Fair warning: Before you read any further, take a moment to assess your tolerance for liberal absurdity on this fine day. If you’ve already spent more than ten minutes listening to Hillary supporters or reading up on the latest nonsense coming out of Obama’s mouth, move on. Come back and catch this story another day, when you can afford a little bit of anger in your life.
Okay, sticking around? Feeling good? Wonderful, glad to hear it. But when you storm off in a black rage in a few minutes, just remember that we warned you.
In the Dallas Morning News, University of Texas postdoctoral fellow Goleen Samari informs us that not only is “Islamophobia” a real thing – as opposed to being an understandable reaction to Islamic terrorism – it actually poses a “public health” threat to the entire country. A public health threat much more serious, apparently, than explosions and gunfire and planes slamming into skyscrapers.
“The unfounded hatred of Islam or stigmatization, fear and dislike of Muslims rose to 67 percent in 2015, the highest it has ever been,” Samari writes. “In fact, hate speech and crimes against Muslim Americans tripled after the San Bernardino and Paris attacks.”
All right. Odd definition of “unfounded,” but okay.
“But there is an effect of all this that has not been widely reported: the impact on health,” she writes. “Simply put, Islamophobia has grave physical and mental health consequences for Muslims in the U.S. It is a public health issue. Yet, research on the health implications of this is understudied and often ignored by the masses.”
Samari does not provide us with any evidence of this claim, but she’s more than happy to substitute her own speculation for the facts. To make it easier on the reader, she doesn’t bother to draw a distinction between her made-up concerns and any actual problems that may or may not exist. We’re to take her on faith. Life is so much easier when you don’t have to think!
“One study found that the coverage of Islam and Muslims in The New York Times was more negative than the coverage of cancer, alcohol and cocaine,” she says.
Though Samari doesn’t link it, there was indeed such a study. You can find a writeup of it on the left-wing conspiracy site AlterNet, if nowhere else. They provide a few examples of “negative” Islam headlines, which include things like “Trial Starts in Attack at Exhibit of Anti-Islam Cartoons.”
Sadly, the writeup doesn’t give us examples of “positive” cancer stories run by the NY Times.
“Discrimination against Muslim Americans has been linked to paranoia, psychological distress and reduced happiness as well as high cholesterol, obesity and other health problems,” she writes.
Here, she does link the study. It was put online in July. It was published by the American Journal of Public Health in September.
It was authored by Goleen Samari.
“Another study finds that a lack of social support leads to depression for Arab Muslim immigrant women. Islamophobia also prevents Muslim Americans from seeking health care, resulting in more late-stage cancer diagnoses,” she writes, and we’re back to the land of non-citations.
“By addressing Islamophobia as a public health issue, we can condemn hateful ideology and actions against Muslim and Muslim-like Americans while meeting an objective goal of health as a fundamental human right for all,” she says.
When you spend as much time observing liberals as we do, you get numb to a lot of the nonsense. But even for liberals – even for Muslim liberals – this is too much to handle.
The Muslim (and Muslim-like??) community has a public health threat, all right. It’s Islamic extremism, which is responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Muslims over the last twenty years. And any Muslim academic, religious leader, or politician who is concerned about anything else is doing their own religion a grave disservice.
When your religion is getting worse coverage than cancer, maybe your problems are bigger than the New York Times.
