Malcolm Grant is the president and provost of University College London (UCL), the academic institution attended by Detroit bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. He sports a list of awards and titles so long that his business card must be printed on A4 paper. In other words, although New Zealand born, he is a quintessential member of the British establishment.

Here is what he wrote in an article on New Year’s Eve defending UCL from charges that it was an institution rife with the kind of multi-cultural political correctness that had allowed Islamic terrorism to be incubated right under his own nose. Referring to Abdulmutallab’s terror plot over Detroit, he said:

“What induced this behaviour remains a mystery. He has not emerged from a background of deprivation and poverty. He came from one of Nigeria’s wealthiest families. He was privately educated, and to a high level. He gained admission to University College London, where he studied mechanical engineering with business finance between 2005 and 2008, and was president of the UCL student Islamic Society in 2006-07.

“The events of Christmas Day came as a complete shock to the UCL community.”

Oh dear.

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If you thought the Danish cartoon controversy caused a ruckus, get ready for this. Reports out of Switzerland suggest that voters have today approved a referendum to ban the construction of new minarets — spires situated next to Mosques for the Muslim call to prayer — across the country. News agencies say that the legally binding decision was backed by an astounding 57.5 percent of the population. A week ago, opinion polls put support for the move at just 37 percent.

The move is likely to provoke the kind of mass confrontation that followed the publication of a series of cartoons in Denmark in 2005 which linked the Prophet Mohammed to terrorism. In the months that followed, more than 100 people died in unrest across the Muslim world, Danish embassies and shops were burned to the ground and protests erupted by Muslim groups in Europe calling for the censorship of opinions considered insulting to Islam.

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I have written many times on the subject of how the BBC airbrushes the anti-Semitism of Hamas out of its profile of the organisation on its website. But don’t be fooled into thinking this is just about Israel. Another favourite trick in the armoury of the politically correct ideology which holds sway in the Western world’s most powerful media organisation is to play down or ignore the Islamist roots of much of the world’s terrorism generally.

Today, the BBC website carries a story entitled “Mumbai Attacks: One year on”. The attackers are variously referred to as “militants” and “gunmen”. To wit:

“On Wednesday, a court in Pakistan charged seven people in connection with the attacks, including alleged mastermind Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi - head of the banned militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.”

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A Muslim, Palestinian-American soldier massacres 12 fellow soldiers and a civilian at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. Evidence is already available that the perpetrator, Major Nidal Hasan, a military psychiatrist, was incensed at the prospect of being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and that he had compared suicide bombing to the bravery of soldiers in combat who might fall on a grenade to protect the lives of their comrades.

It is also clear that he is a very devout Muslim who opposes the wars he feared being sent to fight in. According to the testimony of a former colleague, Col. Terry Lee: “He said maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor…At first we thought he was talking about how Muslims should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but apparently that wasn’t the case.”

So clearly, there are good grounds for suspecting that this might at least have something to do with the kind of Islamist agenda which has provoked massacres from Bali to Tel Aviv, from London to New York and from Madrid to Mumbai. Note that all I am suggesting here is that there are “good grounds for suspecting”. In other words, I am arguing that any open minded and intelligent analyst would want to take that possibility into consideration.

Well, not if you write for the Guardian which raced out two op-eds with the aim not of expressing sympathy for the victims but of starkly warning that red neck, Islamophobic loons were about to have a field day. But if its loons you’re after you rarely have to search further than the Guardian’s editorial page.

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A fascinating report in Britain’s Daily Telegraph by Adrian Michaels highlights a series of studies showing dramatic growth in Europe’s Muslim population. This is due to a rapid rise in immigration combined with high birth rates. Just as interesting is the story about the story: “Britain and the rest of the European Union are ignoring a demographic time bomb,” the author notes, “…almost no policy-makers are talking about it.”

The report goes on to state:

“The numbers are startling. Only 3.2 per cent of Spain’s population was foreign-born in 1998. In 2007 it was 13.4 per cent. Europe’s Muslim population has more than doubled in the past 30 years and will have doubled again by 2015. In Brussels, the top seven baby boys’ names recently were Mohamed, Adam, Rayan, Ayoub, Mehdi, Amine and Hamza.”

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