A US blogger applauds Harry’s Place for its “magisterial dismembering” of Islamophobia Watch. (Must have missed that one.) Apparently we’re suffering from “reflexive Islamophilia”, defined as “the tendency of some Western Leftists to offer an intellectual free pass to Islam and Muslims because it is non-Western”. (I’m afraid grammar is not one of this blogger’s strong points.)

Our basic mistake is to suppose that Islamophobia is a form of racism: “It is not – Islam is a religion, an ideological choice.” Really? How come there are so few Muslims among white inhabitants of the United States, then? And rather more among people of colour in the Middle East? Well, obviously, they just made different individual choices.

Pearsall’s Books, 26 March 2005

Update:  For Pearsall Helms’ reply – which fails to address the point I was trying to make, namely that religion is not primarily an individual choice but rather part of a community’s collective culture – see here.