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In today’s world, where most of the western media “enjoys” boosting up their ratings via negative portrayals of Muslims and pumping insipid fear-mongering, every Muslim should equip themselves with proper tactics to resist against Islamophobia and possibly convert this resistance into a clement allurement that will invite mankind to Islam. Some of these tactics for young Muslims when they fight Islamophobia might be as follows: 1) Don’t rush about “teaching” the world about Islam. First, you have make people realize that although Islamophobia is a “recent” discussion, especially of the last decade, racism is nothing new. It is one of the oldest “sin and stain” of mankind and racism is a double-edged sword that can hurt every nation sooner or later. Learn about history of racism first. 2) Civilized discussions about politics rather that “my religion is the best!” attitude: Hating is cheap and easy but learning about world history is not, people need time. When people talk about “savage Muslims of the deserts”, don’t immediately defend your “brothers”. Instead, try to shift people’s focus to “history of middle-east after 19th century.” 3) Don’t ever try to downgrade other religions or other “holy figures”. This is not just respectful but outright “sin” according to Islamic faith. Yes, there are unfortunate individuals whom insult Prophet Muhammad, but keep in the mind that you have to respect and believe in “other” prophets mention in Holy Quran. 4) With this in mind, you can base your claims on the concept of “others”. Many keyboard vigilantes or arm-chair experts would not know about “otherization” but here is your chance to tell people that Holy Quran does not “omit” Jesus or Moses or Abraham and all the rest. Ostracism doesn’t work in Islam, use this. You know what ostracism means, right? 5) Ask them why hicabi-workers have become a problem now, since they have always been wearing what they are wearing. Again, you can use this claim to make Islamophobes focus on world events rather than the religion itself. There have been “Muslims” and their children and their worship places all over USA and Europe for the last century but for some reason people started to see them as “cultural” threats only recently. 6) When they try to tie their Islamophobic views with the events of 9/11, take a deep breath and don’t jump into every kind of conspiracy theory you can find on the web at once but instead try to engage in “civil and emphatic” conversation. 7) Today, with the enormous amount of deliberate and persistence false-information being spread about Holy Quran and Prophet Muhammad, it might be even trickier to fight Islamophobia. Try to inspire people from the pages of history of Islam and sufism and try to unearth sheer amount of “philosophical and scientific richness” that were flourished through out the centuries, especially in the golden age of Islam. 8) Try to make people question about their “news-sources”. Again, when you’re doing this, don’t rely on “conspiracy theories”. Rather, tell people that it won’t hurt to be a bit of skeptical. You know that western renaissance and reforms in the medieval times were fueled with “philosophical movement of skepticism”, right? 9) Research…This is obvious but doesn’t hurt to be reminded again. Don’t rely on your “brothers and sisters” all the time. Keep in mind that for every country that is full of Islamophobes, there are also very “normal and healthy” folks in that very nation that are not happy with these “racist” mind-sets. So, form alliances with them. 10) Finally, be a good Muslim, maybe the only and the best way to fight Islamophobia: And the servants of (Allah) Most Gracious are those who walk on the earth in humility, and when the ignorant address them, they say, "Peace!"; (Al-Furqan 25/63) Baris Tarimcioglu/islamoformation.com More articles of Islamic culture, Quran Tafsir and History of Islam can be found at www.islamoformation.com To read more about Islam History and Islam Fiqh please visit http://www.islamoformation.com/
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