Aaronovitch on Islamophobia

Nice to see David Aaronovitch talking good sense over at the Guardian today, locking horns with the kind of person who says, of Theo Van Gogh's awful murder in Amsterdam.

"Theo wasn't killed by Dutch society but by a Muslim. But then Muslims rarely do much soul searching."

"See that!", Aaronovitch snaps.

"In a blink of a cursor? See how "a Muslim" so quickly became "Muslims"? There are a billion Muslims with a hundred thousand interpretations of the Koran, but they are all now transformed into the Muslim who killed Van Gogh."

He goes on to say that...

"there is today - even among intelligent and thoughtful people - a story of Muslims as there was, when my father was young, a story of Jews. The story of Jews was about the clannishness and closeness of a self-designated 'chosen people', and how they used their undoubted talents to manipulate the media, the world of finance and (latterly) the US political process. And if one was caught in a fraud, then (as I once overheard a Daily Mail columnist say to Norman Tebbit), wasn't that 'their' way?

The story of Muslims is of a backward, super-sensitive religion which mistreats women and suppresses dissent. It is as true and as useful as the story of Jews, and, if we keep on telling it, leads to a similar place."

Full article here: David Aaronovitch: All Muslims are not the same.