veiled4allah: Muslims are not all alike

Imagine a similar film being made here featuring Lubavitcher Jews and suggesting the plight, say, of a child in a closed community. The child might talk about paedophilia in one of the many unregulated weekend classes, about the code of silence, all set against the background of a seven-branched candlestick, with the words of the Torah passing across her body. Then suppose it was made, not by a Lubavitcher, but by a rightwing member of the Conservative party, who had once called a Jew, a "Christ-killer", as Van Gogh once described a Muslim as a "goat-fucker". Murder maddens and some good people have accordingly gone mad. On one centre-left website, a Dutch writer expressed fury that a TV presenter had argued that the killing meant Dutch society had to do some "soul searching". "Dutch society has (to do) much soul searching?" the writer (taking the handle of "Voltaire") asked angrily, adding: "Theo wasn't killed by Dutch society but by a Muslim. But then Muslims rarely do much soul searching."

See that? In a blink of a cursor? See how "a Muslim" so quickly became "Muslims"? There are a billion Muslims with a hundred thousand interpretations of the Koran, but they are all now transformed into the Muslim who killed Van Gogh.

So there is today - even among intelligent and thoughtful people - a story of Muslims as there was, when my father was young, a story of Jews. The story of Jews was about the clannishness and closeness of a self-designated "chosen people", and how they used their undoubted talents to manipulate the media, the world of finance and (latterly) the US political process. And if one was caught in a fraud, then (as I once overheard a Daily Mail columnist say to Norman Tebbit), wasn't that "their" way?

The story of Muslims is of a backward, super-sensitive religion which mistreats women and suppresses dissent. It is as true and as useful as the story of Jews, and, if we keep on telling it, leads to a similar place.