Why is the West So Islamophobic?

I first met this particular professor at a postgraduate gathering.  I was a fresh PhD student and a new arrival in Australia to boot—my ears were not yet used to the Aussie accent.  I tried to hide myself in the corner during the morning tea break, but this professor found me.  “Hi there!  I just heard that you are from Bangladesh?”  “Yes,” I replied weakly.

I’d never seen someone so happy to meet a Bangladeshi.  She guided me to another corner where two professors were having a serious-looking conversation.  “Look who I have here,” she said.  “She’s from Bangladesh! Remember, I was talking about Taslima Nasreen?  She’s from the same country!”  They began bombarding me with questions.  “Why are people so angry with Nasreen?”  “Why do they want to kill here?”  “Why is the state not supporting her?”  “What’s wrong with criticizing a religion? It’s her human right!”  “What about the feminists in your country? Why can’t they do something for her?”

I could say little to them.  To be honest, I have never liked Taslima Nasreen.  She seemed to me a genius who wasted her talent in running for cheap popularity.  She could have made constructive criticism of the blindness of the religious; instead she used the suffering of Bangladeshi Muslim women to propel herself to the top of the global feminist movement.  I’m not a fan of the fatwas issued against her, either, but I was surprised to see how academics (in this case in Australia) were so concerned about one woman who is actually leading a luxurious life abroad, manipulating world sympathy in her favor and in reality doing nothing significant for the “victims” for whom she extolled.

I ran into this professor again at another recent postgrad meeting. My English had improved and I was presenting a short talk on Bangladeshi Muslim women's sufferings under the new secularist government. Naturally I had to talk about the ruling party’s history of political violence—thirteen members of opposing parties were killed in 2006.  The government is now arresting and torturing its political opponents and censoring the press.  They are also banning the hijab in government buildings, this in a country where 91 percent of the population is Muslim!  The professors knew nothing of this.

On my way back home I couldn’t help but wonder:  why do this people get so invested in the persecution of Taslima Nasreen but know nothing about the current government’s deprivations?  When a single illiterate village imam declares a fatwa to punish a village girl, the world sits up and takes notice, but it ignores the 2006 political violence?  Why do so many people care about rural resistance to NGO activity because they advocate female empowerment, but no one knows or cares that three girls from Pirojpur were arrested last July for their supposed connection to extremists and held for three weeks before the case was dismissed?

It’s hard for me to escape the conclusion that the world just doesn’t care about the suffering of Muslims.  No one seems to care about secular fanaticism.  In April 2010, the social science department of Rajshahi University (a public university in Bangladesh) banned any form of veil for female teachers and students.  Women who wear the veil are now being harassed. In a 2008 Harvard International Review article, the son of Bangladesh’s current prime minister portrayed the country as a breeding ground for Islamic extremism and advised that the Bangladeshi government ban the burka in all government facilities.  Not a single feminist voice has been heard either inside or outside Bangladesh in favor of freedom of choice, freedom of expression, or freedom of religion.  Why is it when one criticizes Islam, it is called freedom of expression, but when a Muslim defends his or her religion it is called extremism?

When I compare the reaction to the case of Taslima Nasreen to the present crackdown in Bangladesh, it becomes crystal-clear to me that the world, or at least the Western world, has a naked anti-Muslim face.  Secular Westerners read every single story about Taslima Nasreen and shed tears for Muslim women who are suffering in the name of religion, but they don’t even bother to look back when anti-religious secularists undemocratically torment the same Muslim women.  They listen to Ayan Hirsi Ali, Taslima Nasreen, or Irshad Manji decry the Muslim world’s “unjustified” behavior, but they refuse to hear the cries of Muslim women when their hijabs are forcefully removed.  A double standard is clearly at play here, but why should it be so naked?