As with many problems in life, tackling Islamophobia in a politically and socially effective, as well as intellectually and philosophically valid, manner is a delicate quest for balance. It’s the familiar “Goldilocks” standard: not too hot and not too cold, but just right. Some argue that the very term “Islamophobia” should be abandoned altogether because it suggests, or could be used to enforce, a zone of impunity surrounding Muslim religious sensibilities that could curtail or even prohibit speech that transgresses these sensitivities.

These critics are right to worry about this potential problem.

The Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), particularly egged on by and in turn using, the government of Pakistan, has been trying (in vain, of course) to deploy the term Islamophobia in multilateral institutions like the United Nations in order to secure a global consensus on restricting speech so as to protect religious opinion from any form of criticism or satire. Some Muslim organizations in various countries have been attempting to promote a similar agenda within the laws and regulations of individual states as well. So the concern is genuine and valid.

The term “Islamophobia” is here to stay

However, this objection misses the mark in two crucial ways.

First, we are stuck with the word. For better or worse, “Islamophobia” has come to be the accepted term for discrimination and bias against Muslims. In a conversation a few years ago with novelist Salman Rushdie, who was and is concerned about the abuse of the word Islamophobia, asked me: “What’s wrong with just calling it simply racism?” The problem, of course, is that racism or bigotry are broad, catch-all terms that refer to the phenomenon of discrimination in general. But bigotry, bias and discrimination against Muslims in the West is based on a very specific set of ideas, images, stereotypes and arguments that are both ancient and modern, and that are particular to a range of discourses that inform that bias. They overlap in many interesting ways with other defamatory discourses, such as anti-black racism, anti-Semitism and other ideologies of hate, but there is a specific set of concepts that inform anti-Muslim bias, especially in the West. Therefore, we need a word that will refer to that set of ideas precisely, as a discrete subset of the broader problem of bigotry and racism.

That term is, and will remain, Islamophobia, because after several decades of constant use it has become the settled and consensus word for it. It is not an ideal term, by any means. But it is far too late to find a different one. Anti-Semitism is an awkward term as well. The term refers to hatred of Jews, but uses a word that also applies to many other groups. Indeed, some Arabs (including those who do engage in blatant anti-Jewish hate speech) seriously, and in some cases sincerely, argue that they cannot be anti-Semitic because they are themselves Semites. There are many other problems with the term anti-Semitism, but after a couple of centuries of use, as a practical matter it is the one we are stuck with. After a couple of decades of use, it isn’t going to be all that much easier, or purposive, to dismiss or replace the term “Islamophobia” either.

It’s not the signifier, it’s the signified, stupid.

Second, what’s crucial to any term is the generally accepted definition of it, not the word itself. Any word or phrase is liable to be abused or defined in such a way that it promotes social harm. What is decisive in language is not the signifier, but the consensus view of the signified.

In the American social and political context, the power of the derogatory term “nigger” is so enormous that under current circumstances almost any word connected to the Latin term for black from which this word was derived conjurers the entire cultural apparatus of slavery, segregation, discrimination, violence and abuse. “Negro,” once widely viewed as a respectful term for black people in the United States, is now typically seen as also, although to a lesser extent, unacceptable.

Some have even argued that the unrelated word “niggardly” — which is roughly synonymous with “parsimonious,” Germanic in origin, and has no connection to the set of Latin and Latin-derived terms referring to black and darkness — is also unacceptable merely because it sounds to many listeners to be reminiscent of those now stigmatized Latinate words that evoke a painful and horrible history. Government officials in my own city, Washington DC, have had to resign because they used the word “niggardly” correctly, but their African-American colleagues nonetheless took offense on the grounds that one should know that anything that seems to come close to “Negro” in sound, let alone “nigger,” is axiomatically disrespectful.

However, Spanish-language words derived from the same Latin origin have traditionally not been perceived as derogatory in many of their own cultural contexts because they have not been widely viewed as conveying anything similar to the awful, traumatic history as their English counterparts. There are, however, signs that the taboos on English words derived from the Latin word “niger” (black) are spreading among some Spanish-speaking populations, particularly in the United States. (The French word “nègre” has also long been seen as a pejorative.)

In American popular culture, it is extremely difficult to construct a hypothetical scenario in which the casual use of the term “nigger” by a non-African-American wouldn’t at least raise the eyebrows, if not the ire, of the public. But it’s easy to construct such a scenario involving African-Americans, some of whom frequently use the term, particularly in the context of rap and hip-hop culture and music (although it is sometimes controversial), without either intending or, in most cases, causing offense.

In some cases the distinction is made by separating the word “nigger” from the colloquial term “nigga,” which is sometimes held to be not only acceptable but affectionate, particularly when it comes to intra-group usage among (especially young) African-Americans. However, it’s unlikely that, except in some unusual contexts, the use of the word “nigga” by non-African-Americans, particularly those who are perceived as white, would not be viewed as insulting and provocative. The history of language is also replete with examples — from “Quakers” to “queers” — of signifiers whose generally-accepted signification shifted over time from pejorative to affectionate, or at least inoffensive, often because of their calculated adoption by the group being signified.

The point is that a word itself is merely a signifier. What it signifies depends entirely on a common understanding based on culture, history and context. Even a word that, at first glance, appears perfectly suited to conveying its generally designated meaning, without the obvious built-in drawbacks, shortcomings and inaccuracies of, for instance, anti-Semitism or Islamophobia, is still liable to be defined in a way that promotes the repression of legitimate speech and ideas, or some other negative social impact.

Words are empty vessels

In our conversation, Rushdie argued that societies should abandon the more specific term Islamophobia in favor of the more broad-ranging term racism. Beyond the evident need for a term that refers to the specific network of ideas, tropes and stereotypes that inform Islamophobia, the trouble with this idea is the implicit notion that the word “racism” is somehow less susceptible to abuse by demagogues than “Islamophobia” may be. Charges of racism, however, are frequently deployed in a reckless and socially harmful manner. Accusations of anti-Semitism are often leveled by pro-Israel propagandists to defame critics of Israeli policies towards the Palestinians or other completely legitimate viewpoints that have nothing to do with hatred of Jews and do not spread fear or dislike of them. I, personally, have been baselessly and ridiculously accused of “homophobia” by anonymous online trolls who were merely using it as a pejorative in order to try to smear my character because they passionately disagree with my ardent advocacy of a two-state solution based on ending an Israeli occupation that began in 1967. And on it goes.

The words themselves are not decisive. Indeed, they are empty vessels into which can be poured, by consensus understandings of their meanings and appropriate usages, socially useful or harmful content. And even then, as noted above, they are still subject to the abuse of false accusation. There is no need to dust off a copy of 1984 to understand how any of this works. The process is constantly in motion, swirling around us all the time as our social and political realities are constructed by the meanings that we attempt to ascribe to our words.

Euphemisms and puns work the same way: there is a generalized understanding of what is “really meant.” So do most figures of speech, including almost every form of metonymy (context makes it clear when “the White House” refers to the executive branch of the United States government, for example). There’s no need to delve into Derridian deconstruction to uncover how slippery and unstable the relationship between language and meaning, signifier and signified, must always be. But, in order to achieve specific social and political goals, there is a need to put that understanding aside on a contingent basis in order to facilitate advocacy, build constituencies and coalitions, and achieve positive, demonstrable results.

The history of the battle against anti-black racism, or anti-Semitism for that matter, in the 20th century in the United States demonstrates that, in spite of the inherent difficulties posed in trying to use language for constructive social purposes (as opposed to demagoguery), real progress is, indeed, genuinely possible. And it all depends on developing, slowly and painfully, by fits and starts, new and improved social consensuses about the equality of all people in our societies and the basic respect they should be accorded in our national and collective conversations.

The real struggle is over definitions

There is no point, therefore, in searching for a different or “better” term for anti-Muslim bias than “Islamophobia.” It’s almost certainly too late, and any other word would be just as liable to abuse depending on the common understanding of what it refers to. Therefore, the goal must be to arrive at a broad-based, widespread and commonly accepted definition that achieves two things simultaneously. First, it must provide an effective and clear-cut understanding of what constitutes anti-Muslim bias. And second, it must not invite or facilitate the stifling or stigmatizing of speech and ideas that are legitimate and respectable, even if they make many Muslims uncomfortable.

The urgent task at hand is to develop a working model that can help society to distinguish Islamophobic speech — which should be shunned and for which there should be a significant social and political, although certainly not criminal, cost — from legitimate free expression that calls for no response other than normal engagement, agreement, disagreement and so forth.

All of these benchmarks need to help us distinguish between hate speech — which targets real people and spreads fear and hatred of them, thereby compromising or threatening their ability to function as equals to all others in society — versus speech that may be provocative and make people uncomfortable, but which critiques, challenges or lampoons legitimate targets, which include ideas, icons, religious dogmas and practices, political views, or other social phenomena that are the subject of proper debate and discussion.

Good faith

The first, and perhaps the most suggestive — although also one of the most subjective — of these signposts is good faith. Does the speech in question involve legitimate, sincere conversation and criticism? Or, instead, does it reflect an obvious effort to defame the targeted group and their belief system? Is the speaker lying about what the people in question, in this case Muslims, believe or do? Is there an effort to stereotype the identity group? Are generalizations being made that are obviously unfair or inaccurate? And is it clear that the speaker knew or should know that what they’re saying is fundamentally untrue, or is only true for a subset of the general group when they are presenting it as characteristic of the whole?

One of the key examples of how this “good faith” test works to identify genuinely Islamophobic speech is the “work” of the extremist Catholic anti-Muslim hate monger Robert Spencer. Like many other Islamophobes, Spencer combs through Muslim religious texts, history, practices and current events to identify and publicize anything and everything that makes Muslims, or Islam, look bad. In one of the great ironies about Islamophobia, Spencer and many other anti-Muslim demagogues are the only people other than the most strident Muslim extremists who insist that the most extreme, literalistic and violent interpretations of the faith are the only “real” or “correct” ones. Everything else is chalked up to religious dissimulation.

Spencer’s essential methodology (he has no formal academic background or training in Islamic studies or history whatsoever) is to try to find anything that might cast Islam and Muslims in a bad light, no matter how questionable or marginal the source, and present it as the unchallengeable truth. He also specializes in identifying the most extreme interpretations of Islamic doctrine and practice throughout the ages and presenting them as the “true” or “authentic” versions of the faith. Spencer’s basic view of Islam was summed up in the following passage: “Islam itself is an incomplete, misleading, and often downright false revelation which, in many ways, directly contradicts what God has revealed through the prophets of the Old Testament and through his Son Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh […] For several reasons […] Islam constitutes a threat to the world at large.”

I have explained in detail in my short essay “Religion and violence: another look at Islamophobia and anti-Semitism” precisely how Spencer and others cherry-pick from religious texts and practices in order to spread fear and hatred of Muslims in general by focusing on the beliefs and conduct of the most extreme Muslims, presenting it as if it were genuinely representative of Muslim communities in general. The technique is precisely the same as used by many of the worst anti-Semites, and described very accurately in a 2003 report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “The Talmud in Anti-Semitic Polemics.”

Dutch-Somali politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali provides an even simpler and cruder version of this process in bad faith. In a November 2007 interview with Reason magazine, she said that the faith could be socially and politically useful, “only if Islam is defeated.” Reason asked her: “Don’t you mean defeating radical Islam?”  She replied, “No. Islam, period,” explaining: “I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they’re the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of the West. You stop that. You stop the symbol burning and the effigy burning, and you look them in the eye and flex your muscles and you say: ‘This is a warning. We won’t accept this anymore.’ There comes a moment when you crush your enemy.” She concludes: “There is no moderate Islam. There are Muslims who are passive, who don’t all follow the rules of Islam, but there’s really only one Islam, defined as submission to the will of God. There’s nothing moderate about it.” And, she proclaims, echoing so many other Islamophobes: “Islam is a political movement.”

Both Spencer and Hirsi Ali clearly and quite intentionally spread fear and hatred of ordinary Muslims by framing the religion as a political movement that is at war with the West and is driven by vicious and malevolent goals and methods. There is no way for their audiences, assuming they believe them, not to conclude that ordinary Muslims, particularly immigrants in the West, are a serious and potentially mortal peril, and at very least are guilty until proven innocent. There is no way that these sentiments can fail to provoke precisely the sentiments of fear and hatred that most potently inform and legitimate bigotry, discrimination and even violence. Their obvious and evident bad faith is clear from this willingness to generalize about vast groups of people in the most negative, indefensible manner, which no serious person could fail to recognize as both false and the product of visceral ill will.

Impact on people’s lives

This leads immediately to the second benchmark I have proposed for identifying Islamophobic speech: its impact on the lives of real people. One of the questions that needs to be asked early on in trying to identify anti-Muslim hate speech is this: “Is the intended or inevitable consequence of this speech going to make life more difficult for Muslims to live as equals in this society? For example, does it paint Islam and Muslims as inherently or generally antithetical to Western or American society?” In particular, the question needs to focus on the likely reaction of the target audience: non-Muslims in Western societies. How will they react to the speech in question? What impact will it have on their assumptions and basic belief systems regarding Muslims, and in some cases possibly even Islam itself?

If the speech or representation in question will logically provoke a response of suspicion and anxiety regarding Muslims at large, then one is almost certainly dealing with a form of hate speech (“Muslim immigrants have no loyalty to the infidel nations in which they have settled,” for example, or “there is no distinction in the American Muslim community between peaceful Muslims and jihadists”). The impact on the audience is all-important, because it is not abstractions such as religion that need defending, but rather real people who are vulnerable, and their rights which can be abridged. Ideas are fair game. The reputations of broad identity groups are not. It’s reasonable to list all the reasons why one doesn’t agree with all or part of any given interpretation of Islam, and even to criticize it harshly, as long as the critique is based on a good-faith evaluation of what that version of Islam as a social text actually promotes. Indeed, it’s vitally important that intolerant, obscurantist and extremist versions of any religion or belief system, including Islam, particularly when they promote violence, be confronted and denounced vociferously and categorically until they are marginalized to the point of irrelevancy. But it’s not reasonable to list a bunch of fabricated reasons why Muslims, or any other broad identity group for that matter, at large are to be regarded as dangerous or threatening.

Stigmatization

This, in turn, leads directly into the third benchmark I’m proposing for identifying Islamophobic speech: stigmatization. Does the speech in question single out Islam as somehow uniquely problematic when all major religions have been, and indeed frequently still are, used for both good and ill? Is Islam being presented as special in some kind of negative way? If so, then the speech in question is almost certainly phobic or hate-mongering, in part because the track record of all religions is very poor indeed, but much more importantly because of the unimaginably vast range of ideas, beliefs, values and human experiences that are incorporated in the broader Muslim experience over enormous swaths of space and time.

Both Islamophobes and Muslim fundamentalists and demagogues share in common a desire to reduce Islam into a single, or at least a small set, of beliefs, practices, experiences and orientations. Both are wrong. There are a few — very few — things that most, perhaps almost all, Muslims historically have agreed upon (monotheism, revelation, the Prophet’s basic role, the divine nature of the Quran, and a few others), and practices that they have shared. But what is common to them is much less striking than the vast diversity to be found in the dizzying kaleidoscope of Muslim beliefs and practices across many centuries and most of the globe.

There are at least 1.5 billion people in the world today who can be accurately described as Muslim in some sense or another. They exist in virtually every country (I know some very learned and devout Japanese Muslims, for example). Among them, virtually every human phenomenon and experience can be discovered, at least somewhere. Indeed, given any group of people that rises to the huge proportion of 1.5 billion, there is very little distinction between whatever phrase accurately describes them as a subset of humanity (in this case, Muslims) and the broader category of “people.” There is very little by way of experience, practice, belief and values that can be found in the broader category of “people” that cannot be found in the gigantic subset “Muslims” — except, perhaps, atheism and agnosticism, if “Muslim” is to be construed strictly and exclusively as indicating a set of religious beliefs and is not in any sense indicative of any other kind of identity, community or cultural heritage.

Therefore, anything that tends to single out Muslims, to mark them as unique or particular, especially in a negative way, there’s all the hallmarks of hate speech and irrational bigotry. The late and much lamented Nigerian novelist and scholar Chinua Achebe is known for his powerful and evocative phrase: “Africa is people.” By this simple observation, Achebe was pointing out that the Western concept of “Africa” is so burdened with stereotypes, statistics and other abstractions that what is often lost is that behind this imaginary façade of “Africa” is simply a large group of societies that, in turn, are made up of families composed of individual people. Underneath this gigantic scaffolding of mystification lurks ordinary human beings, obscured by ideology and assumptions. Achebe appealed to his readers and audiences to recover the crucial understanding that when they are discussing “Africa” what they are really talking about in every meaningful sense is simply people, with their basic and essential needs, wants, rights, hopes, fears and common humanity.

Much the same must be said, time and again, about “Islam”: Islam is people. Behind all of the similar, and perhaps even worse and more insidious, cultural, ideological and intellectual baggage burdening the word “Islam” are, once again, simply a large group of people. To stigmatize them in general, whether implicitly or explicitly, is to attack their common humanity, and single them out for opprobrium, anxiety or suspicion based on stereotypes. Stigmatization is the essence of discrimination. So the singling out of Muslims in a negative way from other people is one of the clearest hallmarks of hate speech and defamation.

Generalizations

Finally, this brings us to the question of generalization, which overlaps somewhat with the earlier categories, but deserves some attention of its own. Does the speech in question engage in absurd and facile generalizations about the incredibly diverse world of Islam and the extremely heterogeneous history and present-day reality of Islam(s) as a social text? Any time one encounters blanket, categorical statements holding that Muslims think or act in a particular alleged manner, or that Islam holds some sort of belief or another, particularly when these claims represent extreme or objectionable qualities (for example, “Muslims insist that women should cover their hair in public” or “Islam preaches the killing of apostates”), one is likely to be encountering reduction as a form of defamation.

It may be objected that these standards are vague, subjective and too general. In practice, however, I do not think there will prove be a huge problem in applying them in real cases. This same process is performed daily with regard to many other vulnerable communities, including various racial and religious identities, the GLBT community, and others. Identifying hate speech is a lot easier in practice than in the abstract. We will, for the most part, know it when we see it — especially if we have benchmarks like these to help guide us.

By holding people to account for Islamophobia, we cannot mean that we expect others to always be nice to Islam and Muslims. We cannot mean that Muslims should never be disturbed or offended. We cannot come across as calling for censorship of speech some of us don’t like. In the United States, at least, the censorious position is, thankfully, almost always the losing position. In a free society, there will be forms of speech that many, including Muslims, don’t like but which will have to be tolerated and cannot be seriously classified as “Islamophobic” if the term is to have any effective social and political, or defensible intellectual, meaning. There will be blasphemy, satire, apostasy, challenges to the tenets of the faith from scholars, other religions, secularists, atheists, agnostics and others. And that’s fine. Indeed, it’s healthy and necessary.

What’s not fine, and what must never be acceptable, is hate speech. And to combat hate speech without violating the rights and the values of free speech or free conscience requires a common understanding of the term Islamophobia that strives towards that balance, that “Goldilocks” standard, which is essential. Our task is to simultaneously combat bigotry and defamation while upholding freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. It can, and indeed must, be done. And, to achieve this, our principal tool must be a widely-accepted definition and standard for judging what constitutes Islamophobia that protects people from calumny while embracing the widest possible range of expression as legitimate contributions to our collective conversation.

One of the more tiresome political clichés, almost as ubiquitous as the indefensible and virtually meaningless claim that “everything happens for a reason,” is the idea that almost anything can become a “teachable moment.” Frequently, indeed most of the time, in practice that’s really not true. Occasionally, however, even (or as it turns out especially) the most ridiculous outbursts — provided that they emerge at the right time and place — can constitute an invaluable intervention in the collective conversation.

Enter Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who is still insisting — despite well-established fact — that there are “no-go zones” in European countries like Britain and France where non-Muslims, including the police, dare not enter and which are ruled by vigilante extremist fanatics. Thesepreposterous allegations first surfaced on the FoxNews cable television channel, floated by self-styled “terrorism expert” Steven Emerson, who absurdly cited Birmingham as an entirely Muslim city in which non-Muslims hardly dare to enter. He added the claim that in parts of London, “Muslim religious police ‘beat’ anyone who doesn’t dress according to […] religious Muslim attire.”

Emerson has a long history of making up nonsense and spewing it in public. He blamed the April 1995 Oklahoma City bombing on “Middle Eastern terrorists” because the culprits had “tried to kill as many as possible.” The attack was, of course, carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Earlier, he had blamed the first World Trade Center bombing on Serbian extremists, when, in fact, Islamist fanatics were responsible.

Both Emerson and Fox subsequently apologized, particularly after an outcry from British Prime Minister David Cameron (who correctly pointed out that Emerson is “clearly a complete idiot”), as well as Birmingham authorities and officials in France (which was also accused of harboring extremist Muslim “no-go zones”).

Not for Bobby Jindal such lily-livered, craven kowtowing to the ruthless tyrant Fact! The sovereign independence of his imagination and convenient fantasyland will never capitulate to the dictates of reality.

In a speech at the increasingly jingoistic Henry Jackson Society in London [full disclosure: in the past, when the group had a rather different profile than it presently does, this author wrote a couple of papers for the think tank], the Louisiana governor accused some Muslim immigrants in the West of seeking “to colonize Western countries, because setting up your own enclave and demanding recognition of a no-go zone are exactly that.”

In a subsequent interview with CNN, Jindal insisted that such “no-go zones” do, in fact, exist, even though Fox and Emerson had both apologized for making the claim, and there is no evidence whatsoever supporting the allegation because it’s a ludicrous fiction. Indeed, this leap of bizarre, parochial, surrealist imagination about the strange doings in foreign countries that can take hold of the American mind, particularly on cable television, seems pulled directly from the brilliant satirical movieTeam America: World Police, which skewers, among many other things, how some Americans are capable of constructing the most preposterous fantasies about other societies, particularly in the context of anxieties about terrorism.

To his credit, CNN’s Max Foster pressed the governor to name one of these areas. Of course he couldn’t. But that didn’t stop him. Jindal insisted: “Look, I’ve heard from folks here that there are neighborhoods where women don’t feel comfortable going in without veils.” Obviously, that settles that, since he “heard” about it from “folks.” He also cited aDaily Mail article about urban problems that did not, in fact, mention religion or actually buttress any of his claims. In a final perfect grace note, Jindal had the astounding temerity to boast that in propagating this laughable fiction, he was merely being brave and honest especially since: “I knew by speaking the truth we were gonna make people upset.”

The episode is important — very important — because it illustrates much about the practical mechanics of bigotry and Islamophobia in contemporary American culture. There are several crucial facts to understand before any analysis of this brouhaha can proceed.

Jindal is a Rhodes scholar. That suggests he is not a stupid man, and he isn’t. And it means he studied (and lived) at one of the finest schools in Britain. So he knows he is lying, and that what he’s saying is not only untrue but ridiculous.

Moreover, Jindal knows where right-wingers have gone off the rails in recent years. In 2012 he complained: “It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that. It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.”

So it’s impossible not to conclude that Jindal is quite certain, correctly, that although his present comments about “no-go zones” in Europe deeply insults the intelligence of the voters, his comments will nonetheless be politically helpful to him.

There are several reasons for this.

First, there is still a zone of impunity for attacks against Muslims in the United States. Jindal figures he can get away with this, and he’s right.

Second, he knows that many people in the United States will believe him. They will want it to be true, and they will assume that it is true, and really not care whether or not it actually is true. This is already the case with several prominent “conservative” (read bigoted) commentators on the political right who are backing Jindal to the hilt.

Third, he understands, as Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post has pointed out, “that in politics, the worst thing you can be is irrelevant,” and that this outburst, no matter how ridiculous, is getting him a lot of attention. “Point, Jindal,” Cillizza concludes, and it’s hard to argue with that evaluation.

Fourth, and most importantly, Jindal is very familiar with the codes and dog whistles he is deploying. He packages his comments as an attack on “radical Islamists” and the “radical left,” when it’s quite clear that many if not most of his audience will assume that those terms actually, in practice, refer to Muslims in general and mainstream American liberals. Jindal is presenting his outburst as a defense of Western societies from an alien onslaught. “The huge issue, the big issue in non-assimilation,” he says, “is the fact that you have people that want to come to our country but not adopt our values, not adopt our language and in some cases want to set apart their own enclaves and hold on to their own values.”

This crude xenophobic fear of the other is a powerful political tool, as old as human society itself. French neo-fascist politician Marine Le Penessentially played the same card in an 18 January New York Times op-ed, in which she shamelessly tried to exploit the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices to press for “a policy restricting immigration.” She characterized what she called “massive waves of immigration” as an attack on “our laïcité, our sovereignty, our independence, our values.”

Both of these calculating cynics know perfectly well what they are doing by appealing to the public’s basest instincts of fear and loathing. They are dividing the world into “them” versus “us,” and making it very clear that the identifying characteristic of the “them” is that “they” are Muslims. Naturally, they don’t provide any benchmark for distinguishing radicals versus anybody else. It doesn’t matter to their game. What they are doing is seeking popularity and support based on chauvinism and jingoism.

Unfortunately, following Jindal’s outrageous comments, someone namedArsalan Iftikhar argued on MSNBC that the governor “might be trying to scrub some of the brown off of his skin.” This, of course, played into the racially-charged agenda Jindal is promoting and provided the Louisiana governor with a great deal of unintentional support which he certainly did not deserve. It’s a perfect example of precisely how not to argue against bigotry or, as in this case, Islamophobia.

On this site last week, I argued that the most recent Charlie Hebdo cover wasn’t bigoted, Islamophobic or in any other way objectionable. It’s useful now to have a perfect example of what Islamophobia actually looks like. Jindal is trying to cover his tracks by saying he’s talking about extremists, but by propagating urban legends and paranoid mythologies he is deliberately creating an atmosphere in which his listeners have little choice, assuming they believe him, but to conclude that there is a very dangerous menace in the form of an immigrant community that constitutes a dangerous fifth column in a clash of civilizations.

Like Le Pen, Jindal’s rhetoric is not only grotesquely unfair and untrue, it can only have the effect of making it more difficult for the individual members of Muslim communities and their families in the United States and other Western countries to function effectively and happily in their societies. It promotes fear and hatred of them. What makes it “phobic” is that it is irrational, particularly given that Jindal’s claims rely entirely on a mythological urban legend. Charlie Hebdo is an iconoclastic magazine that makes fun of Islam and all other religions. In its irreverence, it is clearly an equal opportunity offender. However, what Jindal is doing precisely singles out Muslims, stigmatizes them and promotes the idea that they are particularly or uniquely dangerous.

In any free society there has to be space and protection for rhetorical attacks, critiques, lampoons or any other speech that challenges religious ideas, icons or other sensitivities, particularly when they are dealing with abstractions, no matter how sacrosanct they are in some people’s eyes. Of course, this can cross the line into bigotry. But the benchmark for judging must always be the impact such speech has on the ability of actually existing, living human beings to live rich, full and, especially, equal lives in their own societies. Muslims, like other believers, are just going to have to live with critiques by atheists or agnostics or others about their religious views. But when those critiques cross the line into hate speech, they abandon any sense of fairness or accuracy and make claims that are clearly intended to, or will inevitably, stigmatize existing communities and create fear and hatred of them.

Assertions that Islam promotes murder, terrorism, lying, rape and so forth are not critiques of Islam. They are hate speech, because it is manifestly untrue, cannot be argued in good faith, and will inevitably have the effect of creating fear and hatred on the part of non-Muslims against individual Muslims. In the same way, attacks that argue that Judaism also promotes murder, terrorism, lying or rape are not only anti-Semitic, they are a very familiar and old-fashioned form of anti-Semitism. Indeed, the accusations by bigots against Muslims today are virtually indistinguishable from traditional accusations anti-Semites in the West have leveled against Jews, particularly from the middle of the 19th century until the end of the World War II.

So, I suppose that Jindal (and Le Pen, for that matter) are to be thanked, in a bizarre way, for reminding us of what Islamophobia really looks like, since so many people got confused about Charlie Hebdo and its iconoclastic caricatures. Their thinly-veiled, indeed barely-disguised, attacks on people (in this case Muslims) reminds us most helpfully that opposition to bigotry is about the defense of our fellow human beings and their right to be free from calumny. The battle against Islamophobia must, if it is to be successful and respectable, always be squarely directed along those lines. It cannot be about protecting people’s feelings or religious sensibilities. It cannot be about preventing attacks on religions — which, if they are true at all, can defend themselves — or any other set of abstractions.

But it can and must be about squarely recognizing, and insisting that others acknowledge, that attacks like these — which threaten the ability of individual people to practically and functionally be equal to others in their societies, and to live without being subjected to a climate of fear and hostility — have no place in respectable circles. Obviously there shouldn’t be any laws restricting bigotry. Free speech, if it is to have any meaning and really be free, must protect the most outlandish and ridiculous of opinions. But societies have a clear ethical obligation not to treat bigotry as if it were respectable.

Jindal’s comments should have meant the end of his career, and if he had made similar comments about many other groups it would have. In the future, there is no doubt that these kinds of remarks about American and European Muslims will not be uttered with the complete impunity that currently exists. But to get to that stage not only will everyone of goodwill have to redouble their efforts to stigmatize bigotry, we are going to have to be very clear about our definitions, identify hate speech as narrowly as possible, and choose our battles carefully.

You would think people would have the decency to let this go. You really would. But with the blood of much of its core leadership still wet on the ground, French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo is in trouble with the devout and the sanctimonious, as always. I suppose they wouldn’t have had it any other way. Their latest cover has come under heavy fire from many quarters. It depicts a figure identified by many people, including some of those associated with the magazine, as representing the Prophet Muhammed. Under the banner “Tout Est Pardonné” (“all is forgiven”), the figure is tearful and holding a sign reading “Je Suis Charlie.”

It may be their finest hour. Somehow the usually puerile and intentionally vile Charlie Hebdo has managed, on its own terms, to be magnanimous and occupy the high moral ground while at the same time nonetheless infuriating the thin-skinned religious types that are its favorite targets. That’s an impressive circle to square. My friends and colleagues at The National newspaper in the United Arab Emirates have made the best case one could against Charlie Hebdo’s new cover, but I find it entirely unconvincing. Here’s why it makes no sense for anyone to be offended, annoyed or angry.

First, there is no consensus or blanket ban against representations of the Prophet in the vast spectrum of religious belief that constitutes Islam as a social text, both historically and in the present day. There have, in fact, been thousands of representations of Muhammed by Muslims that have been respectful and devout. Whenever this issue comes up, some historian of religion or art or something has to devote — and really we ought to be able to say waste, but unfortunately we cannot — some of their time to explaining how false and ahistorical the claim that there is an “Islamic” prohibition against representing the Prophet really is. The latest example comes from Christiane Gruber in Newsweek, but there are dozens of other similar articles that make this elementary, but somehow weirdly elusive, point for those who somehow still don’t or won’t get it. This oldie but goodie from a few years ago by my friend Omid Safi is always worth revisiting as well.

Second, several commentaries following the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices, including this one by Lucas Powers or this one by Jack Jenkins, have made the case that the problem isn’t with representations of the Prophet Muhammed as such, but is one of perceived disrespect. Let’s put aside for a moment that nobody has a right to expect their beliefs to be respected in a free society and especially by cartoonists and satirists. It’s extremely hard to argue that the new Charlie Hebdo cover isn’t respectful, if we assume it really is depicting the Prophet Muhammed. If that’s the case, he is being shown (and not at all for the first time by this magazine) as being much more humane and decent than some of his followers, particularly violent extremists. This time, the magazine has depicted him as being opposed to violence that has been foisted on his name and reputation by murderous gangsters (they did this before in their famous “It’s hard to be loved by jerks” cover a few years ago). In the immediate context of the massacre — and given the well-established beliefs of the iconoclasts, atheists and communists that make up the staff and leadership of Charlie Hebdo — clearly this cover is not only relatively respectful, it’s downright generous.

Third, it’s worth noting that there isn’t anything inherent in the image that necessarily identifies it as a representation of the Prophet Muhammed. If one believes such representations are “sacrilegious” or “blasphemous” and one looks at this image and concludes that it qualifies, to some extent it is the viewer themselves who imposes that reality on an image that could be interpreted very differently. Obviously, not only does nobody know what the Prophet Muhammed actually looked like, it can be confidently stated that this is not in any way a remotely convincing caricature of an inhabitant of the Arabian Peninsula in the sixth and seventh centuries. So, to a certain extent, to those who are offended by it, this cover is a trap. If there is blasphemy at work, the bulk, if not all of it, is imposed on this otherwise and on its own terms rather ambiguous image by viewers and readers who are insisting on seeing it in the most objectionable light possible. One could, after all, easily dismiss it as not really representing anything remotely like the Prophet Muhammed.

Those who claim to see genitalia or other provocative images buried or encoded in the cartoon are equally demonstrating their own proclivities. They are only there if you think you see them. I don’t, and for me they are not there. If you do think so, and see them there, that says a lot about you and nothing at all about the image itself. Dust off the Freud, read a bit and think again.

Fourth, what’s the alternative? What if Charlie Hebdo had, to the contrary, announced that it would never again depict an image that could be interpreted by anyone as representing the Prophet Muhammed? Would that not mean, simply, that the terrorists had won? that iconoclastic satirists had been cowed by terrorism, brutality and mass-murdered into silence? Is there anyone who respects the Prophet Muhammed or follows the traditional values of mainstream Islam and would not be horrified that a sudden “respect” for their sensitivities was not attributable to having been, in some sense, legitimately earned, that the power of the argument had carried the day, but instead that raw fear and terror had prevailed?

Even for those who disapprove of depictions of the Prophet Muhammed, isn’t murder far worse an offense? If the terrorists have created a binary between the two (as indeed they surely have), isn’t it worse for murder to prevail over iconoclasm? Is there really a good argument to be made that the correct response to this terrorist attack is for the magazine to surrender in the face of that assault? If so, what’s the limit? Who next should feel compelled to alter their behavior and abandon their values because they don’t want to be shot by violent extremists? And wouldn’t that imply, in the final analysis, a tacit endorsement of the effectiveness, if not the validity, of terrorism and murder as a tactic? If we really oppose violence, clearly we cannot seriously counsel capitulation to its coercive force.

Fifth, it is up to those who do not approve of depictions of the Prophet Muhammed on the grounds of the religious sensitivities of some Muslims to propose a practicable and viable way of balancing their disapproval with the requirements of any society that values freedom of conscience and expression. Of course they are free to disapprove all they want. Publications such as the New York Times can decide, as it did, that it did not want to reprint images that many people find religiously objectionable. That, too, is a free-speech right, and a perfectly legitimate decision. And so is the choice made by Charlie Hebdo today.

If publications are not free to make both the New York Times’ and theCharlie Hebdo judgments, then what sort of free speech are we really talking about? Ultimately, there can be no freedom of speech, or freedom of conscience and religion either, if there is no freedom to “blaspheme” in the eyes of others, and to engage in iconoclasm and irreverence towards faith, in general or in particular. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation continues, mainly through Pakistan (which, of course, is one of the worst violators of human rights via anti-blasphemy laws and usually unpunished vigilante actions), an outrageous “Combating the Defamation of Religions” initiative at the UN and other multilateral agencies. This effort to create a zone of impunity around religious sensibilities has been, and will remain, a complete failure because it’s an obvious and blatant attack on the fundamental and universal principles of freedom of speech and conscience.

The onus is very much on those who would go beyond countering speech with speech and look instead for governmental or even international authority to protect religious sensibilities by restricting speech to explain how any of that could possibly be consistent with freedom of religion, freedom of thought and conscience, and freedom of speech. Making the case about double standards and hypocrisy, which is sometimes accurate especially with regard to Europe, doesn’t bolster the argument for restricting speech. It makes the case for eliminating restrictions on indefensible exemption such as laws criminalizing Holocaust denial in a number of European states.

Finally, there is an objectionable quality to the way in which people engaged in this debate who are critical of the new Charlie Hebdo cover typically presume to speak on behalf of large groups of Muslims, whether in France or anywhere else. It’s typically said that “Muslims have been insulted” without any consideration that there undoubtedly is a significant constituency of Muslims who don’t care what Charlie Hebdo publishes at all, and hence have no objections. People are even attributing this sensitivity to Ahmed Merabet, the French police officer who was one of the first victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre. With respect, no one knows how this victim of terrorism would have reacted to Charlie Hebdo’sresponse on its cover today. He might have been insulted. Or, like quite a few Muslims I know, he might have regarded it as a moving and touching, and entirely appropriate, reaction to a terrible crime and tragedy.