Just when you thought that opinion might be shifting towards a recognition of the existence of widespread and atrocious media bigotry against the Muslim community, in steps Ed Husain to assure everyone that Islamophobia is just a myth promoted by Islamist extremists.

In an article in today’s Evening Standard marking the third anniversary of the July 2005 London bombings, he writes:

“What has changed since 7/7 is the tactics and the public rhetoric of the extremists. Under pressure from Muslim activists, ‘Islamophobia’ has become accepted as a phenomenon on a par with racism, as examined in tonight’s Channel 4 documentary by political journalist Peter Oborne, for example.”

But it’s all nonsense, according to Ed:

“Outside a few flashpoints where the BNP is at work, most Muslims would be hard-pressed to identify Islamophobia in their lives. Yet that is the charge every time the extremists press for new ‘rights’ – over dress in the workplace, for example. If there is anti-Muslim sentiment, we Muslims have to ask what some of us have done to provoke such feelings in a country that is proudly multi-cultural. Islamist extremism might be a good starting point.”

And who are the proponents of “Islamist extremism”? Well, the people organising Islam Expo later this week are among them, according to Ed Husain. Because some of those involved in the event are supporters of the Palestinian resistance they are no different from the 7/7 bombers, in Husain’s analysis. And worse still, supposedly as a result of “a Ken Livingstone commitment to his friends”, the London Development Agency is one of the sponsors of Islam Expo.

Husain concludes with an appeal to the current Mayor of London: “Boris Johnson has a fresh mandate. He knows the organisers behind this week’s event are those that cry Islamophobia. Will he co-opt them, appease or oppose them? His starting point could be to expose their Westophobia, and empower the right side in this battle of ideas.”

Which I think could be translated as: “Please can I have some GLA funding for the Quilliam Foundation?”

The question is posed by Charles Moore, writing in the Daily Telegraph in response to the Lord Chief Justice’s recent speech on sharia law.

In the category of “Islamist extremists” who he claims have mistakenly been accorded respectability Moore includes the East London Mosque, the Mosques and Imams Advisory Board, Osama Saeed, Islam Expo … and even Shahid Malik MP!

He concludes: “So the solution to extremism is that extremists become the official representatives of Islam in this country. Islamist mosques, organisations and spokesmen will be treated as the true voice of Muslims (and woe betide those Muslims who disagree). Then we shall get a lot more sharia than Lord Phillips has bargained for.”

Writing in this week’s Spectator Rod Liddle rallies to the defence of poor Harry Cummins – “the British Council employee who dared to speak the truth about Islamic ideology”, as the standfirst to Liddle’s article puts it.

Apparently Cummins has been bombarding journalists with an email demanding the right of reply to the Guardian, of a character that leads Liddle to describe him as a paid-up member of the “green ink brigade”.

This, you may recall, was the Harry Cummins who contributed a series of articles to the Telegraph back in 2004 bearing titles such as “Muslims are a threat to our way of life“, and who assured his readers that “Christians are the original inhabitants and rightful owners of almost every Muslim land, and behave with a humility quite unlike the menacing behaviour we have come to expect from the Muslims who have forced themselves on Christendom, a bullying ingratitude that culminates in a terrorist threat to their unconsulted host”.

In response to a critic who accused him of underestimating the diversity of Islam and pointed out that extremists were a minority within the faith, Cummins opined that “all Muslims, like all dogs, share certain characteristics”. Understandably, Cummins denounced the proposal to introduce a law against incitement to religious hatred, which he said had been adopted “at the behest of Muslim foreigners who have forced themselves on us”, and he defended the right to express “a virulent hatred of Muslims”.

Liddle, however, is indignant that Cummins’ employers at the British Council sacked him on the basis that he had made “ignorant” and “hateful” comments about Muslims. According to Liddle, notwithstanding the eccentricity of his emails, Cummins “was certainly not a racist, whatever else he was. He made it clear that his beef was with the ideology, not the people”!

On the other hand we are obliged to Liddle for the revelation that “the more barking mad the letter I receive, the more likely it is that they fervently agree with whatever it is I’ve written”. Well, that would figure, wouldn’t it?

It is “common sense” for Christianity to be sidelined at the expense of Islam, a Government minister claimed on Sunday. Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary, defended Labour’s policy on religion after a report backed by the Church of England claimed that Muslims receive a disproportionate amount of attention.

Daily Telegraph, 9 June 2008

The idea that Blears’ targeting of British Muslims as a suspect community amounts to discriminating in favour of Islam against Christianity is of course laughable.

Nevertheless, Mad Mel is appalled:

“Here is a government minister endorsing the sidelining of the founding faith of her country by an aggressively colonising religion whose adherents are determined that it should supplant that founding faith – and boasting that she is giving it British taxpayers’ money to do so in the name of defeating religious extremism…. The root of this madness is the government’s refusal to acknowledge the essence of the problem. Crippled by tunnel vision in which it sees al Qaeda alone as beyond the pale because the only threat the government recognises is terrorism, it fails to see that the other half of the attack is the attempt by Islamists to colonise the cultural sphere and transform Britain into an Islamic state.”

Melanie Phillip’s blog, 9 June 2008