"Chunks of left-of-center opinion have tried to close down the debate by saying that if you were to criticize Islam as a thought system you are a de facto racist."

That's the easiest of arguments to rebut.

"And what race is islam, exactly?"

I love when a moslem calls me a racist, they open the floodgates and allow me to destroy any credibility they thought they had.

"Atonement" is the only book I have read by Ian McEwan. It is one of the best books I've read in a long time, and I loved the movie.

Mr. McEwan is a brave and honest man. I hope Brits are listening.

"...if you were to criticise Islam as a thought system you are a de facto racist."

So, by that same argument, if I criticize, say... pedophilia as a disturbing thought system, I'm a racist?

So be it.

The word liberal needs to be revoked, leftists have nothing but antipathy for liberty.

*** 92:8 ***

Marxism is the natural ally of Islam, or as the publicly-soiled-his-diapers Charles Krauthammer would put it, Islamism.

I always knew that the Left and the jihadists were big-time allies, and I understood some of the reasons, such as their mutual anti-Americanism. But I began to understand the connection more fully after recently reading a book about the Castro revolution in Cuba. First, after Castro assumed power he claimed not to be a communist. He sugar-coated the "Revolution" as democratic and used every form of, in essence, taqiyya, to fool the willfully ignorant, one of which was The NY Times, which supported him. At the same time, within Cuba itself, indoctrination of the people, and especially of children, was going on every waking moment. Every aspect of people's lives was controlled, much as shari'a law seeks to control people's actions totally. As to sexuality, people in Cuba were arrested for all sorts of infractions. Gays were hounded, arrested, tortured and killed as counter-revolutionary. The sex lives of women were monitored, and they were arrested as well for sexual infractions. As in Iran today, and in other parts of the Muslim world, people were tortured until they "confessed", and this would be shown as a spectacle on national TV. There were many public hangings in Cuba and a great deal of public abuse to instill fear in the population. The extreme right has also found reason to ally with the Islamists, due to their shared authoritarian views. The difference, though, between right and left is that few conservatives support the Islamists, yet a surprising number of liberals seldom seem to find anything wrong with promoters of illiberal Islam.

Another major similarity that binds together many Muslims, the Left, and the extreme Right is their animus against Jews and Israel.

Tom Hanks, a liberal who has fallen off the edge, compares WW2 with Japan and the war on terror both as racist...He shares that view with a number of mental misfits, like Sean Penn and other entertainment types...Tom, did a great acting job with Forrest Gump, but has been unable to shake the character since then...

They'll play the race card until it's frayed, tattered, worn and torn.

After that they'll invoke Godwin's law and call you a Nazi.

"Chunks of left-of-center opinion have tried to close down the debate."

Judge them by the company they keep. They'll get what they deserve in the end.

I am an atheist, centralist, UK citizen. And I am afraid of the islamification of my country.

BUT, you are making the same mistake as the left, by linking anti-islam with right wing politics.

We need to go beyond that approach, and deal with islam in a broader political coalition, else the divisiveness of the approach will work to our enemies favour.

Let us call the bullshit of any politician who does not roundly condemn islam, but by facts and evidence.

After all, the only anti islamic party in britian at the moment is the BNP, a far right party, which is homophobic, racist and christian. And I have a real problem for voting for them, even though I know, it will be just meant as a wakeup call to the main political parties, who are entranced by the muslim vote.

After all, if Hitler had never come into power, we would have never started the immigration policies which have been so damaging.

ps, I would consider becoming an American citizen, if things get any worse over here. Only you can defend the British empire's legacy at this rate.

A spot-on, if rather simplistic, analysis by McEwan.

1) He notices that "many on the Left" shares anti-Americanism with the "Islamists" (the latter being an unfortunate choice of term for the far more elegantly accurate Muslims), as though this were a new observation.

2. Secondly, the problem is much broader and deeper than a mere consanguinity of anti-Americanism between Muslims and Leftists: it extends into anti-Westernism.

3. It's not merely "many on the Left" -- it's the vast majority of Leftists who are anti-American and anti-Western.

4. Beyond that, this Leftist-Gnostic poison has seeped out into the wider body politic throughout the West, affecting and infecting the hearts & minds of the majority of centrists and conservatives with regard to an excessive, irrational self-criticism of their own own West. This curious, yet unavoidably massive sociopolitical phenomenon leads a Lawrence Auster to redefine all those centrists and conservatives as "liberals", but that is a rather facile analytical solution, leading to cumbersome and sometimes bizarre contortions in a search for the "true conservative" that itself begins to take on quasi-Gnostic overtones. I prefer to respect their continuing centrism and conservatism -- and their sincerity, good faith and intelligence -- while positing a new paradigm shift in worldview (PC MC, for want of a better term) which, over the past 50-odd years, has successfully changed the mental and emotional DNA of centrism and conservatism, leading them through their sincerity, good faith and intelligence to defend indefensible Islam & Muslims.

5. Thus, the illiberal betrayal of classical liberalism by conservatives, and the anti-liberal betrayal of post-modern liberalism by Leftists -- insofar as all concerned continue to defend an ideology (Islam) and a people (Muslims) who are hostile to both types of liberalism.

6. The "racist" canard used by Leftists -- used to shut down not only debate about, and not only criticism of, Islam & Muslims, but also the condemnation Islam & Muslims richly deserve -- is also supported and enabled by the majority of conservatives and centrists, insofar as these populations have swallowed PC MC, one of whose central tenets is an irrationally excessive Anti-Racism fused with a morbidly excessive Anti-Westernism (cf. #4).

7. The racist canard continues to enjoy massive traction with regard to the problem of Islam because of the undeniable fact that the vast majority of Muslims are ethnic people, and so any negative energy directed even at the general vicinity of Muslims instantly registers in the PC MC mind as "bigotry" and "racism". This potent irrationality is extraordinarily resilient and supported by ostensible reality, and is not going to be easily dispelled by the simplistic retort that "Islam is not a race". Islam may not be a race, but it is a culture followed by hundreds of millions of Brown, Yellow and Black people (with a handful of Whites sprinkled in here and there) -- and as such, it becomes verboten to say or do anything remotely negative against it and its followers.

That the far left is in bed with the jihadists, and the liberal left is seeking ways to appease and accommodate Islam, is old news.

What should be a more pressing concern is that those with power and influence residing to the right-of-center on the political spectrum have fallen down on the job. They are either suffering from ignorance, cowardice or self-interest, and most likely, some combination of the three.

This past week on Fox News, Glen Beck, Charles Krauthammer and Bill Kristol all dismissed the heroic Dutch politician Geert Wilders as a "fascist" (Beck) or an "extremist." Of course anyone who has followed Wilders over the past few years knows that he is anything but an extremist or fascist. When it comes to prominent politicians in Europe and North America on the issue of Islam, there is Wilders and there is--well, who else is there? Wilders is working hard to protect our freedoms, our rule of law and the rights of everyone living in the West--women, minorities, Jews, Christians, Asians, gays, Africans and, yes, moderate Muslims--from the barbaric imposition of Sharia law.

Why isn't Geert Wilders a household name and/or a hero among those in America who consider themselves conservatives? Why wasn't Wilders, Robert Spencer's organization or apostates from Islam like Nonie Darwish invited to speak at CPAC's official functions?

Too much of our media and politicians are owned by Saudi Arabia and other rich Arab-Muslim interests. Prince Asshat bin Talal controls the second largest stake in NewsCorp, which means an agent of the enemy has influence over major "conservative" media: Fox News, Wall Street Journal and Weekly Standard. Furthermore, Prince Alawa-Whatever bin Talal also owns part of AOL-Time Warner; that means stories on CNN, in Time Magazine and on AOL's news service are all being slanted to paint Islam and Muslim societies in an undeserved positive light. Even without Arab-Muslim owenership, CNN, AP, Reuters and so many other media organization do so much business in the Muslim world, and have Arabic language broadcasts and magazines to sell, that slanting the news to avoid upsetting Muslim sensibilities is, in part, about protecting the bottom line. Where conservative voices are not self-censoring out of self-interest, they remain ignorant if they rely on the media--even the "conservative media"--to inform them about the nature of the Islamic threat.

The conservative grass roots movement and organizations like CPAC have too much influence from pro-Islamists like Grover Norquist, who seeks to silence anyone who doesn't share his desire to promote the Muslim Brotherhood-linked Islamic groups. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia is still paying off our politicians and ambassadors once they leave office.

But what about Charles Krauthammer? He is a bright man who seems to have integrity. And his career doesn't seem to be tied to NewsCorp in the same way as Beck and Kristol.
Yet Krauthammer has never showed any understanding of Islam. He thought that Dubai owning our ports was a fine idea.

Could it be that Krauthammer is just a fundamentally decent man who doesn't want to paint all Muslims with a broad brush--that he is giving the benefit of the doubt to those with a Muslim identity who don't support jihad and Sharia-- so he chooses to play the Islam vs. Islamist game? Is it that his identity is wrapped up in being a conservative who no one would ever accuse of bigotry or "racism?"

Of course, Wilders is not saying, and has never said, that all Muslims are a threat to our way of life. He has said that there are many moderate Muslims--probably the majority of Muslims--who are law abiding citizens without a negative agenda. But he also makes the crucial distinction that while Muslims as individuals may be moderate, there is no such thing as moderate Islam. Islam is a totalitarian, imperialistic ideology, and as long as the West continues to import large number of Muslims with among them many supportive of the Islamic ideology, the West is signing its own death sentence, as there is no way to distinguish a moderate from an extremist, as there is no official "moderate" branch of Islam akin to the different denominations of Christianity or Judaism. Any apostate from Islam will tell you that the mosques and Islamic organizations throughout the West are almost entirely funded and operated by those who we would classify as radicals or Islamists.

Islam is not a race. You can get out of being a Muslim but you can't get out of being an Arab.

But seriously, since when did being left-wing = jihadist supporter? Is being right-wing a White supremacist supporter?

"left-leaning thinkers ?"

Not.

Mindless drones,redistributers of (other peoples) wealth. Socialist stinkers who believe they can get something for nothing. Unfortunately, the world is full of 'em....

Mahoundianism's useful idiots will be ditched, or rather, chopped up by their fellow America-, West- and Capitalism-haters as soon as their usefulness is no longer necessary for their beloved slaves of mahound's imaginary alter-ego allah. If mahoundians kill each other over tribal, clan, sectarian and ethnic differences, does anyone really think they'd be any less barbaric and violent towards their commie sympathizers?

Here is a case in point: the Swedish fascist thugs that go by the name of ANTIFA (anti-fascism, of all things), got attacked by their beloved mahoundians as they tried to take their commie parade floats into the now-part-of-Dar-al-mahoundianism Malmö district of Rosengård, during a little festival... I guess they were probably thinking that their Mein-Qurampf-thumping buddies were going to welcome them with open arms on their turf; but instead they faced what, sooner or later, anyone touched by the utterly destructive "gift" of mahoundianism will inevitably face.

What is remarkable, of course, is that a statement of the obvious should be considered remarkable.

But it's welcome, nonethelss. The more such people as Ian McEwan speak out about this, the less possible it will be for the BBC (with John Simpson, great friend and admirer of Peter Hounam, about whom you can find out more at this site), Robert Fisk, George Galloway, and many others, the deeply anti-American and, bien entendu, viciously anti-Israel (because, let's face it, they are antisemites, as all those in the West who are viciously anti-Israel are to begin with, or become), and those who write for "The Guardian" (with assorted seamus-milnes), who naturally end up as Defenders of Islam. They can do no other.

Interesting thread. Would make these two comments: Modern liberalism, as opposed to old-fashion liberalism, has lost its collective mind. It has become so open-minded that it's brains have fallen out. The 1960s were a tragedy in many ways, but arguably the greatest tragdey of all to emerge from this pathetic decade (which nonetheless did see a few triumphs such as the movement towards racial equality and man's conquest of space) that still malevolently influences us is the bastardization of true liberalism, which never had national suicide and self-hate as elements of its ideology.

Second comment: Modern liberalism has largely succeeded in monopolizing the debate. This aberrant way of thinking is so shrill and self-righteous that it uses some seven or eight code words like "racist," "bigot," "sexist," "fascist" and, of course, "Islamophobe" to shut off debate. It's very cheap, actually quite anti-intellectual and very, very stupid. Time for things to change-----permanently.