Mr Simon,

Just wanted to mention two things, one is that if I recall correctly, cultural exchanges between Russia and the US were very rare during the Cold War because of the danger of entrapment. However the possibility of hostage taking by the Russians was never an issue back then. However now with the Muslims and Iranians, both entrapment and hostage taking are existential worries. As an aside, the Israeli author Michael Oren wrote an accurate description of the history of Muslim kidnapping of westerners in his 2004 book Faith and Fantasy in the Middle East.

Secondly; Historically men converted to Islam because Sharia protected them from sexual laws, (e.g. men can have multiple wife’s whether young and old, and practice pederasty). In the movie The Stoning of Soroya, one of the film’s themes is the power that men have over women is total in that they are free to accuse women of sexual crimes, whereas in the West, it is the opposite, it is women who hold the power to freely accuse men of sexual crimes. Between Islamic societies and western civilization the gender roles are reversed. Mine is a simplistic observation of a more complicated issue I’m sure, but Islam and sexual freedom for men is an issue that needs more discovery in order to elaborate on what the West is up against when it talks about Muslim extremists.

Best wishes JamesJ