And the Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast. This is Sam Harris.

What is Islamophobia?

Someone once said it's a word invented by fascists and used by cowards to manipulate morons.

And that's not far from the truth.

There's no question that the term has been designed to confuse people.

Its purpose is to conflate any criticism of Islam, which is a doctrine of religious

beliefs, with bigotry against Muslims as people. In fact, it equates secularism itself, the commitment to keeping religion out of our laws

and public policy, with hatred.

And the term is now being widely used in the mainstream media, and making it impossible to speak honestly about the consequences of

dangerous ideas. Let's be clear about what is real here and what is fake.

Racism is real, right?

There are white supremacist in America, for instance.

And of course, these imbeciles can be counted upon to hate immigrants

from Muslim majority countries, Arabs, Pakistanis, Somalis, etc.

And to hate them for their superficial characteristics, like the color of their skin.

This is detestable.

But these people hate non-Muslim immigrants too, for instance Hindus from India, and for the same reasons.

We already have words like racism and xenophobia to cover this problem.

Inventing a new term like Islamophobia

doesn't give us license to say that there's a new form of hatred in the world.

There is no race of Muslims.

Islam is a system of ideas, subscribed to by people of every race and ethnicity.

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