Midnight on Monday found me in BBC Radio 5 Live’s studios at White City discussing faith schools with Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society. We were on Tony Livesey’s late night chat show, and the issue triggering the discussion was the news that Foreign Secretary and avowed atheist David Miliband is avoiding the local state primary school near his home in Camden and sending his five year old adopted son instead to a church school further away (here). Apparently Miliband’s wife Louise attends the Anglican church linked to the school.

It is of course amusingly reminiscent of – but less spectacular than – the decision a few years ago by left-wing former fire-brand Diane Abbott MP to shun local Hackney schools and send her son to the private £10,000-a-year City of London School (here).

But it is the disingenuous nature of Keith Porteous Wood’s National Secular Society that I want to discuss here rather than the hypocrisy or otherwise of David Miliband or Diane Abbott. I’m not surprised that, when push comes to shove, parents want to do the best for their children, nor that the Milibands have chosen a church school in order to achieve this.

But the real hypocrisy and rank cant lies with the NSS, and Keith Porteous Wood is a pleasant and occasionally formidable spokesman for this deceptive organisation. NSS is better described as a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

The organisation likes to present itself as a benign pressure group that aims to achieve an equitable and just secular society in which religious viewpoints are appropriately represented but restricted in public life. “We campaign… against the undue influence of religion in public affairs and education,” purrs the NSS website (here) claiming they also defend values such as human rights and freedom of speech. NSS, it seems, would persuade us that it promotes a sort of ‘procedural secularism’ (to use the jargon) that includes a neutral public square where no religious worldview predominates and where the state benevolently holds the ring between alternative and often competing beliefs and creeds. This secularism entails a separation of religion and state and non-discrimination between religions by the state that guarantees plurality and religious freedom. For historical and pragmatic reasons I personally wouldn’t advocate disestablishing the national church, for instance, but for many people such ‘procedural secularism’ is an attractive way of organising public affairs, and they point to the US and India as societies where religion thrives within a secular framework.

But in fact the National Secular Society offers no such benign vision. Rather it is another vehicle for shrill and aggressive New Atheism, whose intention is not only to ride religion out of public life, but also to attack faith – especially Christianity – wherever it finds it, including in private belief and practice. According to New Atheists, religion should not even be carried on by consenting adults in private. Their virulent strain of ‘ideological secularism’ (to use the jargon again) which attempts to exclude or severely control religion in private as well as public, is what NSS in fact promotes.

How do I know? NSS’s real motives are uncovered by the ‘debaptism’ campaign currently running on the organisation’s website (here) in which we are urged to ‘Liberate yourself from the Original Mumbo-Jumbo that liberated you from the Original Sin you never had!’ For a ‘bit of fun’ you can also purchase from NSS your very own ‘Certificate of Debaptism’ printed, indeed, on quality parchment paper. Yippee!

Baptism of course is a sacred Christian initiation rite as old as the faith itself. It is personal to the believer and his/her family and is carried out in and by the church. It has no impact whatever on public life or wider social policy.

So why is the NSS sticking its nose into our private business? Because it is two-faced, publicly proclaiming its vocation to promote fairness and restrict religious privilege in public life whilst actually using this as a front for its all-consuming anti-Christian crusade.

Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Daniel Dennett et al are open and honest about their desire to eradicate Christianity. The duplicitous National Secular Society is not.

And that’s why Keith Porteous Wood could only talk cant about Christian and church schools on Monday night.

This week’s conviction of five Luton Muslim men for the public order offence of ‘using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour likely to cause harassment, alarm or distress’ during the home-coming parade of the Royal Anglian Regiment last March (here) is regrettable and wrong.

Our increasingly unconfident and insecure society is, one by one, closing down the freedoms for which previous generations worked and fought and, inch by inch, reducing public space for the genuine difference and debate that’s the life-blood of democratic vitality and progress. We’ve left behind the glad confident morn of the 18th and 19th centuries when Non-Conformity flourished and many of our freedoms were formed and honed; we’ve used up the public moral capital bequeathed us by the Victorians; we’ve replaced public Christianity with a God-less public secularity (if there is such a word) – and our small-minded restrictive nanny state is the inevitable result.

Commenting on the convictions (here), the often admirable Peter Tatchell – no friend of Christianity as he defines it, of course, since he converted to Science-Is-God in his late teens – is exactly right:

“The conviction of these five men is a dangerous infringement of free speech and the right to protest.

“I abhor everything they stand for, but defend their right to freedom of expression. Even though what they said was offensive to many people, their right to speak their mind is one of the hallmarks of a democratic society.

“They want to destroy our democracy and freedoms. I want to defend these values. If we silence and criminalise their views, we are little better than them…

“Democracy is superior to their proposed theocratic state and we need to prove it by demonstrating that we allow objectionable opinions and contest them by debate, not by repression and censorship…

“I defend their right to express their opinions, even though they are offensive and distressing to many people.

“Insult and offence are not sufficient grounds in a democratic society to criminalise words and actions.

“The criminalisation of insulting, abusive or offensive speech is wrong. The only words that should be criminalised are untrue defamations and threats of violence, such as falsely branding someone as a paedophile or inciting murder…

“The best way to respond to such fanatics is expose and refute their hateful, bigoted opinions.

“Rational argument is more effective and ethical than using an authoritarian law to censor and suppress them.”

There’s more to it than this naturally, and certainly it’s right to protect people from verbal harassment in the workplace and children from verbal persecution and bullying in the playground for instance. But the main thrust of Tatchell’s argument is spot on despite the visible distress to members of the public caused by the Luton protest.

However, while rational argument and debate is central to our democracy, they’re not the only weapon in our democratic armoury. Political satire and mockery has an honourable tradition in the UK and that’s also what we need to do against such malicious effrontery. Lampooning, cartooning, buffooning, spoofing and sending-up is what these men should experience in full measure. Their ears should echo with the derision, mocking and ridicule of the Great British Public as we laugh these wacky but dangerous Islamists, their disreputable Caliphate and their misogynistic Sharia law out of mainstream media and off most public stages.

And we have another weapon of mass derision that someone somewhere has suggested: pork scratchings. Or, if they are in short supply due to the decline in the pub trade (here), bacon rashers.

The next time such men make a similarly offensive public protest, they should be showered with pork scratchings or bacon rashers – in large quantities. No one will be hurt by these soft projectiles and the only people who may object is the local Council who would have to clear up afterwards.

But on this occasion I suspect Luton Council would have been delighted to oblige.

A heartbreaking yet inspirational story from Pakistan seems a good way to start the new year. It’s an incident that created a national hero in that strife-torn country and was fully reported in the US by top news outlet CNN (here), yet – as far as I can discover – seems to have been completely missed by mainstream media on our side of the Atlantic. I only heard about it over Christmas, two months after the event. It’s a story well worth re-telling.

On 20th October a burka-clad suicide bomber approached the double-storey women’s cafeteria at the International Islamic University in Islamabad where some 400 students were dining and socialising. He looked suspicious as female students do not normally veil in women-only areas. He shot and wounded a security guard at the entrance to the dining hall, whereupon 40-year-old caretaker Pervez Masih grabbed him and tried to hold him. The bomber instantly detonated the device, spraying ball-bearings and his own body parts over the entrance area and killing Pervez and three girl students.

“There would have been dozens of deaths had the bomber not been blocked by Pervez Masih,” said a senior university security official.

The caretaker, who reputedly earned just £40 a month and was his family’s sole breadwinner, was immediately proclaimed a hero for his self-sacrifice. “He’s now a legend to us,” one student is quoted as saying. “He saved our lives.”

The Pakistan government promised I million rupees (around £7,500) for Masih’s bereaved family; the university authorities contributed towards burial costs and also offered employment for his widow Shaheen and help with the education of his 3 year old daughter Diya; and student volunteers collected £400 plus toys and clothes for the family.

The interesting twist to this otherwise tragic story is that Pervez Masih came from Pakistan’s often-despised 2% Christian minority which regularly suffers discrimination and persecution in this 96% Muslim country. (‘Masih’ means ‘Messiah’ – Jesus Christ – and is the family name commonly taken as a badge of honour by Christians in Pakistan.)

“He rose above the barriers of caste, creed and sectarian terrorism,” said the rector of the university, Professor Fateh Muhammad Malik. “Despite being a Christian, he sacrificed his life to save the Muslim girls.”

True, but the “despite” betrays the Professor’s world-view. A different world-view would explain instead that it was because he was a Christian that Pervez sacrificed his life for the Muslim girls. His instincts made him follow in the steps of his Master who, the New Testament tells us, ‘gave his life as ransom for many’.

The Muslim bomber blew himself up in order kill others; the Christian caretaker sacrificed himself in order to save others. The Muslim bomber would have anticipated – wrongly and tragically – that his act of suicide and his consequent shaheed (Islamic martyr) status would deliver him straight into Paradise; the Christian caretaker will have known – and has now personally experienced – that his faith, confirmed by his self-sacrifice, would deliver him direct into heaven.

Jesus said it all: “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”

As yet another longest night comes and goes, another Christmas Day passes and another year draws to a close, it seems it is progressively easier each year to discount the glittering lights, the endless partying and the rampant commercialism of the Christmas season and to concentrate instead on the real meaning of the Christmas event.

For me of course it’s to do with the world-transforming event a long time ago in Bethlehem when Christ was born in a manger, and on a silent holy night – while shepherds watched their flocks and the herald angels sang – God became one of us.

But for me also this Christmas once again there has been a profound awareness of the unmerited privilege of living amongst the peace and prosperity of the UK in 2009 when the vast majority of our fellow residents on the globe live in poverty and in war-zones, with famine and without basic essentials, under brutal dictatorships and suffering persecution. There’s a lot wrong with cynical, selfish Britain including our own share of poverty, loneliness and hopelessness, but North Korea, Sudan, Haiti, Myanmar, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe this isn’t.

And just as Christianity provided the necessary spiritual, moral and ethical soil for the flowering of the UK’s (and Europe’s) past vibrancy, creativity and organisational ability that led in turn to our present affluence, so – as even atheist Matthew Parris noted last Christmas (here) – Africa (and by extension every other poverty-stricken and corrupt nation) needs Christ. Such countries – and I would argue all countries – need Him now, they need Him for the long term and they need Him in a big way.

However, that’s not the point of this post. Rather it’s an appeal for a dose of public gratitude for our privileges that could renew our political life and move us on from the present cynical culture of asserting rights and claiming victimhood. Thankfulness towards an ‘other’ would shift our collective attention away from the small-minded self-centredness that cripples us and onto that ‘other’ – onto God if you are religious, or perhaps onto previous generations who gave and sacrificed and provided the basis of our present privileged circumstances if you’re not. Either way, gratitude for what we have been given by the ‘other’ would lift our eyes from ourselves to a more optimistic vision of a more generous future, as gratitude leads in turn to giving.

Maybe we ought to introduce an annual North American-style National Day of Thanksgiving. Held in Canada on the second Monday of October and in the US on the fourth Thursday of November, this holiday was originally religious in nature, to express thanks to God for the harvest. It has since become secular holiday when families get together for Thanksgiving dinner with turkey – a sort of additional secular Christmas but without the commercialism – but there is still an underlying tone of gratitude and generosity.

After all, anything that lifts the UK from its long-term pit of pessimism, suspicion and cynicism would be helpful.

Meanwhile, Happy New Year!

Back in early July, the town hall sent me the following Councillors’ briefing about an incident not far from my home: “At 4pm on Saturday (4th July) 100 people gathered in Green Street, Upton Park, with banners proclaiming “Jesus was Muslim”. At approx 6.45pm a fight broke out. A man being chased by a group of youths of Asian appearance collided with a 328 bus and suffered a head injury… Green Street was closed for a couple of hours.”

In this week’s New Statesman cover story ‘The Muslim Jesus’ (anyone still doubt that religion is rising rapidly up the agenda in secular Britain?), the senior political editor Mehdi Hasan approvingly quotes Jonathan Bartley of the left-leaning Ekklesia think-tank (here): “There is a fundamental tension at the heart of interfaith dialogue that neither side wants to face up to, and that is that the orthodox Christian view of Jesus is blasphemous to Muslims and the orthodox Muslim view of Jesus is blasphemous to Christians.”

Hold those two thoughts for a moment.

Last Thursday I was panellist at a well-promoted ‘Big Debate’ at Conway Hall in Bloomsbury. It was organised by the Muslim Debate Initiative on the subject ‘Islamification of Britain: Myth or Reality?’ (here). Courageously MDI – represented on the panel by Abdullah al Andalusi – had invited the BNP as well as the quietly impressive Andrew Copson from the British Humanist Association, a pleasant but woolly Anglican clergyman billed as ‘Princess Diana’s spiritual adviser’, the chairman of the English Democrats who gave an inappropriate party political puff, and myself. BBC, CNN and Press TV covered the event inside while the militant Unite Against Fascism protested outside against the inclusion of the BNP in the programme.

400 people listened for nearly 3 hours while the six-man panel (no women of course, this is Islam) debated the hot issue. The BNP contribution was muted; Andrew Copson was articulate and credible; Abdullah al Andalusi struggled to convince; questions from the floor were frequently penetrating. At one point two members of UAF broke in to the hall to rant “No platform for fascists”, but they were rapidly shown the door by police and stewards.

I take my hat off to MDI Muslims for organising the event. It went smoothly and to time. The discussion was robust yet respectful. MDI faced down UAF’s objection to their Open Platform policy for the BNP, arguing that it’s better to debate than come to blows. Of course there was no agreed conclusion about the Islamification of Britain, but the event was democracy in action. Debate and discussion is the answer to our differences.

(Journalist and blogger Umar Farooq was the first out of the blocks with a detailed review of the debate including the publication of his YouTube videos of the event (here). Flatteringly, he marked me the highest of the panellists (rating 8/10), reckoned I had “massive influence on the crowd” and thought that the audience were impressed at the way I put my points across. Many thanks Umar!)

So now onto another Muslim ‘Big Debate’, called Jesus 4 Sharia – yes, really (here)! It’s to be held on Friday this week and is being promoted by Islam4UK, the latest front name for the fundamentalist al-Muhajiroun group led by Islamic lawyer and self-publicist Anjem Choudary.

A couple of months ago posters sprouted across Newham – including on my street – and elsewhere, advertising a ‘March 4 Sharia’ from Westminster to Trafalgar Square. Organised by Choudary’s group, it was cancelled at the last minute citing ‘security concerns’ – to the delight both of secular Muslims and of non-Muslims. “Lack of support more like,” muttered pundits and bloggers. Maybe.

Undaunted the irrepressible Choudary has now issued his challenge to Christian leaders to publicly debate Jesus with him a week before Christmas. Like the angry Green Street demonstrators and despite the fact that Islam first appeared 600 years after Christ, Choudary argues that the Founder of Christianity was in fact a Muslim – a view universally affirmed by mainstream Islam. “If Jesus were alive today he would… wholeheartedly embrace the Sharia law of… Muhammad,” Choudary says provocatively.

“Don’t touch this debate,” emailed a friend. But in the NS article Bartley points out that the different Christian and Muslim understandings of Jesus are ‘deal-breakers’ between the faiths. And it is better the differences should be debated rather than fought over, as happened on Green Street in July.

So I’ve contacted Choudary and, together with Christian friend and Islam expert Jay Smith, we’ve taken up the challenge.

Let’s see if Choudary accepts.

(Update: In the event Choudary “postponed” the debate, admitting that he was having difficulties in obtaining a venue. He also said that Jay Smith and I were not of appropriate calibre for such a topic and audience, and that he would prefer to debate with a particular Anglican bishop that he named.

I reckon that Choudary’s real reason is that he is fearful of debating with Jay who has already soundly beaten Choudary’s al-Muhajiroun boss Sheikh Omar Bakri Muhammad in debate – before the latter inadvertently exiled himself in Lebanon.

Jay can publicly prove the Christian gospel from the Quran. Anjem Choudary knows he could not stand up under the challenge of such expertise, and that’s the real reason why he’s “postponed” the event.)

It was the 19th century biologist T H Huxley – aka ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ for his public support for Charles Darwin’s recently published theory of evolution – who said that “The great tragedy of Science is the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” We’ve recently seen the slaying of the beautiful hypothesis of man-made climate change by the ugly fact of the human frailty of scientists courtesy of the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia.

The clandestine release of CRU’s confidential emails and documents on the internet (here) – inevitably now called ‘Climategate’ – may prove to be to science what the Telegraph’s publication of MP’s expenses is to politics. And in a wider sense it’s possible it will also   be as undermining to Richard Dawkins   and his fellow science-worshippers as child-abuse by priests and nuns is to the Roman Catholic Church.

On the top global issue of the day where accurate scientific analysis is vital, and just before the Copenhagen summit, we discover – surprise, surprise – that scientists (the high priests of Dawkins’ God-forsaken new religion, Science-is-God) seem to have feet of clay and are subject to the same mendacity and prejudice (Christians call it ‘sinfulness’) as the rest of us. It appears the CRU’s climate-change conclusions do not exactly exhibit ex cathedra infallibility nor are their theories quite as flawless as holy writ.

The ‘ugly fact’ of scientists’ frailty was amply illustrated on BBC TV’s Newsnight on Friday when Professor Andrew Watson from the School of Environmental Sciences also at the University of East Anglia attempted to defend his colleagues at the CRU in a head-to-head debate with ‘Global Warming Contrarian’ Marc Morano speaking from Washington. As I watched Prof Watson’s woeful performance, I was persuaded to take a significant mental step towards the sceptics’ camp.

It was appalling. The main thrust of Prof Andrew’s argument was that underlying CRU research is sound and that the critics are simply mounting a campaign of “character assassination” against CRU personnel. But he became shrill in his protests. He rolled his eyes like a schoolboy in a tantrum. “Stop shouting” he squealed at the bullish American. “Will you shut up just a second?” he yelped.

His piece de resistance came at the end. “What an arsehole,” spat out this esteemed professor who had previously objected to character assassination and was hereby exposed as a vulgar and intolerant hypocrite. It was an expletive for which the BBC subsequently had to apologise. (Watch key moments from Andrews’ performance here.)

Was this an example of the cool, logical, objective, factual, dispassionate, reasoned, rational, evidence-based argument of one of Dawkins’ scientists – the exact opposite (according to Dawkins) of the subjective, biased, emotional, irrational, unreasonable, partial, perverse mumbo-jumbo of religious people?

Actually, the childishness, prejudice, petulance and condescending conceitedness displayed by the professor was breathtaking. No wonder Americans think the English are a whingeing supercilious lot.

No wonder too that the arguments of global-warming sceptics are gaining traction against the theories of climate-change scientists.

There is a publicity horror that pollutes community life in Newham. So watch and learn Kim Jong-Il, ‘Dear Leader’ and dictator of North Korea, you are about to receive a master-class in personality-cult politics courtesy of the Labour Mayor of London Borough of Newham – who of course is not to be confused with the Tory Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.

Supported and promoted by a bloated council PR department with its annual budget – last time I looked – of over £1m of taxpayers’ money, public life in Newham is dominated by one man, Newham’s elected executive Mayor, who preens, pouts and promotes himself at every photo opportunity. He never graces a function or event without the council cameraman in tow. On bus stops and billboards, in council offices and doctors’ surgeries, at train stations and community centres – the Mayor advances himself and his message at every opportunity.

Newham Council is currently installing a running track in a small park in my ward. So who takes the credit for the project? The residents who requested it? The taxpayers who fund it? The council officers who design and manage it? The contractors who undertake the work? No, a large notice by the park gate tells us that it’s “Brought to you by the Mayor of Newham” and that investing in Newham’s parks is the fulfilment of the Mayor’s (election) promise number 15.

Of course the notice itself (estimated all-in cost: £500) is also paid for by Joe Public.

Every fortnight the Council (aka ‘the Mayor’) distributes a free glossy ‘Newham Mag’ into every home in the borough – and guess who always features prominently in it? A cynical wager has developed amongst those who bother to open it; they bet on how many photos of himself the Mayor will publish in each edition. It’s never less than a narcissistic six.

So it was a breath of fresh air when recently I attended a meeting at neighbouring Redbridge Council. Newham Mayor’s publicity machine cannot bulldoze alternative viewpoints in Redbridge as it does here; Redbridge residents and councillors of all parties including Labour are up in arms about Newham’s decision to allow a 50% increase in flights at London City Airport, which has a direct impact on Redbridge people living under the flight path. I also joined a related demo in Redbridge organised by Fight The Flights campaign (here) .

There has been a similar response in Waltham Forest too. So I wrote the following letter to the main newspaper in our borough, the Newham Recorder:

Dear Editor,

The Mayor must be very frustrated.

Each year he spends a fortune of Newham taxpayers’ money on public relations promoting himself and his administration. In glossy magazines and newspaper adverts; on billboards and bus stops; at borough events and in the borough parks – all over Newham there are photos of the Mayor and messages telling us how much wonderful work he is doing in the borough.

But his story doesn’t seem to have seeped over Newham’s boundaries into neighbouring boroughs. I recently went to a Redbridge Council meeting at Ilford where councillors of all parties, including Labour, were unanimous in strongly condemning Newham for lack of consultation over the approved increase of flights at London City Airport. Redbridge residents live under the flight path too, yet like Newham residents they have been sidelined and stitched up. One Redbridge councillor said that the lack of dialogue from Newham “was politically insensitive and morally reprehensible”.

The previous month, Waltham Forest councillors from all parties including Labour unanimously agreed to make strong representation to Newham’s Mayor over the airport expansion. They are also considering legal action about the flight changes over their borough about which they were not consulted. Waltham Forest residents too have been sidelined and stitched up by Newham Council.

Clearly the Mayor’s public relations campaign hasn’t reached into these other boroughs. They can see his administration for what it really is.

Perhaps he ought to spend another fortune preening and promoting himself there. But this time, not at our expense.

Yours sincerely,

So far the Newham Recorder has declined to publish my letter.

I wonder why?

We have two daughters at our local primary school and by God’s grace they’re thriving – thanks to an excellent head teacher and a committed staff team. Reflecting Newham, the school is richly diverse with over 90% of pupils coming from a variety of minority ethnic backgrounds. Nearly three quarters of the children have English as an additional language, many being at early stages of learning the indigenous tongue. Our daughters’ friends reflect this cultural diversity of course, which gives them a great social foundation for living in the 21st century global village. 

Following the Macdonald review and thanks to Ed Balls’ decisions (here), Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) is now high up the educational agenda with significant changes pending. My wife and I have already assessed the current SRE at our girls’ school and it seems sensible, sensitive to cultural diversity and not in need of change.

But UNESCO’s approach to SRE has shocked me rather more than UK government policies. This authoritative United Nations body has published an ‘evidence-based’ report ‘International Guidelines on Sexuality Education’ (here).   Its intention is to influence “educational, health and other relevant authorities in the development and implementation of school-based sexuality education programmes and materials… (The report) will have immediate relevance for… education ministers… curriculum developers, school principals and teachers.”

On page 54 this august body – drawing on ‘evidence’ from diverse cultures around the globe – tells us that learning objectives for children aged five to eight (yes, five to eight) should include the key ideas that “touching and rubbing one’s genitals is called masturbation; some people masturbate and some do not; masturbation is not harmful but should be done in private”!

I looked at our daughters aged seven and eight chattering away as they played happily together and I felt a primordial protective rage well up within me. How dare they try to soil my girls’ innocence and childhood with such grubby, sordid and contentious ‘education’? Teach them about masturbation? My fury hasn’t yet fully subsided.

Doesn’t every father of a five to eight year old feel the same anger when confronted with this official, inappropriate and depraved trollop?

Or perhaps the better ones amongst us manage simply to laugh… or cry.

I’ve joined a Christian debating team called Codgers and recently found myself enjoying the new experience of leading on a couple of Muslim/Christian debates. The first topic was ‘Islam or Christianity: Which offers comprehensive solutions for Britain?’ with Adnan Rashid of the Hittin Institute (here); the second was ‘Jihad on trial’ with Sami Zataari of the Muslim Debate Initiative (here). 

They’ve been well-attended and amicable affairs with friendly relations across the faiths. The Muslim organisers are pleasant guys (yes, only guys, no girls of course – this is Islam) who seem genuinely interested in grappling with the issues. They undoubtedly see the debates as Islamic da’wah (call to Islam, or Muslim proselytism) but there’s nothing wrong with that. The events provide for open argument and discussion, with a level playing field for all sides.

The debates themselves were robust and illuminating, the main result for me being a new understanding of what a wooden rule-bound religion is Islam – at least, the Islam promoted by my debating opponents. It is amazing how little Muslims refer to spiritual things or to invisible matters of the Spirit, and the Islamic after-life seems entirely carnal; paradise is where they (Muslim men; women are much more likely to be found in hell according to Muhammad [Sahih al-Bukhari hadith 1.301; 7.125; and 8.554]) will be rewarded with up to 72 virgins, fresh-faced boy servants, rivers of milk, wine and honey, an abundance of fruits, dates and pomegranates and a life of leisurely luxury the Quran and reliable Hadith tell us, but with apparently few signs of Allah.

My guess is that the negative social impact of such primal, corporal, unspiritual Islam is the root reason why so many of the 57 Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries are failing states – an issue I have begun to address (here). It is also one of the reasons why Islam is certainly no more appropriate for Britain than the materialist ideological secularism (read atheism) that dominates public life today.

My involvement with the Muslim Debate Initiative led me to peruse the blog of one of their organising team, Paul Williams, an intelligent mild-mannered English convert to Islam. There I received a shock.

In his 14th August post under the astonishing question ‘Should Apostates Be Executed?’ (here) Williams writes, “I’ve been mulling over this issue recently, and although I’m no scholar, I would like to outline the arguments for and against executing apostates in an attempt to clarify some of the arguments involved…”

What? “Should apostates be executed?” “Arguments for and against executing apostates.” I couldn’t believe what I was reading! Was this a sick joke? An apparently decent human being brought up in a civilised society was asking seriously whether someone who leaves their religion should be killed. Should slaves be shipped to the West Indies? Should witches be burnt at the stake? Should gays be stoned? Should traitors be hanged, drawn and quartered?

Williams didn’t have time to finish his article on this “hot issue” as he calls it (yes, he really does; check the article yourself) – so instead he posted an historical survey of the subject by Tim Winter. But Williams’ question is in the present tense and posed in 21st century Britain. The subject may possibly be a hot issue in countries like Sudan and Afghanistan but it is shockingly offensive in the UK and alarming for the growing number of ex-Muslims in this country. It is by definition a life-threatening question for many that simply shouldn’t be asked.

As an example, I can highly recommend ‘The Imam’s Daughter’ by Hannah Shah (here for Times review). It’s unputdownable. It’s a sickening but ultimately heart-warming true story about the conversion to Christianity of an Imam’s daughter here in England, her abuse at the hands of her father and his attempts to kill her because of her change of religion. I’ve met ‘Hannah’ – not her real name for obvious reasons – and she’s a very courageous young woman. You can buy her book here.

Regrettably Hannah’s case is far from unique. A few months ago another UK Muslim convert to Christianity – who was born and bred in Newham – sat in my front room telling me how the Imam of an East Ham mosque had indicated to her face that the consequence of her apostasy should be death. And this was from a pillar of the community in Newham!

A few weeks previously I had sat in a coffee bar in Stratford with a further Muslim convert to Christianity who was about to move out of London partly for similar personal safety reasons.

None of these British-born citizens needs an intelligent mild-mannered Englishman asking publicly whether apostates should be executed.

So how come Williams’ normal moral framework has so collapsed that he can seriously ask such a question? How has his conscience become so seared and insensitive?

Sadly, the culprit is clearly his conversion to Islam.

Tonight is Halloween. Ugh!

Sometimes the much-criticised Met Police get it exactly right. In each of our two local papers this week they have taken a two-page advert warning that Halloween “can be a particularly distressing time of year for some of the more vulnerable members of our communities – especially the elderly.”

They also caution people not to throw things like eggs and flour – a theme taken up incidentally by a couple of responsible shops at the top of our road who – like fireworks – won’t sell them to under-18s. The police say eggs and flour “can cause a great deal of damage and misery… (and) can be classed as criminal damage.”

Of course our pre-teen daughters watch the TV and listen to the chat in the playground and want to join in the ‘fun’.

But why would we let them make light of the powers of darkness as if these aren’t real? Why would we allow them to participate in blackmail and threats – “trick or treat” – as if this isn’t learning to bully and torment? Why should they frighten the elderly and lonely? Why should they learn to rejoice in evil as if it’s good?

Halloween is a sick celebration at both a spiritual and social level. Again, I reckon the police have got it right. They suggest that if people want to party on Halloween night “why not just stay at home and having a Halloween-themed party with your friends and neighbours?”

Actually I think this suggestion should have the force of law. If we can ban smoking from public places, how much more should we ban Halloween from our schools and streets too?