21 January 2011
Islamophobia is not just rife but socially acceptable in Britain today. Indeed it “passes the dinner-table test” of being seen as normal and uncontroversial in polite society. So Baroness Warsi, the first Muslim to sit in the Cabinet, was to warn last night.
Her speech has surprised and riled many, not least her fellows in the Conservative Party. What she says is true, which is what so irritates her critics. Prejudice against Britain’s Asian community does not, since 9/11, attract the social stigma that prejudice against other religious and racial groups rightly brings.
