Thirteen workers flee drilling platform but oil company denies spill

Fresh fears about drilling in the Gulf of Mexico were raised today when fire forced workers to abandon an oil and gas platform, just six months after the BP explosion that created an environmental disaster in the region.

The company, Mariner Energy, said none of the 13 workers, who fled the platform and took to the sea in immersion suits, were injured. The coastguard said they were taken by ship to a nearby platform and from there to hospital in Houma, Louisiana, to be checked. Ships, helicopters and a plane were sent by the coastguard from Houston, New Orleans and Mobile.

Photographs of smoke billowing from the rig alarmed politicians, environmentalists, fishermen and others on the Gulf coast, still coping with pollution from the BP oil spill.

Peter Troedsson, a spokesman for the coastguard, said the fire had been put out and, in spite of initial reports of an oil slick, ships and helicopters at the scene could see no pollution round the platform.

He said the initial report had come from a Mariner ship at the scene, but the coastguards could see no oil sheen at the site.

The fire is a setback for the oil industry, which has been arguing that drilling in the Gulf is safe and that the BP explosion was a rare event. It came only 24 hours after companies including Mariner had staged a rally in Houston against a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf. About 5,000 employees had been bussed in for the rally.

Barbara Dianne Hagood, a spokesman for Mariner Energy, told the Financial Times on Wednesday: "I have been in the oil and gas industry for 40 years, and this [the Obama] administration is trying to break us. The moratorium they imposed is going to be a financial disaster for the Gulf coast, Gulf coast employees and Gulf coast residents."

Another spokesman for Mariner, Patrick Cassidy, said he did not anticipate any pollution, as the platform had not been drilling and there had been no blowout. "There is no hydrocarbon spill," he said.

The fire had broken out on a facility above the water, at some distance from the wells, he added.

Dave Reed, an oil worker on a platform about 14 miles away, told CNN he could see the smoke and that a call had gone out for ships, helicopters and planes in the region to divert to the area. "It took an hour for the helicopters to get here and all 13 were taken from the water," Reed said.

The alarm was raised by a commercial helicopter flying over the platform. A coastguard spokesman, chief petty officer John Edwards, said: "We were able to confirm that all people were accounted for."

The fire broke out on the platform Vermilion Oil Rig 380, about 90 miles south of the Louisiana Coast and west of the earlier BP explosion that had killed 11 workers.

Both the White House and the coastguard said they did not anticipate any pollution, but that ships equipped with facilities to help clean up spills had been sent to the area as a precaution.

The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said: "We obviously have response assets ready for deployment should we receive reports of pollution in the water." The White House stressed that, unlike the BP rig, the platform was not a deepwater facility and was only working to a depth of 340ft.

BP's attempts to cap its well, which saw hundreds of millions of gallons of oil spill into the Gulf, were bedevilled by the depth at which they had been drilling. They finally capped the well in July.

Mariner is a small company in the process of being taken over by the Apache oil company in a deal worth an estimated $3.9bn (£2.5bn). The deal has not yet been completed. Shares in both companies fell after news of the fire.

Israeli and Palestinian leaders begin framework talks on a peace deal which could encompass borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security

The Israeli and Palestinian leaders, Binyamin Netanyahu and Mahmoud Abbas, met for the first day of direct talks in Washington yesterday and agreed that a peace deal could be achieved within a year.

George Mitchell, the White House envoy who joined the negotiations, said the two leaders decided to begin putting together a framework agreement on all major issues ? such as borders, Jerusalem, Jewish settlements and security ? that will "establish the fundamental compromises necessary" to flesh out a comprehensive peace deal.

Mitchell said Netanyahu and Abbas agreed to meet again in a fortnight in the Middle East and every two weeks after that. The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and Mitchell will attend the first of those meetings on 14 September.

The negotiations are likely to face their first real test with the next round of talks coming just days before Israel's partial freeze on construction of Jewish settlements in the West Bank comes to an end.

Netanyahu has so far resisted US calls to renew the freeze, which the Palestinians see as a litmus test of the Israeli prime minister's intent.

Mitchell declined to disclose the detail of the discussions, although he said some of the major issues were touched on. Netanyahu and Abbas met US officials and then met privately. Mitchell described the two men's relationship at the talks as "cordial".

Before the talks opened, Netanyahu said two key demands ? recognition of his country as a Jewish state and arrangements to ensure it does not come under attack from within a Palestinian state ? were a prerequisite to a wider agreement.

Netanyahu again called Abbas his "partner in peace" and said he was prepared to make "painful concessions" to reach a deal. But the Israeli prime minister said that what he called the "two pillars to peace" must be resolved.

Clinton launched the negotiations by calling for the leaders to show themselves as bold and courageous statesmen and reach a comprehensive peace agreement within the one-year deadline set by Barack Obama. "We understand the suspicion and scepticism that so many feel born out of years of conflict and frustrated hopes," she said. "But by being here today you each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change."

Netanyahu said Israel was prepared to make sacrifices to reach an agreement. "Together we can lead our people to a historic future that can put an end to claims and to conflict. This will not be easy. A true peace, a lasting peace, will be achieved only with mutual and painful concessions from both sides ? from my side and from your side," he said.

Hamas responded to the talks by announcing that it has joined forces with other armed groups such as Islamic Jihad to launch a wave of attacks against Israel. Earlier this week, Hamas claimed responsibility for the killing of four Jewish settlers in the West Bank, including a pregnant woman.

The Israeli prime minister said there were two issues that he regarded as central to any agreement: legitimacy and security. "Just as you expect us to be ready to recognise a Palestinian state as the nation state of the Palestinian people, we expect you to be prepared to recognise Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people," he said. "I said too, a real peace must take into account the genuine security needs of Israel ? new forces have risen in our region, Iran and its proxies and the rise of missile warfare [with Hamas attacks from Gaza]. A peace agreement must take into account security arrangements against these real threats."

Abbas said he believed a deal was possible. "We're not starting from scratch, because we had many rounds of negotiations between the PLO and the Israeli government."

Warning extended to include Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts

Hurricane Earl blew towards North Carolina today with winds of up to 125mph (200kph), putting the east coast on alert. Federal emergency management agency (Fema) administrator Craig Fugate said there was no longer time to wait on the next forecast to see how close the eye of the storm might get to shore.

A hurricane warning for the tip of Massachusetts, including Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, joined earlier warnings and watches for hurricanes or tropical storms that stretch from North Carolina up to near the Canadian border.

"They really need to focus today on what they're going to do before the storm gets there," Fugate said. "Implement your plans and be ready to heed evacuation orders."

Earl was a dangerous category 3 storm and the hurricane force winds were beginning to spread farther from the eye as the centre of the storm underwent a change, the National Hurricane Centre in Miami said.

The centre's director, Bill Read, said hurricane winds were spread 90 miles from the eye and widening. The eye of the storm was predicted to remain about 30 to 75 miles east of the Outer Banks, meaning that, at the closest point of approach, the western edge of the eyewall could impact Cape Hatteras, with huge waves, beach erosion and maybe some property damage from the waves.

"They're going to have a full impact of a major hurricane," Read said.

There will be a similar close approach for the eastern tip of Long Island, Rhode Island, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket. "They'll be facing a similar scenario that North Carolina is facing today," Read said. "And it will be bigger. The storm won't be as strong but they spread out as they go north and the rain will be spreading from New England."

That will mean strong, gusty winds much like a nor'easter, and because leaves are still on the trees, there could be fallen trees or limbs and downed power lines. "This is the strongest hurricane to threaten the northeast and New England since Hurricane Bob in 1991," said Dennis Feltgen, a meteorologist and spokesman for the National Hurricane Centre. "They don't get storms this powerful very often."

The North Carolina National Guard is deploying 80 troops to help, and president Barack Obama declared an emergency in the state. The declaration authorises the Department of Homeland Security and Fema to coordinate all disaster relief efforts.

Captain and two bowlers protest their innocence as players are to be interviewed by police under caution

The three Pakistan cricketers at the centre of an alleged betting scam that has thrown world cricket into crisis were last night charged under the anti-corruption code of the game's governing body and provisionally suspended.

After a day that began with the Pakistan Cricket Board agreeing to omit the players from the team for the rest of the tour, and the Pakistan high commissioner claiming they were "set-up" by the News of the World, the ICC suspended the three pending a tribunal.

Outside the west London hotel in which Test captain Salman Butt, fast bowler Mohammad Asif and brilliant teenage prospect Mohammad Amir are also staying, ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat provided the swift action many in the game had demanded.

"We will not tolerate corruption in cricket ? simple as that. We must be decisive with such matters and, if proven, these offences carry serious penalties up to a life ban," he said.

"The ICC will do everything possible to keep such conduct out of the game and we will stop at nothing to protect the sport's integrity. While we believe the problem is not widespread, we must always be vigilant. It is important, however, that we do not pre-judge the guilt of these three players. That is for the independent tribunal alone to decide."

Under tougher new rules brought in last year by the ICC, the players can be suspended provisionally ahead of any hearing if it is in the interests of the game.

The row was triggered by allegations in the News of the World that the three had agreed to bowl no-balls in specific overs of last week's fourth Test at Lord's in return for money.

The charges were announced after officials from the ICC's anti-corruption and security unit (ACSU) spent the afternoon at Scotland Yard viewing evidence and seeking police go-ahead. The police are conducting a parallel criminal inquiry.

The three players will today be interviewed under police caution for the first time. Earlier they had agreed to withdraw from the rest of the tour citing the "mental torture" they had been placed under by the allegations. They protested their innocence and the Pakistani high commissioner suggested they might have been "set up" by the News of the World.

While their team-mates were turning out against Somerset 160 miles away in Taunton, the accused three were being whisked into their country's high commission in London amid a flurry of claims and top level political negotiations.

ICC investigators, who had been examining spot-fixing allegations against Pakistan for some time, have been in London since Monday. Sir Ronnie Flanagan, the former Northern Ireland police chief who was appointed chairman of the ACSU three months ago, arrived from Abu Dhabi to join them, while its chief investigator, Ravi Sawani, met police.

But despite withdrawing the players from the tour, following pressure behind the scenes from the England and Wales Cricket Board and the sport's global governing body, the Pakistan camp remained bullish.

The high commissioner, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, claimed the players had been "set up" by the News of the World. Asked if they had been framed, he answered "yes" and suggested the newspaper's video evidence could have been filmed after the contentious no-balls had been bowled.

The News of the World said it "refuses to respond to such ludicrous allegations". The newspaper is understood to be preparing further revelations for Sunday.

Hasan said of the three players: "They are extremely disturbed about what has happened in the past week, particularly in regards to their alleged involvement in the crime. They mentioned they are entirely innocent and shall defend their innocence as such.

"They further maintain that on account of the mental torture that has affected them they are not in right frame of mind to play the remaining matches."

Pakistani journalists repeatedly asked whether the team was a victim of a conspiracy and Pakistan's sports minister, Ijaz Jakhrani, also suggested there could be another explanation for the apparently damning News of the World evidence.

"Let's wait until the report comes. After that we will be in a position to see if it is spot fixing, if it is match fixing or if it is a conspiracy against these players or against the country," he told the Indian news channel CNN-IBN.

After the three wary-looking players arrived to a media posse and a small knot of 20 or so protesters, officials from the Pakistan high commission handed out copies of an article by the journalist and academic Roy Greenslade.

The piece was highly critical of the methods used in previous stings by Mazher Mahmood ? the so-called "Fake Sheikh" behind the sensational News of the World claim that a middleman accepted £150,000 to correctly predict the exact time when no-balls would be bowled.

Although Hasan insisted the three players were "not running away" ? they will remain in England and their passports are being held by the team manager ? they were whisked out of a side door and departed in a people carrier while the car in which they arrived acted as a decoy.

Mazhar Majeed, the 35-year-old middleman the News of the World alleges was at the heart of the betting sting, was arrested on Sunday and released on bail. Separately, he was also arrested as part of an investigation by HM Revenue and Customs into money laundering through Croydon Athletic, the non-league football club he owns.

Both the ECB and the ICC felt the intense focus on and public clamour for action had made it impossible for the three players to play any further part in the tour. The ICC was under pressure to act before Sunday's Twenty20 match between England and Pakistan in Cardiff.

Sources had indicated all week that a negotiated withdrawal was the most likely solution, but a last minute intervention from PCB chairman, Ijaz Butt, threw a spanner in the works. His insistence that the players might still play was seen as an attempt to reassure the Pakistani public that it was not capitulating.

Regulatory agency says findings should not stop medicinal use of oral bisphosphonates

Longterm use of drugs that are commonly prescribed for osteoporosis may be doubling the users' risk of developing cancer of the oesophagus, a study warns.

The drugs are routinely used to either treat or prevent osteoporosis and other bone conditions and are taken by many hundreds of thousands of patients.

Research in today's British Medical Journal links the use of oral bisphosphonates to an increased risk of getting one of the more severe forms of cancer, although no links were found to stomach or bowel cancer.

Experts from the University of Oxford's cancer epidemiology unit and the government's Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) analysed data from a UK GP practice database on around 6 million people.

Among those aged 40 and over, 2,954 had oesophageal cancer, 2,018 had gastric cancer and 10,641 had bowel cancer, all diagnosed between 1995 and 2005.

Examination of their health records showed that the chance of oesophageal cancer was 30% higher in people who had had one or more previous prescriptions for oral bisphosphonates, compared with people who had never taken the drugs.

The risk was almost double for those who had 10 or more prescriptions, compared with those who had had less than 10. And for those taking the drugs for at least three years ? five years on average ? the risk was more than double compared with those who had never had a prescription for the drugs.

Typically, oesophageal cancer develops in one per 1,000 people aged 60 to 79 over five years. Use of oral bisphosphonates over five years would push this up to two cases per 1,000 people, the authors said.

The main author, Dr Jane Green, said: "Oesophageal cancer is uncommon. The increased risks we found were in people who used oral bisphosphonates for about five years, and even if our results are confirmed, few people taking bisphosphonates are likely to develop oesophageal cancer as a result of taking these drugs.

"Our findings are part of a wider picture. Bisphosphonates are being increasingly prescribed to prevent fractures, and what is lacking is reliable information on the benefits and risks of their use in the long-term."

Each year, around 8,000 people in the UK are diagnosed with the disease and around 7,500 people die from it.

An MHRA spokesman said the findings should not stop patients from taking their bisphosphonate medicine. He said the UK Commission on Human Medicines had advised that the evidence from the study was not strong enough to suggest a definite causal association between oral bisphosphonates and oesophageal cancer. However in order to reduce risk of oesophageal irritation it is important to carefully follow the instructions.

The spokesman added: "Patients should also report any signs of oesophageal irritation such as difficulties or pain on swallowing, chest pain, or heartburn to their doctor."

Recent studies have suggested no link between the drugs and oesophageal cancer, but it is thought the drugs do protect against breast cancer in post-menopausal women.

Assistant secretary general to investigate after community leaders say they begged for help before villagers were raped

Pressure grew on the UN over its peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo yesterday after claims that it ignored appeals for protection just days before more than 240 villagers were raped by rebel forces.

Human rights groups said the UN was still failing to safeguard civilians after 11 years in Congo and demanded an urgent review. A British MP said the best solution now lay in seeking military support from Congo's neighbour, Rwanda.

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has sent his assistant secretary general for peacekeeping, Atul Khare, to investigate the alleged lack of action from the Congo stabilisation mission, Monusco, the world's biggest peacekeeping mission, which costs $1.35bn (£865m) a year.

The attacks took place between 30 July and 4 August, and the number of reported victims is now 242, ranging from a month-old baby boy to a 110-year-old woman. Survivors have accused the FDLR rebel group ? which is led by perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide who fled to Congo ? along with Congolese Mai-Mai militia.

Charles Masudi Kisa said his Walikale Civil Association sounded the alarm on 25 July, telling local authorities that the withdrawal of soldiers from several outposts was putting people in danger of attacks from rebels. The military had abandoned every post from Luvungi to just outside Walikale for unclear reasons, he said.

On 29 July, acting on information from motorcycle taxis, he warned the UN civil affairs bureau in Walikale, the army and the local administration that rebels were moving in on Luvungi. "We told them these people were in danger," he said.

Lyn Lusi, programme manager of the Heal Africa hospital in Goma, which treated many of the rape victims, said appeals had gone unheeded. "There was a warning it was going to happen," she said. "They took it to the FARDC [Congolese army] and nothing was done."

Lusi said Khare had announced that the UN would clarify its rules of engagement so that peacekeepers could intervene more aggressively. The UN was unable to confirm this.

Monusco insists it was not told of the attacks for more than a week, despite having a base just 20 miles from Luvungi.

Roger Meece, the UN mission chief in Congo, said UN peacekeepers in the area did not learn about the rape and looting spree until 12 August. Two UN officials in Kinshasa told the Associated Press they heard it from media reports, even though the UN's small civil affairs office in Walikale is charged with protecting civilians.

Ellie Kemp, Oxfam policy head in Congo, said she understood there was no community liaison interpreter for the Monusco unit based near Walikale, making it difficult for villagers to convey warnings. She said one had since been assigned.

"There is a whole series of problems that the UN has been aware of for years," Kemp added. "Soldiers on the ground don't know what's needed of them."

She called for the UN to launch a public inquiry into the mission. "It shouldn't take this kind of incident to make the UN listen to its own advice. Why the hell hasn't it happened?"

Others joined the criticism. Sipho Mthathi, the South Africa director of Human Rights Watch, said: "Civilian protection has remained one of the biggest problems in the DRC and has been one of the biggest failures by the UN as well as the Congolese military. The UN lacks capacity to gather enough intelligence to act proactively. They often feel that if they come in they will be outnumbered by the FDLR. If the UN missions and Congolese army are not capable of protecting civilians then there has to be another way."

Erwin van der Borght, the Africa programme director at Amnesty International, said: "[We call] for an immediate review of the failures of the DRC government and the UN to protect civilians during the mass rape and other sexual violence committed in the Walikale region of North Kivu between 30 July and 2 August, specifically in light of media reports that the UN might have received information at an early stage that civilians were at risk of violence by armed groups."

Congo's army and Monusco have been unable to defeat the few thousand rebels responsible for the conflict in eastern Congo, fuelled by the vast mineral reserves. Monusco has been accused of supporting army units responsible for grave atrocities. The Congolese government wants it to withdraw next year.

Eric Joyce MP, chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the Great Lakes Region, said: "Monusco seem completely and utterly impotent," he said. "They do their best under constraints, but they are thinly spread and don't have fighting troops as Rwanda could provide. The international community needs Rwanda to do something about the FDLR."

Jan Brewer, running for re-election as Arizona governor, suffers not one but two televised debate car-wrecks

Poor Jan Brewer, the current governor of Arizona and a hero to the anti-immigration movement in the US. Taking part in her one (and, we can safely assume, only) candidates' debate before the election in November, she suffers not one but two televised meltdowns.

The first, above, occurred during the debate itself, while she was making her opening statement and was attempting to list her accomplishments. That should have been the easiest part of the debate. But no. "It will go down as one of the most painful openings to a political debate in recent memory," noted NPR.

Yesterday, Brewer commented: "It certainly was the longest 16 seconds of my life. I'm human, I'm human."

The second, below, came after the debate when she was confronted by reporters asking about her previous claim that decapitated bodies of illegal immigrants had been found in the Arizona desert ? although there is no evidence to support Brewer's claim.

Repeatedly asked to explain her claim ? which she had used as an example of why Arizona needed its controversial new anti-immigration law ? Brewer simply refused to open her mouth, before fleeing the scene to annoyed groans from the assembled journalists.

Her performance will presumably be some help to her Democratic challenger, Arizona's state attorney general Terry Goddard, who challenged Brewer to recant her statement on the beheadings during the debate. But Brewer enjoys a huge opinion poll lead and her twin meltdowns seem unlikely to make enough of a dent.

The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain - spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms

"Dear Sir: Your astonishment's odd; / I am always about in the quad." This was the divine response, as imagined by Ronald Knox, to the inquisitive undergraduate who, following Bishop Berkeley's line of thought, wondered whether a tree in the college quadrangle would still exist if God was not there to sustain it. Now someone rather higher in the academic hierarchy has raised the question in a different form. Professor Stephen Hawking says in his new book that there is no place for God in theories about how the universe got started: "Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something." Anyone who has ever watched in amazement as a piece of domestic equipment, say a washing machine, suddenly swings into action, even though no human hand has touched any buttons, will be able to grasp something of what Hawking is hinting at here. The universe just ramped itself up. Simple. And yet doubts remain. One accepts that if God were to choose one day to explain the universe to Hawking, the professor would be one of the few people on the planet with any serious chance of understanding the conversation. But spontaneous creation is, for most folk, just a contradiction in terms. God may or may not find all this amusing. The thing is ? how to put this gently to Professor Hawking? ? that God does not necessarily follow the ins and outs of our many arguments about His existence. Who could blame Him if, after all this time, He has become tired of them? Meanwhile, there is still a tree in the quad.

The very possibility of bisexuality can sometimes run into the same disbelief that Queen Victoria is said to have shown towards lesbianism

It has to be said that something is awry when rumours about a politician's sexuality leave him feeling forced to publicise the miscarriages his wife has suffered. Quite what that something is, however, is harder to pinpoint than it would have been in the past. William Hague made his extraordinary statement on Wednesday despite serving in a government alongside openly gay ministers. Homosexuality is not the bar to office that it once was, and yet gay politicians face a distinctive pressure to declare themselves as such.

While suggestions that the foreign secretary is anything other than straight are no more than gossip, in a truly tolerant society there would be nothing to gossip about. To see that there still is, consider the case of Crispin Blunt, the prisons minister who last week let the press know he was leaving his wife to "come to terms" with being gay. While it may indeed be OK to be gay in public life, it is not done to be unsure about it. The very possibility of bisexuality can sometimes run into the same disbelief that Queen Victoria is said to have shown towards lesbianism. In this warped context the harrowing experience of marital miscarriage can be offered up to counter allegations of sleeping with men, whereas it should be no more material than it would be in the case of an affair with a woman.

All sorts of people are coy in discussing who tugs on their heartstrings. But from Ron Davies' "moment of madness" 12 years ago to David Laws' resignation this spring, politicians of all stripes have paid a price for being anything less than upfront about any attraction they feel towards the same sex. That price is perhaps especially high for those cut from conservative cloth. This is less a point about the top of today's Conservative party, which David Cameron has gone to some lengths to lead towards tolerance, than about those parts of society where old prejudices still lurk. Homophobia has touched all wings of politics over the decades, but it is most easy to find on the right. Fusty assumptions that liberals first challenged two generations ago have only faced serious challenge within reactionary circles during the last few years. Some of the mud hurled Mr Hague's way seems to trace back to his own constituency association, while Mr Blunt's local party is reportedly "unhappy" that he had dared to keep his private feelings private. While the slow tide towards tolerance appears irreversible, Mr Cameron's own vote against fair access to IVF for would-be lesbian mothers is another reminder that it has a way to go.

The prime minister was nonetheless standing solidly with his foreign secretary yesterday, just as he stood alongside Mr Blunt, whose welcome political survival is a heartening reminder of how times have progressed. It has often been said that sex itself is less politically poisonous than all the connected questions of finance, probity or supposed security risks, and that is doubly true today. The only possible public interest question in connection with Mr Hague is whether any hypothetical feelings he harboured for his aide Chris Myers prompted him to appoint him as a special adviser. Even if this did happen, it is not certain that any rule would have been broken, since such rules as there are state that advisers are "exempt from the general requirement that civil servants should be appointed on merit".

Just as MPs were once able to appoint their spouses as secretaries, ministers recruiting advisers are still unaccountable for their choice. As we report today, the coalition is placing political staffers into supposedly apolitical official roles, perhaps to avoid taking flak for creating more of the unpopular special adviser posts. That is the wrong response, but so is a kneejerk bar on all political appointees. In order to work with an apolitical bureaucracy, ministers need to be able make a few appointments of their own. They ought, however, to be answerable for these. Making them so would help to prevent private lives from being dragged into the public mire.

Other people on Pankaj Mishra's list of influential anti-Islamic witch-hunters (Comment, 1 September) can speak for themselves, but please let me state clearly what I have several times stated before: that I am not against Islam, but against Islamic extremism. I regard Islamic extremism as the biggest threat that Islam faces. I only wish I were influential, so that I could do more to get this surely very simple point across: Islam, like most religions, is well supplied with textual incitements to violence that nobody takes seriously except the violent, who are looking for an excuse. In other words, the menace lies in the extremism, not in the religion.

Doesn't Pankaj Mishra feel the same? It isn't always easy to detect what he really means under the rhetoric: writers who don't realise that a collection of words like "triggers a tsunami of vitriol" is a hopelessly mixed metaphor are apt to leave their readers puzzled. But as far as I can make out, he genuinely thinks that Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a right to protest against her childhood injuries, as long as she accepts that such injuries are inflicted by "patriarchal cultures" and not by her religion. Hirsi Ali blames the religion, which she wants dismantled.

As it happens, I agree more with him than I do with her. The abolition of Islam, in my view, would not be desirable even if it were possible. What Islam most needs to do, however, is to find ways for its vast majority ? more than a billion people all over the world ? to express their condemnation of a murderous minority. We are prepared to accept that silence does not mean indifference or tacit approval. But if silence means that those who say nothing about atrocities generated within the Islamic culture are worried that they will help anti-Islamic forces in the west then they are mistaking their real enemy.

No western government wants to persecute Muslims. There are private citizens in the west, extremists on their own account, who would like to persecute Muslims, but they do not have their hands on the levers of power. Whether in the Islamic countries or in those western countries which have a significant Islamic component to their population, most of the people who want to persecute Muslims are Muslims. Most of the Muslims who get persecuted are women. To that hideous anomaly, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is perfectly understandable when she takes a root-and-branch attitude. After all, a root-and-branch attitude was taken to her: she was a female, so she suffered.

Perhaps Pankaj Mishra could answer a simple question. It is the same question that Nicolas Sarkozy, before he was President of France, once asked Tariq Ramadan when they were on television together. Sarkozy asked Ramadan whether he condemned the stoning of women. Ramadan, so much admired by Pankaj Mishra, said he couldn't answer until the subject had been discussed by the imams. Would Pankaj Mishra care to answer, or is he, too, waiting to be told?

Clive James

Cambridge