I READ with some disbelief, the Rev Williams' weekly column on March 17.

Once again he sees the world as he wishes to see it, rather than as it really is.

If democracy is a central principle of the Muslim faith, the Muslims of the Middle East seem unaware of it.

We have seen the results of an extreme fundamentalist government in Afghanistan, where democracy was absent, and power came from the barrel of a gun. There is also no democracy in Iraq, where again force of arms is the law.

Indeed, democracy as we know it does not exist in any Muslim country in the Middle East, and the prospect of it diminishes daily as extreme religious movements such as Al Qaida support and spread throughout the region. These Islamic clerics, in name of Islam, preach hatred and a desire to commit murder of non-Muslims in as large a number as possible, sacrificing their own lives in the process.

Should these groups ever gain political power, they will rule with as much fanaticism as did the Taliban, and the people of the countries they rule will suffer as did the people of Afghanistan.

To state that Islam is one of the most enlightened of religions when discussing freedom and democracy clearly flies in the face of reality.

As for Iraq, we have in Saddam the man who has caused the deaths of more Muslims than any man in the world today, and continues to do so on a daily basis. He has changed Iraq from being one of the richest nations in the Middle East to one of the poorest, mainly because he has spent all his country's income on arms, and at the same time has made himself one of the richest men in the world.

The Muslims living in the free world, if they really care about the people of Iraq, should be supporting the US and Britain in their efforts to free them from this evil tyrant, and giving them at least the opportunity to establish a free and democratic nation.

David Haworth

Upper Mead

Egerton, Bolton