Eight years after 9/11, where's the Islamophobia? by Barbara Kay,

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Eight years to the day later, what are the cultural effects of 9/11? The first out of the starting gate and still leading the pack was the reflexive liberal instinct to throw protective arms around Islam and Muslims. The dust hadn't settled from the trade towers before it was pronounced from sea to shining sea that Islam was a religion of peace, and that Islamophobia was sure to run rampant in the streets, a sin we were all warned to guard against.

But like global warming, which has as yet failed to materialize in spite of so much fervent belief in its coming, Islamophobia never actually took root. In 2006 there were 8,000 hate crimes reported to the FBI in the United States, up 8% from 2005. By far the most were directed against blacks (2,640). Next in frequency were anti-Semitic crimes (967, up from 848 in 2005) - and that was before Bernie Madoff made the news. Gay males suffered 747 hate-motivated crimes, and - here a steep downward plunge - a mere 156 incidents involved Islamophobia (up from 128 in 2005).

In fact, Muslims represented the group least likely to be subjected to hate crimes, and the uptick from 2005 cannot be said to be linked with 9/11, for surely 2002 would have been the high water mark for Islam-based aggression. In any case, 156 acts of hatred - few if any life-threatening - is so nugatory in a country of 300 million people as to be statistically irrelevant. (I don't have Canadian statistics handy, but I am confident that if Islamophobic hate crimes stood out in any way from hate crimes against Jews or gays, our liberal media would have jumped all over them.)

Far from Islamophobia, what actually happened after 9/11 was a wave of Islamophilia second only to Obamamania for its lack of rational foundation and utopian faith in symbolism over reality. The more it became apparent that religious fanaticism was the motivating principle behind 9/11, the more any criticism of multiculturalism or Islam in particular was stifled, and the more we heard about Islam being a religion of peace. After every act of terrorism by jihadists around the globe, the media would warn of an anti-Islam "backlash" - which never happened. Instead a wave of pro-active Islamophilia gripped the west. The smarmy Little Mosque on the Prairie, an insult to the intelligence and to any semblance of social reality, is a direct result of 9/11, one of the more harmless manifestations of western self-flagellation, but in retrospect sure to be seen as one of the more embarrassing.The Human Rights Commission jihads against Ezra Levant and Mark Steyn via Macleans, also a 9/11 legacy, will be seen as more than embarrassing, as downright evil.

The media in general bent over backward to comply with the fiction that we have nothing to fear from Islamic militants in our midst, that jihadists are a complete aberration in a peaceful faith, that multiculturalism has played no part in encouraging grievance-building alienation, and that it is our biases that are the problem, Muslims the victims.

A conspiracy of silence around unpleasant news and facts emerged. Anyone for example writing a book criticizing Islam was unlikely to see their work reviewed in the New York Times. Cases in point are these great names in post 9/11 reportage: Bat Ye'or - Eurabia; Andrew Bostum's The legacy of Jihad; Bruce Bawer - While Europe Slept; Claire Berlinski - Menace in Europe; Oriana Fallaci - The Rage and the Pride (bestselling response to 9/11, but not favourable to Islam) and The Force of Reason; Melanie Phillips - Londonistan; Robert Spencer - The Truth about Muhammed; and of course Mark Steyn - America Alone.

What do they all have in common? Well, they are all well-written by credible, brilliant, experienced observers and scholars, and they are all impeccably researched, minutely documented warnings about the dangers of Islamism. Some - like America Alone - were bestsellers. They all tell the truth about the world of jihadism. And yet: None of them got a New York Times Book review.

The NYT only reviewed books that were hagio-Islamic in flavour by writers like Karen Armstrong and John Esposito, "whose sugarcoated representations of Islam should have been discredited for all time by 9/11," according to Bruce Bawer. There is a glimmer of hope. Bruce Bawer's just-published Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom, which if anything is more condemnatory than his previous book of the stealth jihad that is undermining democracy in Europe at a now unstoppable pace, did finally get a positive review in the NYT this July and was even recommended as an "editor's choice."

Bruce Bawer is  one of those former liberals mugged by reality. A gay activist, he left what he considered homophobic America in 1998 for the "tolerant" society of Europe. What he found was an Islam-based homophobia that put the homophobia of American evangelical Christians in the shade. The Islamification of European and Scandinavian society (he lives in Oslo) turned him into a savage critic of kneejerk liberalism that makes common cause with a culture steeped in homophobia, misogyny and contempt for individual freedoms.

Bawer is coming to Canada and will appear in public forums in Ottawa, Monday September 14 and in Montreal and Quebec City Wednesday September 16 and 17. Bawer's is one of the most intelligent, passionate and credible voices amongst the politically incorrect sons and daughters of 9/11.  Go and hear him if you can.