Islamophobia as official policy
It may be difficult to imagine, but Peter Oborne, rabid screaming Tory that he is, has put the finger on what Labour is trying to achieve with their campaign against the veil:
The most recent assault, which came just hours after the subject was discussed at a Cabinet meeting in Downing Street, was launched by Hilary Armstrong on Question Time and came with the full authority of the Prime Minister.
Harriet Harman, Tessa Jowell, Peter Hain, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, Ruth Kelly and a number of other frontline Labour politicians have also entered the fray.
It is now clear that Jack Straw's comments on women who wear the veil were not, as seemed likely at the time, the result of some random rumination. He surely set out with the intention of putting in motion a national campaign.
In other words, Labour has made the extraordinary decision to place the politics of religious identity at the centre of public discourse, in the same sort of way that Jorg Haider's Freedom Party does in Austria and Pim Fortuyn's List Party did in the Netherlands
Criticisms of this tactic in the Press - which was so derogatory about Michael Howard's timid excursion into similar terrain 18 months ago - have been few and far between.
On the contrary, Jack Straw's comments have liberated the media to follow suit. It seems every day now brings forth news of an outrage allegedly perpetrated somewhere by a Muslim.
Many of the stories - such as the front page claims two weeks ago that a Muslim man had shouted abuse in a hospital at a British soldier wounded in Iraq, or the allegation that a terrorist suspect used the veil to evade detection - are impossible to substantiate and may well turn out to be fabrications.
Some people will feel glad that the subject of Islam is being widely aired at last. And it is perfectly true that many of the comments made by ministers, whether Jack Straw on the veil or Ruth Kelly on the need to keep an eye on 'extremism', contain grains of good sense.
But cumulatively this litany of condemnation has turned into an anti-Islamic crusade. I am a practising member of the Church of England and if we had come under the same wave of condemnation for our practices and traditions I would by now be affronted beyond belief.
If I were Jewish, with the experience of the 20th century to look back on, and came under the same weight of hostility I would be terrified.
There is a whiff of the lynch mob about the wave of attacks over the past fortnight, and it is no surprise to learn that the new national mood sparked by Jack Straw and sanctioned by Tony Blair has indeed led to a number of assaults on British mosques, including one firebombing.
Interestingly, Oborne is (unknowningly) echoing a point "Lenin" made earlier, that islamophobia is becoming Labour's official policy in order to keep public support for its War on Terror, including the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Read more about: War on Iraq, UK politcs, islamophobia
