Letter from Richard Sherman to New York Magazine on Islamophobia vs. Antisemitism

Regardless of how often the editors and reporters of New York Magazine try to convince themselves that islamophobia is the flip side of antisemitism, it simply is not so.

(" Comments: Week of August 24, 2026")

The fact is that "islamophobia" was created by the Muslim Brotherhood to prevent critical discussion of Islam as a 2025 report from the European Parliament makes clear.

See: " Unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood. Brotherism, Islamophobia and the EU". 4. The Influence of Brotherism in EU Funded Initiatives. Islamophobia as a Case Study. Islamophobia. A Brotherist Concept Par Excellence", Florence Bergeaud-Blackler and Tommaso Virgili, ECR Group in the European Parliament, 2025.

"Nothing unmasks Brotherism more than the “fight against ‘Islamophobia’” – a concept deprived of scientific validation, or even clear definition, which is nonetheless the subject of increasing academic and activist engagement. Islamophobia is the perfect vehicle for the Brotherhood to re-educate society and make it compatible with its demands in a multitude of domains: from anti-blasphemy laws to “anti-Zionism”, from hijab promotion to halal butchering, every demand stemming from the Brotherhood’s rigorist interpretation of Islam is clothed under the mantle of “anti-racism” and “minority rights”. By contrast, any opposition to Islamist ideology, goals or policy proposals is, inescapably, labelled as “Islamophobic”.

" Unmasking the Muslim Brotherhood" page 30/53.

See also: " The Secret Apparatus. The Muslim Brotherhood's Industry of Death", Cynthia Farahat, 2022.

Further as useful idiots of the Muslim Brotherhood, the editors and reporters of New York Magazine promote the antisemitic calumny that "islamophobia" is the flip side of antisemitism; nothing could be further from the truth. For example, the German journalist, Wilhelm Marr, in 1879 created the term “antisemitism” to celebrate his hatred of Jews.

On the other hand, the antisemitic genocidal Muslim Brotherhood, the creator of Al Qaeda, Hamas and the Islamic State, in the late 20th century created the modern term “islamophobia” to prevent critical discussion of Islam….. Exactly what Columbia University by not succumbing to islamophobia allowed on March 21, 2024 when it courageously permitted Mohab Hassan Yousef, author of “Son of Hamas,” to speak.

For example under the weapon of "islamophobia", one cannot discuss the fact that Muslims celebrate the fact that Mohammad was a mass murderer of Jews and a serial misogynist of Jews: in 627, according to the Koran, in Medina, Mohammad directed the decapitation of 600-900 unarmed Jewish men and kidnapped and sexually enslaved 1000 Jewish girls and women. Sounds remarkably similar to October 7th. Even mentioning this Koranic fact is today viewed as “islamophobic” by the many useful idiots of the Muslim Brotherhood on college campuses around the world, and in the media and among progressive Jews....and of course, among Muslims.

As Professor Richard Landes in his brilliant treatise, Can The Whole World Be Wrong states: “Islamophobia is a term systematically used to silence criticism of Islam.

“Islamophobia" as it is defined (let’s take the work of Hatem Bazian) constitutes an elaborate structure for silencing any voice that warns about Caliphators. Using both Saidian rhetoric and the apologetic doctrine adopted by multiple US administrations that Islam is peace and anything violent is not Islam, Bazian and his cohorts attacked any effort to link Jihadi violence with Islam.

"But denunciation was not sufficient for Bazian: "Islamophobia" should be criminalized, banned. Despite extensive data indicating that Jews are much more likely to be victims of hate crimes than are Muslims (and most often at the hands of Muslims), both in the USA and Europe, advocates insisted than banning “islamophobia” would preserve peace. Muslim states that systematically oppress their own religious minorities with increasing ferocity, insist that "Islamophobia" be banned in the name of tolerance and peace.

"The contrast then, between the virulence of Muslim discourse about Jews and other kuffar on the one hand, and hypersensitivity to criticism of Muslims, actually reverses the rapports de force. In fact, most Zionists are willing to tolerate and even encourage remarkable levels of criticism before they hit the limits of what they find offensive and Jew-hating. — i.e. comparisons with Nazis, accusations of organ-stealing, of targeting children, of committing (a very slow) genocide. On the contrary, self-appointed spokespeople for Muslims find the slightest criticism unacceptable. Most of these “spokespeople” are covert triumphalists, doing the work of jihadis in blinding their targets (Western kuffar) to the danger they face. In Bazian’s case, he not only fully supports Hamas suicide terror as “resistance,” and may have cited approvingly the genocidal apocalyptic Hadith of “the rocks and the trees,” but he also calls for an intifada in the United States.

“In combining anti-Zionism with anti-Islamophobia, these militants rearticulate the secular “replacement theology” whereby Israelis (the new Nazis) embody evil and anything one does (“resistance”) or says (“calls to genocide ") are legitimate. By these lights, attacking Israel as essentially racist — “apartheid” — and genocidal is fine. By contrast, even pointing to the historical generalization — rendered all the more accurate and pertinent by the developments set in motion by the “Arab Spring” — that Muslim societies “trend toward despotism and away from progress” or that some (how many?) Muslims in the West support jihadi terror and want to impose Sharia on their own host countries is pure, ugly, racist islamophobia.”

“Can ‘The Whole World’ Be Wrong? Lethal Journalism, Antisemitism and Global Jihad“, Richard Landes, 2022, pp 124-125.

Similarly, Pascal Bruckner, one of the "New Philosophers" in France, writes in rapier like style: "The accusation of being Islamophobic is nothing other than a weapon of mass destruction in intellectual debate. For the past twenty years we have been witnessing the fabrication of a new crime of opinion, analogous to what used be done in the Soviet Union to ' silence enemies of the people'. The guardians of dogma keep a wary eye out for the slightest transgression or allusion. Simply mentioning a 'Muslim problem' will call down the anathema of the censors and threats to sue.... "Islamophobia is first of all the name of a narcissistic wound that has been inverted into resentment ".

See: "An Imaginary Racism. Islamophobia and Guilt", 2022, Pascal Brucker, pp 24-25, 34.

It is unfortunate that the clear and perverse meaning of "islamophobia" is often denied to promote Jew hatred against both individual Jews and the Jewish people and the only Jewish country on earth - while preventing critical discussion about Islam....exactly what the Muslim Brotherhood planned and what their useful idiots around the world today continue to promote.

Richard Sherman, Florida Member of The Institute for the Critical Study of Antizionism