Islamophobia is leading the West to a very dark place: Jebara

Good piece by Mohamad Jebara is Chief Imam and resident scholar at the Cordova Spiritual Education Center in Ottawa:

The demonization of peoples and religions is an insidious process that infects entire cultures. Shakespeare vilified European Jews when he wrote The Merchant of Venice, as Charles Dickens did when he made his child-slaver Fagin a Jew in Oliver Twist. For centuries, Jews were portrayed in Western media as sly, deceitful, evil and merciless — a portrayal that allowed the ‘civilized’ world to stand by in silence — and in some cases even rejoice — as the Nazis worked to annihilate European Jewry.

Muslim people, like people everywhere, are quite diverse. Some are saintly, a few demonic, but most lie somewhere in between — just ordinary people who want to live in peace with their families.

Since the formation of the so-called Islamic State, much of the non-Muslim world has continued to misdirect its rage and resentment against its victims. ISIS has killed over 100,000 Muslims, massacred top-ranking Islamic clerics and destroyed hundreds of mosques, seminaries and Islamic heritage sites. It is the Muslim world that continues to suffer most at the hands of these extremists, who try to disguise their depravity with the language of religion.

Centuries of demonization and scapegoating led directly to the death camps of the Second World War. Then, as now, we said, ‘Never again’ — never again would we allow indoctrination and mob mentality to take human civilization to the gates of hell.

Powerful words. Are we still ready to live by them?

Ottawa-based imam Mohamad Jebara wonders whether the racist panic-mongering