Dear Mr Morgan,

We have been receiving numerous complaints from British Muslims about a paragraph which appeared in an article about Birmingham in the Sunday Times magazine on July 28th.

The paragraph mentioned "Allah's arse". This passage has caused immense offence to ordinary Muslims and we would urge you to publish an apology urgently. We are very surprised that this passage was not spotted by the editors of the magazine prior to publication.

We would also request you to send us a statement to this effect immediately so that we can place it on our website at www.mcb.org.uk to assuage the anger in our community.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Inayat Bunglawala
Secretary,
Media Committee,
The Muslim Council of Britain

I can promise you that no offence was intended. We have, understandably received complaints and will be apologising in writing to everyone. I hope you will appreciate there was no intention to offend. The fact that the offending phrase is a local colloquial nickname in wide usage does not excuse our oversight.
We will be exercising extra vigilance in future to ensure we do not offend our valued Muslim readers.