The west is ill at ease with Islam", a BBC colleague remarked, long before 9/11. "Even communism was more familiar." Communism, after all, came from within the western intellectual tradition. Islam, in contrast, is alien as well as threatening. Our mistake is to see Islam as monolithic.
We think of the Saudi brand as the norm – as if cutting off hands, outlawing the building of churches and denying women the right to drive were the norm across the vast sweep of the Muslim world.
After 30 years' experience travelling in the Muslim world – most of that time as a regional specialist with the BBC World Service – I'm still constantly startled by how many ways there are of being a Muslim in the modern world. [Guardian Cif] Read more
