Foreign policy and terrorism

If you are at a very, very loose end this lunchtime and have access to Sky News, you can see me debate (scheduled for 1.30pm BST) the supposed links between foreign policy and terrorism with Asghar Bukhari, chairman of the Muslim Public Affairs Committee.

UPDATE: I arrived back at my office after the programme to an email from Stephen Pollard asking, "Who was that oaf debating with the chap from MPAC?" I don't blame Stephen for finding it an unilluminating discussion. It went like this.

Mr Bukhari asserted it was obvious that the reason for domestic terrorism was foreign policy, because that's what the 7/7 bombers had said was their motivation. I responded that this was largely nonsense, and - even in the form of the notorious letter published at the weekend, some of whose signatories were more serious personalities than Mr Bukhari - inflammatory nonsense at that. It was inflammatory because it insinuated, without its signatories' having the candour to state openly, that in pursuing our policies and forming our alliances we get what's coming to us. And it was largely nonsense because it showed ignorance of recent international history. In the 1990s, our principal ally the United States had fought three times to rescue a threatened Muslim population - in Kuwait, Bosnia and Kosovo - and also pursued a vigorous diplomacy to try to secure a two-state territorial settlement between Israel and an independent Palestine. Yet in that decade the Islamists had atttacked the USS Cole and blown up two embassies in East Africa.

Mr Bukhari repeated the point he had first thought of and told me I could "take a jump" (though whether this was from anywhere in particular or merely into the air he did not make clear). In response to the presenter, Kay Burley, I commented that I had been careful to say it was largely rather than entirely nonsense to suggest a link between Anglo-American foreign policy and terrorism, because it was clearly true that Islamists were angered by what we stood for. I saw no remedy for this, however, as there was no course open to us that would mollify a movement that objected to western powers' enabling an independent East Timor to emerge from Indonesian domination (for bin Laden regards Timor as part of the Muslim world), and found offensive our belief in women's emancipation and rights for homosexuals. I slightly lost track of what Mr Bukhari was saying at this point, but I said that it would be more useful if a supposedly representative Muslim organisation devoted itself to bread-and-butter issues of employment and discrimination, rather than making demagogic statements on foreign affairs. (As I reminded Mr Bukhari, his organisation has been caught in the past - and on its own admission - using an image from a neo-Nazi web site in order to accompany its anti-Israel material.)

Mr Bukhari appeared to criticise me for examining his organisation's web site. He insisted it was time for journalists to listen to Muslims, and that we should "talk about this like adults". I thought this was quite funny, because he'd spent most of the previous ten minutes trying to shout me down.