Sam Harris är en amerikansk ateist som är en stark kritiker av islam. Han får ofta anklagelsen av islamofobi riktad emot sig, och har nu skrivit en text till svar mot dessa anklagelser: Response to Controversy.
Så här skriver Harris om islamofobi:
The meaning of “Islamophobia” is not at all like the meanings of those other terms. It is simply not easy to differentiate prejudice against Muslims from ordinary racism and xenophobia directed at Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, and other people who happen to be Muslim.
[…] the only way that Muslims can reasonably be said to exist as a group is in terms of their adherence to the doctrine of Islam. There is no race of Muslims. They are not united by any physical traits or a diaspora. Unlike Judaism, Islam is a vast, missionary faith.
The only thing that defines the class of All Muslims […] is their adherence to a set of beliefs and the behaviors that these beliefs inspire. And, unlike a person’s racial characteristics or gender, beliefs can be argued for, tested, criticized, and changed.
Harris pratar också om antisemitism:
[…] we have a 2000-year-old tradition of religiously inspired hatred against Jews, conceived as a distinct race of people, both by those who hate them and by Jews themselves. Anti-Semitism is, therefore, a specific form of racism that, as everyone knows, has taken many terrible turns over the years […].
“Sexism,” generally speaking, is a bias against women, not because of any doctrines they might espouse, but because they were born without a Y chromosome.
The meanings of these terms are clear, and each names a form of hatred and exclusion directed at people, as people, not because of their behavior or beliefs, but because of the mere circumstances of their birth.
Rasism är bland de grövsta formerna av fördomar som vi har. Den som är konsekvent antirasist måste vara noga med vad som benämns som rasism.
Fördomar mot muslimer och kristna ska bekämpas men kallas för rätt saker. Muslimer och kristna kan inte utsättas för rasism, eftersom de inte förenas av etnicitet.
Jag respekterar antirasisterna på Expo, men antirasism är ett luddigt begrepp. Själv föredrar jag att ta min utgångspunkt i tron på människans lika värde och på förnuftet.
Humanism kan vara det ord jag letar efter.