“F. Bodi needs to be taken down the pub, sat down quietly, and given a pint and a pork-pie.”

This would sort out a great deal of the world’s problems, I agree.

He’d feel a lot better then!

>Yes, that was the line that concerned me most. Isn’t this the whole point? People holding a warped ideology may not be violent in themselves but their ideology justifies the violence in others.<

I had in mind the people with a warped Islamist ideology who *are* violent, whom Bodi seems to be denying are a threat.

Of course it depends what he means by Islamophobia. The Cof E is a UK institution which denies the prophethood of Mohammed- is this Islamophobic?

Frankly most UK institutions over the centuries are more likely to be indifferent to Islam rather than actively hating or fearing it because, until recently, it has had virtually no influence in the UK.

It isn’t that UK institutions are anti- Muslim. They simply don’t care one way or the other.

Isn’t this the whole point? People holding a warped ideology may not be violent in themselves but their ideology justifies the violence in others.

To say that the solution is more religion is understandable from Bodi’s point of view but would be suicidal to take up. Most religions batter down the critical faculties. Without critical argument anything goes and the strongest tend to win. In the case of the state supported C of E the effects have not been too bad. In the case of Saudi oil- supported Whahabism the prospect is genuinely frightening.

>Since then Tony Blair has continued to misrepresent the nature of the threat as a fight against adherents of a warped ideology bent on dragging us all back to a medieval caliphate.<

Regardless of one’s view of Tony Blair, for the influential and (presumably) ‘moderate’ Muslim Faisal Bodi to imply that there is no threat from adherents of a warped ideology bent on setting up a medieval caliphate is in itself scary.