Glad to see what you posted there Doug. The trouble is this kind of thing gets overlooked in the sound bites - which makes it all the more important to keep on at it.

I posted this in another thread, and people coming to this one might have missed it, and it's really worth following up the link.

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.