Kenan Malik: *Blurring the line between criticism and bigotry fuels hatred of Muslims and Jews.*

This leads him, among other things, to reject the term "Islamophobia", for slightly different but related reasons:

It is for this reason that I have long been a critic of the concept of “Islamophobia”; not because bigotry or discrimination against Muslims does not exist, but because the term conflates disapproval of ideas and disparagement of people, making it more difficult to challenge the latter. It is, in my view, more useful to frame such intolerance as "anti-Muslim prejudice" or "bigotry". The issue, though, is not one of wording; what matters is less the term employed than the meaning attributed to it.

The term I coined is "antimuslimism". I reject it because of a category error: bigotry is not a phobia. A phobia is a mental disorder; we cannot blame people for having a phobia. We can and should blame people (including ourselves) for bigotry. Thus, paradoxically, calling bigotry "phobia" lets the bigots off the moral hook.

I agree with his point that the choice of meaning is more important than the choice of word. But often an article uses the word without explanation, assuming the reader knows what it means. In those articles, the choice of word is the core of the article's communication about the meaning intended.

Another gem from the article:

Anti-Zionism is not necessarily antisemitic; but it can be, and too often is. The answer is not to label all expressions of anti-Zionism as antisemitic but to call out the latter, while acknowledging the legitimacy of the former.

I should comment that criticism (however strong) of actions of Israel is not necessarily anti-Zionism.