The reason is that whites have been deemed to be uniquely evil.

This would not be much of a problem if it were confined merely to the Left. It becomes a major problem insofar as the majority of Conservatives and Centrists throughout West have succumbed to this, through PC MC. Without their enablement, it would not enjoy the traction and influence it does enjoy.

On-topic and directly related to this, is a good analysis by Lawrence Auster of a similar situation in Holland:

Dutch police, after years of ignoring Muslim crime against the Dutch, crack down on the Dutch for threatening Muslims

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/013939.html

Racism is very much alive and well today -- not as a science, and only rarely in one of its traditional forms of an ideology purveyed by various white groups. It is now alive and well as an ideology of the Left and of Muslim Apologists, and most of its precepts have also filtered down into the general mainstream via the amorphous yet powerful sociopolitical process called PC MC.

Thus, the comment of maxpublius above -- "Preserving a culture--it's people, ideas, and land--is not racism. "

Unfortunately, according to the dictates of PC MC, preserving a culture -- its people, ideas, and land -- is racism when white people do it, but it is not racism when non-whites do it. That's the overwhelming political reality in which we live today. And it is directly enabling the Islamic Jihad in the West. It would not be enabling Islamic Jihad in the West if most Muslims were not "ethnic". If most Muslims were white, this would not be an issue. The PC MC West would have shut their ideology down in a heartbeat by now. That's the blunt but unavoidable fact of the matter.

For more, see The Race Factor: The difference between reality, and political reality

Ummm, 2,036 comments. Houston, we have a problem. Jihad Watch needs to shut down NOW and evacuate in an orderly fashion. Do not return into the building until the fire marshals have determined that the instantdebate threat has been neutralized.

Even if he did hear from Bassiouni again, something tells me it would result in more obfuscations & tap-dancing, salted with more aggrieved prickliness and peppered with every logical fallacy in the book.

Another interesting thing about this: Tariq Ramadan and the Muslim Brotherhood are Sunnis, and yet he is working with the Shia Iranian regime: Sunnis and Shia are not always in conflict; sometimes they work together against their common enemy -- us.

There is, however, the matter of the Two-Step maneuver Bassiouini has to fall back on (the same Two-Step which Leftists also use), which Spencer didn't address:

"My position on apostasy has been expressed as early as 1983, namely that at the time of the Prophet it was not considered as only changing one’s mind but that it was the equivalent of joining the enemy and thus constituting high treason."

I.e. --

Step One: First the apologist claims there is nothing there -- no death penalty for apostasy

then when people call him on it with the facts, he moves to

Step Two: Oh, there is something there, but it's something else -- why, it's not apostasy, it's "high treason"!

This is essentially the same Two-Step maneuver used in other similar circumstances when Islamic terrorism -- which is at first denied to exist -- is then admitted to exist when the facts can no longer be denied, but is then magically transformed into "restive" "resistance movements" against "oppression" and "long-standing grievances" in a "context of a cycle of violence" caused by a breakdown in the sociopolitical order due to fallout from Western Colonialism "interfering" in "the region".

Bassiouni's Two-Step tap-dance can be easily dispensed with: the modern world no longer accepts a concept of "high treason" based upon religion and upon religious choices. Now, if only the modern world would step up to the plate and actually enforce what it believes in, we might have on our hands something actually quite relevant, rational and humane to define (and punish: "Mr. Bassiouini, please get your papers and luggage in order...") as high treason...

"I also think Professor Bassiouni is saying "In my version of Islamic law, conversion to Christianity is not punishable by death." This may well be true..."

But he didn't say that, because he's trying to pull the wool over our eyes -- which is easy, since the entire West is so full of sheep these days.

Funny how these anti-American & anti-Western gasbags have such long titles -- like Professor Henry Louis Gates, "Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research."

A well-written anecdote. These kinds of reports of "normal" Muslims need to be blogged more and more.