Verbal

Does a country speak? And were you aware the crotch bomber was Nigerian? (He probably should be told that not many of the 72 virgins would show much interest in whatever was left after his little flame-out).

Anjem Choudary wouldn't last five minutes there.

Well yes, you're right, that site does have an agenda: let's hate all Muslims, would about sum it up. How do you think Muslims reacted to 9/11? Do you even know? Most that I know of in the countries I've travelled to have reacted with a mixture of disgust, anger and fear at 9/11 and continuing and cumulatively far worse atrocities in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Aceh and elsewhere. Some are so appalled that Muslims could do this that they, like the 'truthers in the US, refuse to believe it. It puzzles me as to what you think there more to be done, in cases like the following: Last week, a volleyball match in northwest Pakistan was attacked by a suicide bomber. The townspeople of Lakki Marwat had violently ejected the Taliban from the area. The Taliban responded killing 88 men, women and children. They ended up looking like this (and this is by no means the worst of it) I happen to know a very prominent family in the tribal areas. If you would like to compose a message with your complaint about how they didn't do enough, I promise you I will forward it to them, so that they can reflect on their lack of moral courage while they bury their dead. It's so much harder for you and me to be a couple of internet gits, concealed behind our keyboards, don't you think?

That's about right - at least as far as the religious mythology goes. Mohammad famously said that the Bible, the Torah and the Koran were three fragments of 'the mother of all books' (which is where Saddam got his phrase about the 'mother of all wars' from). He also famously did not give the Koran precedence over the other two. His quarrel with 'unbelievers' was with the polytheistic 'Quraysh', who controlled Mecca. The cave you forgot the name of, together with all the physical relics of Muhammad's time in Mecca and Medina, including the graves of his daughter Aisha, were destroyed in 1802 by the followers of Wahhab, the religious fanatic and thug whose doctrines were forced upon the people of 'Saudi' Arabia, and then subsequently further afield. What seems so tragically ill-understood is that Wahhabism, the brand of Islam that has caused so much damage, is actually just the modern variant of a narrow, unpopular, misogynistic and violent 18th century sect. The reason it spread so virulently is that after Lawrence of Arabia had help return the House of Saud to power, they immediately discovered oil.

For those who persist with the tiresome myth that other Muslims remain silent to the inane provocations by Choudary, or that Muslims are silent when the Taliban murder other Muslims, here, for one, is Mehdi Hasan, in The Guardian. Is Choudary an Islamic scholar whose views merit attention or consideration? No. Has he studied under leading Islamic scholars? Nope. Does he have any Islamic qualifications or credentials? None whatsoever. So what gives him the right to pontificate on Islam, British Muslims or "the hellfire"? Or proclaim himself a "sharia judge"? Will he even manage to round up enough misfits to carry the 500 coffins with him? I doubt it – Choudary and co couldn't even persuade enough people to join a "march for sharia" that they had proudly planned to hold in central London in late October, and, at the very last minute, had to humiliatingly withdraw from their own rally. Pathetic, eh? The fact is that Choudary is as unrepresentative of British Muslim opinion, as he is of British anti-war opinion. Compare the Islam4UK leader with Prestwick protester Marcus Armstrong. The latter went to prison in protest over the British government's alleged collusion in Israel's bombardment of Lebanon in 2006; the former lives safe and sound in a £350,000 house in east London, a recipient of benefits from the same state he so reviles and repudiates. And here's a question for Choudary: of the 1,013 civilian deaths in Afghanistan between January and June 2009, recorded by the United Nations, 595 were attributed to "anti-government elements" and 310 to Nato and government forces. So will he and his odious chums have the guts to fly out to Afghanistan and march through the streets of Kabul and Kandahar, carrying coffins symbolising the innocent Afghans killed by the Taliban and al-Qaida? If he agrees to do so, I'll pay for his airfare myself. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2010/jan/04/anjum-choudary-wootton-bassett

Good grief.

Quite. And most of the wars - aside from the Crusades - were straightforward imperial wars, not religious ones. If anyone wants an insight into how the worst of those wars were fought, have a read of Roger Crowley's brilliant Empires of the Sea (one of the finest popular history books I've ever read) - and it's far better than re-treading all the hackneyed old myths about the clash of civilizations.

Isn't Sol Campbell also suing?

Far be it from me to stand up for the Americans in the region, or to disagree with you or BTF, but the Afghan Taliban didn't exist at the time of the Soviet occupation - let alone as a government of any kind. And actually, the Taliban is a Pakistani creation - a band of predominantly Pashtun 'graduates' from the maddrassas of northwest Pakistan, whose 'education' was bought and paid for, by the Saudis. The maddrassas were nothing more than hothouses for extremism. In the war with the Soviets, the Americans backed various factions. These famously included the 'lion of Panshjir', Ahmed Shah Massoud, a brilliant guerilla fighter who did more than anyone to drive the Russians out. Massoud was no extremist. In fact, he was murdered on bin Laden's direct orders, on 10 September 2001 - the day before you know what. His murder was an attempt to prevent a counter-attack from Massoud after 9/11. But it only delayed the inevitable - Massoud's Northern Alliance routed the Taliban in 2002 (with American assistance, but with no military involvement outside a few special forces). During the Soviet occupation, the Americans also gave material support to notorious and vicious warlords like Abdul Rashid Dostum. And they gave some to Osama bin Laden - although the amounts were paltry. So much so, that the fighters under bin Laden's command were universally regarded as a bunch of amateur jokers by the other muhajadeen, and were actually attacked so seriously by them that they were forced to withdraw from Afghanistan altogether. The real backers of Osama bin Laden were not the Americans, but the Saudis. This was in no way indirect. Bin Laden was on the payroll of the Saudi intelligence service and was under the direct supervision of a certain individual who happens to have since occupied the most senior Saudi position in Britain. Only after 9/11 did the Saudis realise their mistake, and tried unsuccessfully to 'repatriate' him.

I didn't know that - but rather illustrates the point I think we're both making.

Yep, the guy's an absolute hero. The work he does is fantastic - and very effective. All the more surprising since he's American, and therefore, you'd think, a bit of a target in what is usually seen from the outside as a lethally dangerous place. But he has enormous support there, not least because everyone there craves a decent education. I have some direct knowledge of what the Agha Khan's people have been doing, which is similar. They also focused initially on girls' education, but realised that was a mistake. What happened is that the girls threw themselves enthusiastically into their schooling, then graduated, but still had to marry some dumb schmuck, tradionally minded truck driver. Result? Suicide rates among these girls leapt alarmingly. So they modified the education programme to include boys - and the results are very impressive. But - and this is the important point for all of us - as education levels went up, extremism as a problem locally went down.

How accurate is that report? It says that PFC owes £10m to other English clubs. Does that mean that the fees they owe Lens are on top of that? But there are two big unexplained mysteries about Pompey, which that reoort touches on again. 1. How is it possible that a supposedly Saudi-owned business be so completely and openly controlled by Israeli financiers, lawyers and football manager? In the context of Saudi society, that is simply impossible. I can only conclude that al-Faraj is NOT the beneficial (!) owner. 2. How exactly did the FA apply its Fit and Proper Person test against a Virgin Islands registered phantom company?

I'm afraid there's little point arguing with you, because your paranoia seems set fast. If, as I suggest, you read The Looming Tower, you'll get a better understanding of what's really been going on. The problem with this sort of paranoid reaction, which is fairly common, is that it so badly misses the point of what the extremists are up to that it helps obscure the fight against them. And it do you know how long this battle with the Salafists has been going on? No more than 25 years. It started with the invasion my Muslim Brotherhood fanatics of the central mosque in Mecca in 1979, and their eventual expulsion by, among others, French paratroopers. The incident is not well known, but the upshot was that the Saudi decided they needed to act by exporting their extreme Wahhabi to other countries. i was in Pakistan in the mid 1980s when this process, called 'Islamization' began. I've interviewed jihadists who have since emerged from the Saudi-financed maddrassas that effectively replaced state education in some parts of Pakistan. They are not part of a tradition that goes back millennia - it is an incredibly recent phenomenon. The immense damage done by the Saudis can be rolled back. And it's quite simple: get the madrassas closed and pour resources back into a viable state education. I've been into the Karakorum mountains of northern Pakistan recently to look at efforts by, the Agha Khan's organisation, and the impact of their work - a relative drop in the ocean - is quite extraordinary. But in the meantime, here's a challenge for you, since you are so determined to believe that the end game is world domination: find a single quote from Osama bin Laden or his sidekick Ayman al-Zawahiri, or Abdullah Azzam (I doubt you've heard of him, but he is credited in the al Qaeda battlefield manual as bin Laden's teacher; he also co-founded Hamas) that spells out any ambintion for 'world domination'. That is not what they're about - we in the West simply don't matter, except as the recipients of fund- and cadre-raising 'spectaculars'. If all you've got to back up your belief is that cartoon jackass Chaudry and al-Mahajiroun, don't bother letting me know.

I think there's more to it than that. They (ie moderate Muslims) are not silent - many protest loudly. But what's either completely ignored or simply not understood, is that these same moderates are the REAL targets of the idiots from al Mahajiroun. So when an absurdly provocative protest is proposed, the logic is that it will create such an overwhelming reaction from the white majority that moderate voices in the muslim community will be silenced. In the polarising 'us vs them' mentality that inevitably follows, moderates will lose powerful positions in the mosques and the respect of those around them. And as for them 'doing enough', it's more easily said than done - easy, that is, for us to be comfortably 'courageous' in nothing but thought. But this is real courage: when villagers in northwest Pakistan successfully expelled the Taliban, the latter responded by sending a suicide bomber into the midst of a volleyball match. These are the people who deserve our support and help, even if their skin is the wrong colour for one or two on here.

Disagree, because there couldn't possibly be any actual BNP-voting racist scumbags on here.

Exactly. And from what the Wiltshire Police seem to be saying, that's what's likely to happen.

I don't think a single person on this thread has suggested anything so patently absurd. The issue is of tactics - namely, how to defuse the extremists' rhetorical (and other) weapons. What you are suggesting is EXACTLY what they want! They want you to be manning the barricades at any demo, pelting them with bricks. Do you really want to give them what they want? If so, it makes you barely better than them, and by doing so, you've joined in an unwitting alliance with them.

Again, well done on helping to do the extremists' work for them.

Well, there's that famous quote by Chamberlain that really underlines the thinking of the British government at the time: 'How horrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a far-away country between people of whom we know nothing!' Hitler, everyone expected, would go around invading bits of Europe to his heart's content, but as long as he didn't turn his attention to Britain, that would be fine - and that there could even be a British dividend in doing a deal with the new Superpower in Europe. That is realpolitik in a nutshell - informed by the horrors of WW1 certainly, but realpolitik nonetheless.

Yes, as I've said, their end game is the fall of Mecca and Medina, which is why Muslims are predominantly the victims. This seems a difficult concept to grasp, but if you read one book and one book only on the actual causes and consequences of 9/11, read the New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright's 'The Looming Tower'. It is, by far, the best researched work on the subject. I fear you have a very one-dimensional view that sees the problem in the religion rather than the death cult that's evolved around bin Laden and his ugly band of murderers. And the consequence of that view becoming widespread is that it plays directly into the hands of the extremists. They WANT to create a world in which everyone sees what's going on now as 'them and us', because it raises funds and recruits. Of course, it doesn't always work. Read Lawrence Wright's account of the massacre at Luxor, for example, which not only caused a wave of revulsion throughout Egypt, but came tantalisingly close to wiping out al Jihad (as al Qaeada was known at the time) before it had really got going. And their tactics won't work if we don't fall so gullibly and gormlessly into the trap they've laid.

I've no doubt you're right about appeasement, but that wasn't done in the name of liberty or freedom of speech; it was done in the name of good old realpolitik - a very inter-war way of thinking. In other words: it was about as far from 'high principles' as you could possibly get - and if appeasers had stuck to these high principles, it's certainly arguable that the outcome would have been different - to the extent that it could have speare some of the 70 million lives. Nevertheless, I agree with your last sentence for the reasons I've already given.

I agree with you. There. I said it.

I seriously thought about calling you a name.

I didn't miss your point so much as argue that it wasn't very interesting. Of course extremists of varying kinds kill in support of their views. The critical points are: Why? What are their aims? And who do they target and kill? Your attempt to dismiss as irrelevant that other muslims are in the VAST majority of cases the victims is odd, because they are being killed in such huge numbers (certainly compared to the tragic but relatively paltry numbers of non-Muslims) for a reason. And of course there's plenty of persecution of other faiths in Islamic countries, just as Muslims are targeted in Screbinica, Western China and Kashmir. Religious intolerance, unfortunately, is rife, and should be condemned. Do you have a point beyond that?

So freedom of speech - or liberty, which amounts to the same thing - means jacksh!t to you? You'd be right at home in somewhere like Saudi Arabia. Besides, to make a very obvious point, it was the 'softies', as you call them, that defeated the Axis powers in the Second World War. Of course, the not exactly freedom-loving USSR was an ally, but the Soviet bloc's denial of basic liberties like freedom of speech only lasted another four decades. The idea of freedom of speech is so corrosive of oppressive governments that they have to lock up democratic leaders in Burma, imprison dissidents calling precisely for freedom of speech for years on end, and beat advocates of political freedom to death in Iran. Eventually, all of those regimes will fall because of this 'soft' idea. And it may suffer setbacks from time to time - as with the Weimar Republic and the Nazis - but think of it as another version of the race between the tortoise and the hare.