The connection between the origins of Islam and extremism today

SIR – Tim Stanley (Comment, June 6) is right to say that Christians (not Christianity) have been guilty of unjustified violence and intolerance.

However, such violence has been contrary to the teachings of their religion’s founder and their foundation texts, the New Testament. For the first 300 years and more, Christianity spread entirely peacefully and, eventually, this persecuted group overturned the might of the Roman empire and came to be a recognised and valued group in the Persian empire. As Pope Benedict has said, it is always possible to go back to the earliest form of the tradition, the teaching of Jesus himself.

Can this be said about the origin and expansion of Islam, and what have these origins to do with the present agony of so many suffering as a result of Islamist extremism? We need urgent answers from our moderate Muslim friends about how Islam is to contribute to world peace and to a respect for fundamental freedoms.

Rt Rev Michael Nazir-ali

London W1

SIR – Islam and Western culture are fundamentally at odds. Attempts at integration are a fruitless exercise. All that can be hoped for is peaceful coexistence.

Recognition of this is a first step towards improving our security. Michael A St Clair-george

Rye, East Sussex

SIR – Only do-gooders and politicians who think they have a duty to tell us how to live really want integration.

The rest of us much prefer to live with people like us. When I lived in London, large numbers of Polish ex-servicemen settled in Ealing at the end of the Second World War. Then, under Labour in the Fifties, came the large-scale immigration of Caribbean people, who largely lived in Notting Hill Gate and Brixton. Nowadays the former has been taken over by the rich, while in Brixton yuppies are taking over.

Similarly, many orthodox Jews prefer Stamford Hill, while affluent Asian businessmen prefer Wembley. Even Britons who emigrate live close to each other in, say, the Dordogne or fairly tightly drawn areas of southern Spain.

Integration, rather like socialism, is fine as a theory but simply not acceptable to the majority in practice. Andrew Blain

Emsworth, West Sussex

SIR – Is Khalid Mahmood, Labour’s parliamentary candidate for Birmingham Perry Barr, correct in his assertion that the biometric passport readers at the UK border “are not linked to the various watch lists” (report, June 7)?

If so, then the first action of the new home secretary on Friday must be to instruct that those machines are switched off immediately and that all new arrivals to the country are directed towards a manned entry post. David Gilliard

Leeds, West Yorkshire

SIR – If Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, is correct that cuts in police spending have made the force inefficient (report, June 6), then how is it that the three Islamist attackers at London Bridge were all shot dead within eight minutes? Dr Allan Chapman

Wadham College, Oxford

SIR – The United Kingdom had a long-running, heavily armed presence in Northern Ireland for many years under different governments.

In France there are permanently armed police, and paramilitary forces are deployed daily, while the US has a routinely armed police service and probably the most formidable security and intelligence apparatus in the world.

Despite such measures, history shows that terrorists intermittently, over time, manage to defeat any and all attempts by any government, in any country, to counter the threat. Alan Love

Chelmsford, Essex

SIR – Increasing the number of soldiers and police on the streets will not in itself solve the terrorist crisis.

An armed officer would have to be standing in exactly the right place at the right time when an attacker struck, and would have to be quick enough to kill the perpetrator before he killed.

Arresting every person that the intelligence services suspect of being radicalised would mean the incarceration of thousands. If such a scheme were to be imposed, vulnerable people would be at risk of absorbing the idea that their religion was being attacked, and more of them would take up the extremists’ “cause”.

The one way to curtail terror is to attack those who preach violence in the name of religion. That requires radical legislation. Douglas Mumford

York

SIR – Dr Roger Grimshaw (Letters, June 6) proposes that there should be armed police officers at polling stations.

This would not only take such officers away from areas at greater risk, but also give an indication to terrorists that they had won. Ted Shorter

Tonbridge, Kent