This article was going to be about the Israeli assault on Lebanon and my visit there over the summer. That’s a vital issue and one to which I may have the opportunity to return in these pages but...

As I write these words, other events have superseded. I, along with Muslim communities in Britain and all right thinking people, have been left reeling by the string of anti-Muslim attacks – verbal, propagandistic and physical – over the last few days.

There was the sinister speech by Home Secretary and wannabe Labour leader John Reid at the party’s conference. With no trace of irony the man who lectures Muslim women on how to bring up their children thundered about Muslim bullies.

Then we had Jack Straw, a wannabe deputy leader, wading in with the despicable comment that he tells Muslim women who come to see him at his surgery that he would rather they take off their veils. A male politician says he wants women to disrobe before he speaks to them and the entire media treat it not as a disgusting invasion of privacy but a legitimate intervention in a supposed “debate” about multiculturalism.

Straw is not a stupid man. This wasn’t an off the cuff remark. It was calculated. It was a blatant move to show that he can be as tough on Muslims as… well, as tough at John Reid.

So here we have it, in the battle to succeed Tony Blair and his deputy at the top of the Labour Party it is considered necessary to bash Muslims. And Muslim bashing is becoming a competitive sport for the Tory and Labour frontbenches as well.

David Cameron got the headlines he wanted when he rehearsed the tired old Islamophobic tirades: “I’ll smash muslim ghettos” ran the front pages.

Meanwhile the politicians had provided the mood music for those who literally want to bash Muslims. Straw’s comments to his Lancashire local paper came out after an attack on Muslims outside a mosque in one of the biggest towns in the county, Preston, and in the middle of several days of mob attacks in Windsor on a Muslim business.

They came out the day of a gathering witch-hunt against a Muslim police officer who was excused guard duty at the Israeli embassy in London.

There is now a very clear and sulphurous smell of violent anti- Muslim racism. There are times when a quantitative build-up of incendiary material reaches a critical point and erupts. There is a very great danger that we are reaching that point.

The build-up of Islamophobia has been happening for years – particularly and most dramatically since 11 September 2001. Frighteningly, at each stage more and more liberal intellectual opinion has been peeled off to provide a veneer for the right. We saw it earlier this year in the response to the racist Danish cartoons. It’s there again in the response of many liberal commentators’ to Straw’s cynical and dangerous ranting.

At times like this the worst thing any oppressed group can do is to allow itself to become isolated. One great victory of the anti-war movement has been to draw many people into the battle against Islamophobia alongside Muslims. That coalition of forces needs to be deepened now.

There should be a public, dignified but determined response to Straw’s outburst in every town and city. Now is the time for all of us to speak out.

And it raises a further question. For too long Straw has been able to take Muslims and other traditional Labour voters in Blackburn for granted. If he won’t do the decent thing and stand down. Then it is up to those who he has misrepresented for so long to gather round a candidate who can truly represent them.

Readers can listen to George Galloway on 1053/1089 am TalkSport, every Saturday and Sunday from 8pm.