Here. If the attacks on Egypt’s Copts are the responsibility of Islam, it’s difficult to understand why leading representives of that faith have appealed for unity between the Muslim and Coptic communities. This was the call issued by Yusuf al-Qaradawi when he addressed a mass rally in Tahrir Square in February. Violence against the Coptic community in Egypt is clearly not the responsibility of an entire faith but of a minority of its adherents. Would the Telegraph report attacks by right-wing bigots on abortion clinics in the United States under the heading “Christianity’s war on healthcare workers”?

Evil Islamists gather in Tunisia: An Nahda election campaign rally

Perhaps it’s just the “Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be” syndrome that affects us all in old age but I can’t help feeling that the competence of Islamophobic witch-hunting over at Harry’s Place – never exactly impressive anyway – is in sharp decline. I mean, there used to be a time when they would at least make some kind of effort to dig up dirt on opponents of the Iraq war or Israeli state terrorism in order to try and discredit them. But standards are slipping.

A recent example is a post headed “Guardian appoints Engage employee as stand in religious affairs columnist”, written by one “Lucy Lips”, who qualifies as the most frothing-at-the-mouth Zionist on a website where she faces stiff competition for that title. Her article is an attack on Nadiya Takolia, who works as a researcher at ENGAGE and last week was responsible for compiling the Guardian‘s Divine Dispatches religion news roundup in the absence of its usual author, the paper’s religious affairs correspondent Riazat Butt. Lips’ attack isn’t even original – it’s lifted from an even more demented Zionist site called CiF Watch – and as an attempt to smear Nadiya Takolia it really is quite pathetic.

Lucy Lips even finds it highly sinister that Takolia provided a link to an item at Islamophobia Watch in her Divine Dispatches article. This was a short piece we posted warning that the English Defence League was intending to establish a political party, which you might have thought was a fairly uncontroversial point to make, even by the standards of Harry’s Place. Furthermore, the previous week’s edition of Divine Dispatches, which was written by Riazat Butt, also linked to our website. Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that Islamophobia Watch actually includes material that is relevant to the subject of that particular Guardian column.

Continue reading →