Taking offence is a blackmail strategy and any excuse, real or imagined, will do: it is seen in the belligerent drunk, growling “What are you lookin’ at?” or the gang member who draws a knife because he has been “dissed”. It works because polite, educated respondents try to treat this as a real question, to apologise and negotiate.

You cannot negotiate with a drunk or a knife, and you cannot negotiate with those who manufacture offence as a weapon.

DAVID MATHIESON
Epsom, Surrey

Sir, The real issue here transcends the Pope’s remarks, just as it transcended the Danish cartoon furore a few months earlier.

It seems we are in a world wherein one side of the debate has tacit permission to be as inflammatory and venomous as it pleases, while the other must continually genuflect and wring its hands in an apologetic orgy of self-loathing and self-abasement.

There are those among us who are weary of Western servility in the face of communities at home and abroad which seek to extinguish all criticism of their religion and their culture, while simultaneously — and with no sense of contradiction — spitting hatred and a doctrine of destruction in our direction.

It goes without saying that the Pope’s remarks were at best ill-timed and unhelpful. Whatever its origins, Islam remains a noble religion with a noble message. But those who claim to speak for Islam do their faith no favours by seeking to silence all criticism absolutely, as opposed to meeting it with reasoned, measured debate.

The day that Muslims worldwide display the same concern for Western susceptibilities that we are currently obliged to display for theirs will be the day that serious dialogue between the two can begin.

PHILLIP McGOUGH
Nottingham

Sir, It might strike some of your readers as ironic that complaints about the Pope’s recent speech allegedly linking Islam with violence were associated with the burning of his effigy.

ROBERT RHODES, QC
Outer Temple Chambers, London WC2

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