An insight into how the Guardian/British journalism educates itself about Israel with that fierce commitment to truth and objectivity for which it is rightly famous:

NUJ Central London branch presents VISIT PALESTINE produced and directed by Katie Barlow at the Guardian News Room, 60 Farringdon Road

"...a passionate indictment of the Israeli military in the Jenin refugee camp...this is raw, urgent movie-making." The Guardian

"An astonishing piece of work, a wonderful film...quite unlike anything I've seen." John Pilger.

What drives a young, well-educated Irishwoman to volunteer as a "peace activist" in the Middle East? Caiomhe Butterly is one of a growing number of volunteers who risk their own safety to intervene in the long-running and bloody conflict between Israel and Palestine.

Activists such as Butterly are usually stereotyped as lunatics, meddlers or saints. Visit Palestine offers an insight into a brave, honest,determined yet self-critical woman who takes direct action to the limit,with no quest for glory. The film also reveals the everyday lives of Palestinians and challenges the one-dimensional stereotype of them as fighters or victims, heroes or fanatics. The film gives us a rare chance to see whatshe calls "the spaces of beauty and joy" created by a people under occupation.

Shortlisted for a Grierson Award 2005 for Best Newcomer
Nominated for a Rory Peck Award 2005

Followed by a Q & A session with Katie Barlow and Caimhe Butterly, chairedby NUJ general secretary Jeremy Dear.

Noam Chomsky provides another example of the superior moral sensibility for which he is justly renowned by stating that Hamas is preferable to the United States and Israel:

Personally, I'm very much opposed to Hamas' policies in almost every respect. However, we should recognize that the policies of Hamas are more forthcoming and more conducive to a peaceful settlement than those of the United States or Israel. So to repeat: The policies, in my view, are unacceptable, but preferable to the policies of the United States and Israel.

The Canadian National Post, which ran the story claiming that Iran was to introduce distinctive badges for Jews and other minorities, has now said the story was false and apologised. This link can only be read by subscription only, but in view of the seriousness of the allegation and the twists and turns of the story, I reproduce the item in full here.

Last Friday, the National Post ran a story prominently on the front page alleging that the Iranian parliament had passed a law that, if enacted, would require Jews and other religious minorities in Iran to wear badges that would identify them as such in public. It is now clear the story is not true. Given the seriousness of the error, I felt it necessary to explain to our readers how this happened.

The story of the alleged badge law first came to us in the form of a column by Amir Taheri. Mr. Taheri, an Iranian author and journalist, has written widely on Iran for many major publications. In his column, Mr. Taheri wrote at length about the new law, the main purpose of which is to establish an appropriate dress code for Muslims. Mr. Taheri went on to say that under the law, 'Religious minorities would have their own colour schemes. They will also have to wear special insignia, known as zonnar, to indicate their non-Islamic faith.'

This extraordinary allegation caught our attention, of course. The idea that Iran might impose such a law did not seem out of the question given that its President has denied the Holocaust and threatened to 'wipe Israel off the map.' We tried to contact Mr. Taheri, but he was in transit and unreachable.

The editor who was dealing with Mr. Taheri's column wrote to Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. The Wiesenthal Center is an international Jewish human rights organization that keeps a close watch on issues affecting the treatment of Jews around the world, and maintains contacts in many countries, including Iran. Asked about the specific allegation that Iran had passed a law requiring religious minorities to identify themselves, Rabbi Cooper replied by e-mail that the story was 'absolutely true.' When a reporter spoke to Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean of the Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, a short while later, Rabbi Hier said the story was true and added that the organization had sent a letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan asking him to take up the matter. (Rabbi Hier has since said that, contrary to the understanding of the reporter, the Wiesenthal Center had not independently confirmed Mr. Taheri's allegation.)

The reporter also spoke with two Iranian exiles in Canada -- Ali Behroozian in Toronto and Shahram Golestaneh in Ottawa. Both said that they had heard the the story of the badges from their contacts in Iran and they believed it to be true. Canada's Foreign Affairs Department did not respond to questions about the issue until after deadline, and then only to say they were looking into the matter. After several calls to the Iranian embassy in Ottawa, the reporter reached Hormoz Ghahremani, a spokesman for the embassy. Mr. Ghahremani's response to the allegation was that he did not answer such questions.

We now had four sources -- Mr. Taheri, the Wiesenthal Center and two Iranian exiles in Canada -- telling us that according to their sources the Iranian law appeared to include provisions for compelling religious minorities to identify themselves in public. Iranian authorities in Canada had not denied the story. Given the sources, and given the previous statements of the Iranian President, we felt confident the story was true and decided to publish it.

The reaction was immediate and distressing. Several experts whom the reporter had tried unsuccessfully to contact the day before called to say the story was not true. The Iranian embassy put out a statement late in the day doing what it had failed to do the day before -- unequivocally deny such a law had been passed. The reporter continued to try to determine whether there was any truth to the story. Some sources said there had been some peripheral discussion in the Iranian parliament of identifying clothing for minority religions, but it became clear that the dress code bill, which was introduced on May 14 and has not yet been passed into law, does not include such provisions.

Mr. Taheri, who had written the column that sparked the story, was again unreachable on Friday. He has since put out a statement saying the National Post and others 'jumped the gun' in our characterization of his column. He says he was only saying the provisions affecting minorities might happen at some point. All of the people who read the column on the first day took it to mean the measure was part of a law that had been passed. Mr. Taheri maintains the zonnar, or badges, could still be put in effect when the dress code law is implemented. On Saturday, the National Post ran another front-page story above the fold with the Iranian denial and the comments of the experts casting doubts on the original story.

It is corporate policy for all of CanWest's media holdings to face up to their mistakes in an honest, open fashion. It is also the right thing to do journalistically. We acknowledge that on this story, we did not exercise sufficient caution and skepticism, and we did not check with enough sources. We should have pushed the sources we did have for more corroboration of the information they were giving us. That is not to say that we ignored basic journalistic practices or that we rushed this story into print with no thought as to the consequences. But given the seriousness of the allegations, more was required.

We apologize for the mistake and for the consternation it has caused not just National Post readers, but the broader public who read the story. We take this incident very seriously, and we are examining our procedures to try to ensure such an error does not happen again.

Douglas Kelly, Editor-in-Chief, National Post

Interview in yesterday's New York Sun.

A story notes:

There were 32,100 Islamists living in Germany last year - an increase of about 300 from 2004, said the report by Germany's domestic security agency, the Verfassungsschutz.

Cause for concern, then? Don’t be silly.

The number of Islamist extremists based in Germany increased slightly last year but the country faces far lower threat of terrorist attacks than states which took part in the Iraq war, an official report said Monday.

So that’s all right then. But hold on:

‘Even though the degree to which Germany is threatened is clearly lower than for those states which took part in the Iraq war, it must be noted that Germany is still seen ... as a helper of the US and Israel,’ said the report which underlined the presence of German troops in Afghanistan as boosting this image.

Ah.

Here are two more links to recent comments published about my new book Londonistan, just published in the US by Encounter and published next month in the UK by Gibson Square:

Editorial in New York Sun

Review by ‘Spengler’ in Asia Times

The usual moral inversion by the BBC:

Gaza always feels like a pressure cooker. How could it be anything else? It is one of the most overcrowded places in the world. Getting on for a million and a half people live in a strip of land around 50km long and 9-12km wide. But in this claustrophobic, fragile place, brutalised by getting on for 40 years of a violent Israeli occupation, the temperature is rising.

Excuse me? ‘Brutalised by a violent Israeli occupation’? Every word in this phrase is a distortion. There is no ‘occupation’ in the accepted sense of the word: ever since Oslo, the Arabs of Gaza and the West Bank have been ruled by their own Palestinian Authority. Israeli military actions in these areas have been necessitated solely by the terrorism inflicted upon Israelis by their inhabitants and Israel’s need to defend its citizens against mass murder. (The other Israeli activity has been routinely treating Palestinians from Gaza in Israeli hospitals, about which the BBC is silent). The Arabs of Gaza were not ‘brutalised’ by Israel; Israel is having to defend itself against them because they are brutal. Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israel predated the ‘occupation’ of the disputed territories, and Arab terrorism against Palestinian Jews predated the restoration of Israel as a Jewish state.

Like it or not, what is happening amounts to collective punishment.

Yes, it is indeed collective punishment: a century of collective punishment by the Arabs of the Jews, for asserting the right of the Jews to live as a nation in their own historic land.

Since my post last Friday (below) on the report in the Canadian National Post that Iran was introducing yellow badges for Jews and other identifying badges for other faith members, it has been reported that this story was not true and even that it was a hoax.

The Post itself published a subsequent story casting doubt on the original, containing strong denials by an Iranian embassy spokesman in Ottowa and second-hand denials from the Jewish community in Iran:

Sam Kermanian, of the U.S.-based Iranian-American Jewish Federation, said: in an interview from Los Angeles that he had contacted members of the Jewish community in Iran — including the lone Jewish member of the Iranian parliament — and they denied any such measure was in place. Mr. Kermanian said the subject of ‘what to do with religious minorities’ came up during debates leading up to the passing of the dress code law. ‘It is possible that some ideas might have been thrown around,’ he said. ‘But to the best of my knowledge the final version of the law does not demand any identifying marks by the religious minority groups.’

But the same story also sounded a note of ambiguity:

Ali Reza Nourizadeh, an Iranian commentator on political affairs in London, suggested that the requirements for badges or insignia for religious minorities was part of a ‘secondary motion’ introduced in parliament, addressing the changes specific to the attire of people of various religious backgrounds. Mr. Nourizadeh said that motion was very minor and was far from being passed into law. That account could not be confirmed.

Now a report today in the New York Sun offers yet another twist to this disconcerting series of revelations and denials. Pointing out that the writer who first made the claim was Amir Taheri, an Iranian analyst whose finger is usually on the pulse, it reports that Taheri is sticking by his own story.

This is what Taheri published today in response to the controversy:

Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun. As far as my article is concerned I stand by it. The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation.

Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation, including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such. The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. (In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908).

I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004. I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September. Regarding the dress code story it seems that my column was used as the basis for a number of reports that somehow jumped the gun.

As far as my article is concerned I stand by it. The law has been passed by the Islamic Majlis and will now be submitted to the Council of Guardians. A committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of implementation. Many ideas are being discussed with regard to implementation, including special markers, known as zonnars, for followers of Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism, the only faiths other than Islam that are recognized as such. The zonnar was in use throughout the Muslim world until the early 20th century and marked out the dhimmis, or protected religious minorities. ( In Iran it was formally abolished in 1908). I have been informed of the ideas under discussion thanks to my sources in Tehran, including three members of the Majlis who had tried to block the bill since it was first drafted in 2004. I do not know which of these ideas or any will be eventually adopted. We will know once the committee appointed to discuss them presents its report, perhaps in September.

But -- now two named members of Iran’s Jewish community – including its lone Jewish member of parliament – have denied the story:

Over the weekend, the representative of Iran's Jewish community in the Iranian legislature, Maurice Motamed, denied that the proposed dress code changes would require minorities to wear distinctive clothing or badges. The chairman of the parliament's cultural committee, Emad Afroogh, also told wire services that the initial reports of such restrictions were ‘worthless.’

Yet Mr Kermanian’s own tune has changed, and he is now saying that he thinks the proposal was a ‘trial balloon’:

‘I am not sure if we have the whole picture. The person who originally reported this, Amir Taheri, is someone with fantastic credibility. In my heart, I think there must have been something that triggered this,’ Mr. Kermanian said.

The Sun’s report goes on to say this:

An Iranian-American anti-regime activist living in New York, Banafsheh Zand-Bonazzi, said the formal legislation does not contain language on the special insignias, but added that Mr. Taheri was correct in saying this measure is being discussed and considered.’I have spoken to quite a few people and it is a subject being discussed,’ she said. ‘This is about being able to decipher who is who, so they can pinpoint the dissidents who make trouble for the regime and determine what ethnic group they come from.’

Yet, the Sun goes on, the denials of the story have spawned an instant conspiracy theory among the usual suspects (natch):

Some who fear that President Bush may be planning a land war against Iran, or at least the aerial bombing of its suspected nuclear facilities, pounced on the fact that the central claim of the National Post story has not been confirmed. On his Web log yesterday, the former president of the Middle East Studies Association, Juan Cole, called the original National Post story a ‘black psy-ops operation,’ implying it was deliberately planted to demonize President Ahmadinejad.

But as the Sun also points out:

...the prospect of a dress code for non-Muslims in an Iranian theocracy is not so far-fetched. Iranian religious leaders historically mandated dress codes for non-Muslims. The country’s current constitution already carves out special status for non-Muslims, prohibiting them from obtaining senior posts in either the army or government. Muslims in Iran officially enjoy preference over non-Muslims in gaining admission to universities.

So before this story is consumed altogether by the global politics of intellectual warfare, can someone please establish the truth here once and for all?

Update: See later post, 27 May 2006.

Canada’s National Post reports that Iran may require Jews and Christians and other minorities to wear coloured badges to identify themselves as non-Muslims. The implications and historical resonance are as obvious as they are horrific:

Iran's roughly 25,000 Jews would have to sew a yellow strip of cloth on the front of their clothes, while Christians would wear red badges and Zoroastrians would be forced to wear blue cloth… ‘This is reminiscent of the Holocaust,’ said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles. ‘Iran is moving closer and closer to the ideology of the Nazis.’

True enough. But what many may not realise is that the yellow star by which the Jews in Nazi Germany were branded has wider and deeper origins. Indeed, it started under Islam, when Jews living under Muslim rule in the eighth and ninth centuries were forced to wear first a distinguishing mark and then a piece of yellow cloth, variously a belt, a turban and a badge. This sign of ‘dhimmi’ status was subsequently adopted in medieval times in Europe and in Britain, where Jews were forced to wear a yellow badge.

The Nazi yellow star was merely the latest reworking of that historic global obscenity. Until now.

From today’s New York Times:

In 1999, there were only eight newborn American girls named Nevaeh. Last year, it was the 70th-most-popular name for baby girls, ahead of Sara, Vanessa and Amanda.

The spectacular rise of Nevaeh (commonly pronounced nah-VAY-uh) has little precedent, name experts say. They watched it break into the top 1,000 of girls' names in 2001 at No. 266, the third-highest debut ever. Four years later it cracked the top 100 with 4,457 newborn Nevaehs, having made the fastest climb among all names in more than a century, the entire period for which the Social Security Administration has such records.

Nevaeh is not in the Bible or any religious text. It is not from a foreign language. It is not the name of a celebrity, real or fictional. Nevaeh is Heaven spelled backward.

The name has hit a cultural nerve with its religious overtones, creative twist and fashionable final 'ah' sound. It has risen most quickly among blacks but is also popular with evangelical Christians, who have helped propel other religious names like Grace (ranked 14th) up the charts, experts say. By contrast, the name Heaven is ranked 245th.

'Of the last couple of generations, Nevaeh is certainly the most remarkable phenomenon in baby names,' said Cleveland Kent Evans, president of the American Name Society and a professor of psychology at Bellevue University in Nebraska.The surge of Nevaeh can be traced to a single event: the appearance of a Christian rock star, Sonny Sandoval of P.O.D., on MTV in 2000 with his baby daughter, Nevaeh. 'Heaven spelled backwards,' he said.

As the NYT headlines its story:

And if It's a Boy, Will It Be Lleh?

And not forgetting the writer of the story, whose name is

Jennifer 8 Lee

Thames Water has come up with a novel solution to the water shortage in the south-east of England:

‘We have to look at any possible alternative, including towing icebergs from the Arctic and seeding rain clouds,’ Richard Aylard, of Thames Water, said at an emergency meeting of the London Assembly.

Towing icebergs up the Thames, eh. What next, sunbeams from cucumbers? Wouldn’t it be better for Thames Water to mend its own leaking pipes which are sending the water straight into the ground?

McCartney and Mills split, blaming the media;

John Reid blames Tories for asylum chaos;

so inspiring to see the notion of personal responsibility is still as alive as ever in stateofdenialville UK.

Judges for the Turner Prize insisted that they were not seeking controversy yesterday as they announced a shortlist of artists best known for clay models of genitalia and an eight-hour video of disco dancers. ‘None of the artists is in any way trying to be sensationalist,' said Sir Nicholas Serota, the director of Tate and chairman of the jury. 'They are trying to deal with the issues of the 21st century.’

But of course.

Daniel Hannan makes some excellent and much needed points in his sharp criticism in today’s Daily Telegraph of the EU’s decision to resume subventions to the Palestinian authority despite the fact that it is run by Hamas, the terror outfit of which the EU supposedly disapproves:

Even if a way could be found to circumvent Hamas, the very fact of pumping more money into the Occupied Territories will make terrorism more likely. Palestinians are already, by some measure, the largest per capita recipients of overseas aid in the world. Yet the level of violence in Gaza and the West Bank has risen in proportion to the amount of assistance received.

When Hamas was elected earlier this year, the EU brushed aside American objections and handed over 120 million euros. Palestinians responded by ransacking EU diplomatic missions and kidnapping European citizens. But the EU is less interested in the practical consequences of its subsidies than in the message they send. By firehosing cash at the PA, Europeans signal their opposition to Washington, suck up to their Muslim voters and, above all, vent their dislike of Israel.

True enough. However, there are a couple of other points where Hannan’s analysis requires a bit more elaboration. He states:

The Jewish state represents the supreme vindication of the national principle: that is, the desire of every people to have their own country. For 2,000 years, Jews were stateless and scattered, but they never lost their aspiration for a national home. The EU, by contrast, is founded in the belief that national loyalties are artificial, transient and ultimately discreditable. Simply by existing, Israel challenges the main assumption on which European integration is based.

Yes – and no. Yes, the EU does perfectly exemplify the anti-democratic, nation-busting philosophy of ‘trans-national progressivism’ that is inexorably destroying the national identity -- and consequent willingness to defend it -- of its constituent and doomed nation states. And yes, the Jewish state falls foul of that philosophy. But the very same EU – like the left, which is impaled on the same contradiction - supports the desire of the Palestinians to have their own state, which clearly doesn’t fit its belief that ‘national loyalties are artificial, transient and ultimately discreditable.’ The reason is that it supports certain national loyalties purely in order to destroy other national loyalties -- those of the western world, which gave rise to the individualism and progress which it embodies and which are the real targets of both the left and the Islamists who, for different reasons, wish to undo modernity.

Second, Hannan rightly scorns the argument that economic deprivation causes terrorism. But then he fall into a parallel trap by suggesting that terrorism is caused by economic dependence:

An unconditional welfare state is thus the perfect terrorist habitat. Think of the two London Tube bombers who had been living on income support and housing benefit. Had this option been closed, perhaps they might have found jobs, and so been too busy to work themselves into a suicidal rage.

But what about the other bombers who had jobs? What about the al Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri who is a qualified psychiatrist, or the paediatrician Abdel Aziz Rantisi who was a leader of Hamas? Jihad is fuelled neither by economic deprivation nor dependency but by religious fanaticism. Economic dependency has retrograde effects, to be sure; but it’s important to be clear about the wellspring of the threat to the west that Europe is so intent on denying.

Here is Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s statement of resignation from the Dutch parliament and her announcement that she is to leave the Netherlands. Read it and weep.

Today, you can hear and watch me broadcasting on my new book Londonistan on (among others) the following US shows:

The Tammy Bruce show, 2.05-2.25 pm EST (national radio KFI-AM 640)

The Big Story with John Gibson, Fox News, between 5 and 6.00 pm EST (TV)

The Netherlands appears to be in the throes of a pathological moral convulsion. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the immensely courageous Dutch MP of Somalian origin who is guarded day and night because of the threat to her life from Islamist terrorists, is being hounded out of the country – by the hostility of the Dutch, who far from protecting her have now turned against her. Tomorrow, she is due to hold a press conference at which she will announce her resignation from the Dutch parliament and her intention to leave the country (although stories circulating today about a move to the US would appear to be premature).

Ms Hirsi Ali has lived with this threat to her life ever since, on a TV programme after 9/11, she announced that she was no longer a Muslim. Subsequently, this threat worsened after she helped write the script for the film Submission, a protest against the treatment of women under Islam, which led in turn to the murder of the film-maker Theo van Gogh. In all the years in which she has been living under sentence of murder, Ms Hirsi Ali has not flinched from continuing to fight for the rights of women and others against the horrors of Islamofascism. And yet now she has finally been broken, in a development that shames the Dutch people and should strike a chill throughout the rest of dhimmi Europe.

Two blows have felled her. The first was the ruling by a Dutch court which upheld a complaint by her neighbours that her presence in her apartment was putting them in danger, and which gave her four months to leave her home. This was the first victory for terror, inflicted by a Dutch court. The second came last week, when a Dutch TV programme broadcast as a ‘revelation’ the fact that Ms Hirsi Ali had told lies when she had applied for asylum back in 1992.

Ms Hirsi Ali has never denied that she told lies on her application for asylum. The lies involved a false surname, a false age, and saying that she had fled from Somalia. This was in itself true, but omitted the fact -- which is salient to an asylum claim -- that she had landed up in various other countries before coming to the Netherlands. Of course, this was wrong, and she shouldn’t have done it. However, the fact that she was a refugee from Islamist oppression was true. More pertinently, she has frequently acknowledged that she told these lies and even informed the leadership of her party, the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy, when she first stood for parliament. At no stage, however, did the Dutch authorities which knew about this ever take any action against her. Now, however, a TV program has strangely broadcast the story of her asylum application as if it were a new and shocking development.

What is shocking has been the response. Instead of people saying that this was already well known, the ‘revelation’ has been treated as a major scandal. The Dutch media has been engulfed by a feeding frenzy of outrage against Ms Hirsi Ali. The Dutch immigration minister is now ‘investigating’ the legality of her status. To say it again: her behaviour at the time was wrong. But the fact is that the vast majority of Dutch asylum claims, it is said, are made on the basis of falsehoods of one kind or another; yet it is only Ms Hirsi Ali who is being singled out for this treatment.

Moreover, it is oppressive to haul up someone in this way years after she has settled as a citizen; any action against her by the authorities should have been taken at the time, because it is invidious to start questioning someone’s bona fides if they have been settled into a country for many years. How much more so when that person has displayed the kind of conspicuous courage in defence of that country’s values as Ms Hirsi Ali has done. Yet instead of being cherished as a national heroine, she is being broken and bullied out of the country by an unholy alliance of venomous leftists, spineless public servants -- including those of a highly conservative disposition -- and radical Islamists, all giving a victory to the forces of evil.

Yet that surely gets to the nub of what is happening here. A country which until now has displayed total indifference to Ms Hirsi Ali’s immigration status has seized on this ‘revelation’ as a golden opportunity to turn a heroine into a pariah and thus rid itself of the danger that it thinks she represents. Never mind that she is defending the country’s integrity against the forces of barbarism; they’d rather surrender to them. The word for this is indeed submission.

So she is being used as the classic scapegoat. Drive out Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and they will drive out (or so they think) the threat of the jihad. Thus the authentic voice of appeasement; thus courage is punished and resistance abandoned; thus the murdered Theo van Gogh is doubly betrayed. A shocked friend of Ms Hirsi Ali says that the mood in the Netherlands today reflects a thirst for a public hanging. But this public anger is being funnelled not at the clerical fascism that has caused Dutch public figures to be guarded day and night against the threat of murder, but at one of those very figures. Thus the victim of violence is turned into its cause, and her institutionalised lynching will purge the terror from the people.

It is a mindset as medieval as it is misguided. Shame on them.

It is always very heartening when decent, sensible Muslims who truly abhor the extremism and violence being perpetrated in the name of their religion write to me to express their support for my views. Two such people have written following my talk at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC on the themes of my new book, Londonistan, and its misleading report in a paper in Pakistan (see post below). Here is what the first correspondent had to say:

I just read a review about your book in one of English papers published in Pakistan by the paper’s correspondent in Washington, who heard you speak at one of the institutes here. I am writing to tell you that as a Pakistani Muslim, who is frightened by the rise of Islamofascists around the world, I support and admire your views. I think that the time has come for those, who are interesting in living in a free world, to stand up and defend freedom. If these fanatics are not confronted and decisively defeated today, we might encounter a bigger problem tomorrow. I also agree with you that it is the not free world that should feel guilty, or take responsibility for these crazy terrorists. If anything, the free world should re-examine their policies of allowing people in their countries without understanding their views or ideology. I believe that all the communists should go to Russia or China, all the Islamofascists should go to Saudi Arabia and all the people believe in freedom should migrate to the free world. Today, if you as a westerner go to a so called ‘Muslim’ country, you have to change your appearance and accept their life style, even though you are there temporarily. So, why don’t ‘Muslims migrating to the west in great numbers adopt to western ideas? If they don't agree with the life style or it bothers them, they must be forced to leave, period. I hope and pray that the free world is going to win this battle, and terrorists using Islam as tool to justify their hateful ideology will be history!

A second Muslim gentleman, who comes from India and now lives in London, wrote to say:

...I am appalled by the these Pakistanis destroying great British society. It is even more disturbing that instead of accepting responsibility of their failure to integrate, they are blaming British society for their backwardness...Finally, please don't get upset by the criticism that will come your way. What you are suggesting is difficult, but the right course of action and there is a lot of support for your ideas in the society. We don't want to be known for terrorism, we are not interested in biting the hand that feeds us and we will do whatever it takes to help English people.

Last Wednesday, I spoke on the themes of my book Londonistan to a meeting of the Heritage Foundation think-tank in Washington. After my presentation finished, I was asked a question by a Pakistani journalist. What was I suggesting, he asked sarcastically: that all British Muslims should be deported? This was the gist of my reply to him (you can hear what was actually said in the video recording on the Heritage website).

I said I was certainly not suggesting anything of the sort, and that the question illustrated precisely the kind of mischievous misrepresentation to which arguments like my own were repeatedly subjected. I said that I had repeatedly emphasised in my book that British Muslims should not all be tarred with the brush of extremism, that across the world Muslims were the most numerous victims of Islamist terrorism, and that it was very important to give truly moderate, reformist Muslims our support and protection. I believed that Britain should be delivering the message that Muslims were welcome in Britain to practise their faith, which should be respected, but at the same time Islamism – whereby the religion was being used to inspire hatred and violence against the British state or against America, Israel and the Jews – would not be tolerated. Britain’s current failure to draw this important distinction, I suggested, was not only endangering British society but undermining truly reformist British Muslims, since Britain’s appeasement of Islamist extremists was cutting the ground from under the moderates' feet in their own attempt to defeat them.

The following, however, is what this journalist, Khalid Hasan, has written in his newspaper the Daily Times of Pakistan:

I asked her after she was done what she proposed should be done to deal with the situation. Should all British Muslims be thrown out and a ban placed on further immigration of Muslims to Britain? While there was little doubt that this is what she would wish, [my emphasis] she said it should be made quite clear that minorities could not dictate to the majority. While everyone was free to practise his religion, including Islam, no one could be permitted to sabotage the essential Western values of British society..

She added the standard disclaimer that it was not her intent to ‘demonise all Muslims’ although at one point she suggested that there was something intrinsically the matter with Islam when it came to violence [my emphasis].

This grossly misrepresents what I said in my remarks and in my reply to Mr Hasan. He has ignored what I said in my reply to him and provided instead an untrue and defamatory gloss, imputing to me a view which I do not possess. I also did not make any reference in my remarks – indeed, I specifically say in the book that this is a matter on which I do not express a view at all – to any ‘intrinsic’ characteristic of Islam.

Mr Hasan is of course entitled to his opinions about my views, and he is also free to make the kind of unpleasant remarks about ‘Zionists’ which he includes in his article. However, he is not entitled to distort a public presentation liked this, and the Daily Times of Pakistan might like to note that he has badly misrepresented what I said.

The Times tells us that British contempt of court rules mean that this week’s official reports on the 7/7 bombers have only been able to give us a partial view of the terrorist threat:

The reports could only ever offer a truncated explanation of the events that led to last year’s terrorist outrages. The full story of 7/7 cannot yet be told. Not only do large gaps remain in the authorities’ knowledge, but also the sub judice rule, which prevents public discussion of anything that might impinge upon a current or forthcoming trial, is in force because associates of Khan face terrorism charges. This rule, intended to protect the right of defendants to a fair trial, has the unhappy side-effect of stifling legitimate debate and creates a misleading impression of the threat posed by violent extremists.

The reports by the Intelligence and Security Committee and the Home Office tell us that Khan and Tanweer visited al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan, were under surveillance and were recorded in the company of other terrorist suspects. We are told that those other suspects were regarded as a greater threat and that surveillance of the two men from Leeds was dropped. But the two reports cannot reveal who the other suspects were, who guided them, what they were planning to do or what became of their more dangerous plot. These points are sub-judice. To disclose them would invite prosecution for contempt of court. Senior counter-terrorist investigators have expressed to me their frustration that the sub-judice rule prevents them from keeping the public informed about the terrorist threat to Britain.

The implication is that when it comes to the threat to the UK, we still don’t know the half of it. What we do now know, however, from the report of the Commons Intelligence Select Committee is that alarmingly the British security service, MI5, didn’t know even that.

Not that this report actually says so in terms. Indeed, it is a report whose broad conclusions are simply belied by its more detailed findings. For although it lets MI5 off the hook by sympathising with its lack of resources and acknowledging the dangers of judgments formed with the benefit of hindsight, it also provides a catalogue of astounding incompetence by MI5, matched by its self-serving excuses to get itself off the hook.

Thus we learn that MI5 had come across Khan and Tanweer, two of the 7/7 bombers, on no fewer than five occasions; but because they were thought to be on the periphery of other investigations they were never identified as a terrorist threat. This was even though they had spent time in Pakistan where -- we are now blandly told – it is now assumed they met al Qaeda operatives. In addition, they were actually referred to by terrorist detainees from outside the UK in early 2004, but only by pseudonyms. And so

The Security Service sought at the time to establish the true identities of the men but without success

even though they actually had a photograph of Khan. Had they shown this to those detainees July 7 2005 might well have remained an unexceptional day.

The report says:

The judgement was made (correctly with hindsight) that they [Tanweer and Khan]were peripheral to the main investigation and there was no intelligence to suggest they were interested in planning an attack against the UK. Intelligence at the time suggested that their focus was training and insurgency operations in Pakistan and schemes to defraud financial institutions. As such, there was no reason to divert resources away from other higher priorities, which included investigations into attack planning against the UK.

‘Higher priorities’? What higher priority could there be than preventing the murder of 52 British citizens and the maiming off many more? The only reason why there was ‘no reason’ to divert resources from these important higher priorities was that MI5 had no evidence that the ‘attack planning’ was being conducted by Tanweer and Khan. In other words, this absurd formulation is simply a self-fulfilling excuse.

What is clear from the body of this report, moreover, is that the main problem was the fundamental error made by MI5 that suicide bombings in the UK were highly unlikely.

This in itself was simply astounding. As the report says, MI5 knew that British citizens were planning attacks against Britain. It knew that suicide bomb attacks were a distinct possibility in the UK. It knew that the transport system was a prime target. And yet:

..the JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] had judged, in March 2005, that such attacks would not become the norm within Europe. A post-July assessment by JTAC explained that extremists in the UK had been thought less likely to carry out suicide attacks because long-term indoctrination in the UK is more difficult than in countries with larger extremist communities and a more pervasive Islamic culture. The fact that there were suicide attacks in the UK on 7 July was clearly unexpected: the Director General of the Security Service said it was a surprise that the first big attack in the UK for ten years was a suicide attack. On the earlier JIC judgement she said: ‘I think it is a reasonable judgement that still stands. I do not think we expect these to be the norm. In our analysis before July of the number of operations and operational planning of which we were aware… only about *** % showed any interest in suicide. The JIC has since revisited suicide attacks and concluded that more might be inspired to conduct suicide attacks following the events of July 2005.

As the report comments:

We are concerned that this judgement could have had an impact on the alertness of the authorities to the kind of threat they were facing and their ability to respond.

To put it mildly! But if the head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, still refuses to acknowledge her earlier mistake, how can we have any confidence that she is now getting it right?

Moreover, as the Times reports, the police seemed to understand something which eluded MI5 altogether:

Dame Eliza’s admission that suicide bombs were unlikely “to be the norm” has shocked other counter-terrorist agencies. The Times is aware that the threat of young British Muslims, radicalised by extremist preachers and groomed by hardcore activists, perpetrating a suicide attack was at the forefront of police contingency plans for a terrorist attack several months before 7/7. The ISC said that it was concerned that MI5 had reached such mistaken conclusions.

We also learn from this report that the security world’s understanding of the wellsprings of Islamist radicalisation was completely wrong. Only now does it say that it has realised that this radicalisation can take place much faster than previously thought and that there is no one profile of an Islamic terrorist.

The Head of Specialist Operations at the Metropolitan Police Service said: 'We were working off a script which actually has been completely discounted from what we know as reality.'

The report observes:

...we remain concerned that across the whole of the counter-terrorism community the development of the home-grown threat and the radicalisation of British citizens were not fully understood or applied to strategic thinking. A common and better level of understanding of these things among all those closely involved in identifying and countering the threat against the UK, whether that be the Security Service, or the police, or other parts of Government, is critical in order to be able to counter the threat effectively and prevent attacks.

But are they getting it right now? As I say in my new book Londonistan, which explores precisely such thinking in the British establishment, they are not. On the contrary, the whole political security nexus at the heart of our defence against this threat to our society appears to be in a state of denial about the nature of this threat and in particular its religious character which they are too afraid even to name for fear of being accused of a politically correct thought-crime. Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of this report is the robust way in which it uses the term ‘Islamist terrorism’ when the police and security establishment refuse to use that term – a fact to which this report delicately does not allude -- so deeply are they into the policy of appeasing Islamist extremism.

There are now, the report tells us, around 800 suspected terrorists in Britain. 800! And can we be sure that even this figure is correct? In the interests of national security, the case for a through inquiry into the intelligence service is now overwhelming.

Tomorrow, I am due to be on ‘Hey Wake Up America’, KGAM 1450 at approx 1205 EST; and on Fox News ‘Weekend Live’ Channel National some time between 1 and 2 pm EST.

Meanwhile, here’s a Question and Answer on Londonistan which has been published on FrontPageMag.com

I am currently in the US promoting my new book ‘Londonistan’ (see home page) which was published this week by Encounter Books in New York (and next month in London by Gibson Square). Although it is about Britain, it appears to be touching a number of nerves in America too. For those who want to read, listen to or watch the various reviews, broadcast interviews and public presentations on the book, here is a selection of links which I hope you find useful.

Some of the broadcast shows:

Thursday May 4, 11 - 12pm, the Jim Bohannon radio show

Wednesday May 10, 11.35 - 12 noon, the Laura Ingraham radio show.

Tuesday May 9, 0745, the Fox and Friends TV show (click on 'War on Terror')

Events

May 10 2006
Talk, Heritage Foundation

On-line coverage

Clifford May, President of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies

Frank Gaffney, head of the Centre for Security Policy:

Erin Carden, National Review Online

Question and answer on National Review Online

More anon!

The editor of United Press International, Martin Walker, writes drolly about the report exonerating the BBC of anti-Israel bias:

This produced mocking guffaws in my own newsroom, where some of the BBC’s greatest hits — or perhaps misses — remain fresh in the memory. There was the hagiographic send-off for Yassir Arafat by a BBC reporter with tears in her eyes and that half-hour profile of Arafat in 2002 which called him a ‘hero’ and ‘an icon’ and concluded that the corrupt old brute was ‘the stuff of legends’.

There was Orla Guerin’s unforgettably inventive spin on the story of a Palestinian child being deployed as a suicide bomber, which most journalists saw as a sickening example of child abuse in the pursuit of terrorism. Guerin had it as ‘Israel’s cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes’.

There was the disturbing case of Fayad Abu Shamala, the BBC Arabic Service correspondent, who addressed a Hamas rally on May 6, 2001, and was recorded declaring that journalists in Gaza, apparently including the BBC, were ‘waging the campaign shoulder to shoulder together with the Palestinian people’. Pressed for an explanation, the subsequent BBC statement said: ‘Fayad’s remarks were made in a private capacity. His reports have always matched the best standards of balance required by the BBC.’

There was the extraordinarily naive coverage of the London visit of Sheikh Abdur-Rahman al-Sudais, the predominant imam of Mecca, to open London’s largest new mosque. He was described as a widely respected religious figure who works for ‘community cohesion’, and a video on the BBC website was captioned ‘The BBC’s Mark Easton: '
"Events like today offer grounds for optimism”.’ The BBC must have missed his sermon of February 1, 2004, that said ‘the Jews of yesterday are the evil fathers of the Jews of today, who are evil offspring, infidels...calf-worshippers, prophet-murderers, prophecy-deniers... the scum of the human race whom Allah cursed and turned into apes and pigs...These are the Jews, a continuous lineage of meanness, cunning, obstinacy, tyranny, licentiousness, evil, and corruption...'

These are isolated examples, but they stick longer in the memory because they are reinforced by a broader pattern of coverage that seems to play down that Israel is a democracy that elects Israeli Arabs to the Knesset and which does not engage in systematic terrorism and suicide bombing of civilians. So it was startling to read the report for the BBC governors finding so much bias in favour of Israelis.

As Walker says, this was in part because the authors of the report placed so much weight on ‘research’ evidence about the apparent absence of coverage of the Palestinians. But then so much of this ‘research’ is itself flaky, often produced by people with all the usual prejudices and then some. Even so, Walker concludes that for all its flaws the BBCstill does a better job that any other news organisation on Earth.

Which is scary.

The horror is back. As was entirely predictable, there is to be another attempt this year at an academic boycott of Israel. This one is to come not as last year from the AUT but the rival higher education union, NATFHE. All this was predicted on this website – and elsewhere – last year when the AUT effort failed and NATFHE’s strategy became all too apparent.

This latest boycott will be, apparently, even more far–reaching since it will apply to all lecturers and academic institutions in Israel as opposed to the tiny handful in last year’s motion. As Ha’aretz reports, however, NATFHE, which is to bring the issue to a vote at its annual national conference on May 27-29, is to proceed with some caution. Since the University of Haifa – one of the targets of last year’s boycott call -- has threatened the AUT with a lawsuit, the NATFHE motion does not actually recommend a boycott of Israeli institutions but calls on the union to suggest its members carry out the boycott.

‘The conference invites members to consider their own responsibility for ensuring equity and non-discrimination in contacts with Israeli educational institutions or individuals, and to consider the appropriateness of the boycott of those that do not publicly dissociate themselves from such policies,’ the NATFHE motion states. It also encourages lecturers to hold meetings on the issue on campus.

So here we go again. But let me repeat what I said last time round, when I predicted this thing would not go away because it had been defeated on the wrong grounds. The argument last time, which led overwhelmingly to the defeat of the boycott, was the issue of academic freedom. Of course this is important. But it’s not the point. The reason the boycott is so evil is that it is based on a series of Big Lies – the lie of Israeli ‘apartheid’, of Israeli ‘oppression’, ‘aggression’, ‘occupation’ and all the rest of the demonology of delegitimisation, ignorance and prejudice. Running through last year’s resistance movement against the boycott was the argument that academic freedom was necessary in order to continue to demonise and delegitimise Israel (I paraphrase, but that essentially was the message). That aspect of the resistance was thus guilty of the same prejudice that was behind the boycott itself. It was thus not only wrong in itself but ultimately self-defeating because it meant that the inspiration for the boycott was not only not being addressed but would surely lead to the boycott springing to life once again.

So it has now proved. This time, the resistance must take on the actual cause of the boycott: the wellsprings of hatred of the Jewish state which course through our campuses. Freedom of speech is not the issue. It’s the bigotry, stupid.

What is being called Europe’s ‘soft totalitarianism’ is on the march – and it is not restricted to Europe. European Union law, which came into effect a few days ago, will force recognition of gay union on member states whose traditional, religious social ethic means they are opposed to it.

The law orders members (including those which have rejected calls for such unions) to ‘facilitate’ homosexual partners who have ‘married’ in their home countries and want to travel to or live in EU nations which don’t recognise such unions.

Three EU countries, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain have permitted ‘gay marriage’. Britain, Germany and a number of other countries have introduced gay civil unions. Other states, however, such as Poland, Italy and Malta have resisted such moves and the EU’s coercive policy is directed at them.

It is astounding that Europe is not merely systematically unravelling the moral settlement at the heart of western civilisation but is using such coercion to do so, riding roughshod over the democratic rights of individual countries to pass laws in accordance with their own religious and moral beliefs and values. It is a clear illustration of the totalitarian impulse at the heart of not just the EU project but the ‘progressive’ universalism which the EU project embodies: the belief that individual nations have no right to express their known particular values through their own laws, because laws and values rooted in the particular are by nature exclusive and discriminatory; that the only legitimate laws and values must be universal and supranational; and that because these are universal, they are by definition unchallengeable and therefore any person or state who defies them must be guilty of prejudice and punished accordingly. This is cultural totalitarianism: a supranational religion of nihilism that is now to be ruthlessly enforced by the Savonarolas of secularism.

And it is not confined to Europe. As Maggie Gallagher reports in the Weekly Standard, the same ‘liberal’ intolerance has now claimed a particularly sad casualty. The Catholic Charities of Boston, one of America’s oldest adoption agencies, has now been forced to shut down because of its opposition to same-sex adoption.

Massachusetts law prohibits ‘orientation discrimination’. In November 2003, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court gave the green light to ‘gay marriage’, opposition to which instantly became classifiable as a legally stamped prejudice. The outcome of that was that the moral and religious beliefs of the Catholic church came into direct conflict with state-mandated nihilistic secularism.

To operate in Massachusetts, an adoption agency must be licensed by the state. And to get a license, an agency must pledge to obey state laws barring discrimination--including the decade-old ban on orientation discrimination. With the legalization of gay marriage in the state, discrimination against same-sex couples would be outlawed, too.

Cardinal O'Malley asked Governor Mitt Romney for a religious exemption from the ban on orientation discrimination. Governor Romney reluctantly responded that he lacked legal authority to grant one unilaterally, by executive order. So the governor and archbishop turned to the state legislature, requesting a conscience exemption that would allow Catholic Charities to continue to help kids in a manner consistent with Catholic teaching. To date, not a single other Massachusetts political leader appears willing to consider even the narrowest religious exemption.

The result is the loss of a charity doing invaluable and necessary work in finding adoptive families for hard-to-place children. It also illustrates the deep illiberalism of a world-view which presents itself as the acme of liberal tolerance, and exposes as false the argument used over and over again to support the gay rights agenda, that this merely serves the principle of equality and hurts no-one else in doing so. Wrong. It is denying Catholic moral teaching the right to express itself. It is a direct assault in those values. It is not liberal, it is not progressive, it is not serving equality. It is instead enforcing one value system over another, and as such is a direct assault on the bedrock of our freedoms and our society.

As ever, Mark Steyn hits the nail on the head:

On the afternoon of Sept. 11, as the Pentagon still burned, Donald Rumsfeld told the president, 'This is not a criminal action. This is war.'

That's still the distinction that matters. By contrast, after the 2005 London bombings, Boris Johnson, the Conservative member of Parliament, wrote a piece headlined 'Just Don't Call It War.' Johnson objected to the language of 'war, whether military or cultural . . . Last week's bombs were placed not by martyrs nor by soldiers, but by criminals.'

Sorry, but that's the way to lose. A narrowly focused 'criminal' approach means entrusting the whole business to the state bureaucracy. The obvious problem with that is that it's mostly reactive: blow somewhere up, we'll seal it off, and detectives will investigate it as a crime scene, and we'll arrest someone, and give him legal representation, and five years later when the bombing's faded into memory we'll bring him to trial, and maybe conviction, and appeal of the conviction, and all the rest. A 'criminal' approach gives terrorists all the rights of criminals, including the 'Gee, Officer Krupke' defense: I'm depraved on account of I'm deprived. If you fight this thing as a law enforcement matter, Islamist welfare queens around the world will figure there's no downside to jihad: After all, you're living on public welfare in London plotting the downfall of the infidel. If it all goes horribly wrong, you'll be living on public welfare in Virginia, grandstanding through U.S. courtrooms for half a decade. What's to lose?

It's a very worn cliche to say that America is over-lawyered, but the extent of that truism only becomes clear when you realize how overwhelming is our culture's reflex to cover war as just another potential miscarriage-of-justice story. I was interested to see that the first instinct of the news shows to the verdict was to book some relative of the 9/11 families and ask whether they were satisfied with the result. That's not what happened that Tuesday morning. The thousands who were killed were not targeted as individuals. They died because they were American, not because somebody in a cave far away decided to kill Mrs. Smith. Their families have a unique claim to our sympathy and a grief we can never truly share, but they're not plaintiffs and war isn't a suit. It's not about 'closure' for the victims; it's about victory for the nation. Try to imagine the bereaved in the London blitz demanding that the Germans responsible be brought before a British court.

Ah, but if we were fighting World War Two now, we'd lose. The problem is that what's happening corresponds neither to criminality nor to war, as conventionally defined, but lies stranded in an existential limbo somewhere between the two. We define war as between states, which clearly the global jihad is not. On the other hand, the stakes for which the jihad is playing -- the conquest of the free world and its subjugation to Islamism -- mean that it is not only absurd to regard it as criminality but positively dangerous, because the response is so demonstrably inadequate. The premise of the criminal justice system is that it is better if a number of guilty people go fre than that one innocent person should be wrongly jailed. When it comes to the jihad, however, this is a risk no society can take. Hence the problem.

Through a fog of jet lag, I have just caught up with the report to the BBC governors on the impartiality or otherwise of the BBC’s coverage of the Israel/Palestinian conflict. It has not improved my equilibrium. How can people pronounce on the impartiality of others on an issue when they are not only demonstrably not impartial themselves, but also appear not to understand what objectivity means -- and clearly have no idea that they are not, and do not?

Some of the panel’s conclusions are fair enough. It is undoubtedly welcome that it not only criticises the BBC’s inconsistency in using the word ‘terrorism’ but that it also recommends that the BBC use it to describe violent attacks upon civilians that have the intention of causing terror for political or ideological reasons, whether perpetrated by state or non-state agencies. As it says:

It seems clear that placing a bomb on a bus used by civilians intending death or injury in supposed furtherance of a cause is a terrorist act and no other expression conveys so tersely and accurately the elements involved.

Quite so. Other conclusions strive to be even-handed, such as its strictures that the BBC places

...insufficient analysis and interpretation of some important events and issues, including shifts in Palestinian society, opinion and politics. There was little reporting of the difficulties faced by the Palestinians in their daily lives. Equally in the months preceding the Palestinian elections there was little hard questioning of their leaders.

But given the key role the BBC has played in the demonisation and delegitimisation of Israel in the eyes of the nation, the panel comprehensively misses the point. It concludes:

Apart from individual lapses, sometimes of tone, language or attitude, there was little to suggest systematic or deliberate bias. On the contrary, there was evidence, in the programming and in other ways, of a commitment to be fair, accurate and impartial.

But ‘commitment’ to be fair, accurate and impartial is not the issue. After all, there can hardly be a BBC journalist or editor who is not committed to the notion that BBC journalism must be fair, accurate and impartial. The problem is that when it comes to the reporting of the Middle East conflict – along with a host of other issues – the BBC not only has a default position that is very firmly one of ideological leftism but, crucially, that it thinks this is the objective truth.

Beneath all the strenuous striving to appear to be seated on the Mt Parnassus of dispassionate judgment, the panel cannot help revealing evidence of the very same partial mindset displayed by the BBC. Thus tellingly it says the Palestinians live under ‘the Occupation’ with a capital O. What occupation? Ever since Oslo, the Arabs in the disputed territories have lived under rule by the Palestinian Authority. The only occasions when Israeli rule impinges on their daily lives occur when Israel takes defensive security measures to stop the Arabs from murdering its citizens.

There may be ‘little reporting of the difficulties faced by the Palestinians in their daily lives’ – but there is even less reporting by the BBC of the difficulties faced by the Israelis in their daily lives, like living under siege for the past half-century surrounded by millions of people who want to wipe them out; like never knowing whether your loved ones are going to be blown to kingdom come when they get on the bus to work; like having to venture onto an armed front line every time they take the kids out for a pizza.

There are other similarly telling lapses. But far worse – and infinitely more revealing -- is its conclusion that the BBC’s coverage did not

consistently constitute a full and fair account of the conflict but rather, in important respects, presents an incomplete and in that sense misleading picture

because it gave more ‘on air’ time to Israelis than to Palestinians, and failed to give equal weight to the two ‘rival narratives’ of the Middle East conflict.

Oh dear.

Are these panel members really so obtuse that they really believe that the only people who provide an anti-Israel ‘narrative’ are the Palestinians? The amount of air-time the BBC provides for the enemies of Israel overwhelmingly exceeds the air-time given to its defenders. It routinely broadcasts items in which Israel is defamed, with no-one putting the case for its defence at all. There certainly is a systematic imbalance – but it is all the other way.

Even worse still, however, is the underlying and extremely disturbing moral equivalence of this analysis. Rival ‘narratives’? How very post-modern. How very post-factual. BBC journalism should not be providing ‘narratives’; it should be providing as objective reporting as possible of ascertainable facts. In the context of the Middle East these facts are that, ever since Israel was restored to the Jews as their country, it has been under existential attack against which it has –sometimes controversially – been forced to defend itself by measures including the retention (however complicated this essentially defensive measure became by the subsequent overlay of religious zealotry) of the disputed territories.

The fact that this objectively truthful history is denied by the Arabs does not make it any less true. ‘Rival narratives’, by contrast, means there is no objective truth but merely two stories which have equal meaning because they are ‘true’ for their rival proponents. They must therefore must be given equal weight simply because each side believes them to be true; which in turn means that BBC journalists cannot make a judgment whether either of them is actually true. This is not fairness and balance; this is a repudiation of the basic principles of journalism. It is a formula for the promulgation of falsehoods.

Would the members of this panel have wanted the BBC to give equal weight to the Jewish ‘narrative’ of the Nazi Holocaust on the one hand and the rival ‘narrative’ by David Irving on the other -- or would its first duty be to report the objective reality of the Nazi genocide? Would they want it to give equal weight to the American ‘narrative’ of al Qaeda’s execution of 9/11 on the one hand and, on the other, the rival Muslim ‘narrative’ that the whole thing was a Mossad plot?

It is clear from the exasperated tone of the report that the panel felt besieged by strident partisans of both sides of the Middle East impasse. It is equally clear that they had neither the knowledge not the inclination to decide which of these sides was in the right -- doubtless because each was merely articulating a ‘narrative’ of equal weight.

Which leaves us where we were before this panel was set up -- with the BBC, through its distortions and omissions, loaded questions, double standards, partial language, rigged panel discussions and systematic decontextualisation of violence which have succeeded in reversing the roles of victim and aggressor in the Middle East in the minds of millions of people, constituting the single most influential weapon worldwide in the monstrous campaign to prepare the ground for the destruction of Israel.

As its coup de grace, the panel declares that there is no link between the BBC’s coverage of Israel and the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment in the UK. This of course is mere assertion based on no evidence at all. Indeed, how can it be otherwise? Since the panel has concluded there is no BBC bias against the Jewish state, how can it have contributed to animosity against the Jews? QED.

The truth is, however, that every time the BBC asserts or implies falsely that Israel is the cause of violence in the Middle East, people hate the Jews just that little bit more. Thanks to this report to the BBC governors, that process will now inexorably and distressingly continue.

A number of readers have written to tell me that Amazon.co.uk was recording a problem with supplying my new book, Londonistan (see home page). I understand this was a glitch at Amazon which is being corected, and there is no problem with the book.

Apologies for the shortage of posts at present, but I am travelling. Please bear with me and I will post up entries whenever my feet touch the ground.

A common claim of the global warming lobby is that there is an overwhelming consensus of scientists that man-made global warming is for real. Well, that consensus is looking less and less overwhelming as the days pass. Here’s what some distinguished scientists have told the Canadian Prime Minister in an open letter:

Dear Prime Minister:

As accredited experts in climate and related scientific disciplines, we are writing to propose that balanced, comprehensive public-consultation sessions be held so as to examine the scientific foundation of the federal government's climate-change plans.

Observational evidence does not support today's computer climate models, so there is little reason to trust model predictions of the future. Yet this is precisely what the United Nations did in creating and promoting Kyoto and still does in the alarmist forecasts on which Canada's climate policies are based. While the confident pronouncements of scientifically unqualified environmental groups may provide for sensational headlines, they are no basis for mature policy formulation.

The study of global climate change is, as you have said, an 'emerging science,' one that is perhaps the most complex ever tackled. It may be many years yet before we properly understand the Earth's climate system. Nevertheless, significant advances have been made since the protocol was created, many of which are taking us away from a concern about increasing greenhouse gases. If, back in the mid-1990s, we knew what we know today about climate, Kyoto would almost certainly not exist, because we would have concluded it was not necessary.

'Climate change is real' is a meaningless phrase used repeatedly by activists to convince the public that a climate catastrophe is looming and humanity is the cause. Neither of these fears is justified. Global climate changes all the time due to natural causes and the human impact still remains impossible to distinguish from this natural 'noise.' The new Canadian government's commitment to reducing air, land and water pollution is commendable, but allocating funds to 'stopping climate change' would be irrational. We need to continue intensive research into the real causes of climate change and help our most vulnerable citizens adapt to whatever nature throws at us next.

And here’s who they were:

Dr. Ian D. Clark, professor, isotope hydrogeology and paleoclimatology, Dept. of Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa

Dr. Tad Murty, former senior research scientist, Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans, former director of Australia's National Tidal Facility and professor of earth sciences, Flinders University, Adelaide; currently adjunct professor, Departments of Civil Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Ottawa

Dr. R. Timothy Patterson, professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences (paleoclimatology), Carleton University, Ottawa

Dr. Fred Michel, director, Institute of Environmental Science and associate professor, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa

Dr. Madhav Khandekar, former research scientist, Environment Canada. Member of editorial board of Climate Research and Natural Hazards

Dr. Paul Copper, FRSC, professor emeritus, Dept. of Earth Sciences, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ont.

Dr. Ross McKitrick, associate professor, Dept. of Economics, University of Guelph, Ont.

Dr. Tim Ball, former professor of climatology, University of Winnipeg; environmental consultant

Dr. Andreas Prokoph, adjunct professor of earth sciences, University of Ottawa; consultant in statistics and geology

Mr. David Nowell, M.Sc. (Meteorology), fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, Canadian member and past chairman of the NATO Meteorological Group, Ottawa

Dr. Christopher Essex, professor of applied mathematics and associate director of the Program in Theoretical Physics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.

Dr. Gordon E. Swaters, professor of applied mathematics, Dept. of Mathematical Sciences, and member, Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Research Group, University of Alberta

Dr. L. Graham Smith, associate professor, Dept. of Geography, University of Western Ontario, London, Ont.

Dr. G. Cornelis van Kooten, professor and Canada Research Chair in environmental studies and climate change, Dept. of Economics, University of Victoria

Dr. Petr Chylek, adjunct professor, Dept. of Physics and Atmospheric Science, Dalhousie University, Halifax

Dr./Cdr. M. R. Morgan, FRMS, climate consultant, former meteorology advisor to the World Meteorological Organization. Previously research scientist in climatology at University of Exeter, U.K.

Dr. Keith D. Hage, climate consultant and professor emeritus of Meteorology, University of Alberta

Dr. David E. Wojick, P.Eng., energy consultant, Star Tannery, Va., and Sioux Lookout, Ont.

Rob Scagel, M.Sc., forest microclimate specialist, principal consultant, Pacific Phytometric Consultants, Surrey, B.C.

Dr. Douglas Leahey, meteorologist and air-quality consultant, Calgary

Paavo Siitam, M.Sc., agronomist, chemist, Cobourg, Ont.

Dr. Chris de Freitas, climate scientist, associate professor, The University of Auckland, N.Z.

Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology, Dept. of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dr. Freeman J. Dyson, emeritus professor of physics, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, N.J.

Mr. George Taylor, Dept. of Meteorology, Oregon State University; Oregon State climatologist; past president, American Association of State Climatologists

Dr. Ian Plimer, professor of geology, School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Adelaide; emeritus professor of earth sciences, University of Melbourne, Australia

Dr. R.M. Carter, professor, Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Townsville, Australia

Mr. William Kininmonth, Australasian Climate Research, former Head National Climate Centre, Australian Bureau of Meteorology; former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology, Scientific and Technical Review

Dr. Hendrik Tennekes, former director of research, Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute

Dr. Gerrit J. van der Lingen, geologist/paleoclimatologist, Climate Change Consultant, Geoscience Research and Investigations, New Zealand

Dr. Patrick J. Michaels, professor of environmental sciences, University of Virginia

Dr. Nils-Axel Morner, emeritus professor of paleogeophysics & geodynamics, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden

Dr. Gary D. Sharp, Center for Climate/Ocean Resources Study, Salinas, Calif.

Dr. Roy W. Spencer, principal research scientist, Earth System Science Center, The University of Alabama, Huntsville

Dr. Al Pekarek, associate professor of geology, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Dept., St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minn.

Dr. Marcel Leroux, professor emeritus of climatology, University of Lyon, France; former director of Laboratory of Climatology, Risks and Environment, CNRS

Dr. Paul Reiter, professor, Institut Pasteur, Unit of Insects and Infectious Diseases, Paris, France. Expert reviewer, IPCC Working group II, chapter 8 (human health)

Dr. Zbigniew Jaworowski, physicist and chairman, Scientific Council of Central Laboratory for Radiological Protection, Warsaw, Poland

Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, reader, Dept. of Geography, University of Hull, U.K.; editor, Energy & Environment

Dr. Hans H.J. Labohm, former advisor to the executive board, Clingendael Institute (The Netherlands Institute of International Relations) and an economist who has focused on climate change

Dr. Lee C. Gerhard, senior scientist emeritus, University of Kansas, past director and state geologist, Kansas Geological Survey

Dr. Asmunn Moene, past head of the Forecasting Centre, Meteorological Institute, Norway

Dr. August H. Auer, past professor of atmospheric science, University of Wyoming; previously chief meteorologist, Meteorological Service (MetService) of New Zealand

Dr. Vincent Gray, expert reviewer for the IPCC and author of The Greenhouse Delusion: A Critique of 'Climate Change 2001,' Wellington, N.Z.

Dr. Howard Hayden, emeritus professor of physics, University of Connecticut

Dr Benny Peiser, professor of social anthropology, Faculty of Science, Liverpool John Moores University, U.K.

Dr. Jack Barrett, chemist and spectroscopist, formerly with Imperial College London, U.K.

Dr. William J.R. Alexander, professor emeritus, Dept. of Civil and Biosystems Engineering, University of Pretoria, South Africa. Member, United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee on Natural Disasters, 1994-2000

Dr. S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences, University of Virginia; former director, U.S. Weather Satellite Service

Dr. Harry N.A. Priem, emeritus professor of planetary geology and isotope geophysics, Utrecht University; former director of the Netherlands Institute for Isotope Geosciences; past president of the Royal Netherlands Geological & Mining Society

Dr. Robert H. Essenhigh, E.G. Bailey professor of energy conversion, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, The Ohio State University

Dr. Sallie Baliunas, astrophysicist and climate researcher, Boston, Mass.

Douglas Hoyt, senior scientist at Raytheon (retired) and co-author of the book The Role of the Sun in Climate Change; previously with NCAR, NOAA, and the World Radiation Center, Davos, Switzerland

Dipl.-Ing. Peter Dietze, independent energy advisor and scientific climate and carbon modeller, official IPCC reviewer, Bavaria, Germany

Dr. Boris Winterhalter, senior marine researcher (retired), Geological Survey of Finland, former professor in marine geology, University of Helsinki, Finland

Dr. Wibjorn Karlen, emeritus professor, Dept. of Physical Geography and Quaternary Geology, Stockholm University, Sweden

Dr. Hugh W. Ellsaesser, physicist/meteorologist, previously with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Calif.; atmospheric consultant.

Dr. Art Robinson, founder, Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine, Cave Junction, Ore.

Dr. Arthur Rorsch, emeritus professor of molecular genetics, Leiden University, The Netherlands; past board member, Netherlands organization for applied research (TNO) in environmental, food and public health

Dr. Alister McFarquhar, Downing College, Cambridge, U.K.; international economist

Dr. Richard S. Courtney, climate and atmospheric science consultant, IPCC expert reviewer, U.K.

Meanwhile, the New Zealand Herald reports that a group of leading climate scientists has announced the formation of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, aimed at refuting what it believes are unfounded claims about man-made global warming because they have had enough of ‘over-exaggerated’ claims about the effects of man-made global warming and aim to provide a balance to ‘what is being fed to the people of New Zealand’.

The coalition includes such well-known climate scientists as:

Dr Vincent Gray, of Wellington, an expert reviewer for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), most recently a visiting scholar at the Beijing Climate Centre in China.

Dr Gerrit J van der Lingen, of Christchurch, geologist/paleoclimatologist, climate change consultant, former director GRAINZ (Geoscience Research and Investigations New Zealand).

Prof August H. (Augie) Auer, of Auckland, past professor of atmospheric science, University of Wyoming; previously chief meteorologist, Meteorological Service (MetService) of New Zealand.

Professor Bob Carter, a New Zealander, now at the Marine Geophysical Laboratory, James Cook University, Queensland, Australia.

Warwick Hughes, a New Zealand earth scientist living in Perth, who conducts a comprehensive website: www.warwickhughes.com

Roger Dewhurst, of Katikati, consulting environmental geologist and hydrogeologist.

Owen McShane, of Kaiwaka, director of the Centre for Resource Management Studies, who is convenor of the establishment committee, said many scientists and economists were concerned that the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had an effective monopoly on public announcements on global warming.

’Its statements go largely unchallenged -- or go largely unchallenged in a format that will carry weight with governments, the media or the general public,’ said Mr McShane.

Is that faint thundering I hear the sound of the cavalry arriving at last?

I was delighted to see the Euston Manifesto, the attempt by a group of exasperated leftists to forge a progressive consensus that specifically repudiates anti-Americanism, resurgent Judeophobia and the proclivity of the left to line up with tyranny and against democracy. Here’s a taste:

In connecting to the original humanistic impulses of the movement for human progress, we emphasize the duty that genuine democrats must have to respect for the historical truth. Not only fascists, Holocaust-deniers and the like have tried to obscure the historical record. One of the tragedies of the Left is that its own reputation was massively compromised in this regard by the international Communist movement, and some have still not learned that lesson. Political honesty and straightforwardness are a primary obligation for us...

We repudiate the way of thinking according to which the events of September 11 2001 were America’s deserved comeuppance, or ‘understandable’ in the light of legitimate grievances resulting from US foreign policy. What was done on that day was an act of mass murder, motivated by odious fundamentalist beliefs and redeemed by nothing whatsoever. No evasive formula can hide that...

We are, however, united in our view about the reactionary, semi-fascist and murderous character of the Baathist regime in Iraq, and we recognize its overthrow as a liberation of the Iraqi people. We are also united in the view that, since the day on which this occurred, the proper concern of genuine liberals and members of the Left should have been the battle to put in place in Iraq a democratic political order and to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, to create after decades of the most brutal oppression a life for Iraqis which those living in democratic countries take for granted — rather than picking through the rubble of the arguments over intervention.

This opposes us not only to those on the Left who have actively spoken in support of the gangs of jihadist and Baathist thugs of the Iraqi so-called resistance, but also to others who manage to find a way of situating themselves between such forces and those trying to bring a new democratic life to the country. We have no truck, either, with the tendency to pay lip service to these ends, while devoting most of one’s energy to criticism of political opponents at home (supposedly responsible for every difficulty in Iraq), and observing a tactful silence or near silence about the ugly forces of the Iraqi ‘insurgency’. The many left opponents of regime change in Iraq who have been unable to understand the considerations that led others on the Left to support it, dishing out anathema and excommunication, more lately demanding apology or repentance, betray the democratic values they profess.

Good stuff. There are items in this document that I don’t agree with, but it’s great to see such a brave statement of decent principles and an open denunciation of the left for being on the wrong side of history. Such a challenge from within its own ranks is essential if the left is ever to stop causing so much lethal damage to the west. Let’s see what kind of reaction the Eustonians now get from the comrades.

Here’s Bernard-Henri Levy on the new Judeophobia:

Then, he holds court, telling us that the old anti-Semitism, the anti-Semitism that blamed the Jews for the killing of Jesus and vilified Jews as an inferior race, is largely dead. In its place, a new anti-Semitism has taken shape that is every bit as dangerous and disturbing. ‘If I had to describe this, I would describe it in three words,’ he says, pausing for effect. ‘Israel and anti-Zionism.’

This ‘anti-Zionism as a vehicle for anti-Semitism,’ Lévy says, appears in newspaper and magazine articles that attack Israel without providing the political and historical context found in stories about other countries. Another variant of this new anti-Semitism occurs when the Jews’ enemies resort to anti-Semitic canards in their vicious attacks on Israel. ‘A lot of things that you are no longer allowed to express, that you don’t dare to express, you can express through your hatred for Israel,’ he says. ‘For instance, you can no longer say Jews are thieves, but you can say Israel has robbed the earth of the Palestinians.’

So reassuring to see that the British authorities have learnt their lesson after the July bombings last year, and have now fully grasped the nature of the threat this country faces and the urgent need to address it. The Times has reported that Muslim students training to be imams at a British college with strong Iranian links have complained that they are being taught fundamentalist doctrines which describe non-Muslims as ‘filth’:

The Times has obtained extracts from medieval texts taught to the students in which unbelievers are likened to pigs and dogs. The texts are taught at the Hawza Ilmiyya of London, a religious school, which has a sister institution, the Islamic College for Advanced Studies (ICAS), which offers a degree validated by Middlesex University. The students, who have asked to remain anonymous, study their religious courses alongside the university-backed BA in Islamic studies. They spend two days a week as religious students and three days on their university course.

The text that has upset some students is the core work in their Introduction to Islamic Law class and was written by Muhaqqiq al-Hilli, a 13thcentury scholar. The Hawza Ilmiyya website states that ‘the module aims to familiarise the student with the basic rules of Islamic law as structured by al-Hilli’. Besides likening unbelievers to filth, the al-Hilli text includes a chapter on jihad, setting down the conditions under which Muslims are supposed to fight Jews and Christians.

The text is one of a number of books that some students say they find ‘disturbing’ and ‘very worrying’. Their spokesman told The Times: ‘They are being exposed to very literalist interpretations of the Koran. These are interpretations that would not be recognised by 80 or 90 per cent of Muslims, but they are being taught in this school.

Here are Muslims who are themselves complaining that they are being fed religious bigotry and hatred – and yet the Britsh authorities, including the Charity Commission, are nevertheless simply refusing to take any notice! So responsible Muslims are themselves being abandoned to the jihad because the British establishment simply refuses to acknowledge the true nature of the problem.

Has Britain simply got a death-wish?

I have remarked before that hatred against Jews now appears to become socially acceptable whenever Israel enters the picture. This has produced yet another Catch-22 for Jews, in that the issue of Israel has provoked a firestorm of anti-Jewish hatred, but if one draws attention to this anti-Jewish hatred in the context of Israel one is told such views are in fact perfectly acceptable. Thus the ‘world Jewish conspiracy’ is a lunatic pathological prejudice when used by neo-Nazis claiming that the Jews dangerously subvert the world, but entirely fair comment when university professors claim that Jews dangerously subvert American foreign policy.

In Sweden, prejudice against Israel appears to be running at a dangerously high level. It has just pulled out of European military exercises because of Israel’s involvement, as this article reports. There has also been another particularly disturbing development, as this article reveals:

It is a crime in Sweden to express derogatory statements about ethnic, racial, national, religious and sexual minorities or to incite hatred and violence against them. Simultaneously the limits of what one can express in Sweden against Jews are being expanded gradually. All Jewish institutions in Sweden are being continuously guarded because of threats directed to Jewish individuals as well as to Jewish institutions, and the Jewish communities spend 25% of their budget on security.

The hate website Radio Islam continues to spew forth its coarse Anti-Semitism, spread lists of Jews (real or imagined) and conspiracy theories on its site without the security police or the prosecuting authorities doing anything about it. When the radical right-wing party the Sweden Democrats on the other hand, had one of the Muhammed cartoons on its web-site, it was closed down after a quick and direct intervention by an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

At the beginning of this year, the Chancellor of Justice, Goran Lambertz, discontinued his preliminary investigation against the great mosque in Stockholm. Cassette tapes had been sold in the bookshop of the mosque with a violently Anti-Semitic contents. After a couple of broadcasts on the 26 and 27th November last year, the Stockholm mosque was reported to the police.

In his decision to discontinue the preliminary investigation Lambertz wrote that 'the lecture at hand contains statements that are strongly degrading to Jews, among other things, they are throughout called brothers of apes and pigs.' Furthermore a curse is expressed over the Jews and 'Jihad is called for, to kill the Jews, whereby suicide bombers - celebrated as martyrs - are the most effective weapon'.

The Chancellor raises the question whether the statements 'should be judged differently, and be considered allowed, because they are used by one side in a continuing profound conflict, where battle cries and invectives are part of everyday occurrences in the rhetoric that surround the conflict.' Lambertz thought that the 'recently mentioned statements in spite of their contents are not to be considered 'incitement against an ethnic group according to Swedish law'. His conclusions were that the preliminary investigation should be discontinued because this case of incitement against Jews could be said to originate from the Middle East conflict. That is, in spite of the calls for 'killing the Jews', these statements are not a crime in the legal sense in Sweden, because of the current conflict in the Middle East, according to the Chancellor of Justice. The logical conclusion is clear. If one mentions Palestine in hate speeches and calls for mass murder against Jews, one risks nothing in Sweden.

In May last year the Minister for Justice, Thomas Bodstrom, stated in Parliament that the police and the prosecuting authorities should give top priority to hate crimes as e.g. incitement against Jews. The reinterpretation of the law by the Chancellor of Justice gives the absolute opposite message. If this interpretation will turn into practice the threshold for the expression of hatred and incitement against Jews will be nearly eradicated. The most frightening thing about this decision is the resounding silence that it has generated.

Meanwhile, as Jewish victimisation is airbrushed out of the picture, the largest Swedish Muslim body, the Swedish Muslim Association, is piling on the pressure. Here is its list of demands which includes:

...Corrections of the Swedish family law to adapt it to Islam. It is this law that is the most important to Swedish Muslims: marriage, divorce, child protection, and raising underage children the right to take a vacation on some of the two major religious holidays, and to be allowed a few hours time off in the middle of the day on Friday to participate in the Friday prayers Counties and provinces ought to elevate all the so called basement- and apartment mosques around the country to equal status with Churches

The construction of mosques ought to be financed by interest free loans as an alternative to voluntary contributions from abroad.

Elevating native language and religion [Islam] to the level of normal subject in the curriculum, where Muslim children have the possibility of being educated in homogenous groups using their own native language and their own religion in the County schools. Imams and native language teachers should have status as ordinary teachers in Second Native Language and religion.

Every county ought to have one night a week that should be a womans evening, and respectively a mans evening, in the gym and the swimming hall. The entire hall [facility] should be open only for women or men, whereas other evenings would be for both genders... We demand that county politicians should deliberate this matter immediately

We demand special legislation in this matter that is the right to two days paid vacation in connection to the celebration of these holidays and that these two days cover the need to celebrate the holidays for Sunni and Shia Muslims and it proves that our religion and culture are accepted by the community.

And finally -- without, of course, any irony:

The biggest problem that Muslims face is the opinions of the majority. The community is responsible [or guilty] for trying to assimilate the immigrants of the nation. Both in daily speech and learned discussion the community uses such concepts and expressions in regards to Muslims that are untrue, distorted, and laden with negative undertones. Borders are made between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

Don’t you just love multiculturalism?