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David says: ‘I've pointed to the causes of Islamic extremism that have nothing to do with any Islamic text’.

‘The causes’ (note the definite article)? How does he know that? He provides no evidence. Why don’t we see pathologies like religious extremism and terrorism to anything like the same extent in the many other parts of the world that were subjected to Western colonialism and interference?

Why have some countries emerged as well-ordered, prosperous societies after periods under Western tutelage, and yet most of the Islamic world remains mired in poverty, despite access to enormous oil wealth?

Would things have out any better without the history of Western involvement? Maybe. But given the complexity of historical causation, we just don’t know. Would some regional agency have drawn better inter-state boundaries than came out of the Sykes-Picot agreement? Or would the issue have been settled by warfare? Who knows.

David talks as if the people in the region are just helpless pawns responding to externally imposed forces that render them incapable of making rational choices.

After the (misbegotten) invasion of Iraq in 2003, to take one recent example, did the Sunnis and Shias really have no choice but to start butchering each other in a vicious sectarian conflict?

Could they not instead have taken advantage of the window of democratic governance that opened up after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein to negotiate together an agreement on constitutional arrangements and boundaries?

They had that option – why choose violent conflict instead? Maybe you should consider the possibility that religious attitudes, and the intensity with which they are held, such as the Sunni insistence that Shia Muslims are worse than apostates could have something to do with it?

But here is the most important point. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that David is right, that the Islamic world is in the mess it is in solely because of past involvement by colonial powers and the US. What are we supposed to conclude from that – that we should all feel guilty for the actions of past generations?

And that people from Islamic backgrounds living in the West are entitled to be conferred victim status in perpetuity? This is an attitude systematically fostered by the identity politics brigade, and has nothing but bad consequences for both the ‘victims’ and the wider society.

Take, for example, the ABC regular Yasmin Abdel-Magied whose family migrated from Sudan, who has benefited from just about everything this society has to offer: an excellent education, multiple career opportunities, celebrity status, overseas trips funded by the Australian taxpayer – but she still sees herself as a victim, entitled to go on Twitter and vilify the ‘white people’ she claims are oppressing her. If anything is likely to promote hostility from the wider community, it is that.

The 2016 Australian census showed Muslims, Buddhists and non-Muslim Indians (Hindus plus Sikhs) each at about two and a half percent of the population. All are ‘people of colour’, to use the currently favoured phrase. Yet we hear no talk about ‘buddhaphobia’, ‘hinduphobia’, or ‘sikhophobia’, despite them all having distinctive practices and dress styles. Maybe you should consider that the problem is creedal, and the way it shapes the actions of a minority of adherents, after all, not race or ‘difference’ per se.