It’s ironic that progressive Muslim Dr Taj Hargey of the Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford, (here) asserts what radical-progressive Christian Jonathan Bartley of Ekklesia doubts (here), that there is now active discrimination against Christianity in the UK – much of the responsibility for which I reckon lies at the door of this country’s particular brand of aggressive New Atheist secularisation.

Such discrimination in schools was highlighted in an Ofsted report published three weeks ago (here). And a publication ‘A New Inquisition: Religious Persecution In Britain Today’ launched a couple of week ago by the independent non-religious think-tank Civitas (here) and dedicated to Ben and Sharon Volgelenzang (see my previous post here) highlights how recent religious hatred legislation has been used in an “at best arbitrary and at worst biased” way particularly against Christians.

But discrimination against Christians in the UK is nothing compared to the persecution of Christians abroad. Over the past month:

On 1st July, Muhammad Guul Hashim Idiris, a convert from Islam, was publicly executed in the Hudur district of Somalia, apparently because of his Christian views (here).

On 5th July Maher el-Gowhary, also a convert from Islam who in the face of deep hostility is trying to get his conversion recognised by the Egyptian authorities, was ferociously attacked on a Cairo street while accompanied by his lawyer (here). According to Maher the attackers intended to behead him.

On 16th July Pastor Artur Suleimanov, another convert from Islam, was shot dead outside his church in Makhachkala, the capital of the Russian republic of Dagestan (here).

On 17th July, at least eight Christians including the wife, two children and grandson of a priest were slaughtered in a previously peaceful village near Jos, Nigeria, (here) where the wider conflict is a complex tribal and economic/land issue as well as a religious one (here).

On 20th July, two local Christians questionably accused of blaspheming Islam’s prophet were shot dead outside court in Faisalabad, Pakistan (here).

On 27th July, a Christian centre in West Java, Indonesia, was attacked by Islamic extremists and buildings were destroyed (here).

There are fewer than sixty Catholic priests in Turkey and in June the fifth to be shot or stabbed in the past four years was killed and decapitated by Islamic ritual (here).

In Iraq the campaign of violence against Christians is so decimating and displacing the community that some commentators reckon it is possible Christianity’s 2000-year history in Iraq could end within a generation (here).

It is right of course that discrimination against Christians in the UK should be challenged by Hargey, Ofsted, Civitas and others.

But it is abroad where the real Christian persecution is taking place.

(Incidentally, I spoke outside 10 Downing Street yesterday at a protest against Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws. Organised by the British Pakistani Christian Association (here) and including Sikhs and people from other persecuted Pakistani minority faiths, it was held on the anniversary of the Gojra atrocity – see my previous post here – and had Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali (here), who is himself a refugee from death-threats in Pakistan, as keynote speaker.

I don’t hold much hope. Not only is the Pakistan government unwilling to address the evil effects of the blasphemy laws in their own country, they are actively promoting what is effectively a global Islamic blasphemy law at the United Nations. Pakistan, on behalf of the 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) – including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Egypt, etc, who are not exactly known for promoting human rights – proposed the Combating Defamation of Religions resolution (here) which was passed at the United Nations Human Rights Council in March; indicatively and ominously the resolution highlights Islam and Muslims four times but cites no other religion. It certainly makes no mention of the defamed and mistreated Christians, Hindus, Sikhs and Ahmadiyya Muslim sect in the Islamic Republic’s own backyard.)

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.

Following my criticism of the National Secular Society as an essentially deceitful organisation (here), it’s interesting to find myself in agreement with them for once.

Last August Shamso Miah, described as an unemployed 25 year-old and devout Muslim, left his mosque and went to the East Ham branch of Lloyds TSB, just a couple of hundred metres from Newham Town Hall. There he was involved in a ‘queue rage’ assault on Mohammad Furcan, hitting him three times and breaking his jaw.

Miah came before Cherie Booth QC at Inner London Crown Court on 27 January, and the wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair gave him a suspended six month sentence plus community service.

But it was her comments that caused a minor storm. According to last week’s Newham Recorder (here), she told Miah that her reason for suspending the jail term was ‘based on the fact that you are a religious person and have not been in trouble before’. She added: ‘You are a religious man and you know that this is unacceptable behaviour’.

But the fact that Miah is a ‘religious man’ (she mentioned it twice) should not of itself qualify him for special treatment. In the UK at least, religious and non-religious people are all equal before the law and what the NSS wittily calls ‘Cheria Law’, with its apparent bias in favour of people of faith, is un-nuanced and inappropriate.

However judges have to take individual and personal factors into account of course and those of previous good character may expect to receive a more lenient sentence than habitual criminals. A law-breaker who is normally embedded in a stable family within a close-knit local community may be less likely to re-offend than a solitary unattached inner-city dweller. And a man who is a leader, earning obscene sums of money from his fans and promoted as a role model for youth such as John Terry, may expect less sympathy in court than ordinary Joe Soap. And in sentencing, religious belief is as relevant as these other personal factors

But spiritual discernment is required to assess such belief as not all religions are the same, and it’s regrettable that most of our judges, like most of society, are religiously illiterate. For instance, as the Royal Navy shows (here), many authorities seem to think Satanism may be treated as the spiritual and moral equivalent of, say, Quakerism. And it’s rare for a member of the media commentariat to throw political correctness to the wind and draw a fair distinction between ‘harmless’ Christianity and ‘sinister’ Islam, as Andrew Brown did recently in the Guardian (here).

Different religions, like different foods, have different effects on their consumers. And good food is good for you while bad food ain’t. And as a case in point, it ought to be blindingly obvious even to our secularised authorities that Devil-worship – including the Admiralty-approved variety – certainly ain’t good for a soul, a ship’s crew or society.

So instead of making blanket catch-all assumptions about ‘religious people’, Ms Booth should have looked at Mr Miah’s particular faith – as well as his crime record, employment status, family and home background, education, etc – and its effect on him personally. Then she could make the right judgement about an appropriate sentence for this particular individual in respect of his particular crime.

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.

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.)

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!

A story against myself that amply illustrates our self-interested feelings-based society:
I’m normally careful to avoid driving while talking on my mobile phone. If it rings, I’ll pull over before answering.

I must have been suffering from some post-Christmas amnesia as I certainly wasn’t attentive as I should have been. I had stopped the car at traffic lights on Green Street near my home when my mobile rang. I answered briefly and, as I put the phone down, was horrified to see a police officer climbing out of the well-marked police car waiting at the lights immediately in front of me. He had spotted my illegal activity through his rear-view mirror.
I was caught bang-to-rights and had no excuse. A £60 fine and three penalty points were staring me in the face.

The officer knocked hard on my window and I opened the driver’s door to a wave of belligerent self-centredness. “You’re taking the piss out of me using your mobile right behind my car,” he accused me aggressively as if the whole world orientated around him. “I wasn’t intending to take the piss,” I replied politely but firmly. This was true; regrettably I hadn’t even noticed him or his patrol car.

To my relief without a further word he slammed the door, stormed back to his vehicle and roared off through the now-green lights.

So that was it. I kept my clean driving licence although, if he had taken the matter further, objectively I had certainly (if briefly) broken the law and a conviction would have been the inevitable result.

But because I hadn’t set out to hurt the feelings, upset the self-esteem or insult the ego of one of Her Majesty’s boys in blue, he didn’t pursue the matter and I avoided conviction.

So feelings rule and subjective self-regard overrules objective law-breaking – to my benefit on this occasion.

I pointed out almost a year ago (Convictions in court by Kleenex?) that our court system has become dependent on subjective touchy-feely emotion-based ‘evidence’. So too, it seems, has our police service.

Whatever happened to objective truth, professional detachment and hard facts within the UK’s due process of law?

At their request I was today interviewed again by Hertfordshire police. They are finalising their investigation into ‘Abdullah1425′ aka ‘Muhammed’ who was allegedly responsible for putting the obituary ‘death threat’ video, In Memory of Councillor Alan Craig, on YouTube. (See eg Daily Telegraph Report)

Extraordinarily, the prosecution case against him seems to depend largely on my feelings about the issue. The police want to know how, as victim, I felt about the video. What did I think when I heard about it? Was I afraid when I watched it? How did my wife feel?

The whole approach seems nonsense. The question isn’t, what did I feel? That is purely subjective. The important thing is whether the accused objectively committed a crime.

I tried to help the police during the interview and explained that as a person of faith I took a conscious decision not to be afraid nor to let the obituary video threat affect my life. But surely this shouldn’t be relevant as it was a deliberate decision taken by me after the alleged crime was committed and in response to it.

Or has our legal system now become dependent on subjective touchy-feely emotion-based ‘evidence’ ? Perhaps prosecutions and court cases should be sponsored by Kleenex.