Can the World Ever Have Enough Of and With Phobias?

Wednesday, 3  May 2017

I first raised the question, in my note of February 12, 2017, bearing the same title.

Since then, I am pleased to report that so far , we have been spared the term “Trumphobia” ( even with this new and  improved spelling)  since the fear and loathing of the President  Trump or about the way he has been running the country  has been sufficiently proven not to be irrational.

But now, a new phobia, designed  to push back Islamophobia  has been proposed by Dr. Max Singer , a Senior Research Associate at the Begin-Sadat Center For Strategic Studies (BESA)  in a paper titled: A Dangerous Malady: Islamophobia- phobia (BESA Center Perspective Paper No.449, April 23,2017).

In a nutshell, the Executive Summary of the paper reads: We need a new word, “Islamophobia-phobia” (IPP), or excessive fear of Islamophobia. The term was coined to refer to hostility to, or excessive fear, of Islam. Avoiding prejudice against Muslims is a noble cause, but carried too far, the fear of Islamophobia, prevents a realistic response to Islamism’s attacks on the West.

This new phobia is not just any kind of phobia composed of “hostility or excessive fear”, which has also been characterised as “irrational” by some authors and in some dictionaries. It is a malady.

I predict that this new phobia (IPP) cum malady will not catch fire the way Islamophobia did and in short order, will be consigned   to the archives of both BESA and of this blog, never to be heard of again.