Dalrymple on the case for mistrusting muslims....

A very important, and disturbing, article...

One of the most sinister effects of the efforts of the bombers and would-be bombers is that they have undermined trust completely. This is because those under investigation turn out not to be cranks or marginals but people who are either well-integrated into society, superficially at least, or who have good career prospects. They are not the ignorant and uneducated; quite the reverse. Seven people detained in the latest plot worked in the medical profession.

The perpetrators do not bomb because of personal grievance but because they have allowed themselves to be gripped by a stupid, though apparently quite popular, ideology: radical Islam. Nor are they of one ethnic or national group only: We have had Somali, Pakistani, Arab, Jamaican, Algerian and British Muslim terrorists. This means, unfortunately, that no one can ever be quite sure whether a Muslim who appears polite and accommodating is not simultaneously contemplating mass murder. Deceit, after all, is one of the terrorists' deadliest weapons.

Mistrust of Muslims in Britain has developed quite quickly and could develop much further. In my youth, I traveled extensively in the Muslim world and lived for a time in Africa with a Muslim family without being aware of any hostility or antagonism on my part toward the religion or culture (had I been a woman, it might have been different, of course). Contrary to what the late Edward Said, author of the anti-Western "Orientalism," might have thought, I had inherited no anti-Muslim prejudice.

Now, despite friendly and long-lasting relations with many Muslims, my first reaction on seeing Muslims in the street is mistrust; my prejudice, far from having been inherited or inculcated early in life, developed late in response to events.