The Editor
The Herald
Glasgow

24th July 2006

Dear Editor

Brian Finch (Letters 24 July) seems to be still living in the Crusades time and reading the propaganda materials made up by the powers of that time in order to instil zealotry among their people and motivate them to join the crusades to force the ‘pagan’ Arabs and their ‘false religion’ out of the Holy Land. If, like me, he were to read the works of the latter and modern authentic and famous scholars and historians like Thomas Carlyle, Stanley Lane Pole, Sir Steven Runciman, Karen Armstrong and Scotland’s own William Montgomery Watt, all devoted Christians, who, in their works, pay tribute to the co-existence and the interaction of the Muslims with the minorities under them, he might change his ill informed, biased perceptions of Muslim history.

He appears to be an expert in quoting Quranic verses out of context. If he reads the authoritative interpretations of such texts in their proper context he might realise that the true spirit of those verses is completely different from what he believes it to be.

Yours sincerely

Bashir Maan