Well, since his execution we can't see Saddam Hussein as the enemy any more, but it doesn't seem to have stopped the association of Islam with extremists. It's just that the 'muslim extremists' are now seen as living in our own country, so the rest of you are still scared, but for the muslim community the idea that people are now more likely to see you personally as the enemy is a much more scary proposition.

Whatever eventualities transpire from the meeting between Kofi Annan and Saddam Hussein, it seems hard to imagine that we in the West will ever again see Saddam as anything other than the enemy, and if this is the case it is important that we understand why. How much confusion is there in our minds between our condemnation of the man's personal motivation, methods, morality, and muslim pretensions.

On my good days I like to hope that my friends would have the good sense not to condemn Islam along with the man. But when I sit and watch the evening news and see the face of Islam that is presented, so brutal, so restrictive, so corrupt, I sometimes feel that to the culture in which I live Islam (and hence the muslim) is always going to be seen as the enemy.

Of course, you might personally know a nice muslim, or even two, but how much do we see that as in spite of (rather than because of) their Islam. But when we see brutal acts perpetrated by extremists from the world of Islam, how much do we think it is because of (and not in spite of) their being muslim. Do we see as normative what are in fact extremes.

The complex interaction of personalities, cultures and traditions that has to be negotiated in our global village, really isn't helped by our apparently boundless thirst for the entertainment value of the extreme, those sides of human personalities and cultures that are most strange, most disturbing, most threatening or unnerving.

Yet these are not words that I would use about Islam. I know it by its name the Middle Way. The behaviour of extremes is something I also find unnerving. Just this century alone, Europe has had its share of brutal dictators, warmongers, serial killers and mass murderers, but fortunately most of us aren't like that. Neither us Europeans, nor us muslims.

Muhammad said: "Have compassion on those who live on the earth and He Who is in heaven will have compassion on you. God will show no compassion on him who has no compassion towards all humankind."