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On Derbyshire’s use of “Islamophobia”
In my September 21 blog entry, “Derbyshire endorses Separationism, while attacking Separationists,” I didn’t point out the most obvious objection to Derbyshire’s article. Here is a guy who has made a career of talking about race and race differences and of happily defying politically correct restrictions on the subject, who, when it served his purposes, turned around and freely used a standard politically correct term like “Islamophobia” to discredit everyone who has more serious critical views about Islam than he does. At least, as Derbyshire admitted in a note affixed to the end of his article, Roger Kimball reminded Derbyshire that the word Islamophobia means an irrational prejudice against Islam, and that to use it in the manner he was using it implied that it was not possible to have a rational criticism of Islam. Derbyshire seemed to take the point to heart, so perhaps he won’t be calling people “Islamophobes” again. But the fact that he used the word extensively and that the objectionable nature of it had to be pointed out to him shows how unmoored from any principle he is.
In my blog entry I sum up the several different and contradictory positions Derbyshire has taken on Islam in just the last month or two. Email entry |