Having been at the Edinburgh Book Festival for the last few days, a few of the thoughts offered by writers that I picked up on the way...

Ed Husain was fascinating on how the Middle East is appropriating the West - basically by building malls and buying TV sets but not by opening new schools or libraries. He feels Arab nations' adoption of consumerism without the more cultivated and liberal aspects of Western civilisation has much to do with why radicals fear the West's detrimental effect, and America in particular.

Husain also argued that the paucity of options when it comes to politics in the UK contributes to the relatively easy radicalisation of British Muslim youth. If you have serious complaints against society do you turn to any of the mainstream parties to express them democratically? No - they are only fighting for a few thousand votes in middle England constituencies. Islamism looks far more potent - though Husain is quite clear that it actually radically undermines the true message of Islam.

Alternatively, Husain believes that British foreign policy is only a contributing factor in the radicalisation of British Muslims. The main cause is the fact that the British government let Islamist preachers have free rein through the nineties.

The lack of potency in contemporary Western politics was raised by others in both of the Institute of Ideas events on the rise of religion and the rise of atheism. An interesting argument was that atheism has become such a rallying point for the followers of Dawkins because they fear that religion has become such a rallying point for causes in society, like creationism and anti-secularism, with which they disagree but cannot effectively oppose in other ways. Similarly, atheism can so easily become reactionary - doing little more than bashing religion as opposed to championing its wider liberal causes - because there is so little real politics around.

Talking of religious politics, Philip Blond gets the prize for the most radical view of how to reorganise society - towards Catholic universalism. His point is that the rise of the nation state, though now celebrated, was the start of the atomisation of society and already marked the failure of secularism. It is mostly reactionary against religion and results in self-sufficient individuals incapable of building community. Conservatism has bought into the same sociology by its embrace of capitalism. Only religion can bind people together. Elsewhere he writes, 'True religion has always been public and political because it is about forming communities around shared values and the practices that embody them.'

I profoundly disagree with Blond, though his position enables him to provide a challenging critique of modern society. At least one of the flaws in his argument is the complete lack of historical evidence that Catholic universalism can provide the liberty in unity he proclaims. Or to put it another way, would you trust your way of life to the Pope (most Catholics don't by all accounts)? I think Blond massively underestimates the hubris of Catholic politics with its claims to absolute truth. If monotheism inevitably meant humility then he might have a point but it doesn't. This contradiction leads, for example, to undoubtedly excellent comments that the Pope makes against, say, sectarianism, whilst at the same time acting in as sectarian a way as anyone else.

Tobias Jones whose book on community I hugely admired, was interesting in reflecting on how he had managed to find community upon returning to his terrace in Bristol. In short, he had not, or at least not much. He seems to be coming to the conclusion that living in community requires more radical steps than simply trying to make connections with neighbours - demanding more stability, mutual ownership, and sense of that which is sacred, than suburban life can provide. He is in the early stages of setting up a community with some other families.

Neil Boorman, who burned all his branded possessions to arrest his addiction to them and find himself, was strikingly self-deprecatory and honest. I think he would admit that he has not found out how to live outside of consumerism, though he is less absorbed by it than before.

Some wild suggestions came from Edward de Bono, the 'inventor' of lateral thinking. 'Can your techniques solve climate change,' one fan asked? The guru replied he was sure it could help but as a matter of fact, termites produce one and a half times the quantity of carbon dioxide as human beings, so if you got rid of all the termites then you'd halve the problem. 'Can your techniques solve the crisis in Iraq,' ventured another? Again, the master didn't like to reply in the negative so he quoted the Prophet on scholarship (something along the lines of one cup of ink is worth any quantity of blood) and study (again, one hour of study is worth many hundreds of hours of prayer - though I couldn't find the quotes myself on the web).

The literary critic Adam Thirwell is with Nabokov in thinking that Dostoevsky is a third rate crime writer. He has also never read the Bible.

The biographer Zachary Leader argues that we shouldn't too readily jettison the idea that classic fiction or non-fiction can be morally improving. A novel of Henry James or some political philosophy of Plato is more than just an intellectual work-out or quality entertainment. They might still inspire us to higher things, for all the caveats that are necessary about the camp guards who listened to Mozart.

Finally, a tip from Karen Armstrong - who has just returned from an extensive trip around the Middle East where she was shocked at her warm reception, often being apparently based on surprise that a Westerner should be so appreciative of Islam. Her tip: given that chairing events is much to do with reining in egos, do not though underestimate the difficulty of chairing a discussion with an ego-less man, such as say the Dalai Lama. She told of how he kept descending into giggles - which did not always please the audience, particularly when that was his response to a serious man's question on what to do about homosexuality.