The "Islamophobia" scam

A week ago The Observer columnist Henry Porter wrote of the fashionable cause of censoring speech:

Censorship is in the air. Last week, I was asked to join a Dispatches debate for Channel 4. I explained to the editor that I had my doubts about casting the issues of free speech simply in terms of Islam. After last week's column on the veil, I received a lot of emails that showed the enormous diversity of Muslim opinion. Muslims are as capable of advocating the ideals of free speech as anyone; it's just that we hear more from those who do not.

I was dropped from the programme, either because of this strongly held opinion or because Channel 4 took the view that I would be useless in live debate (a not untenable position). But it is a shame that we do not see that the issue of free expression is wider than any single religious or political interest.

I entirely agree that free speech is an indivisible cause, and it is a shame that its universality is not sufficiently stressed in current debate. But there it is. The most immediate threat to free expression in Western societies does not come from Christian fundamentalists protesting at the teaching of Darwinism or 'blasphemous' works of art, or from the unjust incarceration of the antisemitic pseudo-historian David Irving. It comes from the increasing self-censorship in the communications media and the performing arts for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities.

I watched this evening the Channel 4 debate that Porter refers to, and a predictably lamentable affair it was. But one statement stood out. One of the Danish Imams who led the initial protests against the Jyllands-Posten cartoons declared under cross-examination (from the writer Kenan Malik) that he was entitled to respect. He was, and is, entitled to no such thing. He is entitled in a democratic society to no more and no less than religious and political liberty. Whether he enjoys respect as well is entirely up to him; it is not up to our political and juridical system. The notion that in suffering offence he is done an injustice is false and pernicious. It's also dangerous, because it places no limit on how far the state should regulate people's lives.

There were a few references in the debate to "Islamophobia". This term is a fabricated and question-begging linguistic manoeuvre designed to present the protection of religious sensibilities as a civil liberty issue. Those of us who are disinclined to allow claims of injured sensibilities to moderate our criticism of ideas ought to respond appropriately. To that end, I note from Harry's Place that my comrades have been nominated by an absurd lobby calling itself the Islamic Human Rights Commission for an "Islamophobia" award (according to its organisers, "an annual event to acknowledge - through satire, revue and comedy - the worst Islamophobes of the year"). Other nominees in the UK include Tony Blair and Sky News. Sky's citation reads: "For being a prominent vehicle for anti Muslim propaganda, harboring [sic] bias in the [sic] every report and every question asked". I went on Sky News not long ago to debate a man called Asghar Bukhari of another grandiloquently named lobby group, the Muslim Public Affairs Committee, and can confirm that the presenter, Kay Burley, insisted on posing him loaded questions such as "what's your reply to that, Asghar?"

I was mildly surprised that the nominees did not include the political editor of the New Statesman, Martin Bright, for his important work in detailing the remarkably uncritical dialogue going on between the Foreign Office and Islamist groups. So I nominated him myself. I cannot claim to have done anything like the exhaustive work and analysis that he has done on this subject, but if any reader wishes to nominate me and I am successful, you can be sure I'll turn up to collect the award and express my reasons for pride in it.