I came upon this essay at Sultan Shahin's Rethinking Islam blog, where it is quoted in full, but the original is by Wasim Iqbal, posted at New Age Islam.
It begins as follows:
Not long after it was announced that the former Indian President APJ Abdul Kalam had died, large posters bearing his picture and grieving his demise sprouted up all across the town that I am presently visiting. Many of these were in slums and lower-middle class localities. People had probably pooled in money to have these pictures put up as a mark of respect and love for the departed soul. Clearly, Abdul Kalam was a ‘People’s President’, who struck a deep chord even with the poor, from whose ranks he had himself emerged. He was definitely one of the most widely-respected leaders that India has ever had.The late Indian President had a very obviously ‘Muslim’ name, but that did not prevent vast numbers of Indians, irrespective of caste, class and religious background, from adoring him. Clearly, then (unlike what some Muslims imagine), being ‘Muslim’ is in itself by no way a permanent and impassable barrier for Muslims to win the love, respect and hearts of people from other faith backgrounds.
Today, there is much talk and concern—especially, but not only, in Muslim circles—about anti-Muslim prejudice and negative views about Islam that in recent years have skyrocketed across the globe. Many Muslims who are deeply concerned about this issue insist that it needs to be tackled urgently. They propose a range of measures to deal with it, including launching efforts to educate people of other faiths about Islam so as to address their concerns and misconceptions about the faith; appealing to states to penalize hate speech against Muslims; calling for governments to expand existing anti-discrimination laws to include ‘Islamophobia’ under their ambit, and so on.
Yet, even as such Muslims continue to press with such demands, anti-Muslim sentiments continue to mount. It is not at all difficult to see why. ‘Anti-Muslimism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ have much to do with the views, attitudes and behaviour of significant numbers of Muslims themselves, who are themselves a major cause for ‘anti-Muslimism’ and ‘Islamophobia’ across the world today. This is something that those Muslims who readily accuse the rest of the world as being inherently and congenitally ‘Islamophobic’ do not seem to, or choose not to, recognize.
And yes, the dailykos average reader is going to exclaim, "but he's blaming the victims!".Which is why an American liberal critique of Islam is next to impossible. The Elephant in the Room cannot be named.
Further, Cecil the Lion got more media coverage than Avijit Roy, the American of Bangladeshi origin, an intellectual descendant of Thomas Paine, one might say, who was hacked to death by Islamists in Bangladesh; not an isolated incident, but a pattern in an ongoing war against liberal, secular, humanist writers in Bangladesh -- we know there is a target list of 89, and about half-a-dozen have been dispatched so far.
And Avijit Roy's widow, Bonya Ahmed gave a great speech, explaining what is happening, and dailykos readers gave it one comment. After all, murder of an American (citizen) humanist in a foreign land is none of their business.