article falls short of these standards,” the response states.
“We are asking CMAJ to retract this article immediately and issue a public apology before it does any further harm to a demographic that has been targeted by some of the most violent forms of Islamophobia in this country. [Emphases mine,–LM]
Islamophobia and other forms of hate [there’s that incorrect conflation again –L.M.] must not be tolerated in the health care profession or in our society. Like CMAJ, the Canadian Medical Association deeply regrets the harm caused by the publication of an opinion letter in CMAJ on Dec. 20, 2021.
CMAJ is operated independently of the Canadian Medical Association with its own governance structure and editorial board. While we will always uphold the editorial independence of CMAJ, we feel a responsibility to speak out and express our sincere apologies for the harm caused.
On 23 Dec., the Journal buckled to this pressure and not only retracted the letter but removed it from its website. It made no visible effort to send the commentary to the author, publish some of it, and invite a response before doing so. Click on the screenshot or read the text below.
The letter “Don’t use an instrument of oppression as a symbol of diversity and inclusion” (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1503/cmaj.80742; author: Sherif Emil)1 published in the Dec. 20, 2021, issue of CMAJ has been retracted by the interim editor-in-chief of CMAJ because the editorial process for the article was flawed and biased, and the letter should not have been published.
CMAJ acknowledges and is deeply sorry for the considerable hurt that many people across Canada have experienced from reading this letter. A formal apology from the interim editor-in-chief has been published at https://www.cmaj.ca/content/193/51/E1935.
Retraction Watch criticized the removal, contrary to guidelines from the Committee on Publication Ethics, which recommended marking it as retracted (as the PubMed copy is)
The author of the letter has posted his own conciliatory statement at the Canadian Healthcare Network here.
Tabassum Wyne, executive director of the Muslim Advisory Council of Canada, [said] she was glad the CMAJ “took the necessary steps to correct that mistake” and hear from diverse voices. . . .The council had a virtual meeting with the CMAJ’s interim editor-in-chief, Wyne said, during which it was suggested that the journal look at anti-Islamophobia training in the future.
Wyne also expressed concerns about having anyone on the internet read the letter in an accredited journal. “And that’s why we pushed so hard to have it retracted, and we’re happy with the results.”
It gets worse. The CMAJ editorial group “seeks to remedy” the current lack of Islamic representation on its Editorial Advisory Board. The Muslim advocacy organizations clearly seek to exercise prior restraint instead of merely complaining about it afterward.
The National Council of Canadian Muslims has since thanked the CMAJ for removing the letter, saying it appreciates “the efforts of the editor in chief for taking action and doing the right thing” and looks forward to working with her to “ensure this never happens again.”
(This CTVnews article misleadingly shows a photo of someone protesting Québec’s laïcité law, la Loi 21. This affair has nothing to do with that law and the author says he disagrees with it anyway.)
If the CMAJ follows through on this, there will be religious oversight of what an academic medical journal is permitted to publish.
Action
I have written the CMAJ and the CMA criticizing them for their lack of integrity in this episode. I encourage readers, particularly Canadian physicians, to do the same, even if you are not members of the CMA (as I am not), and even if you would not have published the letter in the first place were you the editor. The Journal has received comments from readers mostly criticizing the decision to retract and censor —see the retraction e-letters link below—but I don’t see awareness of the undertaking to invite Muslim advocates to exercise prior restraint on publication. This hidden censorship is especially dangerous. I recommend that letters specifically call this out so the CMAJ knows you are watching.
Contacts for responding:
This site refers to the retraction announcement, not the original letter. You can submit e-letters there.
At this site you can contact the Canadian Medical Association.
John Locke argued that it is better for a society to be governed around religious tolerance because this would lead to less social disorder than for the state to enforce adherence to one religion and, necessarily, to suppress all others. This works only if the religions themselves are compelled by secular laws to tolerate people who reject or even mock their every teaching—otherwise you have a state religion sneaking in the back door under the guise of stamping out (in this case) Islamophobia.
Growing up in secular Canada, I was always glad that believers could enjoy their freedom of religion but was even gladder that I enjoyed my freedom from religion. Religious differences just never came up in ordinary or professional life. The idea that someone should be enjoined from doing something because it offended someone else’s religious views, and that could be called “harm”, was unthinkable. Increasingly it looks as if we risk losing this freedom out of fearful acquiescence of our institutions to intolerant and censorious religious pressure. Islamophobia (my correct definition) afflicts them, too, and they don’t even notice it. It’s up to us to open their eyes.
Reader Debra, in a comment on a recent post about the UN’s ongoing anti-Israel resolution, called attention to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s “Islamophobia Resolution,” which you can read about in the ABC News, the conservative site The Daily Caller, or the The Elder of Ziyon.
But you’ll want to see the latest version of the bill itself, here, or as a pdf by clicking on the screenshot of the latest version below. This bill was approved by the House of Representatives in a strict party-line vote of 219-212 last Tuesday.
A few words before we get to the bill itself. I will pull no punches in saying that I believe Omar is both an Islamist and an anti-Semite, though I have more confidence in the latter than in the former. Regardless, both she and Rashida Tlaib seem determined to use their power in Congress to promote Islam in America and prevent its criticism. I think that this bill is part of that effort, and you can see its purpose under the words “A BILL” above: to establish a special Office in the U.S. State Department to monitor and report on incidents of “Islamophobia” outside the U.S. (it would never get passed if it incorporated America, but, as we’ll see, it might well do that).
I also think the bill is misguided, ambiguous, pushes a form of blasphemy law (though probably not in the U.S.), and would be unconstitutional in America because it privileges one religion—Islam—over all others. We need no such bills: no “anti-Semitism department” bills, not “anti-Christian department” bills, no “anti-Hindu department” bills, and so on. Imagine what would happen if we had a surfeit of such bills. India would be the subject of many reports by the Islamophobia and Hinduphobia departments, every Arab country would be the subject of innumerable reports of anti-Semitism from the “Judeophobia Department”, and so on. So my first objection is that this bill is a big waste of time, accomplishing little but serveing Omar’s political ambitions. I suspect the Democratic approval was a kneejerk reaction to soothe Omar (the Progressive Left is pro-Islam and anti-“Zionism”).
In fact, several sources say that the bill is Omar’s personal reaction to being denigrated unfairly by the even more odious Lauren “Glock-Packing Mama” Boebert, who has repeatedly denigrated Omar as a “terrorist” and a member of the “jihad squad.” Here’s a CNN report on Boebert’s statements:
Boebert is bigoted, unhinged, and “Muslimophobic”. A congresswoman should not be talking this way about a colleague. She may well be punished by the Congress for her statements by being removed from committees, and I hope to Ceiling Cat that she won’t be re-elected.
Apparently Boebert tried to call Omar to apologize, but Omar hung up on her, which I probably would have done as well. Nevertheless, I have to add that Boebert did nothing illegal by her remarks about Omar; her speech is protected by the First Amendment. What she said was unwise and bigoted.
But in response, Omar wrote and sponsored the bill above, and the Dems in Congress, eager to parade their virtue, approved it. That was unwise, because it opens a Pandora’s box of religions and ethnicities competing to get their own “x-phobia offices” established in the Department of State.
One of the biggest problems of the bill is that it doesn’t define “Islamophobia,” which is something it absolutely has to do. At the end we see its latest construal of Islamophobia, which has problems. We’ll get to in a second.
The bill establishes an office in the State Department headed by a “special envoy for monitoring and combating Islamophobia”. The Office will do this:
So, as you see, it monitors acts of Islamophobia only outside the U.S., and prepares an annual report about what the office uncovers. There is no requirement to monitor any other international acts of religious hatred. (Can you imagine the infinite number of acts that could be reported on anti-Semitic activities of the governments of Arab States? Hatred of Jews is part of the government media in many places.) This wouldn’t fly if it included the U.S., for it would be a very clear violation of the First Amendment, for its language, as we’ll see, could act to suppress free speech as well as singling out one religion for special protection from criticism and reporting above all others.
But the following stipulation worries me because of that:
It seems to bring the Islamoph0bia issue to American organizations like CAIR, who could then use their broadly construed definitions of “Islamophobia”—definitions which often include criticism of Islam—to bear on foreign countries, indicting them for what Americans consider free speech.
Now, what constitutes “Islamophobia”? We can tell only by the things that are supposed to be reported. This is from the bill:
Of course acts of physical violence against Muslims should be condemned, but to be considered “Islamophobic” they have to be perpetrated because the victim is a Muslim. Physical violence against anybody in the U.S. is illegal, but if it’s perpetrated because of the victim’s religion, it is also a “hate crime.” (I’m not sure where I come down on whether “hate crimes” should incur extra penalties.) Thus the bill should state that the physical violence should be based on religion.
Acts of vandalism against mosques are prima facie acts of anti-Muslim activity and are properly reported.
What bothers me most about this bill, both in terms of the international community and the U.S., is not the violence, but the requirement to report “instances of propaganda in government and nongovernment media that incite such acts, and statements and actions relating thereto.” As we know, some Muslims are easily driven to violence if they perceive an insult (“propaganda”) against Islam. That’s why a fatwa was pronounced on Salman Rushdie, why 12 people were killed in the Charlie Hebdo acts, why Theo van Gogh was murdered (and Ayaan Hirsi Ali requires around-the-clock protection), and why the Danish cartoons satirizing Muhammad resulted in widespread violence, including murder. Those could all have been construed as “incitement” to violence, and thereby excused—as they have been for some.
And what about internecine intolerance among Muslims? Is the violence between Shia and Sunni Muslims to be considered violence perpetuated because of the victim’s religion? Such violence is a regular occurrence in the Middle East, and results from warring sects within Islam.
Is it a reportable offense to criticize the tenets of Islam, like the forced veiling and covering of women, their oppression in countries like Saudi Arabia and Iran, their own state-run propaganda against Jews, and so on? These are valid criticisms of Islam, some Muslims and Muslim states, but do they fall under “Islamophobia” in this bill? We don’t know.
For, in the end, unlike anti-Semitism, “Islamophobia” is a recently confected term whose purpose, I believe, is primarily to prevent criticism of Islam. Yes, criticisms of Muslims because they are Muslim are rightfully criticized as bigotry, but remember that the word is “Islamophobia,” not “Muslimophobia”.
That brings me to why Omar confected this bill. Why should we care if it applies only to other countries? We should care because the bill, which requires public reporting, has the potential to chill criticism of Islam in other countries, and we should try, I think, to export our First Amendment rights to countries which don’t have such laws. Also, Omar’s bill constitutes a sort of “blasphemy law”, which could chill speech in other countries. (I believe Israel is one of Omar’s prime targets of this bill. Imagine if the bill was about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism together!).
Finally, it has the potential to chill speech against Islam in America, for if we’re holding other countries to standards that we don’t hold ourselves—for we are free to criticize Islam or any other faith whenever we want—the U.S.might be pressured to consider some kind of blasphemy regulations. Shouldn’t we be held to the standards that Omar’s bill is trying to enforce on other countries? What Omar is trying to do, in the end, is to prevent, worldwide, criticism of her own faith. And that’s not a good basis for a bill.
The bill will now head to the Senate, where I hope it will be tabled or voted down. It is, as they say, a “problematic” piece of legislation.
