"Islamophobia" apparently does not need quotation marks. Its Christian counterpart does.

From Le Monde on 10 December 2011, regarding demonstrations against the play Golgotha Picnic:

“La première à Paris de la pièce controversée de l'Hispano-Argentin Rodrigo Garcia, que certains catholiques accusent de « christianophobie », et que Mgr Bernard Podvin, porte-parole de la Conférence des évêques de France, considère comme un spectacle « blessant », a été jouée sans incident, jeudi 8 septembre, au Théâtre du Rond-Point.”

Le Monde again on 17 September 2012, regarding demonstrations against the film The Innocence of Muslims:

“Le parquet de Paris a ordonné une enquête sur la manifestation qui s'est tenue devant l'ambassade des Etats-Unis samedi, en réaction contre le film islamophobe Innocence of Muslims, a annoncé dimanche 16 septembre une source judiciaire.”

Those quotation marks – or their absence – can speak volumes.

The Euro is just self-evidently a good thing! (Even if 6 out of 10 people say otherwise)

Apparently desperate to join a sinking ship, the Latvian political elite are determined to join the Euro. Unsurprisingly, the political elite think very differently on the matter than do ordinary citizens:

While getting the euro is the obsession of Latvia's policy-making elite, the public appears sceptical -- on the surface at least.

An August survey of more than 1,000 Latvians by the Latvijas Fakti pollster showed that just 35 percent supported adopting the euro, with 59 percent declaring themselves against and six percent undecided.

Happily, the Latvians, like the Irish, have a paternalistic political class who will ignore their protests and drag them into the doomed currency regardless:

University of Latvia expert Ivars Ijabs says the question of euro adoption is seen less as an issue of economics than of reinforcing a European identity and national security -- further anchoring the former Soviet-ruled nation of two million in the European Union, which it joined in 2004.

"According to opinion polls we are rather euro-sceptic, but there has been no call for a referendum (on adopting the euro) and even if there was, there would be a large campaign stressing security issues," Ijabs told AFP.

"Probably Latvia will enter the eurozone as it entered the European Union -- without much debate as it is more or less self-evident that Latvia has to be there."

That is the typical eurocrat response to arguments against their project. Who needs counter-arguments? The EU is just self-evidently a glorious thing, can’t you see that? The europhile position is so self-evidently right, in fact, that a full 35% of the population agrees with it!

Islamists destroy heritage sites. But it was surely the Christians who put them up to it!

Linsay Hilsum of Channel Four has an article in today’s Irish Times, under the eye-catching headline “Heritage of Islam faces threat from within.” In it, she chronicles how Libya and Mali have fallen under the control of militant Islamists since the fall of Ghadaffi (who could have foreseen it?) and that these Islamists have begun smashing up “idolatrous” Sufi tombs and other heritage sites.

Two things stand out about the article. One is the direct and unsubtle comparison between Muslim puritans and Christian ones:

“I don’t suppose the men in the bulldozer had heard of William Dowsing. He was a Christian, not a Muslim, English, not Libyan, and he lived in the 17th century, not the 21st.

But as “commissioner for the destruction of monuments of idolatry and superstition” he was similarly determined to obliterate objects venerated by a different sect of his own religion.”

She goes on to quote a report where Dowsing gloats about having destroyed some “angells” in a church in England during the Puritan revolution.

It’s interesting how politically correct media pundits are afraid to simply criticize militant Islam and leave it at that. “It’s not just Muslims,” they want to say, “we Christians have been just as bad!” However, the zealous Mr Dowsing lived almost four hundred years ago, and even his most fanatical modern-day Protestant heirs, however they might disapprove of “graven images”, generally leave Christians who differ with them on that point in peace.

The other striking thing about the article is how it falls over itself to stress that Islam is the primary victim of militant Islamism. This has the effect of drawing that magical media barrier between nice, moderate, mainstream Islam and its barbarous offspring, jihadism – just in case anyone should confuse the two:

 “The fear today is that much more of the priceless Islamic heritage of the Sahara will be destroyed before the governments in Mali and Libya install law and order, and stop the latter-day Dowsings from doing their worst.”

No doubt Islamism has made the lives of countless Muslims a misery. But Ms Hilsum might have also spared a mention for the Christians and Christian churches that have fallen victim to the “Arab Spring.”