[yes, I identified Wahabbism accordingly]

Diagnoses of "Islamophobia" never actually killed discussion and debate at all (as Haslam claimed). Rather, the suppression was from bigots' alternating corruption and avoidance of debate by instead making calculated, gratuitous provocations usually via inflammatory lies. On this aspect, I can see that Haslam's sub-title line about “prejudice...among people who are cold, callous, inflexible," was very sharp (even though misplaced structurally). So I must concede that my suspicions (later conclusions) on Haslam's intent were unfair and premature, based on prior effects of organized and polarized views about the very subject of “prejudice” itself. That realization was promised within the kernel of Haslam's argument, so at once my apology and praise to Haslam there.

But I am less laudatory or even conciliatory where Haslam marks his guild-like boundaries on “phobia”, and more generally on “fear”. Readers should pursue his line about "prejudice" having "socialized", "organized phenomena", and being "collectively shared"; Haslam's very limited definitions of “phobia” and “fear” are themselves "socialized", "organized" and, we can be sure, "collectively shared" among his own professional clique. Such narrow psychological perspective only suffices in a culture that promotes individualism, selfishness and alienation, with psychologists treating separate clients or consumers. In this sense, Haslam's industry is politically compliant and perfectly Thatcherite: “society does not exist”.

Probably caught in his own collective and organized class presumptions and conceits, Haslam consigns “prejudice” to the “less educated”, thereby stigmatizing those lower-placed in his social hierarchy. From that revealing insight into Haslam's thought structure, we should not be surprised if he also assigns – however discreetly - certain hierarchies to particular disciplines within the academy and the wider education sector: psychology, psychiatry, and probably health disciplines generally around the top, with certification from Melb Uni, etc., higher still. Therefore, if people want to discuss such matters as Islamophobia with Haslam and his colleagues, it is likely they would need particular approval from bureaucratic hierarchy; otherwise, their views will be ignored or misrepresented into stigmatization.

Whether via general supremacism, or more specific supervising offices of liberalist “free-trade” imperialism, evangelical missionary infiltration and crusades, and Zionism,

[cont.]

Islamophobia also draws its energy from other socialized and irrational fears. I refer here to those fears felt among people conditioned into unhealthy, inhibiting and alienating high self-regard. Islam's doctrinal universality and emphatic flattening of class divisions would obviously seem a real potential challenge by Muslim and non-Muslim elites alike.

Then there is the Islamic doctrine's opposition to usury and promotion of Syariah economics, as uncompromising as Old Testament judgement. The entire western-based neoliberalist economy, counting quadrillions of fictitious dollars in the catastrophic, oppressive bubble of derivatives trade, is probably a definitive economic “satan” by such ancient religious edict, as continued and articulated further in Islamic doctrine.

But on a more profound cultural level are such purist Islamic challenges as Aramaic identification of the Prophet Isa (as distinct from more Romanized Christian traditions naming “Jesus Christ”), and Islam's perpetuation of prophets' legacy otherwise known in the west as exclusively “Jewish” religious and cultural property, rather like “Israel” itself. It would be ridiculous if modern New Yorkers claimed ancestral “people's” ownership of vast tracts in England and the Netherlands; why must we accept yet more absurd and vague claims on Palestine from links over 1,000 years earlier? Al'Aqsa Mosque and the Wailing Wall relic symbolize Zionist aggression's misdirected revanchism: by sensible analyses of original historical causality and definitions of “People/Volk”, the Israeli Air Force may more logically deploy bombers onto Rome, Munich or Warsaw than Bekaa or Gaza.

Haslam's article and thread serve unintentionally as tribute to early psychologist Wilhelm Reich, who dared to pursue his studies as a truly “social science”. Of course, Reich was himself vilified and marginalized to the point of pursuing sexual mysticism far outside his earlier brave efforts into “the mass psychology of fascism”, but his daring offered a glimpse into psychology's potentially greater value. And that is not to digress into “sociology” either, but rather to urge Haslam to make a more useful contribution by either admitting his own limitations (thus saving us time) or studying beyond individual pathology and into such collective pathologies as “Islamophobia”, etc.

Yibbedayibbeda...dat's all Volk!

Assalamu'alaikum / Shalom Aleichem

Phillip,

That is terrible, but we see it all the time, i remember a lot of it to poor Denmark during the Islamic cartoon psychosis.

In a word - waffle.

About the only time you came to close to writing anything concrete was when you stated;

'Islam's doctrinal universality and emphatic flattening of class divisions would obviously seem a real potential challenge by Muslim and non-Muslim elites alike.'

And even that is wrong. The ONLY people challenged by Islamo-sceptics like me (although I dislike all things monotheistic) are the ruling clerics. And not just the 'elite' clerics, but all of them. If the average Muslim were to wake up and discover that Islam is all lies from beginning to end then the ruling clerics would lose political power over-night. No wonder they are in a flat panic on a global scale, and no wonder they hate people like Hitchens who prefer to tell the real truth.

TR

I agree.

Thanks Bassam.

But I forgot to mention what the truth is - 'God is not Great. How Religion Poisons Everything'.

I would also like to plug another truthful book - 'Atheism Explained' by David Ramsay Steele. It is a concise and beautifully written argument against monotheism. By the closing chapter the mere idea of Allah/Yaweh becomes infantile and ludicrous.

Both texts should be compulsory reading for the non-clerical classes living in Gaza/Palestine/Israel.

(There is no point giving them to the ruling clerics. They are way too delusional for any logic to penetrate their thick skulls.)