There is also something akin to the charge of anti-Semitism in the accusation — a link that many Jewish leaders have promoted. It was several years after 9/11 that I first remember speaking on a panel with a leader from the Jewish community. My co-speaker framed his remarks by saying, "We must fight anti-Semitism but we must also fight Islamophobia." He could not answer my question of how you could condemn Islamic anti-Semitism without committing an act of "Islamophobia". But the term has caught on, in part because of its catch-all availability. Much of society has imbibed the meme.

The term "anti-Muslim prejudice" has been suggested in recent years to replace it. Certainly an improvement, it may help to draw the lines more clearly than the fundamentalists who shout "Islamophobia" might like. For among the reasons the term "Islamophobia" is so inexact is that — in so far as there is a definition — it includes insult of and even inquiry into any aspect of Islam, including Muslim scripture. Accusations of anti-Semitism would rarely if ever be levelled at any — let alone all — scholars of the history of the Torah. It is not levelled at people who say that the God of the Jews does not exist. Sam Harris and other prominent atheists regularly lambasted for their "Islamophobia" could never be seriously accused of anti-Semitism despite the fact they make exactly the same claims about the Jewish God as they do of the Muslim one.

But even talk of "anti-Muslim" prejudice is wrong if it ignores the most significant causal factors. As Boston should have reminded us, talk of "phobias" only works if you ignore the facts. People do not say about Jews, gays or any other minority what they say about elements — and in some unpleasant cases all — of the Muslim communities because to date neither Jews nor gays have carried out any acts of terrorism (let alone repeated acts of terrorism) against our societies. If they did then we would have to expect — while also again decrying — expressions of outrage against members of these communities. Such widespread blame would be wrong — as wrong as it is to hold all Muslims responsible for the actions of the Islamists. But it too would not have come from nowhere.

The terrorism, bigotry and disdain for non-believers which the radicals in the Islamic communities preach is not beside the point. It is the point — the point from which everything else grows. However, a decreasing number of people seem to want to accept this. They wish to consider everything other than the facts.

At a London conference on anti-Semitism last year there was a walkout by some left-wing Jewish delegates. They objected to the discussion by some members of the desire of Islamic extremists to transform and take over Western societies. "We didn't like it when they said it about us" was more or less the cry of these delegates. As one speaker was forced to say in reply, "But when they said it about us it wasn't true."