A measured look at a difficult situation

Absolutely (although the recent crisis in the NI assembly shows that we need to keep our eye on that ball too).What NI can show, though, is how solutions to terror involve people stepping aside from the mouth frothing hatred and fear mongering of sectarianism, and engaging with "the other side", to try to stamp out the bloodshed. We actually have a march on the NI situation, certainly in the West, in that (in my view and experience), we have a majority Muslim population which has not yet been alienated and rendered hostile by persecution of them (although, Heathen, I recognise that alienation and hostility was not universal amongst NI's Catholic population before the peace process). To hear the simplistic and fear-ridden denunciation of a huge population's faith by certain people on this site and elsewhere, I worry that we miss an opportunity to gradually remove any level of support for fundamentalist violence.Absolutely, we fight it, and look to stamp it out - but we include in our arsenal an engagement with the majority Muslim population, who do not support such violence. That's what the majority of the Catholic and Protestant populations in NI did with each other, when they wanted the killing to stop.

Indeed - and it must have been a hellishly hard thing to do.I think that with Muslim fundamentalism, we have more of a window of opportunity to alienate the terrorists from widespread support within the Muslim community. I don't think they have that widespread support at the moment (at least in the West) - but it's obvious to me that engagement with the Muslim population can only reduce that support - and that denunciation, hatred and fear of Islam can only increase it.Faith et al are entitled to believe what they want, but with every hate-fueled denunciation of the Muslim faith as a "satanic cult" etc, she's actually encouraging the spread of terrorism. No wonder, I guess, that she cites Ivan Foster in her posts, who ended up denouncing Ian Paisley, for putting aside his own hatred, and entering into the power sharing arrangements with Sinn Fein. Ivan Foster seems to prefer keeping the dark flames of hatred burning.