Islamophobia Watch

Writing on his Spectator blog, Stephen Pollard expresses astonishment that he agrees with Inayat Bunglawala's CiF post on the case of Hassan Butt. But Pollard can't resist quoting Inayat from an earlier post on CiF: "So on February 14 1989, when the Iranian Islamic leader, Imam Khomeini delivered his fatwa calling for Salman Rushdie's death, I was truly elated." Along with other quotes from a decade-and-a-half ago, we're invited to believe that this represents Inayat's current position. In fact, in that post on the Satanic Verses controversy (entitled "I used to be a book burner") he wrote:

"Looking back now on those events I will readily acknowledge that we were wrong to have called for the book to be banned. Today I can certainly better appreciate the concerns and fear generated by the images of book-burning in Bradford and the calls for the author to be killed. It seems crazy now, but I really did believe that some committee of learned elders should vet all books before they could be sold to the public.

"In the intervening years I have managed to travel to Egypt, Sudan, Pakistan, Malaysia, Indonesia, Turkey and elsewhere and it is always with a sense of warmth that I return to the UK. Our detractors had been right. The freedom to offend is a necessary freedom. Moreover, Islam has flourished wherever there has been a free atmosphere. I continue to strongly disagree with the way Rushdie caricatured early Islamic heroes of mine, but banning the book was not the answer."