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.)

It was on both BBC and ITV’s London news, in the national media (here) and in London’s Evening Standard (here) this week: the country’s highest-paid council chief executive is leaving London’s poorest borough after only two years in the job. Despite intense media enquiry and speculation, no-one can or will find out why. This, after all, is the hyper-spun media-manipulating one-party New Labour borough of Newham. Think Peter Mandelson. Think Alastair Campbell. Throw in a budget-busting annual £2.5m publicity spend and you’ll get the picture. But you won’t get the facts.

Joe Duckworth was appointed chief executive just two years ago. It had been a long interregnum since the departure of predecessor Dave Burbage (who Box and Cox’d with Duckworth, ending up in the latter’s previous chief executive job on Isle of Wight council). Duckworth was installed in Newham with the brief of improving delivery of services and preparing the borough for the 2012 Olympics.

However it was his pay that became the story (here). Inevitably there is built-in organisational tension between Newham’s two chiefs, the elected executive mayor and the chief executive. To avoid Blair/Brown-style bad blood, mayor Sir Robin Wales fixed Duckworth with UK councils’ top pay packet of £241,000 a year (over £280,000 with pension and perks) and allowed him to continue to live in the Isle of Wight.

Throughout his two-year tenure Duckworth simply visited the borough for just three days a week and enjoyed a four-day weekend at home on the Isle of Wight.

(I called to see him about an urgent legal issue one Monday earlier this year. I sat on the phone in his plush office in Newham talking to him on the Isle of Wight. “It’s a detailed complicated matter,” he said. “It would be much easier if we could discuss it face to face.” Er… really?)

This was an appalling abuse of taxpayers’ money but Wales arranged it to buy Duckworth’s cooperation and amenability. Power-conscious Wales is the boss and he likes it that way. With classic Canning Town coarseness local people called it ‘Duckworth’s bend-over pay’.

The speculation now is that he will receive a £500,000 golden handshake (here), no doubt partly to buy his silence. The poor taxpayers of this deprived borough are likely to be screwed once again.

Why did Duckworth leave? Two separate sources have indicated the chief executive was escorted (‘frog-marched’ said one) out of the town hall on Tuesday evening. A middle-manager told me council bosses are internally promoting a story that Duckworth gave a £600,000 contract to a friend of his called Steve – which sounds to me like Mandelsonian dark arts of character assassination. Others have spoken of repeated clashes between Wales and Duckworth – which seems unlikely in view of the above.

One thing is for sure, we’ll never know for certain. We don’t know what goes on in Kim Jong-Il’s North Korea. Why should we know what goes on in Sir Robin Wales’ Newham?

Like our recent prime minister, German federal chancellor Angela Merkel is a child of the manse but, unlike him, she is willing to bat for the public benefits of Christianity – as of course befits the leader of Europe’s largest Christian Democratic party, the CDU.

In Munich last month, following in the footsteps of federal president Horst Kohler, she beat a path to the Ecumenical Kirchentag (church congress) where 50,000 Christians from all major Gernam denominations heard her clearly re-affirm that Christianity is the main foundation of that country’s value system.

Alan Wilson reported in the Guardian about Kohler’s robust pull-your-socks-up call to the ecclesiastical leaders attending the Kirchentag – ‘power speaking truth to church’ Wilson dubbed it (here).

(Incidentally, Wilson writes an informative article – but why does he underplay Christianity on this side of the Channel? He states twice that the 55,000 attendees at Munich are about 20 times the numbers of those at the largest Christian gathering in England. Really? Just 2,750 people?

Here in Newham 30,000 Christians meet twice a year at the ExCel Centre for an all-night ‘Festival of Life’ (here) .

Also in Newham this coming weekend, Christians from across London and the denominations will meet at West Ham United FC in Upton Park for the annual Global Day of Prayer (here). If the last GDOP at West Ham in 2007 is anything to go by, there will be up to 15,000 Christians in the stadium on Sunday afternoon.

At the end of July my family will attend New Wine (here) for a week of Christian worship, teaching and fellowship – together with over 10,000 other believers.

There are many more examples. In its heyday before the development of the Olympic complex claimed its premises in 2007, Hackney-based Kingsway international Christian Centre (here) had 12,000 worshippers in its 4,000-capacity building every Sunday. So although Wilson is (a) a C of E bishop and (b) writing for the Guardian, surely these are inadequate excuses for him being so out-of-touch with on-the-ground Christian reality.)

But while Kohler’s robust comments rightly grabbed the headlines, Merkel’s were important too. “Our society lives on premises that it cannot create by itself,” she reminded the Christian audience, a statement which commentators recognise as based on the dictum of German legal philosopher Ernst-Wolfgang Bockenforde, that “the liberal secular state is based on normative premises that it cannot itself guarantee”.

Basically the argument is that only religion – Christianity – can create the ethical basis that modern secular societies depend upon to function. “On the one hand (the liberal secular state) can subsist only if the freedom it consents to its citizens is regulated from within, inside the moral substance of the individuals and of a homogeneous society,” wrote Bockenforde in his ‘Staat, Gesellschaft, Freiheit’ (here). “On the other it is not able to guarantee these forces of inner regulation by itself without renouncing its liberalism.”

Exactly! Our democratic freedoms depend on their Christian undergirdings, and as the latter are eroded from public life so inevitably the former shrink too. The direct consequence is our burgeoning and increasingly illiberal nanny state where Big Sister knows best and replaces God; citizens are handbagged into line by progressively more intrusive laws, bureaucratic regulations and diktats from Brussels as well as Whitehall; fear and caution replace faith and optimism in public discourse; and, for example, freely consenting adult smokers are no longer allowed to get together to form a smoking club! The vital organs of our mature democracy – such as freedom of association – are being closed down. Liberalism is being renounced.

Regrettably despite his much-vaunted churchgoing, I don’t see David Cameron following Angela Merkel with a reminder of the necessity of Christianity for the health of our democracy.

In the event it wasn’t so bad. I had watched Jacqui Smith leave her election count in tears and seen Charles Clarke’s look of defeat as his result was read out, and I’d wondered if that’s how all incumbents feel when they’re defeated at the polls.

All I can say is that it wasn’t so for me, partly because of the conduct of Labour supporters. As I had also seen and experienced at innumerable Council meetings, the tribal and primitive nastiness of Newham Labour Party is a wonder to behold. I was the butt of it when first elected in May 2002 when Tony Banks MP and Cllr June Leitch led the hissing and booing; CPA was the butt of it this time when Mayor Sir Robin Wales led the noisy Labour celebrations of our defeat with an inelegant jig. If you can find some kind of perverse pleasure in seeing human nature at its most graceless and infantile, then there was quite a lot of enjoyment – of sorts – available at the Newham count. Unlike the outgoing Labour prime minister, the Labour Party in Newham doesn’t do dignity.

We ran an effective campaign and I don’t think as a small party that we could have done much more. For the first time CPA was criticised in Labour Party election leaflets but I don’t think these scored much with the voters, and certainly we rapidly answered their points with our own flyers. This was good election stuff, kept CPA accountable to our voters and there can be no objection to Labour doing their job in this way.

The decisive problem for us was the fact that the general election took place on the same day as the local elections; voters’ focus was inevitably on national issues and on the three main national parties. As far back as January we’d talked privately about the possibility of a Labour tsunami in Newham – and so it proved. The parliamentary votes were counted first and once I saw the significantly increased majorities – against the national trend outside London – of Newham’s Labour MPs, I realised CPA’s time on the Council was up, for now at least.

In the event Labour wiped out all opposition and once again holds all elected seats at all levels. Their total grip on the borough is amazing and unique.

For me the most revealing event at the count was Mayor Sir Robin Wales’ acceptance speech in which he rounded on CPA and accused us of lying. Of course we’ve become used to this allegation over the years as it is the bog-standard reaction of the Mayor and his colleagues when their activities are exposed and their policies criticised yet they have no answer. Frustration, anger and bluster are their usual response.

I first came across this in 2001 when I led local residents in their campaign against the brutal Canning Town housing regeneration project. At meeting after meeting Sir Robin publicly accused me of lying. I wasn’t of course, but in the Orwellian one-party state of Newham where everyone is expected to view the world through the Labour Party prism, speaking an alternative truth to power is tantamount to treason.

Also I have previously posted about another incident when I was absurdly accused of lying (here).

So Sir Robin’s accusation this time was neither abnormal nor unexpected, although it was made more entertaining by two amiable young hijab-wearing members of Respect who shouted back “You’re the liar; you’re the liar!” However CPA supporters kept their cool despite the Mayor’s torrent of vitriol; turning the other cheek is an important ethic.

But Sir Robin’s spite was revealing. Clearly the exposure of his parking habits deep in the basement of the Council’s Building 1000 (see previous post) was still rankling. He has no explanation for his abuse of the disabled parking space apart the strutting self-important self-promotion that is symptomatic of his administration, so in his embarrassment he lashed out at CPA. An urgent FoI request by his campaign manager Lisa Buckingham (here) revealed that as usual Sir Robin hoped to pass the buck and blame Council officers. But unfortunately for him he’s in charge, he’s the boss, and daily he chose to park his car right over the disabled logo. So he’s stuffed.

Of themselves, of course, his parking proclivities are no great shakes. But as a metaphor for the corrupting self-centredness of the Mayor’s image-conscious spin-addicted administration, they are superb. And his reaction to our publication of the photo – the uncontrolled anger, the bullying solicitor’s letter, the responsibility-ducking FoI request and the false accusations – exactly highlight much that is wrong in the Mayor’s office.

And the future for CPA in Newham? We’ll have a break and then review the options. After eight good years I don’t think I’ll stand for Council again. But there are good people in the party who want to serve the wider community through CPA and Newham urgently needs an Opposition party. I’ll be happy to support them.

Personally, I’ve always found election time in Newham enjoyable but regrettably there’s rarely any real debate. The democratic deficit created by the all-powerful Labour Party – that’s produced effectively a one-party state in the borough – ensures that there’s little scope for sparks to fly or temperatures to rise. Labour labours hard to close down debate and to ensure that everyone sings from their Town Hall song sheet.

So it was with some amusement that we received a letter from the solicitor of Newham’s Mayor Sir Robin Wales. It seems we’ve scored a significant hit and one of our election leaflets has incurred Sir Robin’s wrath: “It will be understood by those reading (the leaflet) that the Mayor has put his own interests above those of disabled drivers and (it) makes derogatory comments on the Mayor’s motives and values,” said the solicitor’s letter. “(It) will undoubtedly cause serious and ongoing damage to the Mayor’s reputation, feelings and chances of re-election.”

Our intention is not to upset the man himself but rather to expose his self-serving secular administration. So… yes, it’s election time and we are objecting by all valid means to the values and policies that this all-powerful executive Mayor has imposed on Newham during his second term of office. And yes, we believe from the evidence that the Mayor puts his own interests above those of disabled drivers and many others. And yes, we wish to do all we can to swim against Newham’s traditional Labour tide, to spoil his chances of re-election and to offer a better and Christian alternative.

So we’re guilty as charged by his solicitor – but welcome to democracy and legitimate democratic politics, Sir Robin.

The letter continued by listing 11 demands to which CPA should agree including the disclosure of all the names and addresses to which the leaflets have been distributed (we had 23,000 printed and most have been delivered!); the publication of a full apology; the payment of Sir Robin’s legal expenses; and the donation of £5,000 to a charity of his choice.

“Typical,” said one wit in the office, “God had Ten Commandments so Sir Robin has to have eleven.”

The source of all this controversy? It centres primarily on a photo taken with my family camera in the basement of Newham Council’s sparkling new glass offices close to London City Airport. It’s a picture of the parking space that is closest to the lifts and stairs to the offices above.

Before Newham Council moved in, it rightly had been reserved for disabled drivers. Now it’s reserved for you-know-who who parks his car daily over the blacked-out disabled logo. Case closed.

You can see how we’ve used the photo in the latest edition of the Newham Recorder – turn to page 15 on the online digital edition here.

We’ve used it too on the Christian Peoples Alliance pages in the Mayoral election booklet that is sent free to every voter across Newham. In view of Sir Robin’s legal letter it’s significant that all party inserts in the booklet have to be approved for their accuracy and fair comment by the Council’s Chief Executive & Returning Officer and also by the Council’s Head of Legal Services.

We’re also promoting it on a lorry that is driving around Newham for the last two weeks of the campaign.

Our aim is to highlight the strutting preening self-promoting values that are at the heart of New Labour’s showcase project in Newham – in direct contrast with the caring serving Christian values that were taught to us by the Son of God. Newham Labour operates at the Town Hall through the unholy trinity of power, control and self-promoting spin, and we are attempting to hold up a mirror so that all Newham can see just how ugly is this secular ‘we-don’t-do-God’ (here) New Labour project beneath its smooth glossy exterior.

We replied to the solicitor’s letter suggesting that Sir Robin should recognise that our leaflet is part of the rough and tumble of election politics and is therefore protected as such by the law. The alternative is that he’ll have to take us to court.

So far we’ve heard no more. It seems Sir Robin has blinked first.

My apologies to any readers who have missed my posts over the past few weeks. I’ve been taken over by preparations for the Newham elections on 6th May. The Christian Peoples Alliance is putting up candidates for Newham Council right across the borough; I’m standing as CPA candidate for Newham’s executive Mayor; and in the national General Election on the same day we’re running a candidate – Stan Gain – in the West Ham parliamentary constituency.

This is a massive exercise for a small party that relies almost entirely on volunteers. But we’re up and running, the initial exhausting preparation and organisation is over, the campaign is going well and I’ve now a little more time for blogging.

On the doors it appears many people are confused about how to vote in the General Election. “They’re all the same” and “I can’t tell the difference” is a common refrain, and apathy a common result. Many it seems won’t vote at all.

So I was amused to see this refusenik position being bolstered recently by handbills that suddenly sprouted on walls and advertising hoardings around my neighbourhood. ‘Voting is Haram’ they announced – ‘haram’ being an Arabic term for ‘forbidden by Islamic law’. Muslims were being urged not to vote in the elections.

This is of course a minority position within the Muslim community (here) that is propounded mainly by extremist groups like Hizb-ut-Tahrir and al-Muhajiroun and its successors. And it’s in interesting contrast to Premier Christian Radio’s worthy initiative called ‘I Promise To Vote’ (here) which attempts to mobilise Christians for the elections.

Personally I’ve always insisted on going to the polling station and fulfilling my civic duty. But in the past, when faced with the mind-numbingly anodyne and limiting choice of one of the three main parties (which is Box and which is Cox?), I’ve often scrawled ‘Christ is King’ across the ballot paper and stuffed it in the box.

It may have been a spoilt ballot paper, but at least I’ve expressed my views.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dear Editor,

The Mayor must be very frustrated.

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

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

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

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

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

Yours sincerely,

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

I wonder why?

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.

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!