Remarkable article in the leftist Guardian about the challenge posed by Islam. Remarkable for its forthrightness and its placement in such a left-wing, anti-American publication.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comme...104875,00.html

The space in which to argue that Islam is an essentially benign religion seems to narrow with every passing day..Those who think that what we are observing is solely a blowback against Western foreign policy, the invasion of Iraq and Israeli's treatment of Palestinians vastly underestimate the profundity of what is happening - or the possibility of changing it by changes to foreign policy. The tensions between Islam, the British and the West have much deeper roots.

Can Islamic theology and culture compete with the march of globalisation, Western values and their self-evident superiority in delivering a prosperity that Islam cannot match? The West provokes Islam not by doing anything, although what it does is hardly helpful; it provokes at least some strands of Islamic thought simply by being.