melanie phillips: this call for harmony is a death threat (updated)

The Melanie Phillips guide to reading comprehension:

And so when it says

So let our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill

it’s really a variation of the ancient adage: submit or die.

There is, of course, nothing that any Islamic scholar could have written that could not have been characterised by Phillips as "put[ting] a scimitar to the neck of the Christian church."

You might also notice how her manichean world view allows her to maintain both that only a part of the Islamic world "has waged war on the Christian (and Jewish) western world" and that the entire Islamic world - via the "global Jihad" - wants Christianity to surrender.

To summarise: hoooot, hooooot.

EDIT: More of that deplorable bending over backwards to global Jihad:

"Our Nation is proud to be a land of many beliefs, and our society is enriched by our Muslim citizens. On the first day of Shawwal, the first month of the Islamic calendar, may people of all faiths reflect on the values we hold in common, including love of family, the importance of community, and gratitude to God."

...courtesy of President Bush, in a presidential statement issued by the Whitehouse (which, incidentally, got the facts wrong in the first draft, now corrected: Shawwal is the tenth month). Found via Dan Froomkin. I look forward to Phillips' strident condemnation of President Bush for enabling the slaughter of good Christian men and women etc. etc.