Source: The Times (London)

On May 27, 2000 The Times (London) published an article entitled " The West is still demonising Islam." Author Karen Armstrong contends that "This is an age when people are beginning to discover the richness of other religious traditions. Without abandoning their own faith, some are turning for nourishment to more than one religion...But one religion seems excluded from this circle of goodwill. For nearly a thousand years, the Western world has cultivated a distorted vision of Islam which bears little relation to the truth but which shows no sign of abating, even in the more tolerant climate of today's world." "The distortions cultivated by the West do not reflect the fact that Islam had for centures a better record of tolerance than Christianity; that the Koran gave women rights of inheritance and divorce that European women would not receive until the 19th century; that the core message of the Koran is a passionate cry for social justice..."