Notwithstanding my protestations to the contrary, I do read The Guardian and The Observer newspapers, though I should qualify that admission by making it clear that they are not my favourites.  Often infuriating, sometimes plainly wrong-headed they provide an alternative point of view that enables me to redefine or adjust my own.

What has become evident to me over the years, however, is that these titles are the moderate voice of some fairly strange-minded people who hold fairly extreme views, which are not reliant upon evidence, reason or truth.

Today in The Observer, a Leader presents an argument that must have provoked a large part of its readership to foam at the mouth.  In essence, the article seeks to point out that the West has not in the past and does not even now "have it in" for Islam and that "we" should not fall for the lies that suggest that it has or that we are the authors of our own misfortune as regards being the target of disaffected "Muslims" who wish to kill us for our sins.

The Leader pulls no punches:

"It is also a logical and moral absurdity to imply, as some critics of British policy have done, that mass murder is somehow less atrocious when it is motivated by an elaborate narrative of political grievance."

Furthermore,

"But anyone whose alienation leads them to want to kill indiscriminately has crossed a line into psychopathic criminality. Policy cannot be dictated by the need to placate such people."

And,

"But [British Muslim leaders] have a more immediate responsibility to promote the truth: that Britain is not the aggressor in a war against Islam; that no such war exists; that there is no glory in murder dressed as martyrdom and that terrorism is never excused by bogus accounts of historical victimisation."

Reading some of the critical comments recorded upon the Observer's website in response to this Leader, most of which are not made by "disaffected young Muslims", is quite an education.  It is also very depressing.

These ludicrous lies about the West and Islam