A correspondent attended a recent conference at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, or Chatham House, which was discussing the question 'Is Islam a threat to the west?' He writes:

'The good news, in case you're worried about losing the clash of civilizations, is that the assembled experts answered the question with a resounding "no!" The bad news that there still exists a dire threat to the West. It's posed by America.'

Hardly surprising, since the star of the show was Tariq Ramadan, the Islamic scholar who was refused entry to the US by Homeland Security and of whom Daniel Pipes has written, as I recorded in a previous post (December 1 2004):

• ‘He has praised the brutal Islamist policies of the Sudanese politician Hassan Al-Turabi. Mr. Turabi in turn called Mr. Ramadan the "future of Islam." • Mr. Ramadan was banned from entering France in 1996 on suspicion of having links with an Algerian Islamist who had recently initiated a terrorist campaign in Paris. • Ahmed Brahim, an Algerian indicted for Al-Qaeda activities, had "routine contacts" with Mr. Ramadan, according to a Spanish judge (Baltasar Garzón) in 1999. • Djamel Beghal, leader of a group accused of planning to attack the American embassy in Paris, stated in his 2001 trial that he had studied with Mr. Ramadan. • Along with nearly all Islamists, Mr. Ramadan has denied that there is "any certain proof" that Bin Laden was behind 9/11. • He publicly refers to the Islamist atrocities of 9/11, Bali, and Madrid as "interventions," minimizing them to the point of near-endorsement. And here are other reasons, dug up by Jean-Charles Brisard, a former French intelligence officer doing work for some of the 9/11 families, as reported in Le Parisien: • Intelligence agencies suspect that Mr. Ramadan (along with his brother Hani) coordinated a meeting at the Hôtel Penta in Geneva for Ayman al-Zawahiri, deputy head of Al-Qaeda, and Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind sheikh, now in a Minnesota prison. • Mr. Ramadan's address appears in a register of Al Taqwa Bank, an organization the State Department accuses of supporting Islamist terrorism.’

Ramadan believes that Islam should replace western civilisation. He wants western culture Islamicised, gradually excising all references to Christianity and Judaism altogether. He has been accused of outright prejudice against Jews. One writer has said of him: ‘His problem is not the modernization of Islam, but the Islamification of modernity’ (‘Esprit et Vie,’ February 17, 2000).'

Just the sort of splendid chap over whom Chatham House would drool.