In October, the debate reached one of its nastiest points with an over-booked and badly-chaired studio discussion-cum-slanging-match on ABC. Daisy Khan, the wife of the imam of the proposed mosque, Feisal Abdul Rauf, was one of those who appeared on Christiane Amanpour's panel. The anti-building side were repeatedly defamed. Robert Spencer of the Jihad Watch blog was accused by one of the other guests of being in league with neo-Nazis and was not allowed to respond. On both sides, people who had lost family-members on 9/11 slugged it out. The effect was bitter. At one point, Daisy Khan claimed that her opponents were throwing her "into the arms of al-Qaeda". The author and former Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali came on via video-link. "What are you complaining about?" she asked. "You are sitting here at ABC TV. You've got a great job. You have freedom. Nobody is throwing you anywhere. Your rights are protected. I think that it's your perception of being a victim." Khan glared at her: "I am not a victim, Ayaan, stop calling me that. You're the one running around with a bodyguard." The studio audience greeted Khan's taunt with laughter, applause and cheers. They almost drowned out a single man in the front row shouting at Khan: "And why do you think that is?"

But Khan was savvy. She turned it around. It was she and her husband who were under threat. It was they who had received death threats. Rather than Hirsi Ali being at risk from the same Muslim fundamentalists who had murdered her film-making partner Theo van Gogh in 2004, it was Daisy Khan and Imam Rauf who were at risk from the dreaded American public.

She was playing into a ready new media narrative. Just weeks earlier, Time magazine had run a cover, asking: "Is America Islamophobic? Does America have a Muslim problem?" So it came as no surprise that Khan was able to conclude her performance, and the whole programme, by positioning herself at the centre of the political spectrum as well as the storm. Asked whether she and her husband, having seen the strength of peoples' opinions, would consider moving what was now called the Park 51 Community Centre, she was clear: "No. I think that American values have to prevail. I think I'm now fighting for American values." Much of the studio audience applauded.

In the space of a very few weeks, the herd of inquiring minds had moved from amazement that Khan and her husband could have such a tasteless idea as to construct a Muslim mega-centre near Ground Zero to full-on backing of the idea. And thanks to popular outrage and civil protests, it was now no longer Islam but America that was under the spotlight. Soon, it was not Islam but America that was at fault and needed to be investigated. By the end of the year, the New York Times had run a grand total of 15 uncritical puff-pieces extolling Khan and her husband. None questioned Imam Rauf's questionable connections with extremist ideologies and regimes, nor his refusal to condemn the terrorist group Hamas.

This mattered because America had, in a remarkably brief period of time, fallen for the twin European errors of our time. First, it had fallen into Europe's relativistic error of confusing victim and aggressor. The provocative act of placing an Islamic mega-centre near Ground Zero had been turned around. It was not the aggressor but the offended who were showing intolerance and bigotry. Offender had become offended.