Trickery and the propagation of falsehoods are the weapons of the ignorant and the bankrupt. Those who fight for genuine causes need not resort to deception to win support. They have one big weapon on their side: the truth. Consequently, when a protagonist resorts to falsehoods and deception as a weapon, this casts a huge shadow on the legitimacy of their cause.

One such group of pretenders is Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood. This week the BBC reported that supporters of deposed President Muhammad Morsi, who have tried to depict the mass popular uprising against him and the Brotherhood as a conspiracy led by the Coptic Church and secularists,

used one image of a group carrying a cross to claim Christians had led protests against the Islamist president. The photograph dated from 2012, it later emerged.

Meanwhile, it has been claimed that photographs of dead children were presented by pro-Morsi supporters as evidence of killings by the Egyptian army, with the military saying the images had originated from the conflict in Syria”.

The Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood are not the only ones who resort to trickery to try to win support for themselves. We’re all familiar by now with how Zionists abuse the term “anti-Semtism” – that is, anti-Jewish racism – to shield Israel from all criticism by branding the critics as anti-Semites (or self-hating Jews, in the case of Jewish critics of Israel). The same tactic is also used to deter criticism of anything or anyone Jewish, irrespective of the validity of the criticism. The big flaw in the argument, of course, is the fact that Jews are not a race but are followers of Judaism, a religion of various races.

Muslims are not a race but followers of a religion of various races

This flaw, however, hasn’t stopped some Muslims from borrowing the Zionists’ tactic by stigmatizing critics as racists. As one commentator observed on the Atheism & World Peace Facebook page,

Those openly critical of Islam are sometimes dubiously slurred as racists, regardless of what their true views on race may be.

In fact, Islam is not a race. Islam has nothing at all to do with genetics, nor is it an innate characteristic. It is an ideology – a voluntarily-held set of beliefs about individual behaviour and the rules of society. People choose their beliefs; they do not choose their race.

Therefore Muslims are not a race of people. In fact, there are Muslims of all races.

Hence, criticizing Islam is not racism. There is no such thing as “anti-Muslim racism” any more than there is “anti-Christian racism”, “anti-Methodist racism” or “anti-Capitalist racism”.

Islam is not a race. Muslims are not a race. Islam is an ideology that should be open to critical examination. Muslims, however, are individuals who should be protected from harm or harassment in the same way and for the same reasons as anyone else.

So, if your cause is genuine and legitimate, your only ally and your best weapon is the truth, not trickery, fraud or unsubstantiated assertions.

And if you really believe your ideology is sound and is the path to happiness and wellbeing, and If you have nothing to hide and can justify your behaviour, then you should be able to overwhelm your critics with the force of your argument, not smear them with taboo labels, whether “anti-Muslim racism”, Islamophobia, anti-Semitism or any other form of racism.