The new normal

Nick Cohen is appalled by the way some on the left go after liberal Muslims and ex-Muslims who campaign against Islamism.

I have enjoyed the Guardian for decades. But too many of its contributors have lost their wits and abandoned their principles over radical Islam. They show no signs of finding either soon. As a matter of course, they publish a defence of the silencing of Maryam Namazie, an ex-Muslim feminist, or a piece denouncing Maajid Nawaz, the Muslim leader of the anti-extremist Quilliam Foundation.

In academia, speakers at Bath University, surely the most malign[ed] higher education institution in Britain, call ex-Muslims “native informants”, as if the decision of free men and women to decide for themselves what they should believe is the equivalent of collaborating with a colonial oppressor. For the religious right and the political and academic left, a liberal Muslim is their trussed-up version of the enemy, the alien, the “other”.

None of the above is astonishing. It’s been going on so long that we accept it as the “new normal”.

It’s not astonishing but it is reprehensible.

2 Responses to “The new normal”