“Britain’s state of denial continues to deepen. We saw it after 9/11, when people said America had brought the atrocity upon itself – mainly through its ‘uncritical’ support for Israel. Then after Britain’s own human bomb attacks last July, the media became gripped by fear not of Islamist terrorism but of Islamophobia, or fear of the fear of Islamist terrorism. Now we are told that the riots in France by Muslim and Arab youths from the banlieues – the city suburbs – have nothing to do with Islam but are the result of poverty, unemployment, racism and discrimination. Those who say, au contraire, that Islam is at the core of the disorder are being vilified as far-right racists and crazed reactionary demagogues.”

Melanie Phillips in the Jewish Chronicle, 18 November 2005