Referring to my column of March 31, Alfred Gauci (April 11) wrongly accuses me of two things.

First, he says, I did not condemn the March 22 terrorist attacks in Brussels. The second accusation wavers between saying that I ‘almost’ blamed ‘the Belgians’ for the massacre and that I actually blamed no less than the entire ‘West’ (“as he likes to write whenever an issue concerning Muslims arises”).

Did I really not condemn the attacks? Throughout, I referred to them as ‘terrorist’ – a term that carries an automatic condemnation. In one passage, I referred to some Daesh jihadists as “violent criminals before their recruitment” and who “then give an Islamist meaning to their murderousness”, which should suggest to any competent reader that I consider jihadist terror attacks to be murderous.

Did I blame, or almost blame, ‘the Belgians’? On the contrary, I wrote that the Belgian flag became a symbol of solidarity with the victims and how Belgium’s values were asserted in defiance of those of the attackers (who, remember, I described as terrorists).

Did I blame the entire ‘West’? Not in this column or ever. If Gauci thinks otherwise, let him quote directly from any ofmy columns.

But let it be direct quotation: we already know that what he reads between the lines can be sheer fantasy.