WELL, at least Cherie Blair was in good company when she made that outrageous and totally untrue statement about Palestinian youths having no alternative but to mount murderous suicide attacks on Israelis.

Rowan Williams, the man rumoured to be in line for the job of the next Archbishop of Canterbury, uttered the same falsehood in a booklet he produced earlier this year called Writing in the Sand.

Dr Williams writes: "We have something of the freedom to consider whether or not we turn to violence and so, in virtue of that very fact, are rather different from those who experience their world as leaving no other option." This is a high-grade sample of the cant we have heard these last six months from those Westerners who despise the civilisation which is their inheritance.

Of course, the potential suicide bombers have other choices. For a start, they could tell Yasser Arafat that they would like to accept the peace plan worked out in 2000 in which Ehud Barak offered "land for peace" and progress towards the establishing of a Palestinian state. This is what the Palestinians claim to want, so why didn't they accept it when it was theirs for the taking? Because, in 2000, Israel withdrew its forces from Lebanon, and Arafat imagined that Israel could be overthrown with just one more shove. So he declared the uprising, the intifada, with the long-held aim of wiping the state of Israel off the map.

But the issue is wider than this. Cherie Blair's and Rowan Williams' words wouldn't matter much in ordinary times, but we are not living in ordinary times: remember, we are in the thick of a war against terrorists worldwide. There are well-informed, lethally-armed groups of determined murderers in all the Arab countries who want to see the destruction of Western civilisation.

These people are determined fanatics, and they have not gone away. They will certainly not be dissuaded from their evil work by the canting drivel of Cherie Blair and those who think like her. Next time it could be a nuclear device set off in London or a germ warfare attack on Rome. Think about it. We are at war. Cherie Blair and Rowan Williams merely give encouragement to our enemies the terrorists by their misplaced sympathy.

Of course the Arab world has an alternative to the wholesale sponsorship of terrorism. They could civilise themselves to begin with. Not one of the Arab states is a mature democracy. Not one of them has made any attempt to join the modern world.

A mile or so from my front door is the huge mosque in Regent's Park. Where are the Christian churches in Saudi Arabia? If Christians are caught worshipping, even in private houses, in that country, they are imprisoned, or worse. The alarming truth is that, out of envy, hatred and malice, they want to bury us. Dear Mrs Blair, dear Doctor Williams, let me repeat the old wartime slogan: "Careless talk costs lives".

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange