Dear Deborah Jamil. Your e-mail encapsulates the ill informed relativism so prevalent in the current time, whilst displaying complete ignorance of the subjects cited. Let us take, for example, the case of Muhammad. Which 'ossified' religions was he acting against? Why do you consider them to be ossified and 'harmful ideologies'? What are the sources you use to reach such a conclusion? Your suggestion that Muhammad was interested in 'universal human rights' is not based on any clear understanding of early Islam, either from within the Islamic historical tradition or outside, where such source material is available. I imagine you are the type to march with the leftists of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the 'Stop The War Coalition', proclaiming the value of 'Human Rights', whilst standing with the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB)and other self-proclaimed 'representatives' of Islam without ANY sense of irony.

@ Deborah Jamil I've read some bollocks in my time, but never so much all in the same paragraph.

The formalized religions formed some time after the deaths of the people the adherents of those religions claim to follow.Even just a cursory study of their history will show that the people referred to as prophets were fighting the ossified religions of their time--Jesus, Judaism and Muhammed, paganism--and any practices they had people do were simply an attempt to wean them off the rituals of a harmful ideology and point them in the direction of universal human rights. They could not eliminate every harmful practice at once but pointed to a direction to go in--the same direction universal human rights activists are pointing toward. If they were to return today they would not be on the side of the obviously ossified religions/ideologies similar to the ones they were fighting against when alive.

The trouble with the whole "imperialism" thing is that doesn't even have to be about today. You say there is now Westerm imperialism in Iran, Nigeria etc but of course there are some who will argue that what those places are now is a product of past imperialism. This sort of silliness is not restricted to the West with. I once met a Turkish "socialist" who turned his back rather than talk to me, the "imperialist". He'd obviously forgotten all about the Ottoman Empire.

Speaking on the BBC's Today programme in February 2010, Gita Saghal said: "I've been concerned about what Moazzem Begg and his organisation stands for for a long time but the issue I really have is with my employer because we are a Human Rights organisation, we make very very careful decisions about how and where we partner with people, we have long discussions around these things and when I spoke to people in my office who are experts on these matters who investigate armed group violations, who are regional experts who work on counter terror policy, all of them said they had recommended against this relationship. I then asked where the decision had been made that we should have such a close relationship or whether we had just drifted into it and whether we had any form of paper work that would explain what we were doing and why we were doing it and none of that has ever been answered." Asked what her objection was she replied: "Because I believe that the organisation Cage Prisoners has an agenda that goes way beyond being a prisoners rights organisation. Well yesterday I was on radio with Asim Qureshi who is another prominent figure in the organisation and he didn't deny statements that were read out to him supporting global jihad which he said was protected under international law." From the time of his first article in the Guardian in February 2006 to his last one in January 2010, Moazzem Begg was repeatedly asked what it was he was doing in Afghanistan. He declined to answer. Only in 2010 in an attempt to justify his association with Amnesty International did he claim that he was there setting up a girls school in the Taliban infested country. On 22 February 2009 in an article for the Guardian, "Guantánamo: the forgotten prisoner" is a statement about Shaker Aamer: "Since the early 90s, Shaker Aamer had resided in the UK, where he worked as a translator at a legal firm and later met his wife. In the summer of 2001, Aamer made the decision to live and work in Pakistan and Afghanistan, along with his wife and children, to undertake projects to support a girls' school and build wells." How strange that following the article, Mr Begg seemed to retrieve his memory and could remember that he was also setting up a girls school in Taliban infested Afghanistan.

The recent movement among left-leaning academics in the U.S. to boycott Israeli universities and professors illustrates beautifully the left's delusion described here. I'm so glad Sahgal and Tax are standing up for human rights and against hypocrisy.