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.)

I am hoping that the Labour government’s £145m Preventing Violent Extremism (PVE) initiative will get the chop as part of the new ConLib coalition’s spending cuts. The programme has been ineffective, wasteful, puts public money into extremists’ hands (here) and finds our avowedly secular and religiously-neutral government pouring £millions into anything from schools to soccer clubs, whose common identity overwhelmingly is that they are Islamic. As far as the UK is concerned, Buddhists don’t do violent extremism so their religion doesn’t get state financial support. Nor do Christians. Nor Hindus. Nor Jews. Nor Sikhs. Odd isn’t it?

It is also awful but ironic that a senior member of the government that introduced PVE has himself been assaulted allegedly by one of the violent extremists that PVE was intended to prevent.

Stephen Timms is the personally likeable Labour MP for East Ham. He was a member of Tony Blair’s cabinet and he also held senior portfolios outside the cabinet under Gordon Brown. He lives in Newham, describes himself as a Christian Socialist and is recognised as a hard-working constituency MP.

The alleged assailant Roshonara Choudhary, 21, lives with her parents and four younger siblings in East Ham, just a mile away from Timms. According to neighbours she is a devout Muslim who has given private English lessons to local kids for £5 an hour (here) . She is also bright. A reliable source says that she was an A-star student at a London college who dropped out and became unemployed earlier this year when she started getting involved in radical Islam and studying Islamist websites.

The same source says it appears the suspect would have preferred to get Tony Blair but, reckoning she wouldn’t be able to approach him because of security, she chose Timms instead as an easier target.

Apparently wearing an orange hijab and carrying two kitchen knives she attended Timms’ first constituents’ surgery after the 6th May general election when he was returned with the largest majority in the country. Unusually for a devout Muslim woman she allegedly put out her hand to shake the male MP’s hand – then apparently she suddenly plunged one of the knives into his stomach.

The wounds were not life-threatening and after a spell in hospital Timms has now recovered enough to attend both parliament and his surgeries. He also appeared at the Global Day of Prayer at West Ham FC, Upton Park, on Sunday (see previous post here) where he said he’d been helped by the large number of people praying for him.

(“The church is growing in London,” he also told the 10,000 worshippers, contra Alan Wilson’s Guardian article quoted in the previous post too, “and is a remarkably diverse group of congregations, but one in their faith in Christ.”)

Two thoughts struck me about the stabbing:

First, Timms’ alleged assailant is likely to spend the next decade or so in jail – what a waste of a promising young life. But even more, what a tragedy for the accused’s family who by all accounts are normal local people who will now have to live with the bewilderment, horror and shame that the attack has brought upon them. They deserve our sympathy.

Second, what is it about Islam that regular and socially-integrated people from normal families with good futures ahead of them serving other people can suddenly turn into monsters and killers who perpetrate unspeakable evil?  The Glasgow car bombers were doctors working in NHS hospitals and the leader of the 7/7 bombers was a primary school teacher with a young family. Outwardly there was little sign of the dark destructive thoughts that were corroding their inner beings.

The issue is a spiritual one of course and the crisis lurks deep within the consciousness of the individuals. I have noted before (here) the inner moral collapse that was the result of one intelligent middle-class Englishman’s conversion to Islam. How much more must have been the moral and spiritual collapse of the suicide bombers cited above?

PVE is not the answer. A spiritual problem requires a spiritual solution. As a committed Christian Stephen Timms will know this too.

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.

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.

A friend recently drew my attention to an ‘Official Response’ issued to the press on 23rd December by the Muslim Debate Initiative which slates me for comments I made about Islam and women in posts on this blog. The Response was authored by Dr Tabasum Hussain, a UK-born Muslim now living with her family in Canada, and is published in full on the MDI website (here).

On behalf of MDI Tabasum took strong exception to a couple of light asides I made about the lack of women in the their organisation in London: In one post last November I wrote (here) ‘Yes, only guys, no girls of course – this is Islam’, and in a December post I remarked (here) ‘No women of course, this is Islam’.

In her Response Tabasum writes that ‘Mr Craig (makes) ignorant and often hateful comments about Islam in general, and in his failing to get his facts straight about this whole issue he does a great job of highlighting the lack of credibility in anything else he may blurt out against Islam, Prophet Muhammad (saaw), Women, and Muslim organisations.’

Fortunately this is neither true nor is it the view of all Muslims. Indeed in my December post, above, I quote journalist and blogger Umar Farooq who listened to my trenchant views on the niqab (Islamic face veil) and the gender bias inherent in Sharia law at MDI’s own Islamification debate, yet gave me the highest rating of the six panellists (here for Farooq’s full report).

So yesterday I emailed Tabasum as follows:

Dear Tabasum,

I was both surprised and sorry when a friend recently pointed out your Statement on the MDI website dated 21st December: ‘Official response to Head of Christian Peoples Alliance party, Alan Craig’s article: ‘Off with their heads.’’

I was surprised because, regrettably, in your Statement you don’t seem to take any account of my genuine warm regard for the MDI organisers as expressed in my comments such as “I take my hat off (to MDI)”, “The (MDI) event was democracy in action”, “courageous”, “genuinely interested in grappling with the issues”, etc.

I was sorry because, understandably but also regrettably , neither do you attempt answer the main thrust of my 9th November post which was a stonking great criticism of convert Paul Williams’ foul fetid views on the ‘hot issue’ (as he excitedly describes it) of the execution of apostates. I’m pleased Paul has since taken down his offensive post, but he refuses to debate the execution of Islam’s apostates with me and instead has retired upset into his shell. Perhaps he has had a slight taste of the distress that the growing number of people leaving Islam in the UK may feel when they read such murderous drivel.

Instead in your Statement you major on my light-hearted asides: ‘Yes, only guys, no girls of course – this is Islam’ and ‘No women of course, this is Islam’.

The fact that MDI takes such huge exception to my asides about Islam seems to indicate that I’ve touched a raw nerve.

This raw nerve – and Achilles heel, to mix my metaphors – is of course the fact that Islam is at root a misogynistic religion. There are all sorts of explanations for this, most of which go back to the Founder of Islam himself and the in-built inequalities between the genders within the religion. Of course there are exceptions which prove the rule (Benazir Bhutto became Prime Minister of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan less than a decade after Margaret Thatcher was elected Britain’s first and, so far, only female PM). And I don’t doubt you personally are an effective member of MDI, nor that the new appointee in the UK, Nazli Ali, will be too although I’ve yet to meet her.

But at a fundamental level it is impossible for Islam to provide for the intrinsic equality of worth between the genders that, for instance, Christianity offers.

However, we are members of our respective debating organisations so rather than writing Statements, how about us publicly debating the issue? I suggest I propose the motion: ‘This House believes that Islam is misogynistic’. You would be free to respond to the motion as you see fit.

Unfortunately I cannot undertake such a debate during your immediate visit to the UK, although I’m looking forward to attending your debate with Beth Grove on 5th March. But perhaps we could fix it for sometime during your next visit this side of the Atlantic?

With best wishes,

It will be interesting to see if Tabasum accepts the challenge, and also see if she is willing to debate Islam with a member of the opposite sex.

I’ll keep you informed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)

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!