Does ‘Being Moderate’ Shield from Islamophobia?

Resham Khan before and after the acid attack on her birthday

The 21st century was ushered in by the World Trade Center bombing of September 11th 2001. The
scenes were grotesque to watch for people with faith and conscience. The incident was portrayed as an act of devout Muslims and this created in the world aversion for Islam and Muslims. Those who had Muslim friends pulled back and those didn’t; turned their backs on any possibility.

9/11 created divisions even among Muslims. Some Muslims were delighted citing past and current
atrocities of America against Muslims and some others still maintained that it contradicted the spirit of Islam as Islam has always kicked against the targeting of civilians.

There were further divisions between those who despised the act. Some believed Islam preaches better than that and some others (particularly people with little Islam knowledge) were convinced by the perpetrators and orientalists that Islam justifies what happened on 9/11.

Among those who believed Islam to justify 9/11, some apostatized while those who continued to identify with Islam became who we know today as ‘moderate muslims’ .

‘Moderate muslims’ are those who believe the Islamic scriptures need to be reformed (edited). Contemporarily, they are known to be highly western in their disposition. They tend to put Islam on the scale of western values. Whatever Islam agrees with but the west disapproves of ‘should be expunged’ and whatever the west proposes and Islam disagrees with ‘will have to be incorporated into the Islamic scriptures and imbibed by Muslims’.

You find among ‘moderate muslims’, homosexuals, transgenders, alcoholics, pro-Israelis and every other group you find among typical westerners.
With these features typical of ‘moderate muslims’, fundamentalist Muslim have never had it fine with them. There have been several clashes between the two; the most deadly in recent times happened in Egypt in the aftermath of the overthrow of the Islamic government of Muhammad Mursi in 2013.

Some people though join the ‘moderate muslims’ in an attempt to blend into the western world and also to escape Islamophobia but, has this actually worked out for them?
Every now and then we hear and see instances where ‘moderate muslims’ get harassed , assaulted and sometimes killed by Islamophobes.

On 21 June, 21 year old Resham Khan suffered an acid attack by an Islamophobe, John Tomlin, in London. Her cousin Jameel Mukhtar was with her at the time and was also burnt by acid. She was visiting a shop with her cousin and plan to visit a spa later, unknown to her, a predator was on her track. The news spread very quickly and within a couple of days, the community was able to raise 40, 000 pounds for her and her cousin to undergo plastic surgery.

The Trump era welcomed a supersonic wave of Islamophobia in the west; America in particular. The lavish west inclined Saudi price, Al waleed bin Talal was not spared. Prior to Trumps election, he already hinted on a Muslim ban in America. This sparked protests from both Muslims and non-Muslims alike; prince Waleed joined the war of words and was battered by Trump despite his western inclination.

After the Muslim ban came into effect on 27th January, a number of Muslims realized that they were not as western as they thought. One of them was 2012 Oscar winner, Asghar Farhadi, whose Iranian nationality was enough to get him barred from entering America.

A very good case that could make us understand this situation better is the Palestinian cause. The struggle for the upholding of the rights of the Palestinians has always been split between those who show their Islamic point of view (Hamas) and those who see themselves as having something in common with the Westerners (Fatah) which makes them persistently shy away from showing their Muslim identities. Has this 'moderate' stance of Fatah spared its members from the scorn of the Jews?

These are Islamophobic phenomena directed at ‘moderate muslims’ that have come to public notice, so many others have gone unreported.

All these being said, we go back to the topic; does ‘being moderate’ shield from Islamophobia? I leave you to answer.