An advertising campaign from the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advises that anyone who harbours “intolerance” towards Muslims, or who believes large numbers of the religion’s adherents could pose a danger to the U.S., to take anti-Islamophobia medication for their “unthinking bigotry”.
Information on the packaging for “Islamophobin” informs readers that the medicinal chewing gum provides “multi-symptom relief for chronic Islamophobia”.
The gum promises to treat “irrational fear of Muslims” which is exemplified in the advert by an American man hallucinating that his smiling Muslim neighbour, who is actually pruning plants in his garden, is wielding two swords and shouting “Allahu Akhbar” while chopping frantically at his garden’s foliage.
For some, this supposedly “irrational” association will bring to mind numerous incidents in the past few years where members of the West’s relatively small Muslim minority have attacked non-Muslims in the name of Islam.
In the UK a soldier and a great-grandmother were both beheaded by Muslims invoking Allah’s name. While in the U.S. an Islamic convert beheaded a coworker in Oklahoma, and in another incident in Ohio a Guinean migrant stormed an Arab Christian’s restaurant and slashed at customers with a machete.
The advert also shows a man looking uneasy as he passes a woman wearing a niqab covering her face in a grocery store. After taking the medication, which the advert promises “spreads love”, the camera shows the American man grinning while the niqab-wearing Muslim woman’s eyes crease with laughter.
This is despite the fact that in reality your niqab-wearing neighbour probably wouldn’t be smiling at you. Muslims who adhere to a strict dress code tend to take their faith very seriously, and as such follow the guidance of Muslim scholars who agree that laughing and joking between men and women who aren’t immediate relatives is strictly forbidden.
While the West has seen members of its relatively small Muslim minority populations commit numerous attacks in the name of Islam, the “blind intolerance”, “unthinking bigotry” and an irrational fear of Muslims” is the more pressing focus of concern for CAIR in terms of Muslim/American relations.
The advert states that “side effects” of Islamophobin may include “warm feelings toward Muslims, immigrants or refugees” and “an allergy to the promotion of anti-Muslim bigotry”.
While CAIR and organisations like it are always on the lookout for supposed prejudice towards Muslims in the West — where they choose to live — they seem to have little to say about the daily, life-threatening violence faced by non-Muslims in the Middle East.
Recently in Egypt, where the Muslim Brotherhood enjoy immense popularity, an elderly Christian woman was stripped and paraded through the streets by a Muslim mob while several Christians’ houses were torched.
CAIR has been closely linked to the Islamic supremacist Muslim Brotherhood. In November last year former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz introduced a bill to label the group a terrorist organisation.