A Herald story last week, which I didn’t notice at the time, seems to link my last two blogs in an interesting way. I know it’s important not to get obsessive about some particular topic, otherwise you get dismissed as a loony. And whatever you write, you need at least to seem balanced. For instance, if you write against the entry of Turkey into the EU, as I did earlier this week, you must be careful not to do it in such a way as to start getting called Islamophobic.
Now, “Islamophobic” is an interesting word, with two quite distinct meanings, one of them etymologically absolutely incorrect: a phobia is a fear of something, not a hatred of it. In other words, Islamophobia actually means a fear, not a hatred of Islam. Which brings me to Anna Arco’s story last week, headlined “Police monitor internet for threats against the Pope during his visit”. That’s where my other blog comes in: for the Herald story concerned an extremist website called the Islamic Standard, which has urged Muslims to “tell the Pope just what they think of him after his insults against the Prophet Muhammad”. It also said the Birmingham event was not only a chance to “challenge these evil words of this evil Pope” but that it was also a chance to “call people away from the shirk of worshipping the dead like the Catholics do….”
