Javed Akbar, director of outreach at the Pickering Islamic Centre, notes that at the beginning of the 20th Century, Muslim intellectuals were in love with the West. So where did all the goodwill go?

An excerpt:

To honour the souls of the more than 50 people who died in a planned and pathologically-motivated attack in London, people the world over did stop in solemn silence and paid their respects by adopting the slogan: "Today we are all British."

It was a poignant way to express solidarity with the bereaving families and nation. Paradoxically, when more than 200,000 people were killed in attacks on Iraq and Afghanistan, no one said: "Today we are all Iraqis or Afghanis."

What hypocrisy. What gall.

The horror of 9/11 and now the aftermath of the London bombings reveal, more than anything else, the discord between the true nature of Islam, as religion, culture and civilization, and the way it is projected in the current palpable cloud of Islamophobia. Islam is relentlessly portrayed as an obscurantist, unethical enterprise. Muslims now actually wear the garb of the very demons that the media have been projecting as a collective profile for an entire community and a whole faith.

Is it fair to compare the worst of Islam to the best of everyone else?

Muslims, by far, are the greatest victims of such brutalities, as their faith is continually and recklessly branded and cruelly tied to violence. Much time is spared to proffer, within an aura of intense demagoguery and downright ignorance, flawed definitions and interpretations about a whole religion and civilization.

The ultimate result of such an exercise in misinformation is not to enlighten but to inflame the audience's indignant passion. Lost in the midst of this hallucinogenic haze is the fact that religion, any religion, like any other lofty aspect of human life, can be abused.

Is there a hierarchy in pain, torture and death? Can the word "innocent" be used selectively and the word "terrorist" be assigned mainly for Muslims?