If I was living in a Muslim-majority country, say Pakistan or Malaysia, and some white arseholes started letting off bombs in the name of Jesus, killing dozens of inocent people and demanding the recreation of the British Empire, I’d be out on the streets denouncing them as murdering scum and saying “Not in my name.”

No one is forcing you to demonstate (because Britain is a free country) but the rest of us will draw the appropriate conclusion - that for many British Muslims, killings in Karbala are worth demonstrating against but killings in Kings Cross ain’t.

I know many people argue that we should not have to demonstrate as we are innocent. However we need to see things from the perspective of the population at large, who are rightly or wrongly starting to view all Muslims with suspicion.

In these troubling times it is a political necessity, if we are continue practicing our deen with the freedoms we have enjoyed thus far.

Just a point of clarification. I’ve been appointed the Director of City Circle. Asim Siddiqui remains the Chair of City Circle.

Kind regards, Yahya Birt

Its been a while. Listen, I think it is a bit suspicious that Muslims are only called on to denounce terrorism when it happens in Western countries. Why is that? Is it a white thing?

I don’t understand. Why wouldn’t a public demonstration of disagreement with terrorists and their supporters make a difference? It might show to the terror-inclined that “moderate Muslims” are not spineless, and to us non-Muslims it would show pretty much the same thing. Also, it could increase the self-confidence and sense of effectiveness of the demonstrators themselves. Is it really forbidden to Muslims to manifest agreement with unbelievers on specific principles (i.e. that terrorism is wrong) if this arouses the “anger and contempt” of terror-supporting Muslims?

“There is one other thing Muslims should consider here, which is that we as a community are innocent of what a few people with extreme views do, unless we egg them on ourselves or otherwise help instigate the attacks.”

It’s my impression that Christianity in general aims to make the conscience vulnerable; Islam seems to do the opposite. It has a genius for producing the complacently clean conscience.

Is Islam really so innocent of all this violence? You say, “We have no mechanism for preventing it, so we can’t be blamed for not using it.” But that’s just the point: this is a basic flaw in Islam. It seems to be organized at present on the rogue-CIA principle of “plausible deniability.”