“Question: ‘What is the definition of an Islamophobe?’ Answer: ‘Someone who objects to being blown up on the way to work.’

“The politically correct brigade might not like it but there is a large element of truth in that ‘joke’. In recent years we have had to endure a constant threat to our society from Muslim extremists who kill, maim and brutalise in the name of Allah. Yet, in the inverted moral universe created by our Left-wing political establishment, any criticism of Islam provokes indignant cries of ‘racism’ or ‘Islamophobia’….

“In the light of today’s third anniversary of the July bombings in 2005, the eagerness of Muslim representatives to don the mantle of victimhood is truly sickening. Last week, Minister for International Development and Dewsbury MP Shahid Malik had the nerve to claim that ‘Muslims feel like the Jews of Europe’ because of supposed persecution.

“Meanwhile, the Channel 4 Dispatches programme is tonight examining the phenomenon of so-called Islamophobia, claiming that Muslims are an alienated, vulnerable community under siege. The intellectually barren argument is that Islam ‘has an overwhelming message of peace and tolerance’. Try telling that to relatives of those killed in the Twin Towers or in the London bombings….

“It is obscene for political commentators to characterise as a disease or a prejudice the wish to preserve our civilisation in the face of barbarism. The real disease of modern Britain is the cringing of our cowardly political establishment towards Islam…. The political elite might blather about ‘rich cultural diversity’ but this is only a recipe for the destruction of our civilisation. In practice, its capitulation to Islam is a form of national suicide.”

Leo McKinstry in the Daily Express, 7 July 2008