Yes Virginia, there is an Islamophobia industry

After the massacre of Jews in France, the mainstream media  was more concerned about a backlash of "Islamaphobia" then they were about the future of Jews in France.  It was as though Jewish lives didn't count.  Although Jews make up only 0.7% of France's population,  last year Jews were the targets of 40% of all hate crime. Its not much different here.  In America in 2012 of 1,340 victims of an anti-religious hate crime,  62.4 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias, and  11.6 percent were victims of an anti-Islamic bias.

So why is there so much noise about "Islamophopbia"? 

Ten years ago  the Organization of Islamic Cooperation began to prioritize protecting the reputation of Islam.  A confederation of "politicians, diplomats, writers, academics, bloggers and activists"  began targeting anyone, Muslim or non-Muslim that besmirched the name of Islam, using threats and harassment to silence their criticism.

“The OIC invented the anti-‘Islamophobia’ movement,” says Zuhdi Jasser, president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy and a frequent target of the honor brigade. “These countries . . . think they own the Muslim community and all interpretations of Islam.”

From the Washington Post,  an important article Asra Q. Nomani, a former Wall Street Journal reporter,  and the author of “Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam.”

She writes:

Alongside the honor brigade’s official channel, a community of self-styled blasphemy police — from anonymous blogs such as LoonWatch.com and Ikhras.com to a large and disparate cast of social-media activists — arose and began trying to control the debate on Islam. This wider corps throws the label of “Islamophobe” on pundits, journalists and others who dare to talk about extremist ideology in the religion. Their targets are as large as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and as small as me. 

The official and unofficial channels work in tandem, harassing, threatening and battling introspective Muslims and non-Muslims everywhere. They bank on an important truth: Islam, as practiced from Malaysia to Morocco, is a shame-based, patriarchal culture that values honor and face-saving from the family to the public square. Which is why the bullying often works to silence critics of Islamic extremism. 

Read it all here