...mistakes have been made in the discredited war on terror. Our selective concern for the sanctity of UN security council resolutions, the ease with which we have discarded human rights and embraced torture and extraordinary rendition, the rogues' gallery of tyrants we now treat as indispensable allies - these and other foreign policy errors have done far more to undermine our position in the Muslim world than Osama bin Laden ever will.

The consequences of this have been dire. Two years ago the Pew Research Centre analysed the sources of popular support for terrorism across a sample of six Muslim countries. It found little connection with poverty and a surprisingly small one with Islamic fundamentalism. By far the strongest correlation was with those who felt that America opposed democracy in their country. Contrary to common myth, al-Qaida thrives not because Muslims hate our values, but because we are seen to have been false to them.

David Clark at CiF