Another incoherent anti-Muslim diatribe from Nick Cohen in the Observer. He applauds the editor of Die Welt who re-published the Danish cartoons on the grounds that “it is essential to protect freedom of expression because of all the pain we have invested to keep our liberal, secular society”. Somehow, you can’t imagine Cohen offering similar congratulations to an editor promoting “free speech” by printing anti-semitic caricatures. But publish racist illustrations directed against Muslims and Cohen will acclaim you as a defender of secular liberalism.

Cohen also takes exception to an admirable call by the EU to avoid the term “Islamic terrorism”. He objects that “the EU wishes to deny that political Islam inspires terrorists to blow up everything from mosques in Baghdad to tube trains in London, even when Islamist terrorists say explicitly that it does”. Perhaps Cohen would like us to refer to Bush and Blair as “Christian terrorists”, on the basis that they both make it clear that their politics are inspired by their religious beliefs? But then, I was forgetting – Cohen enthusiastically approves of that sort of terrorism, seeing the invasion and occupation of Iraq as a means of bringing liberal secular values to the benighted Muslim masses.

Mind you, Cohen does have one admirer – Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch, who pays tribute to this “most welcome anti-dhimmitude from Nick Cohen”. Dhimmi Watch, 14 May 2006