I'm a newbie (this is my first post!) and I was wondering how many of you have ever lived in a Muslim country, spoke any Muslim languages, had read the Quran, any Muslim scholars, been inside a mosque, talked with any Imams or even had any Muslim friends?

I've lived in Turkey and Saudi Arabia, speak quite good Turkish, a little Urdu and a very small amount of Arabic. I've read the Quran, read works by Muslim scholars, been in a mosque quite a few times, spoken with several Imams and have a couple of Muslim friends (as well as Christian, Jewish, Hindu, pagan and atheist ones - and I'm married to an agnostic!)

The Afghans are some of the most backward and primitive people in the world, sadly. Judging Islam by them is a bit like judging Christianity by the Ku Klux Klan or Judaism by Rabbi Kahane.

I'm a Christian and proud of my faith but I'm also a firm opponent of dogmatism and intolerance.

As a gypsy, I know all about what happens if you go down that road. My own uncle was a porajmos survivor (what we Romanies call the gypsy holocaust and he lost his parents, brother and sister in Auschwitz because of their ethnicity.

There are millions of Muslims in the world and they are just as different as any other religion or ethnic group.

Still, as the saying goes, 'watch out - the paranoids are out to get you.'

As Thomas Jefferson said, 'a nation that puts security before liberty will end up with neither.'

As Samuel Johnson said, 'to be prejudiced is always to be weak.'