The Black Egg of Islamophobia

[muriel_volestrangler]

This will be obscure to you if you don’t know the backstory. Last night, Channel 4 News did a piece on the Maajid Nawaz/J&M controversy. They showed the comic, but censored Mo – thus playing to the worst stereotype of Muslims as violent fanatics, pushing liberal Muslims “further into a ditch” (Nawaz), betraying the principles of journalism in a democracy, and providing fuel for true anti-Muslim bigots.

http://www.jesusandmo.net/2014/01/29/black/

Related:

Students from the University of Plymouth's Islamic Society are agitating to have a talk by a speaker from the anti-Islamist think tank Quilliam banned tonight – because he failed to condemn Maajid Nawaz's tweeting of the Jesus and Mo cartoon.

The talk by Sheikh Dr Usama Hasan, a senior researcher in Islamic Studies at Quilliam, will take place at the Jill Craigie cinema tonight on the topic of Islam and democracy in the wake of the Arab Spring.

But the Islamic Society is planning to protest at the event because, they claim, Dr Hasan has not condemned the actions of Quilliam co-founder Maajid Nawaz, a Lib Dem parliamentary candidate for Hampstead and Kilburn. Mr Nawaz has received death threats and much abuse for saying that he did not find a Jesus & Mo cartoon offensive. He has written about the experience in today's Guardian.

The Islamic Society has been pressing the University's Vice Chancellor, Wendy Purcell, to cancel the talk claiming that the Quilliam Foundation was promoting "Islamophobia".

http://www.secularism.org.uk/news/2014/01/university-islamic-society-tries-to-stop-talk-because-speaker-didnt-condemn-maajid-nawaz

Time for some institutions - the Liberal Democrats, universities - to stand up for secular rights of freedom of expression in the UK.

[trotsky]

1. This is another really important issue that becomes a problem for some.

There are those who insist we must respect the beliefs of others as long as they don't harm anyone. Leaving aside the difference of opinion in what constitutes "harm," we'd be hard pressed to say that being told we can't draw something is harming us. Yet why should we respect that belief?