A colleague warned me tersely, “Beware; SOAS ISoc is full of radicals.”

I’d been invited to speak last Friday to the Islamic Society at the School of African and Oriental Studies (SOAS – the “world’s leading centre” for the study of subjects relating to Asia, Africa and the Middle East (here)) in central London, and he was concerned I was walking into a lions’ den full of bearded Islamic fundamentalists.

I didn’t mind if I was, but in the event the ISoc members were friendly guys who, if they had beards at all, they were more designer stubble than fist-length.

They invited me to talk about “What I would like Muslims to know about Christianity”. The ISoc organisers had outsourced the Islamic side of the discussion to an outfit called Muslim Debate Initiative (here) whose leading light, Sami Zaatari, was similarly asked to tell the meeting what he would like Christians to know about Islam.

I looked forward to the opportunity to talk full-length about Truth, Love and Jesus Christ – but I was also fascinated by Sami’s conundrum. I’ve engaged with MDI before, having debated in the past with both Sami – who is courteous and serious-minded – and Abdullah al Andalusi and having crossed swords with English convert Paul Williams when, nauseatingly, he salivated on his blog about the “hot-topic” of executing apostates (here). Suddenly exposed and embarrassed by his adopted Islamic morality, he was forced to take down his post.

MDI is seen as a fundamentalist organisation by progressive Muslims and certainly MDI’s usual debating tactics are taken from the confrontational ‘attack-is-the-best-form-of-defence’ school. They prefer to critique the beliefs of opponents (Christians, atheists or anyone else) than to justify Islam. Although limited, there’s nothing wrong with that method during formal debates where part of the skill is to not only persuade the audience of the strength of your own position but also to highlight the weakness of your opponent’s.

But ISoc’s meeting on Friday was not a debate. Rather, the organisers made clear, Sami and I were each to be given 25 minutes to explain our respective faiths and then we were simply to answer questions from the audience. Sami was not to talk about Christianity and I wouldn’t discuss Islam.

This, I predicted to friends, would be a problem for him. Sami is an arch-exponent of the MDI attack-dog approach; he’s never more comfortable than when he is attempting to stick the knife into Christianity. Yet SOAS ISoc was limiting him to one-sidedly promoting Islam.

And he had another problem: in its fundamentalist form Islam is a parasitical religion – like a tick on a dog but more so. It doesn’t have the spiritual, moral or intellectual capacity to stand alone and subsist by itself. Rather it has to have an ‘other’ from which it can suck life and vitality and against which it can measure and express itself. It cannot live peaceably alongside others. It defines itself by hostility to the ‘other’ which it has to take over, suck dry and either dominate or destroy, if necessary by force.

That’s why, globally, wherever fundamentalist Islam arrives on the scene, inevitably in due course there is conflict. Central Nigeria illustrates this dynamic: Jos, for decades a peaceful and popular Christian-majority city, is currently being torn apart by the influx of hard-line Islam from the Sharia states of the Hausa and Fulani north (here).

So given the spiritual and intellectual poverty of his Islam, what would Sami talk about? He had an uninterrupted 25-minute opportunity to promote his beliefs in front of a friendly attentive audience; what would he tell them?

In the event of course, not a lot. Precluded from his default position of attacking Christianity, he spoke for just 16 minutes about Islam… and then dried up. Despite all his speaking experience and all his commitment to his religion, he had nothing more to say. When the ISoc moderator indicated he had another 9 minutes to speak, he declined.

His lack of words summed up the emptiness of his Islam, truly a belief system worth only 16 minutes.

Happy Christ-mas!

Last weekend the Christian Peoples Alliance co-hosted with Christian Concern a fascinating conference in London. Part-funded by the European Parliament, the event was titled ‘Beyond Individualism – Why Civil Society Needs Christian Political Engagement’ (here).

Heavyweight speakers included the ever-persuasive Bp Michael Nazir-Ali, radical-orthodox theologian Professor John Milbank from Nottingham University and political ethicist Dr Jonathan Chaplin from Cambridge.

But for me it was Red Tory Phillip Blond (here) and Blue Labour Lord Maurice Glasman (here) who provided most stimulation.

Phillip Blond, director of ResPublica think-tank (here) , is widely credited as the big thinker behind David Cameron’s Big Society. He set off at a merry pace, professing Christian faith for himself and Christian values as the required ethical underpinning for a successful Big Society. Subsidiarity, mutualism, solidarity, reciprocity, mediation, the value of all persons, objectivity & contingency – this was his rapid-fire set-menu of necessary Christian values. He also gave rapid delivery to a list of the Coalition’s current legislation that in his view has grown out of Christian values, but my pen didn’t want to keep up.

I loved his insights into our illiberal liberal society; our centralised state that rules imperiously over fractured, fragmented, individualised citizenry; and our disempowered ‘little platoons’ (Burke’s words) that currently constitute our flaccid disembowelled civic society – a middle ground that ought instead to be a vibrant creative bridge and bulwark between the state and the citizen.

And I enjoyed Labour peer Maurice Glasman’s contribution too even though the delivery was more downbeat. Jewish himself, he reckoned that Christianity has been central to citizenship for 2,000 years. He also claimed that the Labour Party had been the only institution successfully to heal the rifts of the Reformation by bringing Catholics and Non-Conformists together under its umbrella and citing Cardinal Manning’s role in the dock workers’ victory at the London Dock Strike of 1889.

Glasman liked his alliterative triplets (“relationships, reciprocity, responsibility”; “vocation, values, virtue”) but it was an unmusical phrase containing one particular word that stopped the show for me. Commentators have noted (here) that unusually for a politico he is not afraid to talk about LOVE, and it was that word’s inclusion in a four-word description that made it memorable and, like a flash, summed up the compassion-free New Labour managerialism that I challenged for eight years on Newham Council.

“Secularist materialism without love” – that was Glasman’s characterisation of much mainstream politics today, and it’s certainly a bulls-eye accurate description of politics at Labour’s showcase town hall in Newham. No love. No community-building. No concern for ordinary Newham people and their relationships. Just self-regarding spin and cold target-driven management by mirrors and bulldozers.

I’m not sure how Glasman is rated today within the national Labour Party as just this year he’s been on his way out (here) and on his way back (here). But if my experience with his party compatriots in Labour flagship Newham is anything to go by, in the long term he is stuffed. Secularist Newham Labour doesn’t do God. Materialist Newham Labour certainly doesn’t do love either.

The word, I think, will sink him.

On Wednesday I received this email from the acting editor of Pink News:

Dear Mr Craig, Thank you for your email, I appreciate you may have had a lot of requests to deal with today.

I’m pleased to keep a line of communication open in order for you to exercise your right of reply, and assume you are happy for these and other comments to enter publication unless otherwise indicated?

If you would like to respond to Mr Strudwick’s comment published today, please let me know. The comment can be found here.

Many thanks, Stephen

I replied as follows:

Dear Stephen, Thank you for your email. I read Patrick Strudwick’s remarks and note that he reckons my “comments are… libellous…”

I’m sorry he thinks that. But surely he knows that truth is a complete defence in law.

There is growing public recognition of the menace of liberal fascism and it is certainly a truth that Stonewall et al are guilty of fascistic intolerance. It is Stonewall who led the charge (here) against mild inoffensive unassuming Peter and Hazelmary Bull who had for years, literally, minded their own business in the far south west corner of the country and who now in their evening years have been forced to the courts (and Peter off his hospital bed) to defend their livelihood and Christian beliefs. Such vindictive bullying beggars all belief.

And as mentioned in my previous email, it is Stonewall who just the other day chose to vilify and demonise Melanie Phillips with their nauseating Bigot of the Year Award. Who exactly are the real bigots here?

Gay journalist Johann Hari is frequently a stimulating and insightful commentator despite his recently-exposed transgressions. It is from him that, indirectly, I borrowed the term ‘Gaystapo’ which featured in my original article and caused so much controversy. And it is he who not only points out that many of the most vicious of the past Nazi leadership were gay but also, more importantly, makes a jaw-dropping observation about fascist leadership today (here):

“The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was – including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay.”

If true (Hari names the names) this “twisted truth” is an inconvenient truth for many Pink News readers no doubt; it is certainly a shocking, revealing one for the rest of us. In the light of the current nightmare persecution of private Christians like the Bulls – let alone more public figures like Gordon Wilson (here) – and the recent fact that influential gay leaders have now become firmly established in the UK’s commanding heights and corridors of power, it seems vital for our liberties and liberal democracy that further independent research should be undertaken urgently on the link between fascism and gay leadership.

I wrote in my article that the Gaystapo “want to change our language, manipulate our culture and thereby impose their world-view on us all. Cultural domination is their aim…”

In many ways they have already achieved these Orwellian objectives. For instance Advocate for Mental Health (here) is an independent agency that provides support for service users in hospitals and mental health units and in particular for the LGBT community of Westminster and Kensington & Chelsea. In their guidance to health staff who serve LGBT people, AfMH informs them that they should “Not bring their religious beliefs to work”. I’ve personally seen a copy of this directive.

So not only can Christians be penalised (here), disciplined (here) and fired (here) for giving outward expression to their faith but Christian doctors and nurses working with LGBT people may with impunity be instructed by an authorised agency to leave their inner beliefs, motivation and core identity at the hospital entrance. This is the new discrimination and persecution and yet another step on the Gaystapo’s long march through the institutions.

It must be clear even to Pink News readers that there is a Stalinist sickness and totalitarian intolerance that is corroding our liberties and our culture. It should also be clear to them who is responsible for fostering much of it.

I’d be grateful if you would publish these comments in full through your news service.

With best wishes, Alan Craig

PS. I said in my previous email that I would be happy to meet you to discuss these issues. I’ll up that – I’ll be delighted to buy you lunch.

Yesterday I received this email from the acting editor of Pink News:

Dear Mr Craig,

I am contacting you to see whether you would like to expand on the comments made in your piece “Confronting the Gaystapo”.

Concerns have been raised that, inter alia, an instruction for people to “rise up” against gay “leaders” could be construed as an incitement to hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

If you would like to make any comment please contact me as soon as possible.

Yours sincerely,

Stephen Gray

Acting Editor

This is my reply:

Dear Mr Gray,

Thank you for yesterday’s email asking me if I’d like to expand on my comments in my piece “Confronting The Gaystapo.” I would.

I accused Stonewall et al of fascist-type intolerance. I note they recently awarded Melanie Phillips their Bigot Of The Year Award. Whatever you think of her views, she argues rationally, reasonably, includes factual evidence and incites no-one to violence (it’s known as public discussion within a liberal democracy), yet she has been subject to this Nazi-style pillorying and demonisation.

She is Jewish. She will no doubt recognise the tactics from 1930s Germany.

Is the Stonewall Award a yellow star for her to wear?

I’d be happy to meet with you to discuss this further.

Yours sincerely,

Alan Craig

——————————————————

Having forcibly – and understandably – rectified the Versailles-type injustices and humiliations foisted on the homosexual community, the UK’s victorious Gaystapo are now on a roll. Their gay-rights storm troopers take no prisoners as they annex our wider culture, and hotel owners (here) and (here), registrars (here), magistrates (here), doctors (here), counsellors (here) and (here), foster parents (here), grandparents (here), adoption agencies (here) and traditional street preachers (here) and (here) find themselves crushed under the pink jack-boot.

Thanks especially to the green light from a permissive New Labour government, the gay Wehrmacht is on its long march through the institutions and has already occupied the Sudetenland social uplands of the Home Office (here), the educational establishment (here), the politically-correct police (here), and the Guardianista management of the BBC (here). Following a plethora of equalities legislation, homosexuals are now protected and privileged by sexual orientation regulations and have achieved legal equality by way of civil partnerships.

But it’s only 1938 and Nazi expansionist ambitions are far from sated. Flattered by appeasers and feted by the political class, the Oberkommandos from Stonewall and OutRage! have expansive goals for cultural hegemony and have long wanted to march on the next territory. They want to hijack a word and capture our culture at its deepest level. They want to reconfigure relationships, eliminate the traditional family and hence eradicate stable upbringing for our children. They want SSM – same-sex “marriage”.

And, unbelievably, the Conservative prime minister, betraying many centuries of Christian marriage in his green and pleasant land and naively revelling in his Munich moment, makes virtue out of vice, holds a piece of paper aloft and declares triumphantly to the Tory party conference, “It’s Gay Marriage in our time”.

Someone once said, “There is a time for silence and a time to speak… a time for peace and a time for war”, and SSM could be the invasion of Poland, the catalyst for war and a cultural fight-back. Catholic bishops are incendiary, evangelicals are appalled and even the dear old Church of England seems to think SSM is a step too far – “The Church’s view remains of marriage as the life-long union between a man and a woman,” said an Anglican spokesperson (here).

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. For years Winston Churchill was a lone voice against the burgeoning darkness of Nazi ideology and intolerance. In the wilderness and with few public friends, he was marginalised and dismissed as belligerent and a war-monger. He was scorned as a political has-been, out of touch with the then-modern mainstream.

But he saw clearly the hidden hegemonic ambitions of the Nazis and their intended assault on our civilization, our values, our way of life. To the fury of the Nazi leadership in Berlin he exposed the sinister truth, gave a trumpet-call for resistance and rearmament, and in due course galvanised the nation for an epochal battle against the fascist menace.

Our civilisation, our values, our way of life – indeed the national character – are inevitably formed from the values of the Christian faith, as over a thousand years and more ‘Christianity’ and ‘Englishness’ have become fully entwined and fused. So erase Christianity and you erode Englishness and the nation loses its identity and self-confidence. In recent decades gay militants have been in the van of the secularist and new atheist assault on Christianity, and as a consequence our culture has corroded and debased and national confusion and self-doubt has grown.

Christian believers have been a lone voice against the resulting sexualisation, narcissism, hedonism, selfishness and materialism. Marginalised and dismissed as bigoted and homophobic, Christians are now despised as has-been and out of touch with the cool cosmopolitan mainstream.

But the hidden hegemonic ambitions of the Gaystapo have been exposed recently by their plans to annex and redefine ‘marriage’. They already have achieved equal rights through civil partnerships, so to covet the word and undermine a foundation-stone of our civilisation – and nurturing place for our children – betrays other more ominous intentions. They want to change our language, manipulate our culture and thereby impose their world-view on us all. Cultural domination is their aim and fascist-type intolerance (here) of politically-incorrect dissent (here) is their weapon. The eradication of marriage as “the life-long union between a man and a woman” is a huge next step along their way.

Cometh the hour, cometh the man or woman. Who will stand up and publicly confront this new domination and intolerance? In 1938 it was perfectly reasonable to like the German people but hate Nazi ambitions and ideology. Today it is perfectly reasonable to warmly engage with your gay neighbours while at the same time forcefully confronting the vaulting ambitions of gay leaders and their atheist and humanist fellow-travellers.

There is a season and a time for everything under the sun. For Christians, the season of appeasement, fear and cowering in the corner is over. “Whom shall I send,” said the Lord, “and who will go for us?”

Now is the time for people of courage to rise up and defend marriage, our children and the very foundations of our civilisation. The only right response? “Here I am, send me.”

As part of her personal research, a friend phoned the British Pregnancy Advisory Service to ask about an abortion. The first question they asked was for her post code in order to locate her nearest BPAS clinic. The second was for her credit card details.

Despite soft-focus spin the abortion industry is increasingly hard-nosed, commercialised and cash-flow oriented. From small charitable beginnings forty years ago when terminations were based on genuine concern for the mental and physical health of pregnant women, the business has developed into an £60m+ behemoth undertaking nearly 200,000 terminations a year frequently for life-style or convenience reasons. Money-making brings vested interests, so in addition to the well-paid CEOs and target-setting business development managers (here), the industry engages lobbyists, PR agents and professional activists to generate the spin and promote their cause.

And business expansion brings industry competition and an appetite for market share. So it’s no surprise that BPAS as market leaders have leapt at the growth opportunities offered by next year’s Olympics and this month’s opening of the massive Westfield shopping centre – Europe’s largest – at Stratford in east London. They have taken over ground floor premises of a residential block of 20 flats owned by the affordable-homes supplier One Housing Group close to Stratford town centre and a few hundred metres from an all-girls school with over a thousand 11 to 16 year olds. They obtained the necessary CQC certification on 9th August and are now open for business. And it’s right on my doorstep.

As suits an activity that deals in death, the whole operation has been covert and clandestine. It’s only the excellent eagle-eyed researchers at the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children who have uncovered what’s been going on:

BPAS made no attempt to inform local residents of their intentions of course. Their planning application to Newham Council (here) and even the Council’s own statutory letter of consultation with local residents made no mention of an abortion facility.

But most deplorable of all has been the role of landlords One Housing who haven’t seen fit to explain to their tenants upstairs that terminations will take place on the ground floor and that clinical ‘waste’ will be put into a locked storage unit just by the entrance. Residents were left completely unaware.

Yet One Housing’s own blurb (here) highlights its social responsibility and commitment to residents, and without irony claims that the group does much more than provide a place for the tenants to live. Quite. In Stratford they now provide a place for the unborn to die.

This summer however some low-profile activities of BPAS and other abortion providers have become high-profile. The irrepressible MP for Mid Bedfordshire Nadine Dorries is no saint – except perhaps in the technical New Testament sense – but she has courage, flair and publicity skills. The author of two parliamentary attempts to reduce the time limit for abortions (here) and (here) for which she received death threats from pro-choice activists, she has promoted a Just Say No campaign for teenage girls (here) and this month proposed an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill to stop abortion providers like BPAS from also providing abortion advice.

She argued rightly that the industry has a financial vested interest in encouraging more abortions, and pointed to the pensions industry where pension provision has been decoupled from pension advice. She proposed fully independent abortion counselling so that pregnant women can, unpressurised, make a calm and properly informed choice.

I sat in the House of Commons gallery during the 7th September debate and was sorry but not surprised at the heckling aimed at Ms Dorries. This followed attacks on TV, radio and the internet, denouncements in the press and even a protest demo outside Parliament (here).

Pro-abortionists claim they are ‘pro-choice’ and Nadine Dorries cleverly and correctly described her initiative as ‘pro-informed choice’. And although the amendment overwhelmingly lost the vote it’s clear that, perhaps for the first time, the pro-life side emphatically won the parliamentary and media debate. Pro-abortionists struggled to find any reasoned argument against the purpose of the amendment – how can anyone argue against better informed choice? – and were left ludicrously fulminating about the “Christian fundamentalism” they said was behind Ms Dorries. It was a classic case of what C S Lewis called ‘bulverism’ – when they lost the argument they attacked the speaker. Fortunately Ms Dorries seemed unfazed by the abuse.

Health minister Anne Milton MP supported ‘the spirit’ of the amendment and promised a government review of current counselling arrangements. It was progress – if not the ‘victory’ that the Mid Bedfordshire MP claimed.

Stratford residents are currently formulating a challenge to the underhand opening of the BPAS branch in their neighbourhood. They’re going to need a dose of Nadine Dorries’ courage to take on such entrenched vested interests.

(This post appeared as an article in The Church of England Newspaper on 23 September 2011)

As usual this month sees our annual family fly-away to the hot sun, cool pool and relaxed sociability of a Spanish campsite. The baking beaches, long slow barbeques and solitary early morning prayer times at the water’s edge as the magnificent translucent Mediterranean sun rises silently, imperceptibly, over the sea’s far horizon – the attractions never pall but rather entice us back year after year.

It was maybe five years ago that I fell into a new holiday habit and developed a new holiday mantra. I casually threw Alan Storkey’s ‘Jesus And Politics’ into my baggage thinking I really ought to get to grips with some serious reading rather than the usual airport novel, and surprisingly found myself gripped by the intensity and originality of his argument. In swimming trunks under the poolside parasol, with Bible in one hand and highlighter in the other, I checked and re-checked Storkey’s thesis and for hours was interrupted only by the delighted shrieks and splashings of our pre-teen children enjoying themselves under the watchful eyes of the pool lifeguards.

I love my children deeply, but I was now suddenly addicted to heavyweight vacation reading. “My own holiday begins when the kids are safe, happy and quarter of a mile away,” I announced, and I’d intone this new mantra as I retired to a far corner of the campsite to the amiable disgust of my wife.

Haykel’s 600-page ‘The Life of Muhammad’ was next. Laborious but informative, I was astonished at how this authoritative tome which has the endorsement of the Grand Shaykh of al-Azhar University, Islam’s premier seat of learning, could simply airbrush and whitewash the darker doings of Muhammad’s life. For instance, Muhammad’s approval of the assassination of the poetess Asma bint Marwan – slaughtered whilst asleep with her young children – for composing abusive verses against him, is passed over without comment while the subsequent Islamic conversion of Banu Khutmah, Asma’s husband’s tribe, is warmly attributed by Haykal to the ‘courage’ of her assassin!

The title of the following year’s book, ‘Matters of Life & Death’ by Christian ethicist Professor John Wyatt, didn’t look like jolly holiday reading. Jolly it wasn’t but illuminating it was. It highlighted the callous treatment of weak, vulnerable and disabled people implicit in the Ronald Dworkin and Peter Singer type of godless liberal humanism and how there is an straight-line connection between today’s utilitarian individualism and the growing enthusiasm for euthanasia and eugenics. We are, it seems, steadily returning to the laws of the jungle and Darwinian survival of the fittest; the talented and useful are lauded and acclaimed while the elderly, terminally-ill, unproductive and unwanted are looked at askance. Brute barbarism with a smooth smiling liberal face is apparently becoming the mainstream mindset. O come Lord Jesus!

My main book last year was Richard Dawkins’ ‘The God Delusion’. Perhaps affected by the Spanish sun, I decided to give atheism’s chief proselytist full credit and try to get inside his ‘evidence-based’ arguments against the existence of God. “If this book works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down,” writes Dawkins (p28). Apprehensively, I determined to be vulnerable to his evidence and arguments, with the attendant risk that his book might in some way undermine my faith.

However it took just eighty pages for Dawkins himself to dispel my apprehension. He claims to be a scientist who draws conclusions only from hard facts and clear evidence; if he could see incontrovertible proof of the existence of God he reckons he would change his mind immediately. This sounds terrific – at least until you read Dawkins on Stephen Jay Gould, from whence you realise his claims are untrue and that he has creedal doctrines as rigid as any red-neck fundamentalist believer.

Gould was an eminent evolutionary biologist who argued in ‘Rocks of Ages’ that science, which deals with the empirical realm, and religion, which deals with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value, are ‘non-overlapping magisteria’; the how question is categorically different from the why question. This conflicts directly with Dawkins’ scientism (which believes that science has or will have the answer for virtually every question) so he is forced to write on page 81, “I simply do not believe that Gould could possibly have meant much of what he wrote in Rocks of Ages”!

Gould’s says one thing plainly and clearly. Dawkins, away with the fairies, flying teapots and little green men, and against the clear evidence, believes it simply must mean something else. It’s classic Dawkins self-delusion. I said goodbye to his nonsense.

For this summer’s holiday I have David Bentley Hart’s ‘Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies’ awaiting me on my Kindle. Dipping into the first few pages, I’ve already highlighted the author’s comments about “Christianity’s twenty centuries of unprecedented and still unmatched moral triumphs – its care of widows and orphans, its alms-houses, hospitals, foundling homes, schools, shelters, relief organisations, soup kitchens, medical missions, charitable aid societies, and so on.”

It seems Bentley Hart will be an excellent antidote to Dworkin, Dawkins and Christianity’s other trendy detractors. I can’t wait for my shady corner of the campsite.

(This post was published as an article in The Church of England Newspaper on 26 August 2011)

Peter and Hazelmary Bull are a mild-mannered self-effacing couple who, literally, mind their own business – which for them is running the Chymorvah Private Hotel near Penzance in Cornwall. For 25 years they’ve interfered with no-one. They’ve judged no-one. Summer and winter they’ve simply got on quietly with their lives deep in the south-western corner of England.

They are committed Christians who believe in traditional marriage, as their website makes clear (here): “Here at Chymorvah we have few rules, but please note that as Christians we have a deep regard for marriage (being the union of one man to one woman for life to the exclusion of all others). Therefore, although we extend to all a warm welcome to our home, our double-bedded accommodation is not available to unmarried couples. Thank you.”

Despite this plain public statement of values, gay activists and civil partners Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy, possibly with the active collusion of Stonewall gay rights organisation, went to the hotel in September 2008, tried to book a double room and unsurprisingly were refused.

In December 2010 Hall and Preddy, backed by the publicly-funded Equalities and Human Rights Commission, sued the Bulls on the grounds of sexual discrimination. In January 2011 they won their case in Bristol County Court and the Bulls were fined (here). They are strongly contesting the decision and their appeal comes up at the Royal Courts of Justice in The Strand in November.

Just 90 miles away in Torquay, Devon, is “the UK’s first and only” gay men’s resort which, amongst other things, has been happy to promote its sauna with photos of male genitalia on its website (no link ‘cos no porn on this blog thanks). In March this year I challenged the EHRC about the resort on the basis that what is sauce for the straight goose should be sauce for the gay gander too, but they declined to take action. To the equalities watchdog it seems some are more equal than others.

Lesley Pilkington is a dignified sensitive woman in her sixties who has practiced privately as a Christian psychotherapist for 20 years. Accredited by the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, she has occasionally offered ‘Reparative Therapy’ to people who are distressed by their unwanted homosexuality.

In May 2009 she was approached by Patrick Strudwick who said he was gay, wanted to change and asked to undertake the therapy. He secretly taped two confidential counselling sessions with Ms Pilkington before abruptly revealing he was an undercover journalist and gay activist. He wrote an angry belligerent article in the national press (here) quoting her directly from the tapes, and complained to her professional body, the BACP, who decided against her in May this year. She is currently fighting the BCAP decision through an appeal because it “undermines the special confidential relationship between counsellor and client”.

Last December Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, was secretly taped by two undercover reporters at his MP’s surgery. He expressed scathing views about the Coalition government and, presciently, Rupert Murdoch. When his views were published in the Daily Telegraph he was rebuked by David Cameron who reduced his ministerial role. However Cable’s claim that he had been the victim of a newspaper sting that undermined the confidentiality of an MP’s surgery was upheld by the industry’s watchdog, the Press Complaints Commission, in May (here); the Daily Telegraph was condemned for its deception on the basis that the ends didn’t justify the means.

It seems what is sauce for the Christian counsellor is not sauce for the constituency MP.

Christian sex-discrimination cases like the Bulls and Lesley Pilkington have become the most high profile of recent years and Trevor Phillips, chair of the EHRC and confused pillar of the liberal establishment, has extraordinary views about them. Under cheap headlines about Christians being more militant than Muslims, he recently downplayed claims of bias, harassment and persecution against Christians by diverting the argument; he impugned believers’ motives, asserting that many of the legal cases brought by Christians about homosexuality are driven by an attempt to gain political influence (here).

“A lot of Christian activists… want to have a fight,” he said, “and they choose sexual orientation as the ground to fight on. I think the whole argument isn’t about the rights of Christians. It’s about politics.”

Now I reckon we should celebrate when Christian activists want to get involved in politics and public life. We need more prophets and turbulent priests who get up the nose of authorities, speak truth to power and revitalise our decaying democracy. The recent death of Parliament Square’s Christian peace campaigner Brian Haw (here) was a loss to the whole nation.

But the Bulls and Lesley Pilkington? Thrust into the limelight through no wish of their own, they’ve been forced to fight for their livelihoods and beliefs.

If they’ve become prophets and political priests, it’s because the aggressive gay lobby and Trevor Phillips’ bumbling EHRC have made them so.

(This post was published as an article in The Church of England Newspaper on 22 July 2011)

She is normally a vivacious young woman. Attractive and outgoing with a touch of whacky artistic temperament, she has learnt stage magic tricks using a white dove and goldfish that endlessly surprise and entertain local children.

She is of Bangladeshi Muslim background although she has left Islam and says she has no faith. Married to a Bangladeshi Christian, they have a six year old son.

Like many others they came to the UK to free themselves from minority oppression in their home country and to make a new life. But as she sat distressed and crying in my living room, it became clear it hasn’t worked out like that for them.

Four years ago she got a job as a shop assistant in a local pharmacy in the Muslim-majority area of Shadwell near their home in Tower Hamlets, east London. The shop neighbourhood is dominated by the 1,300-capacity Christian Street (sic) mosque of fundamentalist sect Tablighi Jamaat who aim to build a new headquarters mega-mosque (here) four miles further east at West Ham, close to the site of the 2012 London Olympics.

She says she gets on well with most of her customers, and with her warm friendly personality I don’t doubt that’s true. But soon some customers – both men with beards and women in burqas – started objecting to her western clothing. “This area is 95% Muslim,” they told her, “you should cover up and wear a burqa” (here). During the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan they objected to her enjoying a refreshing cuppa in the shop. They objected too to the non-Islamic name of her son who sometimes came to the shop after school, and to the fact that she is married to a Christian.

But her clothing was the main issue. One day early this year a man came to the pharmacy, asked her into the street outside and made it clear in no uncertain terms that she should wear a burqa. Then in April local men complained formally about her western clothing to her employer. Her response to this ongoing harassment and intimidation: “I don’t want to wear Islamic clothing and in this country I’m free not to,” she argued courageously, and finally reported the matter to Tower Hamlets police.

The growing Islamisation of significant areas of the UK is a complex issue. Fair-minded people will have nothing to do with Muslim-bashing. And freedom for Muslims to practice their religion is a key principle of our liberal democracy. But some Islamic values are so inimical to 21st century Britain that a challenge to them is not only inevitable, it’s right.

Originating from South Asia, Tablighi Jamaat is the most successful Islamic missionary group on the planet and the UK is one of their prime missionary targets. During the recent public inquiry into the use of their West Ham site, the sect’s trustees explained how they reconcile their active promotion of wedding ceremonies with the fact that theirs is a male-only mosque. At the ceremony the marriage contract is signed solely by the bridegroom and the father or brother of the bride. The bride does not sign it. She does not even attend her own wedding!

The Planning Inspector, blinded and biased by his profession’s multi-cultural mores, subsequently reported (here) merely that “the highest standards… of inclusion for women… are not being achieved” at the male-only site (yes, he really wrote such tripe, check it out: para 77) and that the all-male mosque is “generally an inclusive environment”! Troglodyte Saudi authorities that bar female car drivers within the regressive Kingdom can eat their hearts out: this bride-ban is happening in 21st century London apparently with the active connivance of UK authorities.

And there’s yet more misogyny. One of Tablighi Jamaat’s chief ideologues, Ashraf Ali Thanawi, teaches that a woman is to follow her husband’s will and whims in all things, to seek his permission on all issues and to call day night if he does (here). Another, Ashiq Elahi Bulandshahri, teaches that a woman should be confined as far as possible within her husband’s home as “the devil himself begins to accompany her the moment she steps out of the house” (here). She should only be allowed out if accompanied by a male relative and concealed within a veiled black burqa.

This commodification and invisibilisation of women is alien to central Christian teaching where women, like men, are celebrated as created in the image of God. It is no surprise then that the niqab (face-veil) seems so restrictive, degrading and hostile within UK culture; one way or another in this land we are heirs to a thousand years and more of life-affirming humanity-celebrating Christianity. “If the Son sets you free, you shall be free indeed.”

The pharmacy assistant is at the growing frontline clash between these value systems. “We now see more burqas in London than Dhaka,” a Bangladeshi man told me recently.

Her courageous and public rejection of an imposed burqa has brought a torrent of hatred, abuse and threats around the assistant’s head, and this has taken a toll on her peace of mind as I saw in my living room.

She deserves our admiration and needs our prayers.

(This post also appears as an article in today’s edition of The Church of England Newspaper.)

“It’s all a bit dated,” said my taxi companion, a member of the House of Lords with a long track record of public service. He and I had been at the Oxford Union debating the motion “This House believes the 21st century belongs to the East, not the West” (here). We were being taken to the up-market overnight accommodation provided by ‘the world’s most famous debating society’.

“We should have moved on from this old-fashioned adversarial style of argument to a more consensual approach,” he said warming to his theme. “We should look for points of

agreement rather than difference.”

I dared to differ, and said so. You don’t have to be a fiery outside-the-walls Old Testament prophet to recognise how far UK public life has moved from a truth-based confidence to a grey ducks-in-line conformity. The priority for today’s governing class is not to robustly deal with reality but to cautiously control relationships. Rocking the boat and frightening the horses have become crimes against the entrenched liberal status quo. Rather we must cover our eyes, block our ears and hold hands together while we dance round the maypole – preferably singing la-la-la from a politically-correct hymn sheet. After all, as one Roman politician famously said 2000 years ago, What is truth? He would have felt utterly at home in Westminster and Whitehall.

Fortunately Oxford Union Society knows no such toadying compliance. Founded nearly 200 years ago in a more vibrant age, debates in the Union chamber take place under the watchful eyes – by portrait or bust – of Oxford graduates and former prime ministers such as the Marquess of Salisbury, William Gladstone, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Edward Heath. In 1933, the year Hitler came to power, the Union notoriously passed the motion “This House would under no circumstances fight for King and country”. More recently it has listened by video link to the banned Islamic firebrand Zakir Naik, and its contentious invitation to Nick Griffin (here) preceded by two years the BNP leader’s controversial appearance on BBC Question Time.

Our debate last week could only have taken place in secular materialist Europe that has blinded itself to spiritual realities. Speaker after speaker showed themselves dazzled by China’s recent super-power appearance on the world stage and there was much debate about relative economic development, commercial growth and financial investment.

But I pointed out that the real undetected jaw-dropper is the recent phenomenal growth of Christianity in the country. While post-war Europe has said goodbye to God, the Chinese have said hello in exponentially increasing numbers. According to Professor Niall Ferguson, a century and a half of intense Christian missionary work had yielded just half a million Chinese believers by 1949. But he reckons the church today is growing so fast that within three decades some 20% to 30% of the Chinese population of over 1.3 billion will be Christian (here). There will be more Christians in China than the USA.

According to former editor of the Sunday Telegraph, Dominic Lawson, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences has discovered what Europe has chosen to ignore (here).

“One of the things we were asked to look into was what accounted for the success, in fact the pre-eminence, of the West all over the world,” said a senior member of the Beijing Academy. “We studied everything we could from the historical, political, economic, and cultural perspective. At first, we thought it was because you had more powerful guns than we had.

“Then we thought it was because you had the best political system. Next we focused on your economic system.

“But in the past twenty years, we have realised that the heart of your culture is your religion: Christianity. That is why the West is so powerful.

“The Christian moral foundation of social and cultural life was what made possible the emergence of capitalism and then the successful transition to democratic politics. We don’t have any doubt about this.”

As a result and despite persecuting the underground church, the atheist Chinese Communist government is pouring money into Catholic and Protestant seminaries and helping to fund state-sanctioned churches (here). The largest Bible printer in the world is based at Nanjing and produces over a million scriptures a month primarily for the Chinese church (here).

So while Christianity is and will increasingly bring life, vitality, human rights and democracy to China, godless Europe is declining into sterile risk-avoiding regulation-bound sclerotic gentility and is destined to become a sort of Isle of Wight to the world – a refined tourist resort, museum piece and history theme park, but irrelevant to the future of the globe. Tell it not in Gath, proclaim it not in the streets of Ashkelon: how secular Europe is fallen!

But I had good news for the bright young students of Oxford. The future belongs neither to the East nor the West but to them if they will grasp it. As it happens the University’s own Latin motto tells of the one thing that is needful. It is the first line of Psalm 27: Dominus Illuminato Mea. The Lord is my light.

So as I closed the debate I urged them to listen to their University motto and choose the light. I was delighted this proffered choice received loud applause. There is hope for the younger generation, even in fading secularised Europe.

(This post also appeared as an article in last Friday’s edition of The Church of England Newspaper.)