The Daily Mail’s Richard Littlejohn reacts to Muslim Council of Britain leader Muhammad Abdul Bari’s outrageous threat that criticizing Islam will create two million terrorists in Britain: So this is what they mean by moderate voices.

Far from being a bigot, I judge the MCB on exactly the same terms as any other bunch of spivs and opportunists. They are the ones hiding behind religion for political ends. I certainly don’t need any lessons in bigotry from someone like Bari, who invites as an honoured guest to his East London mosque a ‘radical’ cleric who describes Jews as ‘monkeys and pigs’.

Perhaps while the Muslim Council is accusing others of bigotry it would like to share with us its enlightened views on homosexuality and arranged marriages.

‘Islamophobia’ is just another of those catch-all, smear-the-messenger fantasies dreamed up to close down debate and stifle free speech.

When you examine closely Bari’s latest outburst, it is nothing short of monstrous. What he is saying is that every Muslim in this country is a potential terrorist.

If anything is guaranteed to increase suspicion of Muslims it is incendiary statements like that.

The anniversary of the attacks on America should be an occasion for sober reflection and remembrance. But the MCB has never met an atrocity it didn’t try to exploit. Their tactic is always the same.

After their perfunctory condemnation of terrorism, there’s always the caveat about British foreign policy in the Middle East and the assertion that the real victims are not those who have actually been blown to smithereens but Muslims themselves.

While they could never condone what has happened, we are invited to understand the anger and alienation which cause young men to turn themselves into human bombs.

The fact is that this jihad started long before 9/11, years before Iraq and Afghanistan. The first attack on the World Trade Centre was in 1993.

And I still fail to understand how the mass murder of thousands of people, among them many Muslims, could inspire anyone to become ‘radicalised’. You’d expect it to have precisely the opposite effect.