Harry has another go at Islamophobia Watch.
I particularly like Harry’s account of the Algerian civil war: “In Algeria between 1992 and 1998 an estimated 150,000 people were killed as a result of a campaign launched by the Armed Islamic Group….” Of course, this does rather overlook the fact that many of these deaths were caused by the Algerian state forces’ ferocious repression of suspected Islamists, and that the civil war itself was the result of the secularist FLN regime having suppressed the 1992 parliamentary elections on the grounds that the Islamist FIS were about to form a democratically elected government.
Equally impressive is Harry’s staunch defence of oppressed Iraqis against their oppressors. Did he issue a forthright condemnation of the continuing violent occupation of Iraq by foreign armies, I hear you ask. Did his anger boil over at the estimated 100,000 deaths that have resulted from the US invasion? Did he express his fury at the destruction of Fallujah?
Er … no. What he had in mind was the defence of a group of students in Basra whose picnic was reportedly attacked by members of Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia.
And we still haven’t been told who precisely the moderate Muslims are that Harry supports. But apparently to qualify as moderates it is not enough for them to support democracy, human rights and freedom of organisation for other faiths – they also have to support a separation of religion and state along the lines proposed by western secularists. Which of course excludes even the most democratic, reformist tendencies within Islamism.