Douglas Murray is a man in a hurry – or at least a man rapidly on the move.

Youthful founding director of the Centre for Social Cohesion, political columnist, lonely defender of neo-conservatism, luminary of BBC programmes such as Question Time and The Moral Maze and biographer of Oscar Wilde’s homosexual lover Lord Alfred Douglas, Murray is a rising star on the national political scene.

I was at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre a couple of years ago where, before a huge audience, he and Daniel Pipes trounced Ken Livingstone and Salma Yaqoub at the then Mayor’s showcase ‘Clash of Civilisations’ debate. Murray was entertaining, incisive and outstanding.

I also know personally that he is generous and sensitive.

I was saddened therefore to read his recent Spectator article ‘Studying Islam has made me an Atheist’  in which he blames the ‘repetitions, contradictions and absurdities’ of the Quran for turning him against all holy books including the Bible of his own Christian heritage. ‘Holy texts are an accretion of human effort and human error… Scepticism of the claims made by one religion (Islam) was joined by scepticism of all such claims… Muhammad made me an atheist.’

Although he went to church with his family on the Big Day three weeks ago, it was his first non-believing Christmas.

I can understand where he is coming from. Like Murray I was brought up an Anglican and like Murray my religion ebbed and flowed. (As Boris Johnson puts it, “My faith is a bit like Magic FM in the Chilterns, the signal comes and goes.”) But following university and business school, I had drifted into long-term indifferent agnosticism by my mid-twenties.

But what pulled me up short and converted me into an irrevocably committed Christian just before my 30th birthday was precisely that which Murray has so recently rejected – the scriptures, and in particular the account of Christ in the New Testament.

I found that the Bible isn’t primarily a set of propositional truths, ancient stories, beautiful poetry or abstract theology – although it is these. Neither is it just great literature like Shakespeare – although the 1611 Authorised Version gives the Bard more than a run for his money.

I found rather that the scriptures are alive and active. They have the ability to reach out and pluck at your heart strings and/or punch you on the nose in a way unknown to other literature.

So when Shakespeare puts in King Lear’s mouth “I am a man more sinned against than sinning,” we may begin at last to engage sympathetically with Lear in his steady decline from tyrant to tragedy, but we leave the theatre personally unchallenged.

However, when the New Testament tells us that the pre-existent Son of God, facing betrayal, scourging and an excruciatingly painful death, tells his followers “Now (am I) glorified and God is glorified (in me)… A new commandment I give you: Love one another,” we cannot walk away unchallenged. Christ is making huge claims about himself and his demise and significant demands on his followers.

Either he is completely nuts or he is who he says he is.

As I wrestled with the scriptures I found the truth slowly got hold of me from out of its pages. In the end I could do nothing but stop arguing, chuck in the towel and admit that Jesus Christ is indeed the ultimate reality.

Precise accuracy in the material or measurable sense was no longer of major concern. The Bible had revealed profound truth that transcended this limited physical world in a way that Shakespeare cannot. Despite myself, I had come into a deep personal commitment.

Douglas Murray’s issue about the accuracy or error of the Bible is important, but not – in my experience – with regard to personal faith. The key question is whether it speaks to you in a life-challenging way.

When Jesus tells us ‘Love your neighbour as yourself,’ is that just an interesting Christian ethic? Or is it a command from our Maker to be complied with?

The decision, as they say, is yours.

I received a circular email yesterday that contained quotes about Arabs and Jews by former Israeli prime minister and current leader of the right-wing Likud party, Benjamin Netanyahu. It originated from the tensions surrounding the Gaza tragedy and there are no prizes for guessing the tone of Netanyahu’s views.

But what caught my eye were some of the facts that compare Jews and Muslims – hard facts I’ve noticed before that cannot simply be dismissed as Netanyahu bias.

The email points out that the total Muslim population is approximately 1.3 billion or 20% of the world’s population yet Muslims have received just 7 Nobel prizes during the award’s 100 year history; 4 for peace, 2 for medicine, 1 for literature and none for physics and economics – the email doesn’t mention the Nobel prize for chemistry.

(Indicatively, the number would be 8 if it weren’t for censorious Islamic orthodoxy.  In 1979 Pakistani physicist and devout Ahmadhi Muslim Abdus Salam quoted the Quran as he received his Nobel award from the King of Sweden. But he cannot be included among the Muslim Laureates. In 1976 the Islamic Republic of Pakistan gave the Ahmaddiyya Muslim community the Islamic order of the boot, officially classifying them as non-Muslims. In protest Salam promptly decamped for England.)

The email then compares this lamentable Islamic record with that of the total Jewish population of around 14 million or just 0.02% of the world’s population, which received 129 Nobel prizes over the same period, including a phenomenal 53 for physics and 43 for medicine – and 8 for peace.

Why is the Islamic world making such a minimal contribution to creative research, scientific progress and the advance of knowledge, especially compared with the culturally Christian West, predominantly Hindu India and primarily Confucian China?

My favourite loudmouths such as Al-Jazeera star Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi presumably think the Nobel prizes are a Jewish plot. Or that Islamic under-peformance is the fault of the crusades. Or European colonial rule.  Or Israel. Or George Bush.

Muslim professor Pervez Hoodbhoy of Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, Pakistan, offers a more thoughtful analysis that is worth reading in full. (here)

Noting that no major invention or discovery has emerged from the Muslim world for well over seven centuries, Hoodbhoy says that under liberal and enlightened caliphs Islam enjoyed major advances in mathematics, science and medicine during the 9th to 13th centuries – “Islam’s magnificent Golden Age”. Then rigid fundamentalist interpretations of Islam took over and long periods of darkness have followed.

He notes sadly that his own university which is rated No 2 amongst the universities of the 57 countries of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) has 4 mosques and no bookstore.

Former Muslim Ibn Warraq has a similar analysis in his ‘Why I Am Not A Muslim’. He distinguishes three Islams: Islam 1 is what Muhammad taught as contained in the Quran; Islam 2 is the religion as subsequently expounded, interpreted and developed in the traditions (hadith) including sharia and Islamic law; and Islam 3 is what Muslims actually did and achieved, that is Islamic civilisation and culture.

Ibn Warraq reckons that Islamic civilisations often reached magnificent heights despite Islams 1 and 2, and not because of them. It seems that the further Muslim societies are away from these two Islams, so the philosophy, science, literature and art of Islam 3 can better flower and flourish.

Some blame Islam’s lack of achievement on the West’s apparent superiority in the marketplace, the battlefield and the public square over the past couple of centuries.

Maybe the cause lies rather within Islam itself.