mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Last week the Organisation of Islamic the Conference (OIC), a Saudi-based group, was told by Foreign Office Minister Kim Howells that Muslims were committing an “act of self-denial” if they blamed the west alone for the rise of “Islamophobia”.

The OIC conference in London highlighted the Danish Mo-toons as examples of Western hatred towards Islam, and called for regulations to prevent any future examples of “disrespect for religion” in the media. It cited the violent reaction to the Mo-toons as “absolute evidence of the consequences of non-abidance with these regulations”.

Right.

Step up to the podium Kim Howells:

…the existence of anti-Western and anti-Jewish media and material in the Muslim world, some of it in state owned press, undermined as hypocritical the moral indignation that was expressed.

It did a bit, didn’t it?

He also cited some other factors which might just contribute to the negative perception of Islam in the West. Little things like:
– support for Taliban-type legal and social systems
– recent statements coming out of Tehran
– practices that segregate and subjugate women
– conspiracy theories about 9/11 being a CIA plot and polio vaccines being contaminated with viruses
– reports of raped women being punished and stoned
– restrictions on other religions, including death sentences pronounced on Christian converts
– poor human rights records
– authoritarian, undemocratic environments.

Not that these things are important when compared to a drawing of a bearded bloke with a bomb in his turban.

Howells’ entire speech can be read here.

(From The National Secular Society)