Posts like bubblyrat's abpve bring to mind a couple of lines by Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst/Are full of passionate intensity." (Or words to that effect.)

An organiser of the proposed demonstration (perhaps Mr Choudry?) was on the UK's Channel 4 News tonight, debating with the father of a British soldier (dead I assume - I missed the intros). Of the two, the Muslim was infinitely the more composed, coherent and rational. The soldier's dad was completely hung up on the fragile argument that once a UK government has declared war, all British subjects should support the troops. Even in the US, where "my country right or wrong" still retains some credibility, large elements of its citizenry fell well short of that ideal during the Vietnam war.

Those who bang on about the excesses of the Taliban should keep in mind that, as the US-based Slovenian academic Slavoj Žižek observed on the BBC World Service (Hardtalk) recently, muslims in Afghanistan were overwhelmingly moderate,, with liberal outlook before the successive interventions of the USSR and the US.