Matthew Syed on the complicity of western liberals with fatwa-issuing clerics:

Many of the comments on the Rushdie affair over the past 24 hours have pointed out that for many years he has been living quite freely, that the fatwa had been revoked by Iran (although the bounty remains) and that society has moved on from the dark days of book-burning, even if lone attackers remain a threat.

I would suggest that this is delusional, a fantasy conjured up by western liberals to distract from a more sinister truth: over 30 years they have worked as the de facto accomplices of the ayatollah, assisting in the task of dismantling free speech, sending fear through those who dare to criticise or ridicule religion or anything else. Rushdie, in this sense, is not — and never was — a historical affair but a live scandal running through the veins of British life, not to mention other western societies.

Indeed. Charlie Hebdo anyone?

As I read about the attack on Rushdie, my mind turned to Louis Smith, another high-profile Briton from an ethnic minority; a gymnast who won three Olympic medals before going on to a TV career. A few years ago, he and his friend Luke Carson, a fellow gymnast, were frolicking around, singing (as they often did together) when Carson lay down on a mat and shouted “Allahu akbar” while Smith laughed. It was a bit of a giggle, nothing nasty, scarcely satirical. But the video, as you have probably guessed, leaked.

And boom, his life was ruined, with the energetic help of “liberal” commentators.

Yet the truly chilling aspect of this affair — which also went largely unreported — is that Smith couldn’t earn a living after his “crime”. Sponsors and broadcasters turned their backs on him. Progressives didn’t want to know. His income vanished and he struggled to pay his mortgage. To be clear: this punishment beating was perpetrated on Smith not by fanatics, not by knife-wielding fundamentalists, but the monolithic liberal ideology that will not tolerate opinions (or even jokes) that breach their antiliberal creed.

It was the same creed that defended those who hounded into hiding a teacher at a school in Batley, West Yorkshire, last year for showing his class a religious cartoon. It is the same creed that equates criticism of the myriad excesses of the Muslim Brotherhood with Islamophobia.

For that matter it’s the same creed that thinks there’s something wrong with hating religions.