Left-leaning journalists don't just pull their punches when it comes to criticizing liberal politicians, they also seem paradoxically inclined to do so when it comes to discussing radical Islam. This curious phenomenon (curious in that modern liberalism is highly secular and radical Islam decidedly is not) has repeated itself many times over the years and is really one of the most bizarre behaviors I've seen in politics.

As strange and morally obtuse that we on the center-right believe the western liberal press to be on this issue, surely the more frustrated people have got to be clear-thinking liberals like Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens who face the task of trying to get their ideological compatriots to stand up for rationality and civil society. It's a difficult task made even more frustrating by the high degree of self-censorship among liberal media elites. Writing earlier this week at the Huffington Post, Harris (an equal opportunity critic of all religion) recounts how the Washington Post refused to run an article he wrote on the "Fitna" movie that the paper deemed "too critical" of Islam.

Such behavior originates in not just the usual double-standard westernized religion faces but in a very real fear among left elites that criticizing Islam is a physically dangerous endeavor. Unfortunately, as Harris writes, this behavior just exacerbates the problem:

Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press reports that Muslims are incensed that a prominent Italian Muslim writer with a fondness for Israel became a Christian before Pope Benedict on the Easter vigil. (Magdi Allam's writings were quoted by Michael Ledeen on NRO several years ago.) Jihad Watch has new comments. (Photo from AJCBlog.) To the AP:

Italy's most prominent Muslim, an iconoclastic writer who condemned Islamic extremism and defended Israel, converted to Catholicism Saturday in a baptism by the pope at a Vatican Easter service.

An Egyptian-born, non-practicing Muslim who is married to a Catholic, Magdi Allam infuriated some Muslims with his books and columns in the newspaper Corriere della Sera newspaper, where he is a deputy editor. He titled one book "Long Live Israel."

My my, the Canadian Human Rights Commission (CHRC) is busy these days -- aiding and abetting those who wish to suppress the human right of free speech and expression.

Even though (or is it because?) the vehicle that enabled and emboldened the CHRC's thought police and those who complain to it was the passage of the kind of "non-discrimination" legislation Congress has considered passing for several years, US Old Media could care less.

Some of the CHRC's targets:

• A Catholic magazine (also noted by NB's Tim Graham last month) --
  

  In February 2007 Rob Wells, a member of the Pride Center of Edmonton, filed a nine-point complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission alleging that Catholic Insight had targeted homosexuals as a powerful menace and innately evil, claiming it used inflammatory and derogatory language to create a tone of “extreme hatred and contempt.”

  Catholic Insight responded to these charges in its January 2008 issue, saying the complaint consists of “three pages of isolated and fragmentary extracts from articles dating back as far as 1994, without any context.”

  ..... The magazine has continually emphasized that, with the respect to homosexual activity, it follows the guidance of the Magisterium of the Roman Catholic Church.

  Although I doubt it will happen (yet), it seems "logical" that CHRC could say, "OK, you're right, the entire Catholic Church is engaged in 'extreme hatred and contempt.'"

In the past few decades, as political correctness has taken hold of virtually every industry, folks involved in sports and sportscasting that have made racist or sexist remarks on camera have typically been fired or forced to make public apologies.

Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's termination by CBS back in 1988 is a fine example, with the recent two-week suspension of Golf Channel anchor Kelly Tilghman being another.

Yet, given what happened on an Atlantic City dais on January 11, where a high-profile ESPN anchor went on an alcohol-induced tirade which included a vulgar reference to Jesus Christ, it appears public antitheism is not politically incorrect.

After all, until this moment, you probably hadn't heard about this incident, and the person involved apparently has not been publicly admonished for her behavior by her employer.

While you consider such a double standard, Press of Atlantic City reported on January 12 (h/t NB reader Andy Traynor, readers are warned that vulgarity and blasphemy appear after the jump):

Islamic radicals continue to spread irrational hate against the Swedish Mohammed dog sketches, this time in Afghanistan where a newspaper there called for the imprisonment of the newspaper editors who printed one of the cartoons:

Afghanistan on Saturday condemned the printing of a sketch of Islam's Prophet Mohammad with the body of a dog in a Swedish newspaper, calling it hostile towards the Muslim world.

The sketch has also drawn condemnation from neighbouring Pakistan, which said it was blasphemous. Muslims believe images of the Prophet are forbidden and consider dogs to be impure.

Two years after a Danish newspaper provoked manufactured outrage in the Islamic world by printing a series of cartoons lampooning Islam's founder, a Swedish newspaper may have done the same with a series of sketches:

Marking the beginning of yet another dispute over free speech and religious sensitivity, the government of Pakistan has joined Iran in protesting the publication in a Swedish newspaper of a sketch featuring the head of Mohammed on the body of a dog.

"Pakistan condemns, in the strongest terms, the publication of an offensive and blasphemous sketch of the Holy Prophet in the Swedish newspaper," the foreign ministry in Islamabad said in a statement Thursday.