I see that the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) has decided to spend a great deal of time and money distributing 100,000 free copies of the Quran to significant figures in the United States, apparently in an effort to combat Islamophobia. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why anyone thinks giving away free copies of the Quran could possibly be an effective response to Islamophobic bigotry. First of all, like all important holy books, and perhaps more than most, the Quran is a difficult text, particularly in translation. It is poetic, powerful, evocative and generally nonlinear. It is extremely difficult to read and understand even for the most erudite, and has been the subject of an extraordinary range of interpretations, exegeses and readings over the centuries. Muslims themselves have proved that, as with the Bible, it is possible to justify almost anything by referencing or privileging certain parts of the Quran or interpreting its passages in one way or another. Islamophobes rely as much on their own pet passages and interpretations of the Quran as the most devout Muslims. It is therefore extremely unlikely that reading or flipping through the Quran is likely to change anyone’s attitudes towards Islam and the Muslims.

Even more significantly, this effort can certainly look like proselytizing, even though CAIR insists that’s not what they are doing. Obviously, any such impression is not only unhelpful, it is downright counterproductive. This effort is, of course, extremely unlikely to win many new converts to the faith, as CAIR acknowledges. However, by simply sending out the most essential religious text of Islam raw, as it were, CAIR seems to be operating from two deeply flawed assumptions: first, that Islamophobia is driven primarily by ignorance of Islam, and second, that teaching non-Muslims about Islamic beliefs and traditions is best accomplished by handing them a copy of the Quran.

The correlation between ignorance about Islam and hatred of Muslims is not at all clear. Some of the most dedicated Islamophobes are quite knowledgeable about Islamic texts, theology and traditions, although they certainly spend a great deal of effort misrepresenting them or rather focusing on the most problematic and indefensible elements of those traditions and ideas. Ever since the days of Johann Andreas Eisenmenger, author of the crucial 1748 anti-Semitic screed “The Traditions of the Jews,” those well-versed in the traditions of a given religion have shown how such knowledge can be successfully deployed to promote bigotry, fear and hatred. Education in the details of the faith and traditions is plainly not enough to combat such prejudice.

Furthermore, it is deeply questionable whether simply providing people with copies of the Quran constitutes educating them about Muslim beliefs and practices. It strikes me that books explaining these beliefs and practices rather than difficult and in many ways esoteric holy texts, would be more effective, especially insofar as such books emphasize the heterogeneity of the world of Islam. It seems to me that the most important single misrecognition committed in contemporary Islamophobia in the United States is the belief in a monolithic Islamic world and Muslim community, the sense that there is a discrete unit known as “Islam,” as opposed to its binary opposite, “the West.” This way of looking at human realities is an absurd reduction, and in the case of the Islamic world it crucially elides the kaleidoscopic heterogeneity of Muslim traditions, societies, civilizations, beliefs and practices. In reality, there is no such thing as simply “Islam,” there is a multiplicity of different Islams, since Islam as a social phenomenon and a social text has manifested itself in such an extraordinary range of differing and sometimes contradictory incarnations. Simply giving people a copy of the Quran and saying, in effect, “this is what the Muslims believe,” not only doesn’t correct this misapprehension, it might even reinforce it.

Another sort of book that would probably have a lot more impact on the audience CAIR is trying to reach through its free Quran program would be one that deals directly with two of the biggest problems facing American Muslims today: first, the questions about Islamic beliefs and practices that so Americans continue to ask and that remain largely unanswered, and second, existing and sometimes even prevalent interpretations of the faith that are inconsistent with what is essential for Muslim communities to thrive and become empowered in the United States. A book that takes on both Islamophobic bigotry and obscurantism and extremism among Muslims simultaneously would be a very powerful intervention indeed. However, this would require considerable effort and is a lot more complicated than simply buying large numbers of Qurans and mailing them around the country. More significantly, it would involve making choices and taking stands on controversial issues that most people in the Muslim American community continue to try to duck in the name of solidarity or for fear of alienating potential allies and constituents.

And, of course, the deep pockets in the Arab world are as seized with religious fervor as much of the rest of their societies, and only seem to be interested in funding efforts they perceive as promoting Islam. I have no idea how this free Quran campaign is being funded, but the tendency on the part of many people in the Arab world to conflate the political and the religious and to fail to understand how efforts that may be perceived as proselytizing can be entirely counterproductive in the United States might well be part of the explanation for why this mass Quran distribution project is being done as opposed to other measures that would be more effective.

In the final analysis, the most important thing that has gone missing here, as usual, is that Islamophobia is not about Islam as a religion at all – it is about Muslims and is an assault not on abstract ideas, faith or theology, but on individuals and a community who are misperceived as hostile, dangerous and threatening outsiders. Efforts to combat Islamophobia, to be effective, must begin with this premise, and be based on defending people and their basic rights, and not promoting religion or getting into some kind of theological colloquy. Ever since the 1997 report by the Runnymede Trust, most efforts to deal with Islamophobia have been based on the inverted analysis that the prejudice is based on a hatred of a religion which then spills over into discrimination against the faithful. This is absolutely backwards. Islamophobia, like anti-Semitism, is based on a fear and hatred of a people and a community, and attacks on the religion are merely the rationalization for attacks on the community. This is entirely obvious, but it requires a degree of dispassion about religious ideas (of whatever variety) and an understanding that Islamophobia is a political phenomenon to grasp it. Anti-Semitism was never about Judaism, it was about the Jews. Islamophobia is not about Islam, it is about the Muslims. The difference is vast and crucial.