The Grammar of Gaslighting
The problem with “Islamophobia”
From Soviet wards to Western discourse, the move to pathologize dissent remains the most effective way to silence the survivor.
In the Soviet Union, political non-conformists were often diagnosed with sluggish schizophrenia. It was a masterstroke of state repression: you didn’t have to debate a dissident if you could simply “treat” them.1 By framing political disagreement as psychiatric illness, the state stripped the individual of agency. Dissent was not answered; it was diagnosed.
This tactic has never truly gone away.
It has simply TRAVELED.
On November 2, 2024, after Ahou Daryaei stripped in protest against the compulsory hijab in Tehran, the Iranian state’s immediate response was to suggest she was “mentally unstable.”2 Ahou is neither the first nor the last victim of the Islamic Republic, where resistance is not viewed as a principled stance against tyranny but as a clinical pathology.
We are now witnessing a structurally similar method—implemented through language rather than cells—within the contemporary Western public sphere. Certain actors increasingly deploy the term Islamophobia not to describe discrimination against Muslims, but to delegitimize criticism of Islam as a belief system or Islamist power as a political reality.
The Phobia Trap
The choice of the suffix -phobia over the prefix anti- marks a strategic shift in the grammar of dissent.
“Anti-” (as in antisemitism) implies an ideological or moral stance.
“-Phobia” (as in clinical psychology) implies an involuntary, irrational, and disordered state of mind.
By choosing this word, the critic is moved out of the realm of politics and into the realm of pathology. The speaker is no longer someone to be argued with, but someone to be corrected—or silenced.
The Three-Part Collapse
The term Islamophobia recklessly collapses three distinct phenomena into one accusation:
Anti-Muslim discrimination and violence (a real and documented fact).
Cultural prejudice against Muslim communities.
Criticism of Islamic doctrine, law, or political Islam.
This collapse is not accidental; it is an erasure.
When an Iranian woman beaten by the “Morality Police” speaks out, calling her Islamophobic is a category error. She does not suffer from irrational fear; she speaks from lived experience. To apply this term to her is the ultimate act of gaslighting: telling the victim that her protest is not a response to oppression, but a symptom of mental defect.
The Theological Root: The Maftun Precedent
This linguistic move mirrors a much older logic familiar to those educated under Islamic systems. In Qur’anic lexicon, the term maftun (مفتون) is used to describe those who have gone astray, often carrying the connotation of being afflicted or mentally compromised. The term does not merely mark error; it calls into question the dissenter’s mental or moral capacity.3
In Surah Al-Qalam, the response to those who challenged the message was not purely a debate on merits, but a question of sanity: “Which of you is the afflicted (maftun)?” This established a precedent in which disbelief and apostasy are framed not as reasoned disagreement, but as sickness of the heart or spiritual madness.
An Ethical Violation
The modern use of Islamophobia reproduces this structure almost perfectly. It transforms the dissenter from a political actor into a maftun—someone whose mind or conscience is malfunctioning. Whether the label is religious (afflicted), Soviet (schizophrenic), or modern (phobic), the result is the same: argument is replaced by diagnosis.
Medicalizing political disagreement is a profound ethical violation. It undermines moral agency and erases lived experience. International bodies such as the World Psychiatric Association have condemned the political abuse of psychiatry for this reason. The same ethical standard must apply to language.
If we genuinely care about human rights, we must insist on a clear distinction:
Protecting Muslims from discrimination does not require protecting Islam from criticism.
Solidarity with the oppressed does not require silencing those who have lived under religious oppression.
Any framework that cannot make this distinction is not emancipatory. It is disciplinary.
History has already taught us where the pathologization of dissent leads. We should recognize it—even when it appears in gentler language, justified in the name of progress.
Bloch, S., & Reddaway, P. (1977). Russia’s Political Hospitals: The Abuse of Psychiatry in the Soviet Union. London: Gollancz.
CNN, November 2, 2024. Iranian woman detained after taking clothes off at university in Tehran 🔗
Makarem Shirazi, N. (2008). Commentary on the Quran (Tafsir Nemooneh), Definition of Maflun (WikiFeqh)