Is Islamophobia all that bad?

h/t Gerard

Islamophobia?

Mark Steyn writes,

In a pitiful attempt at last-minute pandering, the Labour leader Ed Miliband has told Muslim News that, if he wins next week's election, he will "outlaw Islamophobia". Douglas Murray observes:

If Ed Miliband does become Prime Minister and chooses to make 'Islamophobia' illegal would he mind letting us know what he thinks 'Islamophobia' is? After all a 'phobia' is an irrational fear. The Charlie Hebdo staff were often called 'Islamophobes' before (and after) two Islamists went into their magazine's office and shot most of them in the head. If there is such a thing as 'Islamophobia' and it is indeed an 'irrational' fear, would Ed mind telling us whether it was 'rational' or 'irrational' of the Charlie Hebdo staff to be fearful of elements of Islam? An answer before 7 May would be helpful.

Indeed. A fear of Islam is highly rational: just ask those PEN novelists who don't want to go to any awards ceremony honoring Charlie Hebdo.

Read more here.

Are you voting for a Democrat?

Doug Ross believes that

The Democrat Party has a single, fanatical goal: the destruction of America.

To back up this claim, he cites

Ferguson, Missouri, the contrived war on women, our lax southern border, the invention of first global cooling, then global warming, then climate change, and -- most recently -- climate disruption. By ensuring that grants and other funding vehicles go only to those who toe the government line, dissenting voices are mocked, suppressed, censored, and tarred as "deniers". In order to exploit Muslims, Democrat extremists create terms like "Islamophobia", conflating sober and rational fears of Jihadist attacks -- which occur all over the world, leaving bloody trails of headless corpses and horrifically abused women -- with irrational intolerance.

And what are the goals of these tactics? In Ferguson, riots and violence. For women, anxiety. For Latinos, fear of "nativism". For environmentalists, government control of industry.

Read more here.