melanie phillips: it's your own fault for not agreeing with me

Let she who is without self-awareness write a column. So here's Melanie Phillips:

The question remains, though, quite why Ed Husain feels so viciously towards me. I think it is indeed because of my support for Israel, on which subject he appears to be unbalanced and obsessional. In his Cif piece about me, he claims of me that anyone who opposes her views on Israel is either an Islamist or ‘in the Islamists’ camp’.

This is an absurd misrepresentation of my views. [...] A number of anti-jihadis told me from the start that my support for Ed Husain was misplaced because he had never properly renounced Islamist extremism.

Quite wonderful.

Phillips denounces the idea that she has an "us or them" mentality - you either agree with Philips or are on the side of the Islamists - before turning a few lines later to the claim that Husain has never "properly renounced Islamist extremism." In fact, she explains clearly that the conditions for being a "true moderate" or an "ally of the free world against the enemies of civilisation" are defined solely by.. meeting with her views on Israel.

Whatever criticism you might make of Phillips, she's certainly irony proof.

As ever, the idea that Phillips is some kind of staunch supporter of Islam's "inherent pluralism" should be held against her habit of running off into the wilds of conspiracy theory at every opportunity - for example, the supposed threat of a Caledonian caliphate, the declaration of "jihad in east Londonistan," and - my absolute all-time favourite - the argument that "peace, harmony and mutual goodwill" actually means "submit or die."