I know from experience, Richard, that I do not share the admiration for the work of Alan Bennett that many others do; so it is perfectly possible that when I review one of his plays I might be prone to notice infelicities perhaps more than I should be inclined noticing an Alan Ayckbourn. But, should the latter disappoint or not be up to the standard I had anticipated, I should write so. But my attitude to both is not one I was born with, but one I came to hold after exposure to long experience of their work. Similarly with Islam: I was not born thinking it a mischievous, primitively aggressive faith in comparison with others, and many centuries behind them in ideological development, but have come to this view over long periods of observation of the way its adherents have carried on and expressed themselves. Would you have me suppress what have become my perceptions? On what grounds and on what authority ~~ apart from what seems to me a somewhat foolish and jejune sense of vague 'fair play', entirely inappropriate to the immediate question as to what is to be done about the, as I see it, pretty well uniformly baleful effects of their presence among us.

~M~