"Sweden's 100 explosions this year: What's going on?"

Headline by the BBC.

Everybody is totally baffled, as am I. Stumped. The whole thing is a mystery.

An easy day's work for the courtroom sketch artist.

Scroll down to the picture in this fine Daily Mail article.

Disappointingly, no mention of what their house is worth. It's in north west London so must be a few bob.

Daily Mail on top form

The Daily Mail has pieced together the steps towards radicalisation:

Over the next two decades the burly bodybuilder was convicted of a catalogue of offences including assaults, grievous bodily harm, possession of weapons and public order offences, and was jailed twice.

He drifted from job to job, working as a sales rep and running a television aerial installation business, before meeting his long-term partner Jane Harvey, 48, a successful businesswoman, in 1991.

He then moved into her £700,000 gated home in the village of Northiam, near Rye in East Sussex.

Glorious stuff. After a crime is committed, the press usually say "the police are calling for witnesses", they should add on "… and the Daily Mail are calling for any house price info related to the case, however tangentially".

Daily Mail on top form

Spotted by MBK in The Daily Mail:

English teacher Khalid Masood, 52, a 'lone wolf' attacker, who was living in the Birmingham area, had a series of convictions for assault and other crimes.

Scotland Yard revealed how Masood was known by a number of aliases and MailOnline can reveal he was born Adrian Elms to a single mother in Kent before his religious conversion. Masood has used the names Khalid Choudry and Adrian Ajao among others.

He grew up in a £300,000 house in the seaside town of Rye, East Sussex and had a long criminal history…

Landlord Farhad Makanvand said he didn't know who had been staying at the flats above his curry house as it was rented out by a separate letting agents.

Mr Makanvand, who also owns the next door curry house Shiraz, said: "I wasn't at the scene last night, I don't live there. I bought the property six years ago for over £300,000. It is contracted to the letting agents so I have no idea who lives there or how many people."

The NHS has gone mental!

From the BBC:

Muslims with mental health issues could be helped by re-embracing their beliefs and religious teachings, it is claimed. Traditionally, therapists have shied away from talking about religion as part of treatment - and can often see it as part of the illness.

But an NHS project based on research by Leeds University is "showing some individual signs of success". Those behind the therapy say many Muslims do not get help because of stigma attached to mental illness…

Dr Mir has helped to create a new treatment, based on an existing form of cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) called behavioural activation. Following a successful pilot involving 20 patients, it is being provided by the NHS via a mental health charity in Leeds.

Patients on the course are asked if faith was part of their life when they were well. Those who stopped their religious practice because of depression are re-introduced slowly using a self-help booklet, which highlights passages from the Koran that illustrate "even people with strong faith" can become depressed and that it does not mean God is displeased.

Brilliant. The cure to depression is wearing a headscarf and inviting your husband to beat you/making your wife wear a headscarf and beating her.*

* Delete according to gender of 'patient'.

Fun Online Polls: Trump's travel ban & means-testing

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Which general approach would you prefer for the UK..?

Trump-style travel ban for people from Islamist countries - 97%
Merkel-style welcoming all Arabs in, no questions asked - 3%

Even I, a trendy liberal metropolitan who dislikes everything about Trump, voted for the first option. Which just goes to show how out of the touch the most politicians and journalists are in this country.
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The meddlers are at it again. The Institute for Economic Affairs - of all people - has recommended means testing of nursery subsidies, as reported by the BBC:

The Institute of Economic Affairs study says the right to 15 hours free care a week has distorted the market price.

It probably has, subsidies always do.

It also argues regulations have made it more costly, with many families on average earnings spending more than a third of their income on childcare.

Agreed, but the regulations (i.e. barriers to entry) are a completely separate topic. As to the "more than a third" figure, see below.

The government says it is investing £6bn a year on the facility.

"Spending".

The report argues that despite this investment, families are still paying huge sums for people to look after their children.

Yes they are, that's not really the point. Mum simply compares the net cost of a nursery place with potential earnings after tax, travel costs. Nursery costs quite possibly swallow half or two-thirds of the extra earnings, but the household is still better off overall (plus most kids like being at nursery).

By and large, the tax deducted from Mum's earnings (and the wages of the nursery staff) and the subsidies net off to plus/minus nothing either way, so the final clearing price is probably not that far off a true tax-free market price.

The way early years care is funded means that those who need help the most do not receive it, while many affluent families are generously subsidised, the report found.

This is lefty jealousy bollocks through and through. It's the "affluent families" who are paying most of the £6 bn cost. They are losing out overall. How many extra bureaucrats do we need to decide who "needs help" etc?

As explained above, when Mum is thinking about going back to work, the upper limit on she is prepared to pay for nurseries is two-thirds of her net earnings.
So let's assume that nurseries set their charges at about two-thirds of local average net earnings. Clearly, there is no point for Mum to take a low-paying job, and if that is all that she is offered, then there is simply no point taking it. Does this Mum deserve extra subsidies to bridge the gap? That would surely be economic nonsense.

All of which reminds me of the stupid Killer Argument Against Citizen's Income we looked at yesterday.

It's tempting to means-test stuff in the vague hope it leads to smaller government and lower taxes. Clearly, it does neither. You need much larger government to police these things, and the effective tax rates on those whose subsidies are tapered away becomes penal.

For example, let's take a family with three kids at state school, cost to the taxpayer about £24,000. It would be tempting to say that any household with income over £100,000 should pay the cost in full (or send them private). That is an effective tax rate of 24%, on top of normal effective tax rate on higher earners of overall 50% = 74%. If we also means test NHS access, the right to call police and fire brigade, use of subsidised public transport etc, that effective tax rate ends up close to 100% and there is simply no point earning anything more than whatever arbitrary threshold they dream up.

Therefore, if the government, in its infinite wisdom, decides that something is worth doing, everybody should have the same entitlement, end of. The real discussion is, should the government be doing it at all, yes or no. With nurseries I think very much yes, but I can see there are arguments against.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll, which things ought to be means tested?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Crikey! Alaistair Heath Talks Sense Shock

Here

I quote:-

The solution is a fourth approach, a toughened-up version of the British way. We should be proud to be the country of Sir Mo Farah, Sajid Javid and Sadiq Khan, a nation so at ease with itself that we encourage Muslim state schools. We should continue to embrace refugees fleeing persecution, and pursue a controlled, yet liberal, migration policy.

But we should terminate the old politically correct, cowardly attitude that allowed scandals such as Rochdale, do a lot more to root out extremism, extend economic and educational opportunities, encourage interfaith engagement, recruit more Muslims into the Armed Forces and combat ghetto-isation.

Our mission is to show the world how to host a thriving, prosperous, integrated Muslim minority which can fully buy into core British values while practising its faith. Realism and hard, patient work, not digital hysteria, are the only ways to defeat the demagogues.

Well, I think it's sense. Do you?

Fun Online Polls: USA military spending & "gifts for Islamists"

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Without Googling first, how much is the USA's annual military spending?

$100 billion - 3%
$200 billion - 4%
$300 billion - 7%
$400 billion - 14%
$500 billion - 19%
$600 billion - 52%

You are surprisingly well informed, more than half got it correct. When I first read that figure in an article or reader's letter somewhere, I assumed the person was wildly exaggerating for effect, I had to look it up to believe it.

IF you want to put that sort of insanely large figure in context, it's about equal to the entire military spending of the rest of the world put together, or three-quarters as much as the UK's entire government spending in a year (schools, hospitals, pensions, welfare, the lot).
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This week's made-to-order Trumpage was the travel ban.

Did he do this purely as an ineffective stunt or does he genuinely think it will reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks? The thinking man's Katie Hopkins points out that Trump was merely enacting something that the previous president had already set in motion.

The vocal minority promptly jumped on their chairs and started shouting. Britain's leading Muslim politician (or the Muslims' leading British politician, as they like to see it) said the international community must show “moral leadership” by speaking out against Donald Trump’s travel ban and even the normally temperate Amber Rudd said Trump travel ban is a 'propaganda opportunity' for Isis.

Ho hum. What bothers me is the asymmetry of all this.

Mrs Merkel in Germany tried the opposite tactic and welcomed in a million Muslims. She was rewarded with an overall increase in crimes against women and spate of terror attacks, culminating in the Berlin Christmas Market attack.

Merkel's policy looks like a "gift to Islamists" to me, so how can Trump's polar opposite policy also be a "gift to Islamists"? Or is the world so f---ed up that both are?

It's a tricky question, so I will turn it round for this week's Fun Online Poll and ask which policy people would prefer for this country.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

I've read spy novels, I know how this works.

From the Evening Standard:

British spies are risking their lives daily in Islamic State heartlands to “take the fight to the enemy,” the head of MI6 said today.

Alex Younger stressed agents recruited by the Secret Intelligence Service had penetrated IS “upstream” to stop terror attacks on Britain’s streets.

But in his first public speech, the SIS chief laid bare the perils these individuals faced operating in “the most dangerous and hostile environments on earth” - where paranoid IS fanatics have executed hundreds of people wrongly suspected of being spies.

Spies spend most of their time spying on each other and searching for moles in their own ranks, so it's always good idea to give the other side the impression that you have double agents in their organisations, even if you haven't. Unless you actually have, in which case you have to try and disguise the source of your information etc, in endless twists of logic.

We know that ISIS is just Islamism taken to extremes, they love nothing more than raping, maiming, torturing and killing people and when they run out of victims they just slaughter each other for whatever spurious reason. (The Saudis are hardly better, but for some reason, they count as a reliable ally, go figure). No doubt people in ISIS are paranoid already, of their actual enemies and each other, so basically MI6 has now signed a death warrant for anybody connected with ISIS who has lived in the UK. In which case good work!

If we assume that the head of MI6 is acting rationally, the logical deduction must be that we have no British spies in ISIS. The gamble is, will ISIS assume that Younger is a blithering idiot who has just given away our trade secrets and turn on each other, or will they assume it is a bluff and ignore it? Or is it a double bluff? Or a treble bluff?

This is easier with novels because you can just read to the end and find out...

Fun Online Polls: Merkel & Midges

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How many more Islamist attacks will it take before Merkel realises it was wrong to let a million of them in?
I'm sure she'll apologise and change tack soon - 2%
A couple more and she'll see sense - 1%
A dozen? - 3%
She'll give it a few more years to see how things pan out - 14%
What? A politician see sense? Never! - 71%
Other, please specify - 10%

Thanks to everybody who took part. I'm in the minority on this one, I reckon she'll do a U-turn fairly soon. Oh, hang on, maybe not.
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These last few weeks I have been bitten by midges more often than in the last twenty years put together and it is bloody itchy.

The warmenists have long been predicting that warmer weather = midges and mosquitos will be able to spread northwards. In my limited experience, it's not any warmer but it is definitely midgier.

So that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll, have I just been unlucky or have others noticed this?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Renewing Trident & Islamist attacks in Germany

The results to last week's poll were as follows:

Renewing Trident: Which statement do you agree with more?

Scrapping Trident would be an act of gross irresponsibility - 75%
The threat of mass murder is not a legitimate way to deal with international relations - 25%

You are a bloodthirsty bunch, I was in the minority on that one.

Top comment by Derek:

Meh.

As far as I can see, in the 1940 and 50s an independent British nuclear deterrent made sense. By the 1960s it was beginning to look a lot less independent of the Americans and by the 1990s it was beginning to look a lot less like a deterrent. In the 2010s it just looks like wasted effort to me. It's no longer independent and it doesn't seem to be deterring our current enemies. So I don't think it would be particularly irresponsible to scrap Trident. If we are going to replace it we need to do so with something independent and effective.

But then mass murder (or war as it is more commonly known) is a perfectly legitimate way to deal with international relations. Immoral, unethical and unjust but perfectly legitimate. There are plenty of laws governing what you can and can't do but killing lots of people is pretty much taken for granted, including civilians nowadays.

So I don't find I can pick either option.

Can't argue with that.
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I was on holiday in Karlsruhe - a hitherto sleepy, peaceful and prosperous university/tourist town - for the second time last year, just after Merkel had opened the floodgates and I got a bad feeling about it; there were gangs of them in full Islamic get up having loud discussions/arguments/prayer sessions in the park and behaving aggressively generally.

The inevitable has happened (despite what my auntie, the Green Party councillor in Karlsruhe, had to say about it last year), so that's this week's Fun Online Poll:

"How many more Islamist attacks will it take before Merkel realises it was wrong to let a million of them in?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

"Turkish government had enormous arrest lists ready ‘just in case'"

Newsthump on top form.

Nobody move or your holidays get it!

From BBC Reality Check:

Claim: Leaving the EU would make an average holiday for four people to the EU £230 more expensive in two years.

Reality Check verdict: It would be reasonable to expect a weaker pound to make foreign holidays more expensive, but it is hard to predict a precise figure.

We do not whether and by how much GBP would fall (or rise) relative to EUR post-Brexit, if it were to fall, then yes, the GBP price of holidays in the Euro-zone would go up slightly. Big deal. The amount you spend on a holiday is a fairly arbitrary figure, you can always go self-catering instead of full board; or camping instead of a hotel; or eat McDonalds not a four-course with wine; go for a walk or to a museum instead of to a theme park etc. Over the years, GBP has been a lot lower relative to EUR than it is now, and people still went.

But exchange rates are just one factor in the price of holidays.

As we well know, resorts set prices according to demand, and it is significantly cheaper during term time than during school holidays, so we could more than alleviate this perceived problem by having more flexible term times, i.e. having school holidays at a time when most other European countries don't.

Which brings us to this article from The Daily Mail:

Tourists are facing a shortage of sunshine holiday spots this year as British families turn their backs on previously popular destinations.

Travel agents say that thousands have switched to ‘safe haven’ resorts such as Spain, Portugal and Italy – apparently in response to terror attacks elsewhere.

However, there are simply too few hotels, apartments and villas to cope with the surge in demand. Even if people can find a holiday in Spain, analysts suggest they are paying a ‘safety premium’ of up to 20 per cent compared to destinations including Tunisia and Turkey.

Surely this will also push up prices and by considerably more than fluctuations in exchange rates?

"The motive for the attack is unclear"

The BBC surpasses itself with this one:

One man has been killed and three others wounded by a knife-wielding man near Munich, with police investigating a possible Islamist connection.

The man attacked four commuters shortly before 05:00 (03:00 GMT) on Tuesday at Grafing station. One of the victims died of his wounds in hospital. A 27-year-old German man was eventually overpowered by police and arrested.

Some witnesses said he shouted "Allahu akbar" ("God is great" in Arabic) but the motive for the attack is unclear.

From other reports, it is perfectly clear that he is a Muslim immigrant (possibly second generation).

Fun Online Polls: Sports car attire & Labour's "anti-semitism problem"

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What is the correct mode of attire when driving an open-topped car on British roads (assuming not done satirically)?

Leather jacket/aviator jacket - 26 votes
Driving gloves - 23 votes
Sunglasses - 22 votes
Goggles - 20 votes
Jaunty silk scarf - 18 votes
Leather helmet/headscarf (m/f) - 12 votes
Leather steering wheel cover - 12 votes
Other, please specify - 11 votes

I forgot to add "peaked cap" to the list. Going by the comments, that would have got a lot of votes. I also bought myself a super-grippy steering wheel cover from Halfords (with the ghastly silver stripe turned away from me).

Which is all very reassuring, because I do the first three items on the list (Mrs W even bought herself a matching biker-style black leather jacket to complete the look), I'm wavering on the peaked cap.

Top comment: newageingman

Given the current weather, I am wearing long johns, thermal jumper, thick insulated padded coat, topped off with petrol station supplied £4.99 Insulate gloves and hat set. All in addition to standard clothing requirements for us non naturists.

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This week's Fun Online Poll:

"Is Labour's "anti-semitism problem" just the politically correct term for "too many radical Muslims"?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Some days, I really do despise the BBC

From the BBC

What do British Muslims really think? It's a question that news organisations have repeatedly tried to answer since the terror attacks of 9/11 and 7/7, and one that suggests that maybe the person asking isn't a British Muslim.

Some Muslims have expressed their weariness at these regular enquiries about their opinions, which they believe may be motivated by a desire to demonise them in the eyes of the non-Muslim population or to portray Muslims as a community with a single homogeneous opinion. But others believe these surveys are an important way of raising difficult and important questions about divides within society.

This whole debate has been re-opened by a new poll, but this time some Muslims have chosen to use humour to respond to findings which they feel are not representative of their attitudes.

This is nothing less than apologia by the BBC. A poll has been conducted by Channel 4, generally a fair-minded, generally liberal-minded broadcaster which said that 52% of Muslims would like homosexuality to be illegal. Now, if a Muslim said that say, they get demonised as suicide bombers, they'd have a point. You can even say "we aren't all like that". But you can't say that Muslims are demonised as against homosexual rights when most of them are.

Commenting on the results, Trevor Philips, former head of the Equality & Human Rights Commission, told the newspaper: "I thought Europe's Muslims would gradually blend into Britain's diverse landscape. I should have known better."

But in an apparent attempt to prove him and the poll findings wrong, some British Muslims are taking to Twitter to highlight what they have in common with their countrymen - a sense of the ridiculous, and an appreciation of the banal aspects of everyday life. A Conservative politician, Baroness Warsi, the former Minister of State for Faith and Communities, kicked it off.
Tweet

What the fuck? Sorry, but a few tweets from a few of the more liberal minded people doesn't prove him wrong. A few tweets aren't data compared to 1081 adults who represent a broad cross-section of the population. It's like me tweeting my republican opinion as though that represents what the county thinks of the Queen.

Lord Phillips, who will present the documentary on Wednesday, wrote in the Sunday Times that the poll illustrated truths that some would find uncomfortable. "Liberal opinion in Britain has, for more than two decades, maintained that most Muslims are just like everyone else... we now know that just isn't how it is," he wrote. His comments were seized on by, among others, the disgraced former leader of the far-right English Defence League.

Sorry, but disgraced, how? Other than imprisonment for mortgage fraud, how is he disgraced in this context? If anything, he's become a better citizen, moving more towards democratic change. Or does the BBC mean "disgraced" as in "someone we don't like"?

And what he actually did was write Lord Phillips's word, like what, that means, precisely what exactly? That Lord Phillips and him are buddies? So, finally, you're saying that Tommy Robinson isn't a racist, but just concerned with Islam, like he's been saying for years while being smeared as a racist?

This was the response from the Chair of the Muslim Women's Network UK.

"I wish people would stop promoting the 'us and them' narrative that only promotes hatred & creates divisions"

Right, and what percentage of Jews, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus would like homosexuality to be illegal? Or looking at the survey, how many of those people would tell the police if someone they knew joined a foreign, terrorist army? More, or less than 34%?

You can't go objecting to people having an "us and them" narrative when a reasonable size percentage of your group have a bunch of views about some pretty basic stuff that fall outside of what everyone else thinks.

This isn't the first time a survey about British Muslim's opinions has stirred up controversy on social media. In December 2015 the Sun newspaper published the headline "1 in 5 Brit Muslims' sympathy for jihadis", triggering a huge backlash on Twitter. Its reporting of the results was later deemed "significantly misleading" by the Independent Press Standards Organisation following a slew of complaints.

As opposed to this poll, which found that 23% of Muslims would like areas of the country under Sharia Law instead of British Law? Or how about the Telegraph one a few years ago that said that 40% of Mulims wanting Sharia law in some parts of the country. Sorry, but you can keep suggesting that people saying this are knuckle dragging racists, but after a couple of polls, it's starting to look like you're in the wrong.

A different survey commissioned by the BBC in February 2015 found that 93% of Muslims living in Britain believed they should follow British laws. In the same survey, 27% said they had some sympathy for the motives behind the attacks on Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Full results of the poll can be downloaded here.

Nice try, but wanting a different system of law isn't the same thing as accepting the system you live under. We're all OK with 7% of people feeling they don't have to follow the law? And hey, it's only a quarter of Muslims who have some sympathy for people who murder people over free speech. No biggie.

And I'd just like to add: I know some Muslims and I've worked with some good guys who were Muslims. I don't have a blanket view of Muslims. But to pretend that there isn't a problem with at least some sections of Muslims when you've got these sorts of percentages is just the worst sort of politically correct denialism.

Fun Online Polls: Moving exams for Ramadan & Banning Donald Trump

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Changing the exam timetable to accommodate Ramadan: what do you think?

It's an appalling idea - 90%
It's a great idea - 3%
Other, please specify - 6%

A good turnout with 126 votes, thank you to everybody who took part.

Bayard was in the minority and left a comment: "It's a fabrication of the press, designed to provoke just the sort of reaction below."
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Next up, Donald Trump.

Whatever you think of him, his views are widely known and publicised, so it strikes me that it makes no difference whether he makes a speech in the UK or anywhere else. People will read about it or watch it on YouTube exactly the same. And he is certainly not a threat to UK state security or anything.

Nonetheless, there are plenty who would like to ban him from coming here. Our elected representatives are debating the topic as I type.

I think he is either a buffoon or a highly sophisticated Democrat fifth columnist, neither of which is a reason to prevent him from coming here, but let's put it to the vote.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Dry January & Moving exams for Ramadan

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

How will you respond to the new drinking guidelines? (choose all that apply)

Selection
I will reduce my consumption to 3 units a day - 3 votes
I will go without alcohol for 2 days a week - 1 vote
I will go without alcohol for the whole of 'Dry January' - 2 votes
I will ignore the new guidelines completely, they are a load of nonsense - 182 votes
Good. I was with the majority on this. And an excellent turnout, thank you to everybody who took part.
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Moving from one bit of creeping Islamification of this once great nation to another…

Pupils taking GCSEs and A-levels face timetable shake-up to accommodate fasting Muslims

Personally, I am absolutely appalled by this on so many levels. I'm an atheist, I'm a default Christian, I'm a Westerner and a democrat etc.

I believe in education and what underpins it, i.e. routine. Ramadan moves forward by eleven days, so if they bring it forward each year for two years, in the third year the whole academic timetable will have to be pushed back by a month so that exams fall after Ramadan etc. FFS, if people want to do this stuff, then there are plenty of other countries where they can go and do it, there is no need for the UK government to muck up the lives of our own children.

And as a more rational Muslim (to the extent there is such a thing) wrote in yesterday's Evening Standard letters:

When we fast, we give up our natural right to eat [in order] to worship God and ingrain a sense of sacrifice. This is well understood in many Muslim countries, such as my grandparents' native Pakistan, where exams continue as normal during Ramadan.

The spirit of Ramadan is to tolerate our normal routine while sacrificing our right to eat. yet here, instead of sacrifice, we find Muslims being afforded extra rights to make their lives easier.

While the intention of the exam boards is admirable, in this case I don't think it's necessary - especially as Muslim children shouldn't be fasting until they are older anyway.

Syed Ahmed

So that's this week's (slightly belated) Fun Online Poll.

Changing the exam timetable to accommodate Ramadan: what do you think?

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Islamic State, again.

The responses to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

What is the most likely cause of Islamic State?

The usual violent Islamic tendencies and outside meddling in Syria - 74%
Climate change - 0%
The Killer Cornflake Conspiracy - 10%
Other, please specify - 15%

So no takers for 'climate change' then. It appears that more people would give credence to the 'Killer Cornflake Conspiracy', which is something equally fictitious.

As to 'outside meddling', from the comments it appears that people interpret this to mean Western meddling. That's only a part of it - the Iranians, the Saudi Arabians and possibly the Turks are just as guilty if not more so.
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Being a democratic blog, it's a free vote this week with no party whip this week:

If the UK bombs ISIS targets in Syria, this will…

Make us safer from terrorist attacks
Make us more a more likely target
Not make any measurable difference
Be a waste of money better spent controlling our borders and combatting domestic terrorism
Other, please specify.

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

Fun Online Polls: Is it racist & countries smaller than Israel.

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

Is it racist if a black British woman tells a woman in a full-face burka to go back to her own country?

Yes - 40%
No - 60%

A good turnout with 126 votes. Thanks to everybody who took part.

I was with the majority on this one.

It is clear that "Jewish" is both a people/race and a religion, and there is a ninety percent overlap between "Hindus" and "Indians", in which case it would be impossible/futile to say whether criticising members of either group simply for being members of that group would be 'religionist' or 'racist'*, but Islam is not a race. It's not even a religion if you ask me, it's an inferiority complex/massive grudge against 'everybody else'.

* Unless somebody could show that he dislikes all Indians equally, be they Hindu, Sikh, Christian or Muslim. That would just be racist but at least no religious prejudice involved.
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Just for fun, this week let's have a geography/general knowledge quiz: "Which of the following has a smaller surface area than Israel?".

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.