Lawmaker Says Opposition To Hamas Is Not Islamophobia

An Iranian-born European lawmaker has condemned attempts to silence her with the label of ‘Islamophobe’, especially since the current conflict began in the Mideast.

Darya Safai, a member of the Belgian parliament, mentioned on her X account that some individuals are attempting to silence her by labeling her as an 'Islamophobe.'

Safai is also a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

“What the world is experiencing today is much broader than a war between Israel and Hamas. It is a broad war that shows the direction for certain Muslims to ultimately achieve their goals," she said, highlighting the Muslims’ promised goal to conquer the world and establish an Islamic rule.

“A goal promised to them in their holy book. In the eyes of Islamists, this is a war between Muslims and Israel/West in order to eventually form and conquer a great ummah as the ultimate goal,” said Safai, who has been one of the most vocal European politicians against the violations of human rights by the Iranian regime.

Expressing what many Iranians feel, Safai said, “Criticizing a religion or an ideology, like criticizing Islam, is not something that can be compared to racism or fascism.”

She touched upon an issue often discussed in Iranian social media and said that people who are in line with the Islamic Republic’s propaganda aim to silence all voices of reason. “These shouters do insinuate this and, in this way, try to silence the critics with their term 'Islamophobia’”, she added.

Safai also pointed out that phobia is an unreasonable fear of something, arguing that fear of what Islamist extremists can do is a genuine fear justifiable by the history of deadly attacks on peaceful activism by Islamists.

“Anyone who has grown up in a country where Sharia law is the law, and has experienced it first-hand, has reasons enough to be afraid of the destruction Islam can create," she said.

The regime in Iran killed about 600 people and arrested 22,000 people in 2022-2023 just to prove that the regime did not kill a 22-year-old girl for hijab defiance. “Despite what some naive people try to make us believe here in the West, Islam is not the religion of love and peace, but an ideology that promises its followers a glorious victory, and everything necessary to follow that path, even jihad and terror, is justified,” Safai said.

Vowing that she would “not be silenced by being intimidated with the label Islamophobe,” she said, “I am not afraid and will resolutely continue my work with everything in my power. As a politician it’s my duty to protect Europe and our society from these extremists and I will continue to do so.”

Her remarks echoed a similar sentiment by a large number of Iranians who have become especially vocal about their opposition to the Islamic Republic’s narrative of the Middle East conflict.

On Thursday, Ali Rabiee, a spokesman for former Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, implicitly confirmed the high number of Iranians who support Israel in the war against Hamas, which declared war on Israel October 7, when its forces killed 1,400 Israelis and took over 230 hostages.

Rabiee described the Iranians’ pro-Israel stance as an act of oppositional defiance against the Islamic Republic, derived from decades of justifying hefty investment in militant Palestinian and other groups. Some Iranians stand with Israel in the conflict based on their “national oppositional defiance” against the Islamic Republic, he said.

Since the Hamas terror operation it codenamed al-Aqsa Flood (Storm in Persian), Iranians have become even more vocal about their distance from the Islamic Republic’s narrative of the conflict, making trendy hashtags like #IranStandsWithIsrael or chanting creative slogans about where the regime should put the Palestinian flag.

An emotional funeral for a young Israeli soldier of Iranian origin killed in the Hamas attack went viral earlier this week. People saw a video of Shirel Haeimpour’s grandfather singing a traditional Jewish love song and a wedding song with his Esfahani Persian accent for the young woman.