The bigots who make me weep for Islam

Many crooks are called Mohammed and no one minds. An innocent teddy, though, provokes them to madness. Meanwhile, a victim of multiple rape in Saudi Arabia is to be lashed 200 times for being in a car with a man who wasn't her husband. Back in Britain, research reveals 21,000 girls at risk of genital mutilation; up 50 per cent in three years.

Muslims like me are stricken by shame and horror when these stories break. To blame only the media for exposing these crimes against humanity is scandalous self-denial. Muslims are too often unfairly demonised - as Jemima Khan, our sturdy champion, wrote last week. I am appalled by the vain, self-defined Islamophobes such as Martin-Amis and Rod Liddle. However, Jemima must know that rather a large number of Muslims are demonic and they are on the march.

Ill-educated, volatile and manipulated Muslims have turned inwards; grotesquely punitive, they are fast descending into the pits of backwardness and violent intolerance. Other Asians and Easterners zoom to the top of the league tables in schools, universities, business and the professions. With some individual exceptions, Muslims languish at the bottom of all indicator tables.

Some of this failure to catch up is to do with discrimination. Some, though, is the result of stringent self-limitation. In British universities Muslim obscurantists entice or bully fellow Muslims who seek to liberate their minds. Bright, ambitious students feel hounded because they do not conform to "Islamic rules". One young woman at the LSE had a novel snatched from her and was harangued by her hijabi assailant who left a bruise on her arm.

I pity both of them. If this is happening in British higher education, is it any wonder that we get more and more savagery within Muslim countries? I recently met Rahim, a young Muslim doctor who bewailed the end of our world: "Do you think refined Muslims will survive this century? Or will we become extinct? Barbaric Muslims are more stupid and ignorant than us, but stronger, you know."

I fear he is right. They lash, mutilate and rape women in the name of my faith. I weep for the women and for Islam. I hope Jemima does too.