Old friend and blog-reader and I got into discussion of Hugh Fitzgerald's recent piece on Dubai. He claimed The Economist has "more balanced coverage, based on facts". I went looking for an article he mentioned -- a special on the Arab world -- and though I haven't found it, I did come across one by Lexington on 7th January , which I found tendentious and disingenuous, a truly "Dhimmi" piece.
Re the “special on the Arab world”: I realised that I'd read it and found it incredible that the Economist managed to "analyse" the economic problems in the region without mentioning Islam, which would be rather like analysing, say, the Crash of '29 without mentioning Banks.
The above link is my critique of it, in pdf, for which printing out and reading at leisure is recommended, especially if you're having trouble sleeping.
I admit that one could quesion the figures on "Islamic attacks" for including attacks which might better be described as "insurgencies". Perhaps so, but on the other side, one could equally claim that the "hate crime" stats were over reported as well, in that some were manufactured by the likes of CAIR (eg, the "flying imams" case, op.cit.).
So there are possible arguments on each side for saying the figures are over reported. What's important are trends in each case: and in each case the following is clear: that reported hate crimes against Muslims have gone down significantly between 2002 and 2008. And the number of Islamic terrorist attacks have gone up significantly in the same period. That's the opposite of what is reported by the "Islamic victimhood" crowd, who continue to claim that there are "backlashes" against them, and "soaring" hate crimes against Muslims. That is not supported by the data. (and even though it might not be surprising if the hate crimes were rising...)
