Fish in a barrel

I read this fascinating interview with the wonderful Irshad Manji in the "Independent."

She is frustrated that more moderate Muslims do not fight. "At all of the public events I've done to promote this book, not once have I seen a moderate Muslim stand up and look an extremist in the eye and say, 'I'm Muslim too. I disagree with your perspective. Now let's hash it out publicly.' Yes, after the event people tip-toe up to me and say, 'Thank you for what you are doing.' And there are times when I really want to say, 'Where was your support when it mattered? Not for my ego. But to show the extremists that they are not going to walk away with the show.'"

I wrote to the newspaper's editor complaining about an obvious missing word or garble in another important quote:

"I asked, 'Do these women realise that the very groups and individuals whom they are defending are the very people who, if they were in power here, would frankly their daughters particularly of their right to be at Oxford at all?' "

While I was at it, I informed the editor that Matthew Shepherd was not, as he was described parenthetically in the same story, "a young gay man who was recent crucified and burned to death in Texas."

He was a young gay man beaten and tied to a fence, dying of injuries and exposure, in Wyoming, in 1998.

But I guess, when you're the "Independent," it makes better Bush-baiting if he was crucified and burned in Texas. Fact-checking? We don't need no stinkin' fact-checking.