Joan Smith offers her contribution to the “debate” (read: opportunity to incite further hostility towards Islam and Muslims) over the Gillian Gibbons case:
“It is not enough in these circumstances to claim that Islam is a religion of peace, and dismiss all the things non-Muslims don’t like – honour killings, relentless assaults on free speech, and now an accusation of blasphemy related to a teddy bear – as aberrations. The mores of the seventh century have no relevance in modern life….
“The damage that is being inflicted daily on the image of Islam doesn’t come from people like me, who are constantly accused of Islamophobia, but practices such as forced marriage, honour killings and heated denunciations of ‘Western’ values.”