Authored by Uzay Bulut via The Gatestone Institute,
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Given Turkey's inhospitable treatment of non-Muslims throughout the ages, it is the height of hypocrisy for its foreign minister to complain about Europe's attitude towards Muslims, which has been the opposite of Islamophobic.
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To refresh Çavu_o lu's memory, a review of Turkey's record is in order.
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By proposing to block all criticism of Islam on the grounds that it is "extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic and Islamophobic," Çavu_o lu is revealing that he would welcome banning free speech to protect a religious ideology.
At an event held in on April 11 to unveil the 2017 European Islamophobia Report -- released by the Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research -- Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Çavu_o lu called on EU governments to criminalize Islamophobia.
"There is no ideology or terminology called 'Islamism'; There is only one Islam and it means 'peace,'" he declared -- incorrectly: salaam means peace; Islam means submission. He also claimed that populist politicians are "increasingly engaging in extremist, anti-immigrant, xenophobic, and Islamophobic rhetoric to get a few more votes," and that "centrist politicians are... using a similar rhetoric to get back the votes they have lost."
Urging all politicians to recognize Islamophobia as "a hate crime and a form of racism" in their constitutions, Çavu_o lu accused European judiciaries of applying a double standard by not paying as much attention to Islamophobia as they do to anti-Semitism. Using the Holocaust as an analogy, he continued: "There is no need to relive Auschwitz or wait for Muslims to be burned in gas chambers like Jewish people."
Çavu_o lu's view is not new, but it is a gross distortion of past and contemporary history; it seems shaped by a notion that Islam is superior to other religions, as well as from surah 9:33 of the Quran:
"It is He who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the religion of truth to manifest it over all religion..." (Sahih Translation)
Çavu_o lu's views also echo those of the Turkish government, headed by President Recep Tayyip Erdo an.
Non-Muslims, as we all have been seeing, are persecuted throughout the Islamic world. Muslims in Europe, on the other hand, enjoy equal rights and religious liberty. Unfortunately, many radical imams use the freedoms granted to them by European democracies to preach Jew-hatred and violent jihad, to recruit fightersand to establish sharia (Islamic) law courts in their neighborhoods.
Some Muslims, inspired by the teachings of and atmosphere created by these imams, engage in gruesome, religiously motivated crimes against non-Muslims. A disabled 85-year-old Holocaust survivor, for instance, was recently raped, tortured and murdered in her Paris apartment by an extremist Muslim.
Çavu_o lu, in his talk against Islamophobia, did not mention the atrocities committed by radical Islamists in Europe. Those abuses are at the root of...