Stephen Pollard, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, gives a boost to Bruce Bawer’s latest exercise in anti-Muslim bigotry:
“There is no more important issue facing the West than Islamism, Islamofascism or – to use yet another label – radical Islam. And there is no more necessary precondition to countering that threat than understanding it: where it springs from, how it is expressed and the ways in which it is spreading. But before we do any of that, we have to agree that the threat exists.
“For the United States, the danger so far has taken the form of terror, as 9/11 so clearly demonstrated. In Europe, terror is real too, but a more insidious problem has now taken hold: many liberals and others on the European left are making common cause with radical Islam and then brazenly and bizarrely denying both the existence of that alliance and in fact the existence of any Islamist threat whatever. Bruce Bawer’s ‘Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom’ is focused on this phenomenon.”
It’s no surprise that the JC, never exactly known for its efforts to build bridges between the Jewish and Muslim communities, has taken a lurch in a particularly Islamophobic direction since Pollard took over as editor.