On 17/02/2008, WJhonson(a)aol.com <WJhonson(a)aol.com> wrote: Oh, come off it. Some people are honestly offended by something, for religious reasons. They say so, and ask us to alter what we're doing so as not to offend them further. It's valid to say, "sure, we'll stop". Alternately, it's valid to say, "no, I'm sorry, but I think it's important to keep doing it for these reasons, and I hope you accept that". Both of those are valid responses, and the debate is over which one we should adopt - or whether a middle ground can be found, if the issue has to be phrased in a binary fashion. But there are also unhelpful contributions to the debate. We see some of them out there on the Internet - that this is an elaborate plot to deliberately and with malice aforethought attack Islam. Of course it isn't; it's inertia and a habit to illustrate things leading us into an action some people don't like. But there are unhelpful contributions from *both* sides of the argument, and this is a prime example. It treats it as some blind unthinking conspiracy whereby "they" are doing this to further the "ultimate goal", that we are dealing with an elaborate conspiracy of "extremists" trying to "suppress" us, that any protestations of honest intent are of nought compared to what we know they're really up to. Because, of course, we would never be able to conceive of Muslims as anything other than a shadowy, threatening, monolithically suspicious outside bogeyman - this sort of posting is the exact mirror image of "THEY ARE TRYING TO SLAP ISLAM IN THE FACE". -- - Andrew Gray andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk