A week or two after I wrote this, Jonathan Aitken promised to use 'the sword of truth' when suing the Guardian, and a few years later was jailed for perjury. Praise be to Allah, this Mad Mike Malik is still free, and that grand-daughter of mine will soon be going to secondary school. But its still hard to come up with positive images of Islam.

We may soon be in for another debate on bias in the media if Jonathan Aitken's attack on John Humphrys proves to be just a warning shot. Mr. Aitken feels that the Government's not getting a good enough press, frankly considering the BBC to be openly partisan, and it seems that some of the Cabinet may agree.

For myself, I find it hard to imagine a politician getting a bad enough press, but if Mr Aitken is having a hard time facing the media, I suggest that he glance at the daily news through the eyes of a muslim. Perhaps even more than he, we experience apprehension with every upcoming news story, each one a minefield of potential conflict, with language that can be permeated with the inference and innuendo that is the language of bias and prejudice. We also are usually described in terms of differences, not shared humanity.

Scan the news, and it's hard to come up with positive images of Islam. Surely something must be wrong when there's no news that's good news, just the usual stories of atrocities, Karachi's slaughtered children, sectarian violence amongst Turkish muslims in Berlin, Turks and Kurds fighting in Iraq, with a fleeting reminder of Saddam Hussein, triggering images of cruelty and brutality. And Bosnia is still there, though sometimes nowadays it's hard to see.

But the story that put Islam back on front pages is Mike Tyson out of jail, and now reputedly one mean black muslim, who happens to have called himself after me. The Observer had "Mad Mike is free...Praise be to Allah!" as its headline, neatly associating praise for God with madness, but I think I preferred the News of the World's "Iron Malik", definitely one for my door.

News and current events meant absolutely nothing to me this weekend, however, as my daughter was visiting, to show me the bump that, God willing, will soon be my first grandchild. Nothing as important as that would be in the news, the same reaction you would get from the muslims of Karachi, Turkey, Iraq and the rest of the world. Much like you - and perhaps even some politicians.