People who think well don't always write well, but those who think badly generally write badly. They may use fancy words, but if they lack moral clarity, they will generally lack verbal clarity. Seumas Milne, Guardian columnist and Islam-apologist, illustrates this perfectly. In yesterday's Guardian, he argued that those speakers who pulled out of IslamExpo are "craven and small-minded":

US academic specialists like John Esposito, John Voll and Robert Leiken have debated political Islam with the likes of Tariq Ramadan and Rached al-Ghannouchi, who played a crucial role in reconciling mainstream Islamism with democratic principles in the 1990s.

It is difficult to know what any of this means. Are Esposito and Ramadan supposed to be on different sides? Both are practitioners of taqiyya, whitewashers of Islam. And what is "mainstream Islamism"? I thought "Islamism" was the "extreme Islam" which we are constantly invited to contrast with a "moderate Islam" practiced by the "overwhelming" but overwhelmingly silent majority of Muslims. The only way "Islamism" can be reconciled with "democratic principles" is if the number of Muslims grows large enough to out-vote the Infidels. I cannot imagine Tariq Ramadan saying this openly, so what's to debate?

Milne grows more opaque as the article progresses. He describes Ed Husain as an "extreme anti-Islamist campaigner". What can this possibly mean? If "Islamism" is "extremism", how can a campaign against it be extreme? Would moderate opposition to suicide bombing and stoning be more acceptable?

Some IslamExpo speakers pulled out in support of Harry's Place, target of a libel suit by a supporter of Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. Milne takes the side of Hamas, "winner of the Palestinian elections" - they were elected, you see, so that makes them all right - and the Muslim Brotherhood, "the largest political movement in the Arab world". Size is everything, then?