Good copy, bad press and Islamophobia

Anarcho Akbar: "John Ware belongs to a gaggle of journalists, including Martin Bright, Polly Toynbee, David Aaronovitch et al, who for one reason or another tend to give Muslims bad copy. Not all are motivated by the same thing. Polly Toynbee, for example, is one of the atheist-secularist crowd who despise ALL religion with a vengeance. European history and, in Polly’s instance, personal experience, gives credibility to such a perspective [...]  However, it is extremely rare for Muslim organisations to proffer such a nuanced critic of the personal motivations behind anti-Muslim copy. That’s why Polly gets awards for her 'Islamophobia'. Nor do they ever spot the obvious motivation, which is that Musi-bashing is GOOD COPY. Muslims are the modern folk demon. Writing about the allegedly bad and stupid things they do is GOOD COPY. If journalists have an agenda, it is one which directly attributable to their own training, and the relationship between media and culture."

I've mentioned something similar before on the use of 'Islamophobia' by Muslims, and our general approach to criticisms of Islamic practice and beliefs. As has Atif Imtiaz, in a piece which he allowed me to reproduce on this blog, where he points to the 'cultural illiteracy' of Muslims in Britain and our inability to distinguish between anti-religious polemicists for whom Islam is merely a religion amongst many others, rhetoric for its own sake, and genuine racists and bigots out to malign Muslims.

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Islamophobia Questions - answer YES and the ‘phobia’ will go away!

Will Muslims confirm that the expressed desire of some of the faithful for a worldwide caliphate is to be purged from their teachings (and their websites) and will Muslim leaders publicly renounce all those that support this worldview?

Will Muslims do something positive toward the radical elements within their own ranks by purging Mosques of radical clerics an hold them legally accountable for those that act on their instructions?

Will Moslems actively seek to broaden their junior schools’ curriculum and ensure that only students, that have reached the age of reason, attend institutions that are dedicated exclusively to studying the Qur’an?

Will Muslims actively and constantly rebuke, loudly and publicly, those that undertake violent jihad and denounce the concept as being defunct and belonging to another time (much as the Christians have done with their revolting concepts of the crusades)?

Will Muslims actively return to the now practically abandoned practice of broad spectrum “ijtihad” and as a world religion start a process of enlightenment in a similar way the Christians did with their period of reformation?

Will Muslim scholars and clerics actively endorse a program of democratization and work conscientiously and consistently seek to remove dictatorial governments?

Will Muslims walk away from the concept of a theocratic state and acknowledge that civil law must always out way sharia law?

Will Muslims publicly rebuke governments and organisations that fund violent Islamic movements in foreign lands, such as the one that has existed in Thailand for some years?

Will Islamic religious leaders publicly denounce brutal regimes that are involved in ethnic cleansing such as Somalia and Sudan and volunteer armed forces to United Nations missions involved in attempts to install democratic governments in failed states?

Will Muslims, through a process ijtihad suppress and deny the sura and hadith that are highly offensive to non-Muslims by insisting that their followers acknowledge and accept that they refer to specific historical times and events that no longer exist and therefore render them void?

Will Muslims allow those that wish to leave the faith to do so without retribution?

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