They make money from page views, using those numbers to sell advertising. If they post something heinous, and then make money from doing so because people link to it, then what is the incentive for them to stop being heinous?

Sod rewarding them for poor journalism and barely concealed bigotry.

That’s an interesting comment. Islamists engage in terrorism while thankfully, rightists don’t but they do invade sovereign states and engage in counter-terrorism including torture.

“our aim is to re-vitalise the liberal-left through discussion and action”

Sunny simpleton libels the excellent Ms Phillips.

How very re-vitalising – you pathetic moron.

James (St Johns,Oxford)

In fact, we have this curious paradox that there don’t seem to be any of these kinds of people among Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, Rastafarians, etc etc. Neither, despite centuries of persecution, do we get Jewish terrorism. Seems to be a very muslim thing.

Oh lord, really? You’ve bought the idea that Islam invented terrorism as a tactic? They didn’t even coin the word. Let’s pick just one example of non-Islamic terrorism, shall we? Look up the Haganah, the Jewish terrorist organisation which plagued the British in Palestine from the end of WWI until they were rebranded as the IDF after Israel gained statehood.

Most terrorism has been political and secular. A lot of it has been carried out by Christians. Some by Sikhs, too, though not much over here. A lot by Hindus, who are a pretty wide umbrella with some very differing practices, and until recently were divided into over 600 warring states who loathed each other.

Now, with Buddhists and Rastas, you may have a point, but I seem to recall that Shogunate Japan was Buddhist, and definitely traded in terrorism.

The point here is that terrorism is a verb. One is not a terrorist in the way that one can be brown-haired or blonde, or whatever. One is a terrorist if one uses fear to control. That applies to the agents of every government in the world. It certainly applies to every prohibitative religion. We only use the label if its a non-establishment force using terror to control. We tend to ignore the fact that fear of arrest is the main coercive aspect of modern governance.

I’ll also accept that in conflating ‘fear’ with ‘terror’ I’m possibly stretching a point; but you get my meaning that terrorism is a choice and should be recognised functionally, not an ethnic or religious identity.