24 January 2015

I don’t want to live under Islamic blasphemy law. That doesn’t make me racist

.... In the immediate aftermath of the Paris atrocities most of the people who thought the journalists and cartoonists in some sense ‘had it coming to them’ kept their heads down. I encountered a few who did not, including Asghar Bukhari from the MPAC (Muslim Public Affairs Committee).

In the aftermath of the atrocity Asghar was immediately eager to smear the cartoonists and editors of Charlie Hebdo as racists. From what he and others of his ilk have been sending around since, they appear to have dug down into a narrative which now goes something like this:

‘The murders had nothing to do with Islam, Muslims or Islamic blasphemy law. They certainly had something to do with Western foreign policy or domestic Islamophobia. But by the way Charlie Hebdo is a racist magazine.’ [The Spectator] Read more