It seems that Fiyaz Mughal's Tell Mama organization has overstepped its jurisdiction of “measuring and monitoring anti-Muslim attacks in the UK” to defend the Muslim hellhole that is Pakistan and the Islamic theocracy that is Iran.

This latest article from Tell Mama ('Yet More Tabloid Islamophobia, the Peter Hill Article'), written by Steven Rose, is itself a response to an article written by Peter Hill for the UK's Daily Express: 'Why does Britain feel so obliged to accommodate for minorities?' (published on the 7th of April).

Steven Rose questions Peter Hill's following assertion:

“I wonder if Muslim countries go out of their way to cater for other faiths. Actually, I don’t wonder.... ['Muslims countries'.. 'think that'] 'unbelievers' don’t even belong to the human race.”

According to Steven Rose, that assertion “is not true”.

Mr. Rose believes that Peter Hill indulged in a “glib assertion” about the Islamic view that “unbelievers do not even belong to the human race”. Peter Hill, in any case, never said that every Muslim on the planet believes that statement. He said that “Muslim countries think that...” which is an acceptable grammatical ellipsis.

Nonetheless, Steven Rose is equally glib because he too couldn't bring himself to cite a single example of what's happening to Christians (on a very large scale) in the Muslim world (from Pakistan, Egypt, Iran, the Sudan, Nigeria, Syria to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states). Instead he tells us about the two Christians in Iran's parliament and the fact that Pakistan's National Assembly “reserves ten seats for [its five million or more] non-Muslims”.

It seems strange that in response to Peter Hill's purported view that Muslims are “monolithic”, Steven Rose comes out with an equally generalized statement: no Muslim, and no Muslim/Islamic state, believes that unbelievers “don't even belong to the human race”. Really? Not only are there countless statements in the Koran and hadith which say precisely that: numerous Muslim leaders, from Muhammad himself to clerics/leaders in various Muslim states today, have also said precisely that.

For example, Christians, Jews, "unbelievers", “idolaters”, “polytheists”, etc. are referred to -- in the Koran and hadith -- as “cattle”, “apes”, “swine”, “pigs” and so on. Even the New Statesman's Mehdi Hasan famously referred to all non-Muslims as “cattle”. And if a well-known Muslim member of our media establishment can use such language in 2009, then surely Steve Rose's words can’t ring very true, can they?

Iran

As stated, Steven Rose ignores the massive persecution and killing of non-Muslims that goes on in Muslim countries. He chooses, instead, to pick some egregious choice-specimens of Islamic love, peace and tolerance. And even here Rose's few positive examples aren't quite what they seem.

For example, Steven Rose tells us that in Iran “Christians hold two seats in parliament while other religious minorities (Zoroastrians, Jews, and Assyrians) have one representative in parliament”. For a start, that is an extremely small number. In the UK in 2012, there were 8 Muslim MPs and 12 Muslim peers in both Houses of the British Parliament; as well as 200 Muslim councillors in 2005 (83 in London alone in 2002). And is it supposed to be a good thing that all Iran's Zoroastrians, Jews, and Assyrians share “one representative in parliament”? Perhaps Mr. Rose should have also told us that the Jewish population of Iran has shrunk to 10, 200 in 2012, from the 100,000 in 1948. (Before the Islamic Revolution of 1979, there were 80,000 Jews in Iran. That's a shrinkage of 70,000 in just over 30 years of “Islamic revolution”.) The other minorities in Iran haven't fared much better either.

In addition to that, such parliamentary “representatives” are an example of Iran's tokenism: it's simple acknowledgment of the small role it has assigned to its various dhimmis. The other two assumptions here is that Iran's parliament is just like our own and that these two Christian “parliamentarians” actually have some real power.

Pakistan

Steven Rose then tackles Pakistan. He tells us that Pakistan's “National Assembly reserves ten seats for non-Muslims”. Come again? Yes, Pakistan “reserves ten seats for non-Muslims”. That could mean that non-Muslims don't actually hold -- or have -- ten seats in Pakistan's National Assembly. Now that's a bad thing because there were 2,800,000 Christians alone in Pakistan in 2005; as well as roughly the same number of Hindus. Again, in the UK there are 8 Muslim MPs, 12 Muslim peers and over 200 councilors and the Muslim population here is similar to that of the Christian and non-Muslim population of Pakistan.

So although Steven Rose cites some positives when it comes to the treatment of minorities in Muslim countries, he doesn't cite a single example of the numerous negatives. Despite that, he does have the decency to make some vague -- and very Tell Mamaish -- statements. He says that “much more needs to be done to ensure minority rights and organizations like Faith Matters are actively pushing for countries like Pakistan to ensure the minority rights of Christians, Shia, and Ahmaddiya’s through projects such as the Connecting Communities project.”

Now that's the sort of statement you often hear -- from Tell Mama and other groups -- about the treatment of Muslims in the UK. Yet in Pakistan whole Christian villages are burned down, churches are blown up, Christians are accused of apostasy and then killed and so on. So it's not exactly a small problem, is it, Mr. Rose?

Now, amongst the many screenshots of Tweets and Facebook pages you might have seen on Tell Mama, I bet you've never seen anything like the following:

i) At least a dozen Christians have been given death sentences -- and half a dozen murdered -- after being accused of violating Pakistani blasphemy laws in recent years. In 2005 alone, 80 Christians were behind bars due to these laws.

ii) November, 2005: 3,000 militant Islamists attacked Christians in Sangla Hill in Pakistan and destroyed Roman Catholic, Salvation Army, and United Presbyterian churches.

iii) August, 2007: a Christian missionary couple, Rev. Arif and Kathleen Khan, were gunned down by militant Islamists in Islamabad.

iv) August, 2009: six Christians, including four women and a child, were burnt alive by Muslim militants and a church set ablaze in Gojra.

v) November, 2010: a Christian woman from Punjab Province, Asia Noreen Bibi, was sentenced to death by hanging for violating Pakistan's blasphemy law. A cleric has offered $5,800 to anyone who kills her.

vi) March, 2011: Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti, the only Christian minister in the Pakistan government, was shot dead. He was targeted for opposing the anti-free speech 'blasphemy' law, which punishes insulting Islam or its Prophet.

Most of the above are references to targeted assassinations related to Islamic blasphemy law in Pakistan. Yet that's the very same thing that Fiyaz Mughal is attempting to bring about in the UK on the back of “hate crime” and race relations laws. In other words, Fiyaz Mughal is attempting to replicate, in the UK, what's happening in Pakistan. That's right, Fiyaz Mughal is trying to turn Britain into another Pakistan.

But we must add two more things to that list of Islamic persecution and killing in Pakistan: Islamic terrorism against Christians (such as Peshawar last year) and Muslim communal violence against Christians.

For example, Pastor Nadeem Mukhtar, writing a year ago, had this to say about the situation in Lahore alone:

“Hi all friends. I am Pastor Nadeem from Lahore Pakistan. More than 250 houses of Christians are burnt by Muslims in Lahore Pakistan, Please pray for that.”

And in response to the terrible persecution of Christians in Pakistan, Silas Jacob implored:

“O lord, Help the Pakistani Christians to migrate and give them the resources to do so.”

In consequence of all that, I suggest that Fiyaz Mughal pack up his bags and move to Pakistan, where he can fight real religious persecution and oppression instead of spending all his time trawling Facebook pages and websites looking for aggressive, though largely harmless, statements to screen-shoot.