Dear Lunatics

I am writing to you so-called 'Muslim' bombers and plotters to make it clear that, although I also call myself a Muslim, there is no way you can hide in my house, or my shed. The reason for this is as follows. The minute you drop off, and that half-made bomb canister slips from your deluded, paranoid grasp, I'll be phoning the police. And I hope you get thirty years.

I am worried, though, that you might have got the wrong impression. In a recent comment in The Guardian, Polly Toynbee suggested that woolly minded progressives like me have been saying far too little to condemn you. She's right, of course. When it comes to condemning the murder of 4000 people, my mind gets muddled and I end up thinking of the 4000 innocent civilians who died during the invasion of Afghanistan.

And don't be thinking my house offers sanctuary simply because I have criticised the British police and security services. Unlike you, I think Muslims should be cooperative, and open the door at 5am when police are knocking with their sledge hammers. I have to say, it makes a pleasant change to hear that Muslims arrested by the police have actually been charged instead of quietly released - and with terrorist offences, too. But please don't get confused. There are no terrorists allowed in my home.

We both might condemn arresting officers for shoving a terrorist suspect to his knees and shouting, "Where is your God now?" We might express outrage when such allegations are not investigated for months on end. We may vehemently oppose Blunkett's own Guantanamo (Belmarsh) and help fight the extradition of a Muslim detainee to the USA, a nation condemned by Amnesty International for its record on human rights. But that doesn't mean I would ever contemplate letting you sleep in my bed.

I can see why you might be confused about hiding places. You see, unlike Polly - who bless her, knows Johnny English about the Islamic faith - you and me know that the fundamental religious position taken by Muslim terrorists and the views of so-called moderate Islamists are fruits of the same reactionary tree that first flourished in European colonialism's dank soils. You both share the same dogmatic approach to home-made theological reasoning, and the same authoritarianism. Your common heritage are one of the reasons I think Islamism is a bad idea - another plus for bypassing my property if you are ever on the run.

This doesn't mean that the lovely Islamists at the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) are likely to give you shelter, either, even though their pals in the Muslim Brotherhood might have assassinated an Arab leader or two in their time. You lunatics and the comparatively sane folks at the MAB may share a vision of Islam as an ethical system distinct from humanity's common concerns, and some might argue your shared anti-intellectualism is as great a refuge as any roof can offer. But they condemn you as criminals, and so do I.

You see, however many opportunities you offer for sorry Muslim organisations to play victim and hark on endlessly about Islamophobia in the media, and whatever the shared sense of outrage or theological method, the overwhelming majority of Muslims agree you are a menace to every decent, peace-loving human being on this planet.

Lunatic, you are no friend of Muslims. In Britain, you have allowed an ignorant media and a blundering police force to mutate us from a marginalised community into a threat to national security. You have given open house to one of the most right-wing governments in American history to engage in pre-emptive military violence against Muslim nations willy-nilly. And you have given justification to unscrupulous Muslim states to summarily arrest, imprison, torture and murder opponents of their regimes.

Thinking again, perhaps you can come round to my place. There are so many things that need explaining to you before that half-made bomb canister slips from your sleepy fingers...

Sincerely

Yakoub Islam
Tasneem Project