Muslim leaders tonight backed the Conservative party chairwoman, Lady Warsi, after she claimed Islamophobia had "crossed the threshold of middle-class respectability" in Britain and was now seen as normal and uncontroversial.
The Muslim Council of Britain warned the spread could be "the beginning of something horrendous" in a British society with an estimated 2.4m Muslims.
At Leicester University tonight Warsi claimed that parts of the press had embraced casual Islamophobia and that other parts of society including employers and even school children would be next.
Warsi said that people were fed up of "the patronising, superficial way faith is discussed in certain quarters, including the media", adding that Muslims are too often baldly characterised as either moderate or extreme. [20 Jan. guardian.co.uk] Read more
