Excerpt:
Right-wing journalist Melanie Phillips has been called a “bigot” by both Jewish and Muslim groups for arguing that ‘Islamophobia’ is “a fiction to shut down debate”.
During the BBC’s Sunday Politics programme, she said: “There is no equation between Islamophobia, which is used as a means of shutting down legitimate criticism of the Muslim community, and anti-Semitism, for which there is never any excuse at all.”
In response to Phillips’ invective, reinforced in an article for The Times on Monday, the Board of Deputies tweeted: “Anti-Muslim hatred is a sickness which must be confronted with clarity & vigour. While in a free society it must be permissible to debate religious teachings, it can never be acceptable to hate Muslims for being Muslim or to racially stereotype any group. Bigotry is bigotry.”