Six Months of "Islamophobia" at Huffington Post

Now August, it's a good time to check in how Huffington Post's running tally of "Islamophobia" in 2016 is going.

If we split the year up January to June, let's go over how it went, and then continue with some analysis:

January:

• Man says arson attack on his halal food truck was a hate crime
• Muslim woman ejected from Trump rally
• Man vandalizes mosque and leaves bacon behind
• Christian college fires woman for wearing hijab and saying allah == yahweh. Now she works at UVA. 
• Manufacturing company in Wisconsin changes prayer time rules, fires a dozen of muslims
• Smeared ketchup found on mosque
• Man couldn't enter "Muhammad Khan" in a videogame as it matched a name on an embargo list
• Robocaller in support of Trump said "We don't need muslims"
• Residents of Bayonne New Jersey opposed a mosque
• Islamic center of Omaha had a window broken and bacon put on the door
• Someone made a parody website of the Islamic center of Wheaton, Illinois
• Drunk college students in Tuscon threw beer bottles off a building and said something racist
• Sikh man says an incident in December 2015 wherein he was attacked and called a 'terrorist' was a hate crime
• Man in Florida on Facebook threatens to burn down mosques
• Men in the Bronx beat up a Bangladeshi man and shout "ISIS"
• Australian MP was asked routine citizenship questions and fingerprinted at LAX
• Bill in Tennessee aims to stop "Islamic religious indoctrination" in schools after a teacher asked students to recite the shahada
• People in Milwaukee don't want a new mosque
• Man in Philadelphia punched "for speaking Arabic"
• Poll results find half of Idahoans want ban on muslim immigration
• Man in Minnesota says Sharia law is coming
• Hijabi in Michigan called a terrorist
• California state muslims student association had a "hateful message" left on a table
• Education administrator in Georgia fired for writing "If you wipe your butt with your bare hand but consider bacon to be unclean, you may be a muslim."
• Bill in South Carolina legislature bans citing Sharia as a defense
• Bill in South Carolina OKs bill to create registry of refugees
• Ben Carson says Islam isn't a religion, says it has an "apocalyptic vision"
• Megyn Kelly asks Chris Christie : "They saw [packages, muslims] and they did not think that was enough to call the cops. Do you?"

This is absolute comedy.

What isn't funny, of course, is the violence, intimidation and plainly false rhetoric used against the muslim community. These acts do form part of the enumerated list of 'ACTS' and are reprehensible.

The funny part is that the Huffington Post thinks this is journalism, and that the Huffington Post thinks it can add.

Let's go over the problems with this list:

It includes baseless conjecture as "anti-muslim acts".

Is there an unverifiable claim on Twitter? A crime that even the police haven't been told about? Did someone shoot a Sikh family's horse?

Even the remote possibility that an attack was motivated by racist or anti-muslim animus is enough to include it as an 'anti-muslim' act.

Meanwhile, the Huffington Post needs an allegiance to ISIS signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry before it will believe that Omar Mateen was in any meaningful way motivated by Islamism. Huffington Post bloggers claim Mateen was motivated by "More Personal Pathology Than Radical Ideology"

It's not even limited to 2016

Events listed in January plainly describe events that happened in the previous year, and many of the news clippings are quite ambiguous about when events actually occurred. The only thing consistent is that the date is when the Huffington Post came to know about the 'act'.

It relentlessly double-counts incidents

The "Islamophobia" tracker follows the same "anti-muslim" bills in different stages of becoming law. If it is brought to a house in one month and voted on in the next, it plainly appears as two 'anti-muslim' acts.

Similarly, if a mosque has bullet holes in its sign and bad words in its email inbox, it will appear as two distinct incidents. If a town has a hearing on a new mosque in February and then again in May, same thing -- just count it twice! If there is an extended disagreement like the Urth Caffé incident, count each and every chapter in the saga as a new 'anti-muslim act'.

This is odd when comparing and considering that 9/11 and the Charlie Hebdo attacks are commonly thought of as singular 'attacks'. In reality 9/11 was the coordination of four terrorist attacks, and the Charlie Hebdo shootings included an attack on a kosher grocery.

It's interesting how 'Islamophobia' tends to multiply events but terrorism tends to fold incidents when one tries to claim that '94%' of terrorist attacks are non-muslim. (Spoiler alert: Some people just need Greenpeace to be as bad as al-Qaeda)

It copy/pastes repetitive campaign talking points as unique problems

What did Trump say this week? Basically the same thing he said last week, but it apparently stands out as another 'act'. Same thing goes for everyone surrounding Ted Cruz.

It includes a lack of a religious accommodations as 'anti-muslim acts'

Failing to change a dress code at a bank, military college, corporation, public building or police department to accommodate muslims is arguably discriminatory, but does it qualify as 'islamophobic'?

Is it 'islamophobic' if a bank teller acts strangely when dealing with a customer in a niqab?

If a pool does not allow for a women-only burkini swim time, is it 'islamophobic act' by default?

It includes 'somewhat problematic' opinions as 'anti-muslim acts'

Feeling that Islam is not a religion or that muslims have an agenda are opinions that are not politically correct and are very debatable. To the degree that Islam is a homophobic project is similarly debatable.

However, these showerthoughts broadcast on Facebook are no more Islamophobic -- in fact perhaps even less Islamophobic -- than the mundane opinions shared on social media that detail how Shia or Ahmadis are not actually muslims.

Strangely, even though that this hateful rhetoric leads to the deaths of muslims, Huffington Post does not feel an obligation to find even one person that shared an anti-Ahmadi or anti-Shia sentiment on social media in the entire United States in 2016.

It counts 'acts' that are the opposite of Islamophobia

In May, South Carolina rejected the 'anti-sharia' bill that the Huffington Post was tracking as 'Islamophobia'. Oddly enough, the rejection of the bill appears on the website just the same - and presumably helps add one more to the final tally of '233' Islamophobic acts.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.