29 JUNE 2002, Page 32

Muslim turned Christian

From Dr Jenny Taylor Sir: Melanie Phillips's important article (SHow the West was lost', 11 May) contains one serious error of fact concerning the book she cites. Faith and Power. She describes its co-author Lamin Sanneh. Professor of History at Yale, as a Muslim, whereas Professor Sanneh converted from Islam in his late teens, and maintains a very public, not to say courageous, stance as a Christian intellectual at Yale. No Muslim would have wished to be identified with an analysis that advocates the replenishing of the Christian source of society's moral capital (p. 71) in a book published, after all, by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK).

Jenny Taylor Co-author, Faith and Power, London Nil