Muslim madness

People are not suuposed criticise Islam as a religion but they can persecute radical Muslims. Meejit thinks that everyone has got it arseways.

Last week's column, in which I addressed the charge of "anti-Semitism" sometimes laid against the anti-Israel left, and confessed to a recent overheated reaction when the term was used against me, got more than the usual reaction from readers.

Among the messages were complaints that – not unlike the critics of Israel who are labelled anti-Semites – those who oppose and expose the excesses of radical Muslims are called anti-Islam (including in this magazine).

Somehow it's got into our public culture that it's nasty and illiberal to despise Islam per se – even Bush says it's a religion of peace – but that it's reasonable and prudent to persecute and prosecute Muslim radicals on the basis of their views, or to "racially profile" Arabs because, after all, the odds are better that they're carrying a bomb compared to that nice white lady further down the security queue.

You may not be surprised that I think this is arseways. Hating any or all religions should be your fundamental intellectual right. Urging any sort of prejudicial treatment against someone because of his (rarely her) adherence to even the most extreme religious beliefs is, on the other hand, a definition of intolerant bigotry. When we define people by their religion, we succumb to the same totalising notions that we say we oppose. "Racial profiling", in particular, is an ugly and demeaning way that societies breed cycles of resentment.

Unreliable resources

There's a strand of journalism hereabouts obsessed with the Islamic "enemy within". This is understandable, given the dreadful and obviously newsworthy presence of terrorists and wannabes in Britain. It crosses the line in all sorts of ways when it makes or suggests connections between anonymous "security source" quotes about alleged al Qaida plots in Ireland and the beliefs of Muslims here.

I corresponded lately with a journalist who pursues this sort of story and thinks that we leftishes and Villagers have averted our eyes. In an email, this reporter told me some unsavoury things about the views of a particular Muslim organisation in Dublin and invited me to check it out for myself online. I did, and in five minutes had found inaccuracy, exaggeration and misleading emphasis in the journalist's brief allegations. I'm being discreet because in this case the errors were not published, but they are indicative of where misplaced passion leads even good reporters.

Some writers don't deserve the benefit of any doubt. Eoghan Harris (not, I swear, the target of an obsessive Village plot) opines earnestly about how some years ago he came to realise the danger of the conjunction of Islam and politics. One wonders idly if this was around the time Harris was, by his own account, helping Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi to press for the violent overthrow of a secular Arab regime, and thus helping to usher Islamist terror into Iraq.

Healthy disbelief

No, I don't know for sure about the presence or otherwise of dangerous "radicals" in Dublin: neither the Sunday papers' allegations nor Village's refutations are definitive. But I know something about my old hometown of Paterson, New Jersey, such an alleged hotbed that John Updike placed his new novel's deadly terror-cell there. In fact, the Arabs of Paterson are Bush Republicans, described privately as "lovable" even by the local FBI. So don't believe anything you read, even in fiction.

And don't let them turn "Islamists" into some kind of united web of terror. Hezbollah, for example, is not regarded as a terrorist organisation by the EU, and the most serious Western scholars regard it as primarily a social and political movement rather than an instrument of global jihad. If it or any other organisation, here or abroad, is involved in oppressing, say, women or gays, we should oppose that in solidarity with its victims, not support the blunt instruments of US/Israeli power that slaughter victim and perpetrator alike.

My most politically-learned friend reminds me of the century-old left-wing nostrum that "anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools". Today's anti-Muslim sentiment, he says, is the liberalism of fools. I think he's being kind to call them "fools", but he's on the right track.

Harry Browne will speak at a public meeting organised by Anti-War Ireland, along with Shannon Five defendants Ciaron O'Reilly and Deirdre Clancy, next Thursday 7 September at 7.30pm at the ATGWU hall, Middle Abbey Street, Dublin 1