And if you had made the case from the outset that North Africa had a severe problem with gender equality, democratic accountability and human rights in general, nobody would have gainsaid that. Those are concerns that the EU tackled poorly in the Eastwards expansion. It's perfectly reasonable to demand safeguards against repeating the Polish mistake of granting admission to a country whose political culture is severely lacking.

But that is not what you were arguing. You were arguing that there is an essential character flaw in Islam that is not present in Christianity and which makes North Africa impossible to integrate into the EU. Not just today, or tomorrow or this decade or while they adapt their legal and political systems to European norms. But permanently and insurmountably. And that's the core of my disagreement with you: I do not see a difference in kind between Russia, Egypt and Poland - only a difference in degree.

Of course, it does not help your credibility that you elected to repeatedly bring utter garbage to the table, in the form of baseless slanders against Erdogan, paranoid and delusional insinuations against the Cordoba House, long-debunked urban legends about Ahmadinejad and flat untruths about Egypt.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.