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Last week, a sloppily written but otherwise harmless motion that didn’t even go to a vote in the House Commons had us all being harangued about a foreign plot to impose Islamic blasphemy laws on an unsuspecting Parliament. This week, we are expected to believe that a similarly anodyne motion that was voted down in the House of Commons on Tuesday is already causing “waves of xenophobia” to sweep across the country.

Believe what you like, but it would difficult to dissuade a reasonable person from concluding at this juncture that at the pointy ends of these debates, uproars and arguments, just about everyone is overdosing on crazy pills.

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tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Terry Glavin: How bad is Islamophobia? Someone finally asked Canadian Muslims Back to video

It is only a little more than three weeks since six innocent Canadians were murdered while at prayer at a mosque in the Quebec City suburb of Sainte-Foy, we should remember. And yet Islamophobia, whatever that term might mean, has given way to what you could call Islamophobia-phobia, and the state of play now is best captured by the gonzo maxim: when the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.