As I was finishing writing the book I was getting on a plane to Holland. Just before boarding I am told of the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in south London hours earlier. While it halts me in my tracks it is also not unexpected. Shortly after landing in Amsterdam I will pass near the street where Theo van Gogh was murdered by an Islamic fundamentalist. As I step off the plane I take a call asking if I can do a TV interview from the studio outside which Pim Fortuyn was assassinated (in that case by a non-Muslim who objected to his views on Islam).

In Britain now, as in Holland then, the familiar routine is gone through. The politicians all say that the murder has nothing to do with Islam. Then they say that all violent actions are a "betrayal" of Islam. Then they warn that although no Muslim must be tarred with any brush, the rest of society ought to be, as we are clearly all on the verge of an anti-Muslim pogrom. Almost all mainstream papers and periodicals follow suit. 

The ever-predicted fear of a phantom backlash swiftly overtakes all consideration of the violence that actually has occurred. One Muslim contributor to the Telegraph even has the temerity to argue that while the Muslim attackers were being "anti-Islamic" the non-Muslim (actually Christian) woman who protected the dying drummer was in fact the one acting in an Islamic fashion. Only positive actions can come from Islam. Only negative reactions-or unwittingly good "Islamic" ones-can come from the rest of us. And so the horror will go on. We deceive only ourselves.