Islamophobia Watch recently launched a disgraceful attack on Lucy James, author of a new paper dismantling the BNP’s attacks on Islam. As shown here at the Spittoon, their article was entirely scurrilous.
This affair made me do something which I normally avoid at all costs, read Islamophobia Watch. And when I was reading their latest nonsense I noticed something interesting. On the left hand side of Islamophobia Watch’s website is a list of categories of articles on the website.
At the very top is the category ‘Anti-Muslim violence’ whilst at the bottom of the (long) list is ‘Yusuf al-Qaradawi’. If you are unfamiliar with this name, he is the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, a man who supports wife-beating and FGM and who doesn’t like Jews or innocent Israelis very much.
It might surprise you, then, to find that Islamophobia Watch has found the time to write 241 articles supportive of one of the world’s leading Islamists yet, despite its supposed concern with documenting attacks on Muslims around the world (a noble aim indeed), just 239 articles are concerned with ‘Anti Muslim Violence’.
(UPDATE: This was correct at the time of writing on 23rd August 2009, the links on the numbers above are to screen shots proving so, but Islamophobia Watch has since written three more articles on ‘Anti Muslim Violence’ and no more on ‘Yusuf al-Qaradawi’. Incidentally, if you go to the useful waybackmachine tool then the most recent saved version of Islamophobia Watch, from February 2008, had no fewer than 210 articles on ‘Yusuf al-Qaradawi’ and just 183 on ‘Anti Muslim Violence’.)
The explanation is simple. Islamophobia Watch uses a definition of Islamophobia which cynically conflates criticism of Islamists with anti-Muslim bigotry. Thus a man who wants to go to Israel and blow himself up is to be defended whilst a principled campaigner like Peter Tatchell is accused of “mindless sectarian bigotry” and Islamophobia.
I say this as a leftist myself, but the fact that there are more articles on Islamophobia Watch defending an extremist Islamist than articles documenting ‘Anti Muslim Violence’ demonstrates exactly the problem with much of the modern left.
One Comment
There is a definitely a need for an ‘IslamophobiaWatch Watch’ site in its own right. But I suspect that wading through the cynical racism, the shameless hypocrisy and the self-righteous demagoguery of Bob Pitt would be a dispiriting task.