ISLAMOPHOBIA, WHY DOES IT EXISTS?

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Why do people around the world are afraid of Islam? What is this so called Islamophobia? Is it contagious? Is it dangerous?

ISLAMOPHOBIA

Yes, this word is the most famous word in the world, famous in search engines and maybe the internet community. Islamophobia consist of two words, Islam and phobia. Islam came from Arabic word Salam – that is a word that means ‘submission or surrender’, but also can be translated as peace and harmony.

Islam as a whole phrase can be translated simply as: a religion the believers believe in Allah, have faith in the Last Messenger of Allah, Muhammad Rasulullah and his teaching, and also believe in other prophets send by Allah, believe in al-Quran as the Book of Allah and guidance but also believe in other books such as Torath, Bible and Zabur. Phobia comes from Greek word Phobos meaning fear or morbid fear. In phrase we can translate Phobia as “An extreme or irrational fear of or aversion to something”.  It is a type of anxiety disorder cause by persistent fear of things, objects, situation, people, organization or cause from one owns’ imagination.

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So combine these two words Islam and Phobia and we get a new word, Islamophobia. What is actually this Islamophobia thing? Oxford Dictionary Online translates Islamophobia as: noun; a hatred or fear of Islam or Muslims, especially as a political force.Collins English Dictionary Online translates Islamophobia as hatred or fear of Muslims or of their politics or culture. That’s right, fear of Islam or Muslims. Why should other people fear of Islam and Muslims in the first place? Why the people of the world are being brainwashed by the media to fear Muslim and Islam? Is there any concrete reason for that?

People tend to be afraid of something they cannot or didn’t understand. For example a man named John, John works as a professional skydiver, he do stunts and also teach people how to skydiving. But let’s say if there’s a bank coming to him asking him to audit their account, will John do it out of knowledge? Nah, 100 % guarantee he won’t. He will be afraid to do it because he doesn’t know accounting or doesn’t even have knowledge. Got the idea here? That is also the same situation happening to human and people all over the world when being mentioned about Islam. They don’t know, they don’t understand that’s why they are afraid of Islam. 

LEARNING ISLAM FOR MUSLIM AND NON MUSLIM

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TO NON-MUSLIM

Learning Islam is not hard, Islam is the easiest and simplest religion that can be understand by the entire human in the world. Only those who want to open their mind, ready to learn and listen to the words and engage in academic and professional discussion can learn and understand Islam. You don’t have to convert to Islam to understand Islam, and you are not supposed to look through Muslims to learn and understand Islam, as the religion and its practitioner are two completely different things. Learn Islam through reading related books or websites, seek forums (with correct guidance, and not all online forums can be trusted), and also ask for help from those who really know and understand Islam, scholars who can help and guided you in learning Islam (and not just picking up someone we assume a Muslim but doesn’t know Islam either). Open up; let’s be friend, friend in religion and friend in understanding.

TO MUSLIMS

Our Prophet Muhammad SAW had reminded us that we Muslims carry the image of Islam. We are the representative of our religion, the promoter of peace and tranquillity in life.  We should heed to the advice of our Prophet in promoting Islam the correct way, don’t scare others with bad image and negative reflections of Islam. Remember, we will be rewarded by Allah for explaining Islam.  Our job is to promote the goodness and positive values of Islam, not to convert people. That is Allah’s job, human should not do Allah’s job as we are powerless. So lets us all promote Islam in a better way and make sure we Muslims have good connection and relationships with practitioner of other religion such as Christian, be it Catholic, Protestant or Evangelical, Buddhist, Hindus, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Sikhs, and many other religious in the world.