>> Leaders who are "not so much interested in promoting the well being of their flock as in promoting their own interest and their own role in society as people who have to be dealt with by authorities and who will negotiate."

Wrong quote, Wrong person. It was Menken....geez

duhhhhhhh? What the hell are you guys doing?

this is what Mencken actually said:

No one in this world has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.

H. L. Mencken

http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/h/hlmencke134033.html

The other quote has long be attributed to Mencken...however if one is going to be pedantic about this kind of thing, might want to double check the research.

I was just wondering why I should respect cultures/religions that preach the gospel of female inferiority. All this crap about women being put on earth to be support players to men make me vomit. Men made that up and claim they heard it straight from Allah. Reality, they pulled it out of the crack of their ass. Men are the insane half of the planet, not the superior half. I have been run off the road in my own country by foreign men who think women shouldn't drive.

About the US being stingy and isolationist, the US takes in more immigrants every year for the past 35 years than every other country on the planet combined. Frankly, I'm sick of foreigners, without having to leave the country I'm surrounded. Most people just like complaining about the US because they can't make their country as successful as ours. So they come here and spit their vile, arrogant puke on us about how "superior" their culture is. As they beat their wives and abort their female fetuses.

I want one of those nice stars that the editors give you when you write a nice letter.

Salon. I lub you!

Okay gimme a star now.

When did Women get the vote here in the U.S.? Not that long ago...Stop being so smug.

C.Lisa Rice may be a "student of history" but she sure is one hell of a racist if that story about Jack Straw and his 20% muslim support is true. Miss Rice seems to have skipped some civil rights classes while she studied her history, eh? She fits right in with the rest of her gang though who never really have time for all the problems they are causing in the world. If this whole administration had been aborted at birth, the world would be such a nicer place.

Kill religion. All religion. Radical Islam is the enemy du jour. But all non-rational, non-objective belief systems remove people from their grip on reality. This makes them a danger to themselves and others in countless ways. You can't fight this problem by taking away people's belongings on planes. If this keeps up, we'll be flying sedated and naked before long. Even that wouldn't stop a determined suicide bomber who could swallow plastic explosives wrapped in condoms, like a drug mule.

We need to see Islam AND other religions for the vicious culprits they are. Religious messages promoting violence in any form should be considered capital offenses. If an Imam or preacher of any stripe tells people that "god wants them to do X" and X is a violent act, that person should be immediately arrested. Yes, I'm advocating taking away some free speech. But such speech should be seen for what it is: conspiracy to commit terrorism. We need this strong regulation of religion, since it obviously can't police itself. Until America and other secular democracies understand this, we will keep having terrorism, and we will deserve whatever we get.

I got a star and you didn't.

I don't like where some of these responses are heading.

Who says God deemed women inferior? Christianity may say that, but Islam doesn't. Islam allows women to lead prayer services under certain conditions, Catholics never. Islam says that women are spiritually equal to men, Christianity claims that women were the first to sin and are called "weeds" in the New Testament.

It's not Islam that's the problem, it's extremists who the majority shuns. Polling shows that only 1% of UK Muslims believe the 7/7 bombings were "right."

...because his district was 20 percent Muslim doesn't make any sense to me.

Why would Condi care? Even if she did, why would the British care?

It doesn't even follow that Straw was dependent on Muslim votes. Maybe they all voted against him.

It's a glaringly weak part of the article. It seems like the sort of story the British might believe if they didn't understand us.

Here's a novel way to win the War On Terror. Formally surrender.

Let's face it, the chance of any of us getting blasted by terrorists is far less than getting killed as we drive to work in the morning. Let's go quiet on it and let the police do their jobs, without whipping up all this hysteria. This will make it seem less exciting to these budding suburban jihadis.

On the otherhand, global warming and environmental devestation will definitely effect us, our children, and on and on for many generations for all of us. This is the war we should be fighting. Let's concentrate on doing the right things for a change and get excited about that.

The only way to defeat terror is with hope.

If anyone wants to write to me directly, the address on the foot of this article won't work -- I shut it off for spam reasons some months ago, and forgot all about that when we were editing the piece. Try seatrout /at/ gmail dot com instead.

Dissident, I take it you are a British Muslim. So it's worth taking up your points, because I thnk your argument is confused in parts and in other parts you have misunderstood what I meant.

First, I think that the phrase "terrorist sympathiser" is a confusing and unhelpful one. Quite apart from the ambiguities of "terrorist" itself, it blurs the distinction between means and ends, so that people who agree with the aims of particular terrorist groups, are then assumed to agree with the killing of innocents in pursuit of those aims. But that's a bigger subject.

Secondly, the point about Sharia law is that some people at least want it imposed on areas of Britain. And at that point, it stops being a voluntary thing, but becomes binding on other who disagree. That's the nature of law.

Thirdly, I think Gilles Keppel was talking about a subtly different point to the one you make about the educational system. the school system in Britain, with privileges for certain faith groups, is really the outcome of a compromise nationalisation. The Churches ran the schools before the government took it over, and negotiated themselves a very sweet deal in 1944. The system worked pretty well in England and Wales. On the other hand, a segregated educational system in Northern Ireland is widely agreed to be part of the problem there. I think that a Muslim school sector is more likely to work on a Northern Irish model and in that case it should be resisted. But it's a difficult quesiton, with no obvious answer. In any case, I am certainly not the first person to bring up France as a state to emulate: that tends to be the normal French reaction.

In any case, I have done rather more research into this subject than you believe. Indeed in 1995 I won some kind of prize for interfaith journalism for a series I did for the Independent with Paul Vallely on Muslims. Most recently, I made a Radio Four Analysis programme, with Gilles Keppel, Inayat Bunglawala from the MCB and other interesting people. It's here -- http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/analysis/4814918.stm