“Recently, your paper carried an article about dogs being sent to Turkey by an animal charity in the Borders. I read the item with a sinking heart and it is still worrying me. Surely, everyone must know that Muslims hate dogs.

“Respect and compassion, let alone kindness, towards animals is not part of Islamic culture and the wicked cruelty to animals that is commonplace in Islamic countries has never been a secret from the rest of the world.

“Turkey is an Islamic country. Expats living there do what they can to help the numerous abused animals. Why on earth would anyone think to send dogs from the UK, and ones that have already been unlucky enough to end up in a shelter, to an Islamic country?”

Letter in the Southern Reporter, 27 June 2007

We’re of course familiar with Islamophobia being packaged as a defence of women’s rights or LGBT rights, but the use of animal rights as a cover for anti-Muslim bigotry is now gaining ground. See for example the BNP’s attempt to win support by opposing halal slaughter as “the most barbaric and primitive method of killing animals imaginable”