Muriel Gray's politics are about as far removed from mine as it is possible to get, but we agree on one thing:

Frightened for your life in these days of madness? It’s not about religion, stupid. It’s about foreign policy, and silly us for thinking any different. So let’s have a look at the unique feelings of those young Muslim men who are so deeply affected by international politics and certainly not religion – no, no, goodness me no – and examine those gaping differences between us. We can use the martyrdom tape of July 7, 2005, as a guide to why we’re on such opposing sides and take it from there.

It seems that these suicide bombers are really, really different from us non-Muslims because they’re against the war in Iraq and we aren’t. But didn’t one million people demonstrate against the war, hasn’t the media pounded the government constantly ever since about the terrible error, and have you ever spoken to anyone recently who thinks it was a jolly good idea and it’s all going terribly well? So no real difference of views there. So far the suicide bomber and the majority of British infidels are pretty much in agreement...

So how come if that’s the case, that every imam, Respect party activist, and Muslim “community leader” keeps telling us that religion has nothing to do with these attractive, intelligent young men, with comfortable, safe lives in Britain ahead of them, deciding to turn into mass murderers, and that politics is the only reason?

If we take two groups of young British men of equal ages, all equally angry about these things as so many are, why do the Muslim leaders agree that the Muslim men may be induced to plot to kill in response, while the non-Muslim men are likely to plot only to protest, change their voting pattern or maybe just play a game of five-a-side football and rant about the world’s injustice in the pub later? Religion. That’s why. It may be ugly, but if we don’t keep saying it over and over, out loud and often, that these murderers believe that this life is worthless, a mere test for the one to come, that non-believers are lower than animals, that the British society that protects them, houses them, educates them and keeps them healthy is disgusting and vile only because it is filled with non-believers, that the world must be dominated by their religion and only theirs, and that in dying to help bring it about a reward waits for them and their families that is unimaginable in its pleasure, then how can we ever understand this conflict?

Foreign policy my eye. I, like thousands of others all over Britain, agree profoundly with almost all of the bombers’ “political” grievances, but I do not hate those who believe differently from me and will never kill. Why not? I haven’t got a god telling me to.