the two religions are enemies

This is part of a rejected article that tells it like it is a little too clearly for some:

Teaching Islam among “The World’s Great Religions” in the University of Hawaii, I learned how profoundly ignorant of one another’s religion those Christians and Muslims were. And worse than ignorant: misinformed. Growing up to the realities of our shrinking globe is painful, and obscuring differences stunts this growth. I taught the similarities and differences, and rejoice in the increasing efforts toward interfaith understanding. But we can make no essential progress, religious or political, unless we honestly and courageously confront the reality that our two religions are essential enemies, antagonists each to the other’s essence, mutual blasphemers. Only with that realism can the mutual blasphemers begin to learn to get along with each other without violence.

from Willis E. Elliott: Thou Shalt Not! The WaPo’s ‘On Faith’ Blog Spikes A Regular Contributor When He Writes On Islam

a philosophe on Islamophobia

A French philosopher is now also weighing in on the dubious nature of this term:

On a global scale, we are abetting the construction of a new thought crime, one which is strongly reminiscent of the way the Soviet Union dealt with the "enemies of the people". And our media and politicians are giving it their blessing. Did not the French president himself, never one to miss a blunder - not compare Islamophobia with Antisemitism? A tragic error. Racism attacks people for what they are: black, Arab, Jewish, white. The critical mind on the other hand undermines revealed truths and subjects the scriptures to exegesis and transformation. To confuse the two is to shift religious questions from an intellectual to a judicial level. Every objection, every joke becomes a crime.

from Pascal Bruckner: The invention of Islamophobia
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Update: There has been a response to this essay at Sign and Sight but its main argument is that something does exist - some kind of racism or religious bigotry - and "Islamophobia" is as good a word as any to describe it.

Call it what you will: there is a form of criticism of Islam which is attempting, via expressions such as "Islamic culture" on the one hand and "Christian-Jewish Leitkultur" (guiding culture) on the other, to establish the concept of two different classes of European citizens. This attempt is driven by an irrational fear, which is comparable to McCarthy's Anticommunist hysteria and which I call "Islamophobia". (And, yes, there were Communist spies in the US Government, and yes, there are Islamist terrorists. But hysteria and fear are not good advisors in the struggle for an open society and against its enemies.)

I'm open to suggestions for better words. But anyone who denies that the process of exclusion and denigration that I've sketched is in fact happening, is obviously suffering from a kind of delusion, a disconnect from reality; and for that person, it is only logical to wish to forbid the words that might remind him that reality exists.

from Alan Posener: Pascal Bruckner and the reality disconnect
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Islamomisos and Islamofovos

Good definitions and analysis here:

Might these facts have something to do with reality? After all, "Islamophobia" means fear of Islam. This is quite different from hatred of Islam or wanting to kill Muslims. A Greek friend informs me that the word for hate in Greek is "misos." Thus, "Islamophobia" is not the same as "Islamomisos."

In fact, what we are seeing is a rational fear in the West based on events (Islamofovos, to use the Greek word) alongside the hatred of the West (Occidentomisos) in much of the Muslim-majority world.

The real concern in Europe, then, is that making Muslims feel "excluded" (that is, unhappy) is more likely the prelude to them killing you than it is to you killing them.

from Barry Rubin: What's Happening in Europe: Holland As A Case Study on Islam and Israel