In a recent article in the Corriere, I dwelt on what I believe to be a dominant feature of the cultural and political situation on our continent: the very strong difficulty that present-day Europe, in particular its ruling and political classes, has in thinking the Negative. To think that there can be evil, the Adversary; and consequently Europe's difficulty in accepting the possibility that there can be any kind of incomprehensible conflict (e.g. that over values) or that maximum expression of it which is war. No: there can be agreement or compromise on everything: you just have to want it. It is obvious how all this results in a dramatic consequence: in the loss of a sense of reality, in no longer being able to think of the world as it is and not as we would like it to be.

To make matters worse, it happens that such a ban on thinking reality has now found its sanction even in the use of words, in vocabulary. In the hammering dissemination of terms that serve precisely to stigmatise, let us say in advance, the orientation of thought in a certain direction. Of terms that serve to preventively immunise society from thinking the negative by helping it to hide it, not to see it. And so, for example, evoking certain aspects of Islam - true, mind you, not invented or artfully manipulated - is defined sic et simpliciter as Islamophobia.

With the implication of something sick, of pathological fixation that such a term implies.

It is then evident that it becomes difficult not only to discuss but even to know such an important reality of the contemporary scene. If, for example, on the subject of the anti-immigration protests that have just taken place in Great Britain and resulted in serious riots and violence with undoubted racist content against Islamic people and institutions, someone also recalls, however, the enormous impression left in that country by the scandal of Rotherham - a town in Yorkshire where, for fear of being considered ‘Islamophobic’, the police and local authorities refused for years to investigate hundreds of sexual abuses committed by Asian immigrants of the Muslim faith against very young poor white men and women, many of whom were enslaved and forced into prostitution (a detailed reconstruction of the fact with the outcome of the investigation is on the Guardian website by typing ‘Rotherham’) - I repeat: if one remembers even such a fact in its enormous gravity to explain (explain, not justify! ) the above riots, is that Islamophobia or not? What, in short, is the boundary beyond which the lawfulness - which one hopes no one dares to question - of analysis and judgement ends, and Islamophobia really begins?

The nonchalant use of the term Islamophobia by the mainstream of opinion that counts, and by many authoritative media outlets, points directly to the increasingly generalised application of the double standard that is now the rule in Europe and throughout the West.

For example: does the killing of a woman in Italy have a space in the press and produce a media echo remotely comparable to the daily deprivation of rights, social minority, often savage physical persecution, which affects millions of women in almost all Islamic countries? Which happens - a not insignificant detail - for the reason put forward by their persecutors themselves that so would, they say, the ethics of Islam. Fine: but when one of the many televisions talk shows deprecates our ‘patriarchal culture’, how many of those present (and especially how many women) think of observing that the one that still flourishes in this part of the world simply makes a laughing stock compared to what happens in a large part of Islam? Is it permissible to think that the fear that the accusation of Islamophobia permanently hovering around us inspires has something to do with this resounding turning of eyes away? That the fear that that word instils prevents us from seeing things as they are?

Islamophobia certainly exists as a cultural prejudice in all its possible forms, it would be foolish to deny it. And certainly racism can manifest itself in it. But, I repeat, what is striking is not only the generically intimidating use of the term in public discourse, but the absence of the use of a similar term for identical phenomena but with different actors, perhaps on opposite sides. Again, it is striking to close one's eyes to reality, not wanting to see evil and refusing to give it its name.

Here again, an example: in Europe, in the West, in the land of Islamophobia, it is nevertheless very rare - fortunately! - physical aggression and even more so the killing of an Islamic person because of his or her religious beliefs. Conversely, in almost all of Islam, with very rare exceptions, Christians are not only officially forbidden to worship (in defiance of I don't know how many UN’s declarations on human rights: has anyone ever protested?), but in some parts of Islam - in sub-Saharan Africa to name but one - Christians are constantly in mortal danger because of their faith alone. In recent years, there have been dozens and dozens of Christians burnt alive, tortured, massacred in those places.

Well, what would be said in Europe if something even remotely similar were to happen here? So much for Islamophobia! Instead, perhaps I remember wrongly, but I have never seen or heard the very appropriate term Christianophobia used in connection with the above crimes. Never. So we must once and for all ask ourselves: Why? Why are we no longer able to face reality, to name things? What are we afraid of? And perhaps try to give ourselves an answer.

See, Si è perso il senso della realtà

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