In a debate the other night, Edina Lekovic, director of communications for the Muslim Public Affairs Council, referred to Dutch parliamentarian and filmmaker Geert Wilders as a racist. Wilders, who made the recent anti-Islamist film “Fitna,” has admitted to a distaste for Islam (a religion). But if he’s defamed any ethnic group, I’m unaware of it. So why “racist”?

Last week, Mark Steyn wrote:

Islam is everything but a race. It’s a religion — which is to say [it is] an ideology. It’s also a political platform and an imperialist project, as those terms are traditionally understood. It has believers of every colour on every continent. So, if Islam is a race, then everything’s a race — from the Elks Lodge to the Hannah Montana Fan Club to the British Airways frequent flyer program . . .”Racist,” of course, no longer has anything very much to do with skin colour. It merely means you have raised a topic that discombobulates the scrupulously non-judgmental progressive sensibility.

Steyn doesn’t need any help making his point. But there’s a story in today’s Telegraph that can be cited as supporting evidence. Simon Keeler, a white Muslim, was found guilty of storming with a gang of his associates a moderate mosque in London. In other words, a Western country convicted a white man for harassing and threatening Muslims. Somehow, though, it seems doubtful that Ms. Lekovic will now describe the British courts as racist against whites.