THE intemperate atttack on Michael Gove’s Celsius 7/7 (Books, last week) reveals more of William Dalrymple’s prejudices than anything else. It is astonishing that he dismisses Professor Bernard Lewis, who has made a lifetime study of Islam and the Middle East, but cites uncritically the voices of Osama Bin Laden and other terrorists — including a 7/7 bomber.

Instead of acknowledging that Bin Laden and his followers declared war on the West and secular Arab regimes long before President George W Bush responded with the “war on terror”, Dalrymple prefers to blame “neocon myths” and Israel. He seems unable to understand that there is a civil war taking place in Islam and that western policy-makers should side with the vast, peaceable majority and against the fanatical minority who would destroy their world and ours. The jihadists have made clear that their demands are non-negotiable and that it is not just Israel which faces an existential threat from them, but all of western society.

Dalrymple seems to think that because Gove does not speak Islamic languages he (and I suppose almost everyone else in the West) is unqualified to analyse the Islamist threat. What nonsense. Churchill was no German scholar but he knew exactly what was going on in Germany in the 1930s.

If fashionable intellectuals such as Dalrymple persist in refusing to recognise today’s totalitarian threat, it will be even harder to resist than that which we faced 70 years ago.

William Shawcross
St Mawes, Cornwall

TIRED CLICHES: Gove’s book repeats the tired, failed arguments of the neocons who time and again have only made matters worse in the Middle East. US-imposed democracy falls apart. Overwhelming force brings overwhelming violent reactions. Can Muslims genuinely start supporting states that pursue the widespread use of carpet bombing, cluster bombs, torture, arrests without trial, endless occupation and theft of resources any more than they should the disgraceful terrorism of Al-Qaeda? Ill-informed caricatures of Islam and Islamist groups only obscure the solutions and futures we crave.

The Islamic world is a great deal more diverse and sophisticated than the one- label-fits-all lame analysis presented here.

Dr Rim Tukmani
Imperial College, London University

BIASED ANALYSIS: What a pleasure to read Dalrymple’s brilliant review. At a time when informed analysis has never been more critical, Islam, the Muslim world and global terrorism have become a growth industry, attracting experts and ideologues alike. Dalrymple’s critique demonstrates how Gove’s lack of relevant background or expertise and ideological bias result in a biased analysis contrasting sharply with that of Lawrence Wright, an established expert, whose The Looming Tower is a gold mine of information and insight.

Professor John L Esposito
Georgetown University, Washington
Founding Director, Prince Alwaleed
Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian
Understanding and author of Unholy War:
Terror in the Name of Islam

DIGGING DEEPER: More than a year since July 7, we still lack even a half-decent assessment of the causes of the bombings in London. Like Donald Rumsfeld, Gove does not do nuance. He lumps all Islamist groups as one, from Hezbollah to Al-Qaeda. Gove can only muster one criticism of the Iraq fiasco, that the US did not send enough troops. He also repeats the lazy defence that because terrorism pre-dated 9/11, increasing extremism has nothing to do with Iraq. The anger and ensuing extremism at US and UK policies on Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Afghanistan among other issues, has been building up for decades. Bush and Tony Blair have taken us to a new low point, and sadly, they are just digging deeper.

The trend in bypassing experts is much wider, however, than Dalrymple suggests. Half of Blair's problems in Iraq were as a result of his refusal to listen to those who knew the country best. The much-derided Arabists were again proved right. That Iraq has acted as recruiting sergeant is now surely beyond question after the publication of the collective views of 16 US intelligence agencies claiming that the war is now a cause célèbre for jihadists.

Chris Doyle
Director, CAABU (Council for Arab-British Understanding)

OLIVE BRANCH: Dalrymple refers to “Israel’s unilateral ending of peace talks” in December 2000. In fact, Yasser Arafat was advised by President Hosni Mubarak, King Abdullah and, it is rumoured, Mahmoud Abbas, to accept the (Bill) Clinton/(Ehud) Barak peace proposals and it was Arafat who walked away and started the second intifada. Max Hastings in another review refers to Norman Davies’s allegation that Israel is “the only racially explicit society in the world”, but Israel has 20% non-Jews in its territory with full legal rights.

How does this compare with, for example, the theocratic Saudi regime where Islam is the official religion. Public practice of other religions is prohibited and all citizens must be Muslims.

Bryan Reuben
Professor Emeritus
London South Bank University