September 11 reflection

I really hope it’s not ‘too soon’, but you never know. ‘Too soon’, of course, is the response topical jokes about catastrophes sometimes receive when the public mood is not quite ready for light to be made of whatever disaster, tragedy or scandal is being targeted by a comedian. It was also the response to several statements, articles and speeches written by very serious people in 2001, following the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers on 11 September. Several columnists, activists and philosophers were vehemently criticized within the first few months following the September 11^th attacks, for daring to ask certain questions or make certain observations about the events. And even now, as I consider bringing them up nine years later, I suspect some people will be muttering: ‘too soon’ and wishing I’d be quiet.

But that is simply because ‘soonness’ has nothing to do with why people objected then (as they do now) to certain things being said about 9-11. It’s the same impulse that makes ordinarily rational people object to a mosque being built near the site of the Twin Towers (in which a Muslim prayer room operated peacefully for many years). Because of the great number of people killed in that area, on that day, both have taken on a kind of sacred character for many. This is understandable for the friends and relatives in particular of those who died, but it should not preclude us from asking a question that several people were lambasted for asking nearer to the time: was there anything fundamentally more important about the people killed on September 11 than all other people?

Philosophers and critics who pointed out that while the events of September 11 were tragic and horrible they were not that out of keeping with what was experienced by the rest of the world were attacked for being outrageous, disloyal and speaking ‘too soon’. Is it still too soon now to ask why we still care so much about the 3,000 victims of that attack while even then we could hardly muster as much sympathy for the 20,000 who died in India that January? Is it too soon to ask why every civilian casualty in America should be venerated and mourned, while in our wars in the Middle East they should not even be counted?

Is it still too soon to genuinely ask the question: ‘Why do they hate us?’ without resorting to cartoon answers that assume madness, fanaticism or unadulterated evil and take no factors into account like the historic and economic oppression of Muslim countries by western powers or of the millions of children that had died in Iraq due to American sanctions and been deemed ‘acceptable’ by the US Secretary of State?

Is it still too soon to point out that American lives (and British lives, for that matter) are not nor have they ever been, more valuable than those of civilians or combatants in states with whom we are at war or in regions where our friends or companies commit misdeeds? Is it still too soon to ask Christians in particular to recognise this fact?

Is it too soon to compare the motives of the hijackers to the motives of those who pushed for the Iraq invasion for moral worth?

Is it still too soon to start comparing the numbers of dead in Afghanistan and Iraq, through military conflict and subsequent chaos, on both sides, to the numbers killed on September 11?

I’m not saying that all or even any of these questions would in any way justify the taking of human life (on September 11 2001 or any other day). I am also not saying that the dead from the Twin Towers should not be mourned, and that with respect and dignity. But the ‘war on terror’ continues. Iraq and Afghanistan will live for generations with the consequences of the actions undertaken by governments we elected in response to 9-11. If we don’t ask questions now, or some time soon, we never will. And we will make the same awful mistakes again.

Burnin’ love

Korhaan (courtesy of realbirder.com)

I really need to pay more attention. Last week I was with a bunch of fundamentalist nutcases and when they suggested a fun activity I dragged the lot of them to a bird-sanctuary, petrol cans in our hands and a song in our hearts. Turns out, they wanted to burn a Quran, not a Korhaan. A Korhaan, for those who do not know, is an African bird, also known as a Bustard – clearly destined to be unfortunately mispronounced. The Quran, on the other hand, is the holy book of Islam. Ah, well, it could have been worse. We could have been Seoul or Pyongyang. In my defence, too, burning Korhaans (or Koreans, for that matter) is not much more logical than burning Qurans. And, yet, in the news last week we read about the massively ironically named Dove World Outreach Center (‘Outreach’? Really? Like this?) in Florida, USA, which has made headlines because of a planned 9/11 memorial Quran-burning.

I like to assume, of course, that nobody in this country would be hateful or ignorant enough to support this sort of thing, but then, I look at some of the local comment on the ‘Victory Mosque’ or the frankly vicious (not to mention phenomenally stupid) attacks on Peter Tatchell’s very presence at Greenbelt last week, and I suspect it has to be said out-loud: burning the Quran is a bad idea.

I say this for many reasons that I suspect will be obvious to most followers of Christ. First of all: It achieves nothing. Like Bible-burning, it does not result in fewer converts or less power for the religion. So any pseudo-righteous justification based on wanting to keep people from the lies of foreign gods is (and I do hate having to use these sorts of words) dumb.

Second, it stirs up hate. Yes, yes, I know there is a school of thought among some Christians and secularists that says that Muslims will get angry at anything. But listen. Every culture and religion has certain things they hold up as in some way sacred. It might be the image of Jesus, it might be Sunday’s specialness, it might be a specific understanding of the innocence of childhood or the privateness of sex. The point is, if it’s something you take very seriously, and somebody who knows that about you goes specifically out to debase, destroy or denigrate that thing, what does that make the destroyer/debaser? That’s right. A bit of a bustard. [too much, Mark? Make it ‘swine’?]

We need to understand that most observant Muslims take their scripture so seriously they wash before touching it. Burning it, to them, is a big deal. And all that it will achieve is anger and resentment. And when you deliberately go out to upset someone like that, you lose all moral high-ground when it comes to their response. That’s not to justify an aggressive reaction from Muslims, just to say that if they do get angry, it is intellectually dubious to try then to use that (as it was with the cartoons of Mohammed) as evidence that they, rather than their provokers, are unreasonable.

Another reason not to do it is because Christians from across the Muslim and mixed-faith world are begging Western Christians not to. Their job is hard enough. Their position already fragile because of equivalent angry nutcases on the Muslim side. We do not help them when we do or say things that make us look like the violent, arrogant, disrespectful creeps some extremists would like to paint all Christians as.

But the final reason is because it is not an act of love. Yes, we are called to sometimes say and do things that make people who don’t know our Saviour uncomfortable. But the aim is always to bring them closer to his truth, not shut them off forever. Even bigots who see all Muslims as their enemy must recognise that carrots and love are better than sticks, burning or otherwise.

Tony Campolo interview

I’ve just posted an interview I did a few months ago with Tony Campolo.

Click here to read it.

In it, he discusses (unsurprisingly) how ‘Red Letter Christians’ can change the world through politics.

He also discusses: death; Islam; making a fool of God and how he feels about the harsh criticism he’s received.

Fascinating guy, is Tony. If you’re wondering about what real Christian attitudes to politics might be, but are afraid of crazies or heretics, this is a safe and  good place to start — and you may find him more challenging than you anticipate.

I may post the video here at some point (or point you to where it does get posted).

Israel/Palestine: The Movie.(Oh, and the Islamic plot against Europe.)

Buy this film. Rent it, download it, torrent the living hell out of it, consume it in convenient YouTube-sized bites, but do watch it. Which film? Occupation 101.

From truthinstitute.org

Conversations about Israel and the Palestinians can lead to arguments, rifts in churches, damaged personal relationships and, worst of all, more conversations about Israel and the Palestinians. Shoutier ones. It’s a minefield. You could lose a limb. You could lose a friend. You could lose your sense of humour. But this film could perhaps help.

The fact is, the biggest obstacle in trying to communicate about many of the injustices going on within the Occupied Territories is not, as many Lefties would like to claim, the dreaded Israel Lobby, but ignorance. Or, as this film points out in its opening credits, ‘the illusion of knowledge’. And Occupation 101 is a great film to clarify facts and dispell illusions of knowledge about Israel and its occupation of what are, uner international law, Palestinian territories.

If you are a seasoned hand at trying to turn people on to the plight of Palestinians, you will know how hard it is to tell the whole story: the historical in justice, the complexity, the current violations of rights and also the mistakes that have been made by the Palestinian freedom movement as well. You could lend or even buy someone a book, but, as most of us know (and with apologies to Chris Rock), books are like kryptonite to ignorant people. There are many films that tell parts of the story of Israel’s abuse of power in the region, and many of them are not even made by weird conspiracy nuts, but none of the ones I have come across cover the full breadth of the Palestinian argument. And most suffer from simply not being up to date.

Occupation 101 was released in 2006 and runs all the way up to the terrible events of that year.

no idea who this is by unfortunately

Let’s be clear: this film does not give as much time to Israeli government arguments as it does to opposing views. But it does feature Christians, Muslims, Jews, rabbis, priests, peace activists, women, children, scholars and politicians who have seen the situation first-hand and who all believe that if people knew what was happening, truly knew, they would be horrified. This film is not unbalanced, just as any rational and well-researched documentary about Apartheid need not be unbalanced in order to come to the conclusion that one side is in the wrong.

It has received honours at eight separate film festivals and with good reason. It is, in short, the film I have been looking for to explain concisely why Palestinians have been angry for a long time and why they remain so. And it highlights our role, as citizens of western democracies and particularly as Evangelical Christians serving the God of justice, in either letting injustice continue unchecked or doing something to make it stop.

One of Occupation 101’s greatest strengths is that for every assertion it makes and every fact it quotes it provides an accurate reference. This much cannot be said, apparently, for that YouTube hit and favourite of hysterical Christians and Islamophobes (and those repetative-strain mail-ghouls who can never resist forwarding any mail that claims to be important): the so-called ‘Muslim Demographics’.

The dubious ‘facts’ in this video are investigated in a recent BBC piece and the results are illuminating. You can read it here.

The video itself is obviously annoying. But as a Christian, what is more shaming is that so many of us are only too willing to buy into and promote rumours, hearsay and actual hate, simply because we want to discredit ‘the competition’. It’s stupid, it’s hateful and it does our witness (to Muslims, to the world and particularly to smart people, who need Jesus too) no good.

So, if you sent the video that ‘proved’ there were ‘facts’ ‘proving’ that Muslims were going to ‘overrun’ Europe (quotation marks = irony. many quotation marks = savage irony), make amends. Write to everyone you sent it on to and apologise. Tell them it was a lie. Send them this link, explaining it all: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/8189231.stm

And if you really want to do the cause of speaking truth to power some good, buy a copy of Occupation 101 and start passing it round your friends.

Muslims are the New Jews

Antisemitic propaganda, 1936. http://www.ushmm.org

Like Jews in Germany, 1930, European Muslims are in danger. Germany at that point was a country that was too civilized, too great a culture, home of great thinkers and a great history to ever be suspected of an eventual descent into barbarism and animal hate that would result in the death of millions because of their race. Similarly, we assume, according to the cliché, that it ‘can’t happen here’. And in a narrow sense it can’t. But that’s because we only imagine ‘it’ happening to the same victims.

In 1930, when Hitler’s party started having more success, it was riding on a number of factors, but one of them was a rise in anti-semitism. There was a mood, spreading across Europe, of increasing intolerance for Jews as a race. Scapegoating, blatant racist lies (the global Jewish conspiracy, for one), suspicion of their insular culture and the unwillingness of the orthodox to fully integrate into European society all played a part.

From faithfreedom.org

Can you think of another racio-religious community in Europe that is also suspected, as a group, of plots and conspiracies to destroy our way of life, who are regularly and publicly criticized for failing to integrate culturally, whose insularity and zealous religious fervour are a source of fear and suspicion for even the politically moderate masses?

I’ll give you a clue: it’s not the Swedes.

Last week’s Daily Express ran a huge, front-page headline that demanded that the Muslim Burkha be banned in Britain, as some politicians are seeking in France. Not quite Kristallnacht, I admit, but the fact that there was no general outcry against such a vehemently anti-Muslim statement is telling of our culture’s mood.

The burkha issue is as silly as it is an example of anti-Islamic feeling. Why s

hould Muslim women not be allowed to choose whatever they wish to wear, in order to express their religious convictions? Are the Express (or the rest of the tabloids) brave enough to demand that orthodox Jews cut off their sideburns and take off their hats in order to integrate better into Britain? I didn’t think so. Xenophobes are, by definition,

cowards.

But it’s disconcerting that we can’t see their faces, you say. Diddums. Get over it. This point is made often on radio call-in shows and on internet comment sites, which kinda proves that it is stupid, no?

From http://www.mailwatch.co.uk

‘But what about the poor women who are pressured to wear the burkha by their husbands?’ some people ask. And that, I agree, is a terrible thing. And as soon as those champions of women’s rights find ways (or even bother trying) to prevent non-Muslim women from wearing (or, indeed not wearing) clothes in order to please husbands, boyfriends, potential mates or magazine style gurus, I’ll believe that they are motivated by something other than a dislike for Islam.

Am I saying Muslims are in danger of extermination within the decade? No. But as hateful, xenophobic rumours about the horrors of Islam ‘overrunning’ Britain (or France, or Germany) keep being perpetuated, I want you to see the similarity between these rumours (and the much-forwarded emails accompanying them) and those early German films, portraying Jews as vicious, subhuman, greedy and dangerous. I’m pointing this out so that when political decisions (be they to do with limitations on citizenship or wars against Muslim peoples) are made, you will know what you are doing when you do not speak out. So that you cannot say ‘I didn’t know.’

Update: Click here to read a story about the mood of intolerance spilling over.

Iran: the facts

A terror-sponsoring state with massive ambitions in the Middle East, convicted by the World Court of criminal aggression, is violating the international Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). We need to pray for peace in the region. But before we close our eyes in intercession, a question: Did you think I meant Iran?

I didn’t. I meant the USA. But it was not America last week that was making news by announcing the firing up of their controversial new nuclear reactor this week. Iran’s act, despite the way the media tends to portray it, is not a violation of the NPT. Quite the opposite, in fact. The NPT is a treaty that makes provision for nations without nuclear weapons to receive help and have total freedom in developing nuclear power for peaceful means. Which is what Iran (a signatory to the NPT) is doing. The NPT also requires that signatories with nuclear weapons work to reduce their nuclear arsenal. The USA (another signatory) has not done this, opting, like Britain, to replace nukes. It has also supported allies like India, Israel and Pakistan (none of them signatories) in their development of hundreds of nuclear warheads.

From http://www.iranisnottheproblem.org

Iran has been called part of the ‘axis of evil’ by the US for many reasons. For one, its leadership is internally oppressive. Which, it seems, is okay for US allies, Saudi Arabia, who are the second most oppressive regime towards Christians in the world, according to Open Doors (one spot above Iran on the list, in fact), but not Iran. Iran sponsors terrorism. This is clearly true. But, then, so has the USA, as shown in Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola and a number of other states in which militias comparable to Hamas and Hezbollah committed atrocities and waged civil war with American funding (the International Court of Justice famously ruled against the US regarding Nicaragua).

Of course, none of this means that Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is a nice guy who doesn’t say alarming things. And it doesn’t mean Iran doesn’t want a nuclear weapon, right? Well there’s good news and bad news. The bad news is that Ahmadinejad is a hard-liner (though few papers remember he was in a small minority of student leaders in 1979 who voted against taking American hostages during the Iranian revolution). The fact that America has invaded Iraq on his eastern border and Afghanistan on the west does not make him less so. But the good news (on nukes anyway) is that he is not in charge. He reports to Iran’s Supreme Leader, a cleric called Ayatollah Khamenei, who has final say over everything that happens in Iran, including foreign policy. And the Ayatollah has issued a fatwa against the manufacture, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons, calling them ‘sacrilegious’. Which means quite a lot in Iran.

Countries hosting US bases near Iran

The fact is that Iran was branded part of the ‘axis’ after it had offered to submit to full nuclear weapons inspections, recognise (and normalise relations with) Israel and withdraw support from Hamas and Hezbollah. In exchange, what has become known in diplomatic circles as Iran’s ‘grand bargain‘ only required the US to remove it from the axis, guarantee not to attack Iran, to lift sanctions and to allow European investment to return to Iran. The offer was rejected.

That’s a lot of facts for an opinion column, I know. But sometimes facts speak louder than comment.

Here’s a clip from an excellent film called Iran (is not the problem) — which was very helpful in compiling this column:

The Muslim Threat ?

Embarrassed, horrified and a little dirty. That’s how I felt last week when I discovered that an acquaintance who had been joining me in denouncing Israel’s slaughter of civilians in Gaza on a social networking site was possibly only doing so because he dislikes Jews. Cliché can be disturbingly real as well as disappointing.

My acquaintance describes himself as an ‘ethnonationalist’ and a ‘race realist.’ He resists the term ‘Nazi’ when I suggest it, not for any of the reasons you or I might, but because he rejects nationalism in favour of race-orientation and socialism just on principle. He believes races should not interbreed; that we should defend the ‘uniquely’ brilliant and beautiful accomplishments of white European culture against dilution by the ‘evil’ of multiculturalism (which, inexplicably, he blames for global capitalism) and that Islam is the greatest threat the world faces. He is a racist. He is more thoughtful and honest than most bigots, but that is also what he is. And he is not alone.

Last week saw a furore erupt over a Dutch politician, Geert Wilders being denied entry to the UK because of a film he made: a disgusting piece of Goebbels-style, violently anti-Muslim propaganda (I watched it on the internet – it really is), called Fitna. The film quotes (and, many Muslims online contend, misquotes) passages from the Quran and illustrates them with atrocities supposedly committed by Muslims. It then asserts that Muslim populations are growing in Europe and that we (supposedly White, Judeo-Christians) should fight Islam.

From http://www.opendemocracy.net

Many Christians will have some sympathy with these ideas. After all, growing Islam means fewer Christians and therefore fewer people in heaven, right? Maybe Christians should support the likes of Wilders, despite the racism?

I think not. The Quran may contain disturbing verses, but so does the Bible. Start from Deuteronomy 13 and work outward. Muslims have done terrible things, but so have Christians. Start from the first Crusade and the rape and murder of men women and children, Jew and Muslim by conquering Christians and move forward through Bosnia and Nigeria. Western European culture (calling it ‘white’ is ridiculous) has much to recommend it, but so does Islamic culture, and both have incubated extremists, evil, corruption and destructive forces.

Another example of why racism is stupid (from http://www.someofnothing.com)

To oppose the growth and spread of Islam on these grounds makes the fundamental mistake of secularised Christendom: confusing culture and nation with faith. The reason to follow Christianity is not found in its followers (though we hope we would give some reason). It is in the one whom we follow. So the spread of Islam can be seen either as an opportunity for witness or a failure on our part to do so because we are more concerned with outward culture than inner faith, more focused on worldly influence and power than the growth of the Kingdom. Hating our ‘enemies’ is a seductive temptation for all Christians, but racist Islamophobia should be resisted as the moral filth and intellectual excrement it is, while never being ashamed to proclaim the uniqueness and sufficiency of Christ. We may reject Islam’s truth claims, but never Muslims as people or their right to their own culture.

As the Bishop of Blackburn rightly said last week, in defence of banning Anglican clergy from BNP membership: ‘You cannot be a racist and speak on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ.’

Culture war?

The ‘clash of cultures’ is more than just throwing Danone Fruit Corners or Muller Light in a food fight (in an attempt to put the ‘hurt’ back in ‘yoghurt’). Its convenient short-hand for giving titanic moral and emotional weight to conflicts whose motivations are a little more prosaic, like say those between Al Qaeda and the West. At least that’s how Observer columnist Khaled Diab saw it last week in a piece that outlined how many of us, on both sides of the Islamism vs Democracy ‘struggle’, have been duped into believing that a fight over natural resources, land and political power was in fact a fight between good and evil.

It’s particularly tempting for Christians to believe this, because Islam is, of course, The Competition, if not The Enemy. And if we believe that Jesus is the only way to God in the afterlife and a truly fulfilled existence in this one, we can logically not be in too much sympathy with Islam’s plans for taking over the world. At the same time we also need to remember that we ourselves wish to see the entire world become Christian and should realise that such an idea is as profoundly distasteful to many secularists as the idea of a Muslim world is to the BNP.

It is falling into clash of cultures thinking that has meant that while many Christians believe that the Iraq war is about oil more than freedom, they still somehow believe it’s not such a bad idea, because at least it’s fighting our enemy, Islam. A popular t-shirt depicting the war said we were ‘freeing the %*#$ out of them’. The death and suffering caused by this mental laziness is easy to imagine, if not to calculate (Allied forces in Iraq do not count Iraqi dead).

The fact is, as Mr Diab points out, Iran has better democratic credentials than our ally, Saudi Arabia (and is lower on the Open Doors list of top Christian persecutors), and yet is denounced as the enemy of democracy. Despite many such inconsistencies, we often lazily bvelieve the rhetoric of both George Bush and Osama Bin Laden: that this is a simple fight between concepts of good and evil.

Some aspects are simple One culture worships money, that parades licentiousness and sex as base commodities, despising its poor and glorifying the rich, is the first culture in history where trade dominates all other aspects of society. The other is conservative, simplistic and governed by a strict moral code that demands personal restraint and public acknowledgement of the importance of religion. Obviously there are other factors at play, particularly from a Christian point of view, but it is certainly not a done deal (if we are really experiencing a clash of cultures), that we are on the side of right. Ignoring that fact, regardless of the side on which you generally fall, will allow lovers of freedom to embrace regime change and lovers of the religion of ‘peace with God’ to endorse suicide bombers.

Similar things have been happening in domestic party politics over the last week. The beleaguered Brown government has been pushing its MPs to vote in favour of its proposals to extend detention without trial to 42 days. Failing to do so, it has intimated, will damage the party as a whole. Now, I’m no Tory. Personally I was cursing my luck that the disgraced Tory MEP was called Den and not Ben Dover, just for the sake of a cheap joke. But further denigrating the protection from detention without trial (that has been in British law since Magna Carta) is something that is worth opposing, even if it sinks the Labour Party. Domestic culture clash or no.

Unlikely words from a lefty

Poor Prince Harry. If he hadn’t gone to Afghanistan he’d have been accused of abusing privilege. Because he did, he was criticized for endangering lives by making himself a target. It’s hard to be too sympathetic, though. Media attention is tough, but let’s face it: there are worse countries to be a young royal than Britain. It is, after all, Great.

That’s right. You heard me. Great. I think this country is brilliant. In fact, I think it is better than other countries and we are lucky, as Christians, to be here. That is not because I’m so darn proud of Prince Harry. It’s because the way things are done here are better. Better than a lot of places.

A Guardian story a while back about the evils of union-busters made an interesting point: these blighters have a tougher time keeping workers unorganised and powerless in Britain than they do in the States.

Stringent labour laws? Maybe. But I think that’s just the way British people do things. Charity shops, Make Poverty History, middle-class white evangelicals who campaign for the poor, the fact that both Respect and the BNP may legally operate – you don’t find these things everywhere. Britain is, for all its faults, still open to doing the right thing, and through the Commonwealth, the Special Relationship and, well, our money, the world still listens to us.

Which is why two bits of news disturbed me last week. One had to do with the government agreeing to allow GM testing by bio-tech companies in secret locations because the pubic opposition was too strong, and the other was the tone of news reports about suspected Islamist terrorists playing paintball in the New Forest.

By allowing secret testing to avoid public outcry, the voice of public opinion is actively silenced in favour of the voice of big money. That speaks to me of an erosion of one of the greatest things about this country: that one has a sense that the government is looking out for you, that if terrible things are done here they will not be allowed to continue, and that the will of the people matters.

When a man is tried in the court of public opinion because he is a Muslim and shouts ‘Allah Achbar’ while paintballing, that speaks to me of an erosion of freedom of conscience. I love living in a country where I can believe whatever I like. And I love that the content of my beliefs does not determine whether I can hold or express them. And I hope a Muslim guy can for a moment fantasise that his life is more interesting than it really is by picturing himself as a freedom-fighter rather than, say, Conan the Librarian while playing with friends. This man’s faith and his political views on our many wars should not change that.

The Americans have an interesting idea as part of their constitution. The right to bear arms is entrenched there not to protect them from burglars or Al Quaeda, but so that citizens can rise up against an unjust government if they need to.

No guns is another reason to love this country, but in always being prepared to push their leaders back in line (at least in theory), I think the Americans have something. Because this country will not stay as genuinely great as it is if we do not protect what makes it so. And that’s not our wealth or even the beautiful scenery, culture or language, at least not for the Christian. It’s a society in which people need not fear oppression – not from the wealthy, not from the politically powerful and not even from majority opinion. That’s a nation worth fighting for.

Hmmmm… he’s Ginger, he’s clearly familair with the queen or he wouldn’t talk like that, he’s a bit of an oaf… familiar?

Lynch the Arch-bish!

“Run for your lives! We’ll all be murdered in our beds! Aaaa!” is not really a direct quote from a headline in The Sun last week. But I like to think of it as a spiritual/emotional paraphrase. The actual headline shouted: “What A Burkha”, cleverly calling the spiritual leader of the official Christian church in this country a ‘burke’ while still managing to have a dig at Muslims generally. And they say quality journalism is dead.

If it is dead, watching this story unfold last week was like watching the aftermath of a public gun-crime in a Hollywood movie: lots of emotion, lots of crazy talk and way too much shouting. Listening to various phone-in programmes, watching the headlines in red-tops and smelling the scent of paraffin that so often accompanies a public lynching, was I the only one who wanted to say in a firm, yet calm, commanding voice: ‘Whoah there… let’s just take it easy. Put the gun down. Nobody needs to get hurt – let’s just talk about this,’? Gosh, I hope not.

At the risk of having crosses burned on my lawn, I wasn’t really that upset by Uncle Rowan’s comments, suggesting that incorporating parts of Islamic Sharia law in some areas’ justice systems was unavoidable. He didn’t mean that burglars should have hands amputated or that murderers should be beheaded (though it seems odd that tabloids would object to this – perhaps if it only applied to immigrants?). Rather than Sharia applying to everyone, he meant applying it in civil (not criminal) cases, to some Muslims.

Critics claimed this would create a parallel legal system for Muslims and that that was very dangerous. I don’t want to alarm anyone, but (cue dramatic chords: dun-dun-daaaah!) it’s already happening (eeek!). Some Muslim courts already operate in some areas of this country to help settle divorces. Can you feel the very fabric of society unravelling around you? Funny… neither can I.

We heard ad-nauseum last week that orthodox Jews already have their own courts presiding over limited matters in accordance with their faith. They don’t have the right, so far as I am aware, to acquit an Hassidic Jew of multiple homicide. Nor have they, to my knowledge, ever prosecuted a gentile or non-orthodox Jew for driving on the Sabbath. So, really, they don’t scare me. The argument goes, however, that we can’t have special legal systems for specific parts of society. Really? So should we disband military tribunals? Their rulings are legally binding. What about the rulings of governing sporting bodies? When they fine a racing driver or cricketer, he doesn’t have the right to refuse, does he?

What the archbishop was arguing for was more recognition of religious values in our legal system. Surely supporters of blasphemy laws or opponents of abortion or unfair trade can see the value in that? If we’re worried that official legal recognition of Islam might lead to the spread of a false religion, to the islamification of Britain, let’s remember that centuries of legal recognition for Christianity has hardly left us with a country full of born-again believers or laws that Christians love. Christians today need to be vigilant not so much of the undue influence of other religions as the aggressive attitude of secular society to our beliefs and of believing too much media rhetoric. Today the fear is of Muslims. In the 1930s it was of a Jewish conspiracy. We remember where that went.

Of course I say all of that, but I watched with relish last week as a group of hackers called Anonymous started their campaign against the church of Scientology. I wish them well. It seems even my religious tolerance has a limit. Who’s the hypocrite now?