Steyn D'Jour

Islam is everything but a race. It's a religion — which is to say (if you're an atheist like Amis and his friend Christopher Hitchens) an ideology. It's also a political platform and an imperialist project, as those terms are traditionally understood. It has believers of every colour on every continent. So, if Islam is a race, then everything's a race — from the Elks Lodge to the Hannah Montana Fan Club to the British Airways frequent flyer program. Moreover, to denounce as "racist" any attempt to discuss Islam is to accept that being Muslim, like being black, is a given, fixed, unchangeable. That's what its adherents believe: 36 per cent of young British Muslims think that anyone attempting to leave Islam should be killed. But there's no reason for non-Muslims to sign on to that.

Indeed. One of the biggest mistakes the anti-jihad movement has made is letting liberals set the terms of the debate. How else could we have arrived at the insane position where Islam is a complete system for living, valid for all times and places, but we're not allowed to discuss what it actually involves ?