For continuity, I'm posting McQ's entire piece (but do take the time to also read the informative comments at his piece)

Read these paragraphs carefully. They're by British columnist Melanie Phillips. She's addressing the larger problem Britian faces now because it has refused to face the problem in the past. She also points to the reason why this problem now exists and continues to exist in Britain and elsewhere:

The problem lies in a refusal to acknowledge that Islamist extremism is rooted in religion. Instead, ministers and security officials prefer to think of it as a protest movement against grievances such as Iraq or Palestine, or "Islamophobia". They simply ignore the statements and signs that show unequivocally that the aim is to Islamicise the West.

In large measure, this is the outcome of a profound loss of cultural nerve. The doctrines of multiculturalism and minority rights, themselves the outcome of a systematic onslaught by the British elite against the country's own identity and values, have paralysed the establishment, which accordingly shies away from criticising any minority for fear of being labelled as bigoted.

As a result, it ignored the radicalisation of many British Muslims by extremist Islamic institutions. Worse still, "grievance culture" has meant that instead of fighting the paranoia and lies driving the Islamists' hatred of the West, British society is afflicted by the very same pathology.

Minority rights doctrine has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a "victim" group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the "oppressive" majority.

Britain effectively allowed itself to be taken hostage by militant gays, feminists or "anti-racists" who used weapons such as public vilification, moral blackmail and threats to people's livelihoods to force the majority to give in to their demands. So when radical Islamists refused to accept minority status and insisted instead that their values must trump those of the majority, Britain had no answer.

Britian isn't the only one with no answer. I'm sure you're familiar with the recent arrests in Canada of alleged terrorists who were plotting an Oklahoma City style attack against the Canadian Security Intelligence Service building in Toronto.

Read this particular paragraph by Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post just as carefully as she discusses that attempt in Canada:

These men - all Muslims - who reportedly planned to blow up the headquarters of Canada's Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) in Toronto, are what Canadian officials refer to as "home-grown terrorists," and products of the "jihad generation." Before their arrests on Friday, they had never visited Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq or the Palestinian Authority. They chose the path of jihad in the streets and mosques of Toronto. They learned how to build bombs from the Internet. They trained for their mission in a training camp in Ontario.

They've never been outside the country. They've been radicalized within their own community within Canada.

Recall Phillips analysis above and now consider Glicks:

A Canadian Muslim friend who lives in Ontario told me recently that he has been unwelcome in his local mosque since the September 11 attacks on Washington and New York. His fellow Muslims have blackballed him because he made public statements critical of the hijackers and of al Qaida and the Palestinians and supportive of the US and Israel. He informed me that while in absolute numbers, mosque attendance in Canada has dropped since Sept. 11, those who continue to attend are fervent in their devotion to jihad against the Western world.

That is, the Muslims who have been forced from the organized Canadian Muslim community are those who believe in Muslim integration in the West while those who remain within that community are radical separatists who cannot abide their pro-Western Muslim brethren.

My friend and his fellow pro-Western Muslims are doubly ostracized. Not only are they rejected by their fellow Muslims who decry their denunciations of jihad, they are also rejected by the intellectual and cultural elites in their countries who insist on apologizing for jihadists in the name of multiculturalism and anti-racism.

Sound familiar?

Now, you say, why is it that has come to pass? How do you let this sort of a problem grow to the point that it is producing potential terrorists who've had both the opportunity and ability to become radicalized under your nose?

How? By continuing to turn a blind eye to reality, such as this statement:

The depth of my friend's isolation was made clear this weekend when, in the wake of the arrests of the Canadian jihad cell, Luc Portelance, the CSIS assistant director of operations told his countrymen, "It is important to know that this operation in no way reflects negatively on any specific community, or ethno-cultural group in Canada."

Well yes, it does in fact reflect negatively on a specific community and ethno-cultural group. It is a particular "community" within a particular "ethno-cultural group" which is specifically involved in this plot. And it has been allegedly aided and abeted by the religious community of that "ethno-cultural group".

The fact that it is so hard to admit that instead of spouting this pc nonsense is one of the reasons these sorts of plots continue to be uncovered to the surprise and discomfort of people in Canada and Britian.

Isn't it time all of us faced this threat head on? Isn't it time we quit mouthing politically correct platitudes which simply aren't true? Multiculturalism asserts that all cultures are to be revered and considered equal. And it uses verbal bludgeons such as "racist" or "xenophobe" or "bigot" on those who dare to question our refusal to face reality.

A culture which produces killers and bombers in the name of religious extremism is not a culture we should wish to revere, emulate or incorporate. It is an inferior culture. It should be condemned loudly and often. It should be vilified and shunned. It is a culture we should work on rooting out of our larger culture and eliminating. It is a culture we should refuse to allow the political air it needs to survive and flourish. And we should do that which is necessary to accomplish its elimination.

As Glick points out:

It is against the backdrop of the refusal of Western elites to acknowledge the fact that there is a global jihad that the true danger of radical Islam becomes clear. Many argue that the forces of global jihad are no match for their enemies because they lack regular armies.

Yet because of the defiant, irrational and immoral refusal of Western political, cultural and media elites to acknowledge the threat that internal and external jihadist forces manifest to the very notion of human freedom, they make it impossible for their societies to take measures to protect themselves.

Precisely. It's time to take stock, realize that we're being held captive by the apologists Glick mentions.

All cultures are not equal and it's high time that bit of nonsense was finally laid to rest once and for all. Belief in that myth has partially disarmed us in the War on Terror and we need to realize that, resist it and do what is necessary to protect ourselves.

Together, the SevenStripes.com and the Q and O Blog pieces address the same issue in juxtaposition - Islamophobia made possible through the mechanism of political correctness, along with a significant effort to use the term to limit the free speech of Americans who speak out against Islamic terrorism, as in the case of Islamist-supporting groups like CAIR and others. And we need to be alert to how quickly such Islamist groups are to use charges of Islamophobia and encouraging poliical correctness to protect Islamists from criticism.

Cinnamon Stillwell, in "When Free Speech Becomes A Crime," links the issue of restrictions on free speech with the charges of "Islamophobia" as used by CAIR:

Meanwhile, the push to silence what's been labeled "Islamophobia" is giving rise to further restrictions on speech. In the United States and Canada, groups such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations have instigated numerous lawsuits and brought pressure to bear on writers, radio talk-show hosts and anyone else guilty of criticizing Islam or Islamic culture in any way, shape or form.

Talk-show host Michael Graham was fired by Washington radio station WMAL for calling Islam a "terrorist organization" on his show, after CAIR instituted a letter-writing campaign and demanded an apology. CAIR has used a series of libel or defamation suits to go after those who dare bring to light some of the group's own unsavory ties.

On an international level, the specter of speech codes governing "Islamophobia" has grown exponentially. The United Nations has become the repository for international laws banning the publication of anything deemed insulting to religion and, more specifically, Islam.

Born out of the flap over the Danish cartoons, a series of investigations by the United Nations at the urging of Muslim leaders has led to a slew of resolutions aimed at controlling speech. European and other Western newspapers that dare to publish images of Mohammed in the future or to simply criticize or question aspects of Islamic religion and culture could find themselves on the receiving end of U.N.-sanctioned censorship. Were the United States to adopt such international laws, as some have urged, Americans too could be bound by such restrictions.

As Daniel Pipes pointed out in back in October 2005, Muslims should dispense with this discredited term and instead engage in some earnest introspection. Rather than blame the potential victim for fearing his would-be executioner, Muslims would do better to ponder how Islamists have transformed their faith into an ideology celebrating murder (Al-Qaeda: "You love life, we love death") and develop strategies to redeem their religion by combating this morbid totalitarianism. In the meantime, far more attention needs to be paid to protecting our right to speak out against the Islamists that want to kill us (and are even more than happy to tell us so), and a lot less time worrying about the inappropriate misnomer of Islamophobia. Our only phobia about Islam relates to the Islamists that murder innocent people in the name of their religion. We in the West just happen to value and place importance on human life - unlike the Islamists who love death (Al-Qaeda: "You love life, we love death"), and place little to no value on human life.

Related:
From Daniel Pipes' October 2005 piece titled, "Islamophobia?":

An Islamist group named Hizb ut-Tahrir seeks to bring the world under Islamic law and advocates suicide attacks against Israelis. Facing proscription in Great Britain, it opened a clandestine front operation at British universities called "Stop Islamophobia," the Sunday Times has disclosed.

Stop what, you ask?

Coined in Great Britain a decade ago, the neologism Islamophobia was launched in 1996 by a self-proclaimed "Commission on British Muslims and Islamophobia." The word literally means "undue fear of Islam" but it is used to mean "prejudice against Muslims" and joins over 500 other phobias spanning virtually every aspect of life.

The term has achieved a degree of linguistic and political acceptance, to the point that the secretary-general of the United Nations presided over a December 2004 conference titled "Confronting Islamophobia" and in May a Council of Europe summit condemned "Islamophobia."

The term presents several problems, however. First, what exactly constitutes an "undue fear of Islam" when Muslims acting in the name of Islam today make up the premier source of worldwide aggression, both verbal and physical, versus non-Muslims and Muslims alike? What, one wonders, is the proper amount of fear?

Second, while prejudice against Muslims certainly exists, "Islamophobia" deceptively conflates two distinct phenomena: fear of Islam and fear of radical Islam. I personally experience this problem: Despite writing again and again against radical Islam the ideology, not Islam the religion, I have been made the runner-up for a mock "Islamophobia Award" in Great Britain, deemed America's "leading Islamophobe," and even called an "Islamophobe Incarnate." (What I really am is an "Islamism-ophobe.")

Third, promoters of the "Islamophobia" concept habitually exaggerate the problem:

* Law enforcement: British Muslims are said to suffer from persistent police discrimination but an actual review of the statistics by Kenan Malik makes mincemeat of this "Islamophobia myth."

* Cultural: Muslims "are faced with an extreme flow of anti-Islamic literature that preaches hatred against Islam," claims the president of the Graduate School of Islamic and Social Sciences in Virginia, Taha Jabir Al-'Alwani: "novels, movies, books and researches. Just among the best selling novels alone there are almost 1000 novels of this type." One thousand bestsellers vilify Islam? Hardly. In fact, barely a handful do so (for example, The Haj, by Leon Uris).

* Linguistic: A professor of Islamic studies at George Washington University, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, falsely reported (in his keynote speech at a U.N. event, "Confronting Islamophobia," reports Alexander Joffe) attempts to hide the Arabic origins of English words such as adobe - which derives in fact from ancient Egyptian, not from Arabic.

* Historical: The term anti-Semitism was originally used to describe sentiment against Arabs living in Spain, Mr. Nasr also stated in his speech, and was not linked to Jews until after World War II. Nonsense: anti-Semitism dates back only to 1879, when it was coined by Wilhelm Marr, and has always referred specifically to hatred of Jews.

Fourth, Hizb ut-Tahrir's manipulation of "Stop Islamophobia" betrays the fraudulence of this word. As the Sunday Times article explains, "Ostensibly the campaign's goal is to fight anti-Muslim prejudice in the wake of the London bombings," but it quotes Anthony Glees of London's Brunel University to the effect that the real agenda is to spread anti-Semitic, anti-Hindu, anti-Sikh, anti-homosexual, and anti-female attitudes, as well as to foment resentment of Western influence.

Finally, calling moderate Muslims (such as Irshad Manji) Islamophobes betrays this term's aggressiveness. As Charles Moore writes in the Daily Telegraph, moderate Muslims, "frightened of what the Islamists are turning their faith into," are the ones who most fear Islam. (Think of Algeria, Darfur, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan.) "They cannot find the courage and the words to get to grips with the huge problem that confronts Islam in the modern world." Accusations of Islamophobia, Mr. Malik adds, are intended "to silence critics of Islam, or even Muslims fighting for reform of their communities." Another British Muslim, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, discerns an even more ambitious goal: "all too often Islamophobia is used to blackmail society."

Muslims should dispense with this discredited term and instead engage in some earnest introspection. Rather than blame the potential victim for fearing his would-be executioner, they would do better to ponder how Islamists have transformed their faith into an ideology celebrating murder (Al-Qaeda: "You love life, we love death") and develop strategies to redeem their religion by combating this morbid totalitarianism.

_________

Nov. 10, 2005 update: A report released in Brussels yesterday by the "European Monitoring Center on Racism and Xenophobia" (EUMC), an organization belonging to the European Union, found that there was virtually no anti-Muslim backlash in Europe in the period July 7-October 5, or just immediately following the London bombings. It's another indication that "Islamophobia" is exaggerated.

Other related:Root Causes: A Canadian Muslim gets it right