If ever there’s a phobia one can promote, it should be a true loathing of graft in any form, regardless of it being the petty everyday variety or the major million dollar ones.
I’VE been thinking about phobias lately because there seem to be so many around. I have a phobia about snakes; I simply don’t like their slitheriness. I know lots of people who have phobias about spiders, cockroaches or even cats.
To have a phobia means to have both a fear and a loathing of something. There are people who have a total phobia about germs, and are obsessed with keeping things clean, because they fear if they don’t, they may get ill.
Phobias have nothing to do with evidence or reasonableness; most times they are irrational. Hence it was with that 21st century phenomenon called Islamophobia, the fear and loathing of Muslims by those of other faiths.
It leads to all sorts of irrational acts, including blaming Muslims for every single human infraction there is, and insisting that they are going to do things that they have no intention of doing, for example, setting up syariah law in the United States.
Witness the current Republican primaries. Almost every candidate has said something Islamophobic as a way, they think, of getting votes among the conservative right-wing Christian population.
In the UK, Prime Minister David Cameron has said that the biggest threat to multi-culturalism is young Muslim men. What else would account for such a shocking and outrageous generalisation but a phobia about Muslims?
It has to be said that such religious phobias do not go one way only. The response to Islamophobia has been Christianophobia, where Christians are irrationally blamed for every social ill and accused of plotting to take over Muslim countries.
(This fantasy always prompts the question in my head of why anyone would want to take over a Muslim country these days, when so many are ill-managed and under-developed.)
Judanophobia, the fear and loathing of Jews, also known in the West as anti-Semitism, is another one that goes a long way back, although Judaism is often wrongly conflated with Zionism.
There are some common features to these phobias. The first is that the target of the phobia is not one that the phobic actually knows. Most of the most rabid Islamophobes have never met a Muslim in their lives.
Secondly, it always involves reducing the human target of the phobia to negative stereotypes: “All Jews are tight-fisted” or “All Muslim women are submissive.” If you point out anyone who doesn’t fit the stereotype, then they are regarded as exceptions to the rule.
It helps to remember that every time we stereotype any group, someone somewhere is also stereotyping us. And those stereotypes about us are no more reasonable than any we make of other people. But what do phobics care about such fairness?
Thirdly, while some people may complain about being the targets of phobias, they also often have no problems having phobias about other people.
Many Muslims who complain about the injustices and oppression wrought by Islamophobia have in turn no qualms about oppressing their own women or groups who may not fit into their idea of mainstream Islam.
Homophobia, for instance, is a pretty routine reflex among many Muslim men, especially those men who are the most likely to be picked out at an American airport for further questioning.
In the end, we have to ask in what ways do phobias like these help to advance society? If the US becomes more Islamophobic, will it make Americans happier, richer or safer?
If Muslim countries become more Christianophobic, will their people be less hungry and better educated?
If our societies allow homophobia to become the norm, will our schools be better and our public transport more efficient?
Are phobias even worth using to get votes? At the beginning of this year, Jamaica’s People’s National Party won a landslide victory on a platform that explicitly rejected homophobia and promoted greater inclusiveness.
What’s more, Jamaicans even elected their first-ever female prime minister, Portia Simpson Miller. It just goes to show that using negativity to win votes is a losing strategy because people really want positive and inclusive leadership.
Perhaps, if there was a phobia to promote, it should be a phobia about corruption. Our society should develop a true loathing of corruption in any form, whether it is the petty everyday variety or the major million dollar ones.
We should get to the point where instead of joking about it, the very mention of any form of bribe would be met with severe disgust and rejection.
Coupled with this should be a phobia for the sense of entitlement and impunity that some people enjoy while disregarding other people’s feelings. Instead of simply putting up with this, we should collectively and decisively say it’s simply not acceptable.
Now, that would surely be worth a vote or two.
