“For quite a few years now, there has been a sustained effort on the part of the British media to present Islam – even after the Rushdie affair and now during the Taliban’s reign of terror – as something essentially ‘joyous’ and ‘vibrant’…. Not a mention of the women tortured, the Christian converts executed, the apostates hounded, the slaves in Sudan being sold into torment right now. Call me a filthy racist – go on, you know you want to – but we have reason to be suspicious of Islam and to treat it differently from the other major religions.”

Julie Burchill in the Guardian, 18 August 2001

“Julie Burchill’s article could very well have been written by Nick Griffin of the British National Party, who has also declared that Muslims are a problem”, Bilal Patel points out.

Guardian, 25 August 2001

Since the disturbances in Bradford almost all commentators, reporters, race and religious experts and politicians have been making remarks, which in any other context, would have been condemned as blatantly racist and Islamophobic.

Muslim News, 27 July 2001

Imam Sajid believes that the media “demonizes Islam”. After the Oklahoma bombing, for instance, the world’s media immediately speculated that a Muslim was responsible, “without checking the facts”. One can understand, therefore, Muslim frustration when tabloid headlines scream about Pakistan’s “Muslim bomb”. Britain’s and America’s nuclear arsenal would hardly be called Judeo-Christian.

But not only the tabloid press are to blame, says Philip Lewis, author of Islamic Britain, who, as advisor to the Bishop of Bradford on interfaith issues, also served on the Runnymede Commission. “We found that it was the quality press who were pumping out bile,” he says.

“Replace the word Muslim with Jew in any story on Muslims and it sounds anti-Semitic. That is Islamophobia,” says Yousif al-Khoei, who runs the al-Khoei educational and religious foundation in London.

For a Change, August/September 1998