There’s also Anas Altikriti, a former president of the Muslim Association of Britain.

France, which stood against war in Iraq, scuppered its good relations with the Muslim world when its secular fanatics insisted on banning the hijab in state schools. These cartoons come at the end of a long line of events in which there has been a striking absence of representation of the Muslim perspective and of our rights and freedoms.

Secular fanatics is it. And ‘the Muslim perspective’ on the hijab – but a lot of Muslims, especially women, were in favour of the ban. What about their perspective?

Religion no more restricts freedom of speech than secularism promotes it. Is it so difficult to digest that

Also sorry I missed that inspiring demo.

Several thousand Muslims turned out today to demonstrate against the controversial cartoons of the prophet Muhammad – but the numbers were far lower than the 30,000 the organisers hoped would take part. They gathered in London’s Trafalgar Square holding banners proclaiming: “United Against Incitement And Islamophobia.”

Good about the numbers. Bad about the moral blackmail.

A series of speakers gathered to offer their support to the Muslim community but also to voice their opposition to the ongoing conflict in Iraq. Jeremy Corbyn MP, a long-term protester against the war in Iraq, said: “The only way our community can survive is by showing mutual respect to each other. We demand that people show

Gee, I’m sorry I missed that show.

On Monday, the BBC program Newsnight gathered several Muslims, among them Anjem Choudary, who had organized that demonstration…He verbally abused the other speakers, denouncing one highly intelligent and personable woman, a Conservative candidate at the last election, as an unbeliever because her head was uncovered, and a man because he was clean-shaven. No, of course England didn’t belong to the English, Choudary insisted, or to any human inhabitants, “It belongs to Allah, the whole world belongs to Allah.” He prayed for “the domination of Islam” (“hopefully peacefully”) and looked forward to the day when “the black flag of Islam will be flying over Downing Street.”

Yeah. Can’t wait. Can’t wait to live in … Read the rest

So, Why Truth Matters is published. Jeremy received a copy of it a week ago, and he says the publishers have done a beautiful job. I was all excited, and looked forward to getting a copy too, rushing to the mailbox every day all eager for the treat, then feeling bitterly disappointed when it wasn’t there. By Wednesday I suspected and by yesterday I realized that I wasn’t getting one, so I asked the publishers if I could have one too, and they explained that they had only one and they sent it to Jeremy. They said they were sorry they couldn’t send me one too. Oh.

So I have it only on hearsay that the publishers have done a … Read the rest

And not just threats, but also demands. Like this demand.

British imams have demanded changes in the law and a strengthening of the Press Complaints Commission code to outlaw any possible publication of the cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in the UK.

That’s quite a demand. Quite a bold, confident, aggressive, demanding demand. I don’t think clerics and priests and rabbis and imams should make demands like that of secular societies.

Yesterday’s event, which involved imams and grassroots figures from throughout England and Scotland, marked the foundation of the Muslim Action Committee (MAC), whose leaders plan a continuous campaign to confront the alleged disparagement of Muslim communities and to call for “global civility”…Faiz Siddiqi, the MAC’s national convenor, said:

Correction, to something in ‘Lesson Time’. I didn’t notice this until well after I’d posted the comment, so I had a good opportunity to feel surprised and irritated at my own befuddlement. It’s like those games where an extra word is inserted in some familiar bit of doggerel, and we don’t notice it because we see what we expect to see. Only not very much like that, because I should have been paying better attention, seeing as how I was arguing with the content. Thanks to sloppy reading I agreed with an absurdity. Allow me to start again.

Even if an artist had failed to find someone to illustrate a children’s book on the Prophet for fear of reprisals, this