“One year after the London bombings we have good reason to be concerned. The scars left by this atrocity and other terrorist attacks, and the ongoing ‘war against terror’, have combined to portray Islam as a threat to Western societies. Fear, and the emotions that accompany it, has become a part of the public mindset. In this climate, arguments that were previously the sole province of the extreme right have found space within mainstream political discourse. The past is reinterpreted so as to deny Islam any place in the creation of Western identity which is now frequently redefined as purely Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian.

“Meanwhile many politicians have opted for the dangerous rhetoric of defending ‘Western values’ and seek to impose strict limitations on ‘foreigners’, while at the same time putting in place a whole apparatus of new security laws to fight terrorism. Hardly a Western society has been spared its own debate on questions of ‘identity’ or ‘integration’, but the implicit terms of the debate are often reduced to a distinction between two entities: ‘We, Westerners’ and ‘They, the Muslims’.”

Tariq Ramadan in the Independent, 6 July 2006

The Independent still manages to headline this article “Muslims need to stop behaving like victims”.