looking for a pretext, not honestly expressing any reasonable protest. Not only that, but what they positively affirmed was not true. Although images have definitely been frowned upon in Islamic history, and often absent altogether, there is nevertheless no lack of them. A favorite theme was the Prophet's "Night Journey," when he was taken up in a dream to heaven and hell, as we see in the image here. The whole episode thus exposes the extremism of modern Islamic fundamentalism. This is not the Islam of The Thousand and One Nights or 'Umar Khayyam. It is a fascism that derives from the least humane and tolerant varieties of Islamic law, often that of the H.anbali school favored by the Wahhabis of Sa'udi Arabia, not to mention the dangerous, militant, and reactionary insanity of revolutionary Iran. Apologists then accuse Westerners of hostile misunderstandings Islam, when the disagreement of the apologists is with the radicals, whose own interpretations often have substantial support in Islamic jurisprudence -- if indeed the apologists really do disagree with the radicals: they often seem disingenuous to a suspicious degree.A new political crime has been added to Leftist demonology. This is "Islamophobia." The precedent for this term seems to be "homophobia," and both are about equally confused in their etymology. A "phobia" is a fear, so "Islamophobia" should mean "fear of Islam," as "homophobia," with "homo" used as a prefix for "homosexual," should mean "fear of homosexuals." This is not the way these words are used, however. "Homophobia" and "Islamophobia" are supposed to mean hatred of homosexuals, and of Islam, respectively, where this hatred is the morally (and perhaps legally) culpable expression of bigotry and hostility.In "homophobia" this was already a tendentious reading of traditional attitudes towards homosexuality. Certainly there are people who hate homosexuals, and are even willing to commit violence against them, and it might be reasonable to imagine people fearing homosexuals, if they think that the innocent can be "converted" to homosexuality, or that homosexuality is a decadent and disruptive influence in society. But in general, "homophobia" is usually just applied to people who, largely for religious reasons, and without any particular personal hostility or tendency to violence, judge that homosexual practices are immoral. This is rarely addressed in an honest way in public debate, where "liberal" opinion is in the business of smearing traditional religion (or at least traditional Christianity). Instead, "homophobia" has become a political slogan and a slur, whose meaning and implications are left unarticulated, and which itself becomes an expression of hostility and contempt for religious traditionalists.It is then ironic that "Islamophobia" should follow in the footsteps of this usage, taking advantage of its device as a political slogan and a slur, when in the modern world the source of some of the most intense persecution of homosexuals is from militant Islam. When the President of Iran, Mahmud Ahmadinejad, was invited to speak at Columbia University (at the time of his appearance before the United Nations), many of the anti-American elite were certainly hopeful of hearing a good diatribe against Imperialism and the