I've thought of this piece often since I wrote it nearly fifteen years ago, and I still have that Time magazine. Of course, the global context now is much more dangerous - at least it would seem to be so for the muslims at any rate.

Before the collapse of the communist empire no-one seemed to think too much about the Islamic world as a cohesive unit. A few small groups and individuals were used as muslim stereotypes by the media, the fanatical terrorist, the insane dictator, the corrupt and immeasurably rich oil-sheikh.

But when the iron curtain finally came down and many people hoped that the insane stockpiles of armaments on our planet might finally be reduced, those whose profits relied on further sales rapidly began looking around for a new enemy as an alternative to the Evil Empire. Suddenly papers began to write articles about anxieties concerning Moslem world domination.

Only a couple of months ago, on the cover of Time magazine, superimposed against background silhouettes of a minaret and a raised fist clutching a Kalashnikov (or perhaps it was one of ours - I'm no weapons expert), was the legend "Islam - should the World be afraid?". Who inhabits this world that is to fear the muslim, and is it really being suggested that living as a muslim somehow makes me different from the world.

Now there may be as many muslims as there are Christians in the world, but let's face it, most muslims live in impoverished countries, and we have armed them with weapons that do only reasonably local damage, and which they mostly use upon each other. What is so frightening about the muslims? Why not "Christianity - should the world be afraid?" Blacks or Chinese - should the world be afraid? North America - should the world be afraid?" Now there is a grouping equipped to do some some real damage to "The World".

London today sees the start of the EC Conference on "Europe and the World after 1992", and I wonder how they will define "The World", and what they will see as Islam's place in it. Of course, it is hard to define the world without defining what makes us Europeans, and they might find that a useful exercise as it still seems rather vague. Or is it just that we don't quite know who we are but we know who we are not, and we know we are better than them. We may not have much left of our colonies any more, but our giving them independence doesn't mean that we yet think of them as equals.

Will the Conference consider if being a European also has something to do with NOT being a muslim? How many newspaper articles have recently suggested that Bosnian muslims who may have been there for centuries are somehow a historical accident left over from the Turkish empire, and not really quite European like those nice Catholic Croatians and Orthodox Serbs. If the white skinned, fair haired Bosnians, living for generations in the centre of Europe are to be seen as less than equal by nature of their being muslims, what chance is there for a first generation muslim with brown skin trying to grow up as a modern European muslim citizen.