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Do people in the West have a negative view of Islam because of a campaign of “Islamophobia”? That’s the assumption of an old article that remains relevant, and that we have been accordingly revisiting: “Obsession with Islam blinds West to real problems,” by Omer Taspinar, Asia Times, March 13, 2019:

The result has been to reinforce the tendency in the West to look at the Middle East through the prism of religion. From Turkey’s transformation under Recep Tayyip Erdogan to what has been called the Sunni-Shiite sectarian conflict, the focus invariably is on Islam, at the expense of almost all other economic and political drivers of conflict. The verdict this delivers is ominous: Islam is not compatible with democracy, secularism, modernity and many other progressive achievements. Islam also is perceived as an autocratic, intolerant, violent and belligerent religion.”…

But everything that goes on in the Muslim Middle East has to do with Islam. Erdogan’s transformation of Turkey has focused on undoing the Kemalist reforms that have helped to secularize a large part of the Turkish urban population; Erdogan is doing what he can to re-Islamize the country. Between 2006 and 2009 Erdogan built 9,000 new mosques. How many more has he built in the decade and a half since? He has also built more than 4,000 Iman Hatip schools, which were originally founded to educate young men to be imams and preachers, but now accommodate a curriculum for both boys and girls that is heavy, but not exclusively, religious in nature. Why shouldn’t discussion of Turkey focus on religion, when that has been the focus of the Turks themselves? As for “what has been called the Sunni-Shia sectarian conflict,” is Taspinar suggesting that it really doesn’t exist (but is merely “what has been called…”)? Several hundred million Muslims, in dozens of countries, apparently think otherwise

Taspinar thinks that Western “obsession” with Islam can lead to some very wrongheaded conclusions: that Islam is seen as an “autocratic, intolerant, violent and belligerent religion.” What could have given anyone that idea? Could the treatment of non-Muslims, who, according to the Sharia, must either convert to Islam, or die, or submit to the onerous conditions imposed on the “tolerated” non-Muslims known as dhimmis, possibly lead to that view? Could 1,400 years of history, right up to the present day, suggest an intolerant religion because non-Muslims — Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Hindus, Buddhists — have all been persecuted and tens of millions killed by Muslims? Might Islam be perceived as “violent” because of its long history of conquest of many lands and the forcible subjugation of their peoples? Or could that perception also be prompted by intra-Islamic violence that has pitted Sunnis against Shia, Salafists against mainstream Muslims, Deobandis against Barelvis, orthodox Muslims against Ahmadis? Could Islam be thought a “belligerent” religion because of all the verses commanding jihad — mainly through war — in the Qur’an, and all the wars that Muslims have engaged in to spread their faith?

There is not so much a “Western obsession with Islam,” though it is certainly merited — too little attention has been paid in the West both to Islamic history, and to Islamic doctrine — as there is an obsession among Muslims about the Infidel West. In the lands of the enemy Infidels, Muslims have now been allowed to settle in great numbers. But they seldom integrate, for they are taught in the Qur’an to regard those Infidels as “the most vile of created beings,” and are instructed not to take Christians and Jews as friends, “for they are friends only with each other.” How is the West supposed to persuade Muslims to ignore those Qur’anic verses and to integrate into their societies? And Muslims in the West cannot help but recognize that, despite being peopled by “the most vile of created beings,” the advanced West seems to be thriving. It is maddening for Believers to compare that success with the Muslim world, which stagnates politically, economically, and socially. Politically, monarchs, despots, and generals rule in more than half of the Muslim countries. Economically, the Islamic world’s only important source of wealth consists of the revenues from the sale of oil, that is, wealth that results not from industriousness or entrepreneurial flair, but only from an accident of geology. Socially, the mistreatment of women and of minorities continues to hold back, in many Muslim lands, more than half of the population. This sense of failure maddens Muslims, who have been told in the Qur’an that they are “the best of peoples.”