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By Lorne Gunter

When it was first reported last week that 11-year-old Toronto grade-school student Khawlah Noman had been followed to school by some whack job who wanted to cut off her hijab using scissors, the forces of political correctness were swift to condemn the incident.

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Local and national politicians expressed their shock and indignation. This kind of aggression is not what Canada is about and will not be tolerated, they huffed.

And, indeed, if the assault had been real, it is the sort of behaviour that should be dealt with swiftly and decisively.

However, when the “attack” turned out to be nothing more than a child’s fib (the dog ate my hijab), there was no similar rush to correct the record, to say that maybe Canada isn’t a pit of Islamophobia after all.

It’s the one-sidedness of political correctness – and the fickle, fashionable nature of its outrage – that makes the push for a national policy against Islamophobia and even a national anti-Islamophobia Day such bad ideas.