America, Europe and Islam
Pleasures and perils of name-calling
The Twitter-sphere was sizzling overnight with reactions, some indignant but most joyfully sarcastic, to the assertion by a "terrorism expert" interviewed on Fox News that Britain's second city was now a Muslim-only place. And the guffaws barely died down when the expert, Steven Emerson, offered an unconditional apology for slurring the "beautiful city" of Birmingham: a claim which even its most loyal residents would hesitate to make. In one popular quip, the city was renamed Birming out of deference to its residents' aversion to pork.
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