Religious minorities have a difficult, sometimes horrendous, time in Pakistan. In previous posts I have cited the murder of Christians in Gojra (here) and the persecution of the Ahmadi Muslim sect (here) . More recently Shazia Masih, the 12 year old Christian domestic servant of Lahore High Court attorney and former president of the Lahore Bar Association Muhammad Naeem, allegedly has been raped and killed by her well-connected and wealthy employer (here) and three Sikh men who refused to convert to Islam were beheaded by the Taliban in Peshawar (here).

So when the charismatic Wilson Chowdhry of the British Pakistan Christian Association, together with his cousin Alex, asked me recently to join a group of UK-based Sikhs and Christians who were presenting a petition and letter at Downing Street about these atrocities, I accepted with alacrity.

Our joint protest not only covered the Sikh beheadings and the Shazia rape and murder case, but also the urgent need to change the Blasphemy Laws of Pakistan, Sections 298A and 295B & C, which are used to persecute and harass minority faiths in the country.

Besides the BPCA and the Christian Peoples Alliance, the delegation included representatives from the British Sikh Council, United Sikhs and the Sikh Human Rights Group.

As ever, leading, organising and energising the delegation was Wilson.

This is a cause close to my heart and worthy of the support of everyone who sees freedom of speech and religion as vital human rights.

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.

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.

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.

Ten days ago I got a call. It was journalist Hugh Muir, formerly of the Newham Recorder but now lively diarist at the Guardian. He has a new column in the paper’s G2 section ‘Hideously diverse Britain’ , presumably borrowed from Greg Dyke’s ‘hideously white BBC’ jibe (here) and wanted to interview me about the projected West Ham mega-mosque that I’ve been opposing for the past three years (here).

We met at the Christian Peoples Alliance office at Canning Town and talked about the mosque and our campaign. He questioned me at length about the acceptability of a Christian challenging the construction of a Muslim place of worship. Eventually he asked how I felt about the pro-mosque websites and videos that virulently attack me for my opposition and attempt to taint me with a BNP brush, for instance here and here.

I told him how I’d discovered that the person responsible for the websites, Tahire Faruq, lives just half a mile from my home, and how I called on him unannounced earlier this year to see if he’d have a cuppa and chat. Suddenly Muir lit up; he’d smelt a story. Astonished that I’d visit a hostile opponent who’d obviously crawled all over my past life (why? – after all, Christ teaches his followers to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’), Muir became animated. I realised he’d suddenly found the narrative for his ‘Hideously diverse’ column the following week.

It was published in the Guardian last Friday – ‘Friendship across the religious divide’. You can read it in full here.

I especially like Muir’s optimistic ending: ‘If that’s the future, it’s not so bad’.

The liberal democratic liberties that hesitantly grew and then finally flourished across the UK and Europe over the past couple of centuries are under assault as never before. The continent is run by an unelected, interfering and financially incompetent (or corrupt) Commission that, as Ireland has found out, is utterly cynical about the will of the electorate expressed through the ballot box; the clout of the UK’s ancient Mother of Parliaments – sunk in the quagmire of the expenses scandal – has arguably never been lower; and the yawning gap of mutual incomprehension between the governing classes and ordinary people is feeding the growth of hard-line extremism on all sides, as the May election of two BNP MEPs and the recent UAF-encouraged Muslim violence at Harrow mosque (here) demonstrate. 

One by one – and despite the European Convention on Human Rights and associated national legislation – the lights of our liberties and freedoms are being extinguished in the name of our risk-avoiding, hurt-preventing, initiative-curtailing, target-worshipping, bureaucratic-meddling, money-mad, politically-correct, aggressively-atheist nanny state, which itself is only one stop away from a police state.

And the downhill slide towards this police state took a defining step forward two weeks ago when a Christian couple, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, were arrested following a heated argument about religion in front of guests in the restaurant of their nine-bedroom private hotel in Aintree, Liverpool. No violence took place, no mayhem ensued; but one Muslim participant reckoned her religious sensibilities had been insulted and went to the police. Plod knocked on the hotel door – and now the Vogelenzangs have been remanded on bail and await trial under the Public Order Act 1986, a measure designed to stop violence and disorder on the streets.

The details will come out during the court case in December, but it’s already clear that the robust but peaceful expression of religious beliefs and opinions in a semi-private place in England in 2009 is now subject to police intervention and arrest. Henry Porter in the Guardian called the decision to prosecute ‘daft’ (here). Others reckon the police action is ‘heavy-handed’. Actually it is much worse than that; it is deeply deeply ominous. The mind-set and management ethos of the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has now become so Orwellian and Stasi-like that in my view we have crossed the anti-democratic Rubicon. The chilling effect of this prosecution – whether it succeeds or not – on free speech is momentous and we are now but a few steps from Gestapo knocks on the door in the dead of night for anyone who expresses peaceful but apparently contentious, odious, offensive or politically incorrect views especially, as in this case, about Islam.

Of course the normal courtesies of hospitality should have restrained the Vogelenzangs from arguing with one of their guests, and I am not surprised that the local hospital is no longer sending outpatients to stay at the hotel. I wouldn’t either. But that does not justify police arrest or the CPS decision to prosecute.

To paraphrase George Orwell, ‘Liberty, if it means anything, means the right to offend’. By being dragged into court the Volgelenzangs have already been penalised for exercising that right and by extension, as fellow citizens, so have we. And they may yet receive a substantial fine and a criminal record.

What is to be done? First, the Vogelenzangs’ fight is our fight so I’m sending £100 to their legal defence fund run by the Christian Institute (here).

Second, we must stand shoulder-to-shoulder with them. I therefore intend to repeat their opinions – only more so – on this blogsite with a view to sharing a police cell and court appearance with them.

The exact nature of their offending views is open to dispute as the unnamed Muslim lady claims Ben Vogelenzang called the founder of Islam, Muhammad, a ‘warlord’ – but he denies this. However it seems agreed that Sharon described the hijab (Islamic headscarf) as a form of ‘bondage’ (here).

Now I certainly admire Muhammad as one of the great figures of history, up there with Napoleon, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great and King David (of Goliath fame, who established Jerusalem as Israel’s capital around 1,000 BC). And the modesty of much Islamic dress is to be applauded.

But it is also valid to see Muhammad – like other historical greats – as a very flawed figure. And the niqab (Islamic face-veil) is as controversial in the UK as in France (here).

So I hope my Muslim friends and acquaintances (that especially includes you Abdul, Asif, Mohammed, Humera, Tahire, Manish, Irfan and Yaqoob) will forgive me now as I write about both Muhammad’s flaws and Islamic dress in a way they may find offensive. But I need to do so (a) primarily in order to assert my right to freedom of speech, and (b) secondarily to get myself nicked so that I can stand alongside the Vogelenzangs.

“Muhammad was a warlord, a paedophile and a vindictive murderer, and the niqab is a hostile anti-social sign of female subjection which should be banned from public places.”

There, I’ve done it. Now if someone would kindly take a copy of this post to the police, please also tell them they can obtain my address via Newham town hall. I’ll await with anticipation the nocturnal knock on my door.

Ben and Sharon, wait for me. I’m on my way!

I was surprised by a lump-in-the-throat experience earlier today.A week ago, 3rd September, we were remembering the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War, and we heard once again grainy recordings Chamberlain’s voice telling the nation that Germany had not responded to the 11.00am ultimatum and that therefore “we are at war”.

Tomorrow we will remember the 8th anniversary of 9/11.

But today I attended a commemoration service for Canning Town’s own wartime tragedy when Hallsville School received a direct hit from a high explosive bomb in the early hours of Tuesday 10th September 1940. Officially between 70 and 80 people including many children died; locally it is believed still that the figure is far higher but the wartime government falsified the figures for the sake of public morale. Whole families who had been bombed out of their homes and who were sleeping at the school while waiting for evacuation were wiped out – transportation should have arrived the previous day, but apparently had been sent mistakenly to Camden Town.

In recent years the local branch of the excellent Royal British Legion has organised a Service of Remembrance on the anniversary of the incident at the war memorial outside the old St. Luke’s church on Tarling Road, and within sight of today’s Hallsville School just 300 metres away across the local park. I was asked to both lay a wreath on behalf of local people and do the Bible reading.

It was a glorious sunny morning, the leaves of the park trees were tinged in early autumn brown. Knots of older people stood or sat around reminiscing before the service took place. Some of them were pre-teens in 1940 and can still remember vividly the dark night the bomb fell. And a dozen equivalent pre-teen children from St Luke’s primary school were there too chatting away, with their bright promise of youth and life.

At 11 o’clock we started, singing lustily the traditional and emotive hymn, “Abide with me”. The haunting and similarly emotive bugler’s Last Post sounded out across the park, a reverent minute’s silence followed and then the Reveille was played.

Laurence Binyon’s poem came next: “They shall not grow old as we that are left grow old. Age shall not weary them nor the years condemn… At the going down of the sun and in the morning, we shall remember them.” We prayed the Lord’s Prayer, laid our wreaths on the memorial and then it was my turn to read from the Bible.

I glanced across the park to Hallsville School, looked at the old people worn down by the years but proud and dignified as they remembered lost family and friends, saw the fresh expectant faces of the school children, and I turned to the Bible text. It was the 23rd Psalm: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want… Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.”

A lump rose in my throat, tears started to well up and I thought, “I’m not going to make it.”

I paused, took a breath, looked up and down again, was conscious of the Lord’s presence and the importance of the occasion, and started.

Just sixty seconds later I had made it; I had completed the task without sniffling! “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” I read, “and I will dwell in the House of the Lord forever.”

For all sorts of reasons I left the service thankful for God’s goodness and mercy.

Some people claim that Green Street in Newham is to travellers from South Asia what Oxford Street is to North Americans. It provides a colourful variety of predominantly Asian clothing, foods, confectionery and jewellery usually of high quality and at relatively low prices. At weekends it is usually packed with shoppers looking for bargains, especially at the extraordinary Queens Market which is more of a bazaar or souk than a traditional East End street market.

We live just off Green Street so last night my family and I walked along the road to participate with our neighbours in the lively Pakistan Independence Day celebrations. The police had closed off part of the street to facilitate the event, and crowds of mainly young people bedecked in the national colours of green and white and blowing on hooters promenaded along Green Street enjoying the party. It was good fun.

But I also had a heavy heart. Just two weeks ago some eight of my co-religionists (including children) at Gojra in Punjab, Pakistan, had been brutally butchered (here) by a murderous crowd whipped up to a frenzy by militant leaders of local mosques. Some of the Christians – who form a small vulnerable minority in Punjab and indeed in Pakistan – were burnt to death in their homes while the local police looked on.

At the last count there were some 20,000 Pakistani-background people living in Newham, about 8.5% of the population. They are a minority but a respected one, and I was pleased to see Newham police actively cooperating while they celebrated their national independence from Britain that took place 62 years ago.

The contrast between the treatment of the respective minorities on Green Street and at Gojra was painful, so I wrote today to the Pakistani High Commissioner in London:

Your Excellency,

Atrocities against Christian minority in Gojra
Last night my family and I attended the Pakistan Independence Day celebrations on Green Street here in the heart of Newham in London’s East End where we live. It was a safe and vibrant street party for all and particularly for the large Pakistani minority in our area, thanks in part to the local police who closed off the road in order to protect and promote the event.

On Saturday 1 August a number of Pakistan’s Christian minority in Gojra were butchered by a mob apparently inflamed by leaders of nearby mosques over accusations of ‘blasphemy’ against the Quran. During the massacre the local police stood by, unwilling to intervene while Christians – including children – were burnt to death.

Reports indicate that a senior Gojra police officer has now been suspended. Nonetheless as a Newham councillor and a Christian I felt deeply the tragic contrast between the happy event for Newham’s Pakistani minority on Green Street last night and the gut-wrenching atrocity perpetrated with police collusion against the Pakistan’s Christian minority in Gojra two weeks ago.

The Gojra massacre follows a similar if non-fatal mob attack on minority Christian homes a few weeks earlier in the Kasur district of Punjab, also following accusations of ‘blasphemy’.

I am writing therefore to insist that the Pakistani government urgently:

(a) Ensures that the mosque and Muslim leaders who inflamed the violence together with the actual perpetrators are brought to justice;
(b) Carries out a full investigation into Gojra police collusion with – and inactivity during – the atrocity, makes sure that officers responsible are appropriately and severely punished, and guarantees that in future police attitudes towards all minorities is respectful and in line with Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s inclusive founding vision for Pakistan;
(c) Provides generous compensation for the grieving families and the traumatised Christian community in Gojra; and
(d) Abolishes or drastically amends the notorious Pakistan blasphemy laws that are used abusively against non-Muslim minorities and others, often in pursuit of non-religious petty disputes.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

Councillor Alan Craig

I’ll update you on his reply and any developments in due course.

We have to admit it. For the time being the social liberals have won the culture and media wars and, aided and orchestrated by the trendy politically-correct metro-nanny BBC (no longer our spinster Auntie), they completely dominate public discussion.This doesn’t make them right, and I’d certainly lay at their door responsibility for the destruction of the family – the glue of society – which has resulted in so much dysfunction amongst our emotionally-deprived and troubled youngsters. However there are achievements of the left-liberal PC brigade which I reckon are wholly praiseworthy. See for instance how our public attitudes towards disability have changed for the better over the past two decades.

But now this PC dominance has become suffocating and unhealthy. Like Harriet Harman, political-correctness lectures, hectors and handbags us into line. It promotes blandness and conformity, suffers from post-imperial guilt and self-loathing, talks in empty elastic management-speak, dismisses independence and character, and stifles real debate. And, appallingly, it plays directly into the hands of the BNP which, rising from the grass roots, is a growing protest against such top-down elitist control of debate and policy.

But what’s this? Into the politically-correct public arena steps the gentle, saintly and scholarly figure of the Rt Revd Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, Bishop of Rochester and member of the House of Lords.

Instead of resting in the comfy armchairs and imbibing at the cocktail parties of the great and good like the Oxbridge don he yearns to be, this Pakistani refugee from persecuting Islam strides into both church synod and peers chamber uttering orthodox 2,000-year-old Christian truth.

Its explosive stuff of course, the sort of stuff that got Jesus Christ murdered by the religious and political establishment of his day. Inevitably the current Church of England establishment is embarrassed. “Christian truth?” murmur liberal bishops. “Please don’t talk about that.”

Over recent days gays have dominated the airwaves of the gay-obsessed BBC, run at senior levels by a lesbian mafia according to insiders. The programming was prompted by the 40th anniversary on 28th June of the Stonewall riots in New York and by last weekend’s huge Gay Pride march in central London. Much of the discussion has been inconsequential, reflecting perhaps that the homosexual agenda is now so mainstream it has nothing new to offer. See for instance the vacuous political squabble between the gays of the two front benches (here).

But Bishop Michael spoilt the party. He threw a rock into the pool. He told the Sunday Telegraph that gays ought to repent (here) – a universally applicable idea he borrowed from the Founder of Christianity and Saviour of the World (Matt 4:17, etc).

Of course the balloon went up with the usual suspects queuing to heap opprobrium onto the Bishop’s balding head. The often admirable Peter Tatchell called on Dr Nazir-Ali to repent of his sins (here). And even some unknown Tory frontbencher called Nick Herbert who claims to be gay (“me too, me too”) had a go, ludicrously lumping together gentle bishops like Dr Nazir-Ali (and perhaps the equally gentle and scholarly Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright) with homophobic bullies at home and gay persecution abroad (here). Really?

It’s probably inevitable that Bp Michael should have decided to resign (here) from the Bishops’ Bench – the C of E cannot contain a senior man of character and courage like him. It seems backbones of jelly are required for leaders of our national church, and this mild-mannered courteous man refuses to fit that bill.

He’s a true scholar and gentle-man as well as a true Christian leader. I honour him.

Is the tide turning? Is the country waking up at last?

A fortnight ago the Home Office banned Geert Wilders, Dutch MP and producer of the anti-Islam film Fitna (http://www.themoviefitna.com/fitna-the-movie) from entering the country, in part because jailbird Lord Ahmed promised 10,000 Muslims on the streets in protest. It was a depressing denial of freedom of speech by a government that somehow manages to be both supine and hectoring at the same time.

The erosion of our liberties has been going on for decades but, to lift our spirits, it seems the fight-back has started. There is a sold-out Convention on Modern Liberty (http://www.modernliberty.net) this weekend that I’d give my right arm to attend.

Sponsored by Liberty, The Guardian, Joseph Rowntree and openDemocracy, the Convention organisers point out that 60 years after Britain was the proud co-author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), we are now faced with ‘unprecedented… challenges to our rights, freedoms and democracy’. They argue we are the ‘inheritors of an inspiring tradition of liberty’, and through the Convention they are issuing a ‘call for the renewal of our democratic self-confidence’. Amen to that.

Significantly the Convention draws together people from across the political spectrum. The rights-loving Left comes together with the freedom-loving Right and Tony Benn sits on the same platform as David Davis MP. Maybe this is another sign of the break-up of the old-style turn-of-the-century political categories and of the re-drawing of political boundaries and alliances.

Earlier this week a courageous woman made a little-noticed call about an under-publicised aspect of the UDHR. In a Question for Short Debate in the House of Lords, Baroness Caroline Cox asked the government about the persecution of religious believers in contravention of Article 18 of the UDHR (http://www.parliament.the-stationery-office.com/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/90224-0011.htm#09022472000227).

Caroline Cox is an extraordinary woman who displays quintessentially English qualities. Modest, fearless, practical and restless, with a passion for the under-dog and a mild dose of attractive eccentricity,  she has busied herself over the years with dispensing aid and love to the most persecuted and forgotten communities on earth. Often at great personal risk in conflict zones and frequently in situations of real personal hardship, she has helped and comforted dispossessed people in Nagorno-Karabakh, Burma, North Korea, northern Nigeria, Sudan and northern Uganda amongst others. She has seen human misery at its worst and faith at its most hopeful.

When she speaks she does so with real authority based on her first-hand experience. She knows what she is talking about.

In the House of Lords this week the Baroness pointed out that while around the globe millions of people suffer because of their religious and atheist beliefs, national governments – including our own – only half-heartedly support Article 18 of the UDHR (that is, the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; to change religion or belief; and to outwardly express religion or belief).

She also highlighted the attempts of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to protect Islam from criticism by repeatedly promoting a spurious ‘Combating Defamation of Religions’ resolution at the UN General Assembly.

I’ll return to the subject of the OIC and its defamation resolution in a future post dv, and I may find myself irresistibly compelled to defame their religion as espoused by fundamentalist members of the OIC such as the Wahhabi Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

But meanwhile let’s celebrate the efforts of Caroline Cox and the Convention organisers. While there are such people impacting public debate, the lights of liberty cannot be fully extinguished.