I suppose Mormons really have the same relationship to Christianity as Muslims, with the Book of Mormon instead of the Koran. And they were seen as terrible people one time, and some of them did terrible things. (And others had terrible things done to them.)

It'd be very easy to imagine an alternative history in which they'd be seen as the great enemy. All it would have taken would have been people doing the wrong things at crucial points along the way.

The terrifying prospect is that the wrong decisions now could turn this into some new Crusade, with the whole Muslim world becoming the enemy.

Here is an extract from an article in today's Observer (London) by a Muslim writer, Ziauddin Sardar - and I do urge people to click on this link and read the whole article, which clears up a lot of the distortions and half truths we are seeing about Islam.

The Koran says: 'Even if you stretch out your hand against me to kill me, I shall not stretch out my hand against you to kill you. I fear Allah, the Lord of the World.' I paraphrase the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad: the murder of one innocent person is akin to the murder of the whole of humanity. I tell them that the Prophet forbade the killing of civilians, women and children, the old and infirm, the wanton destruction of property, burning of crops and slaughter of animals, even in a full-scale war.