A Newham political blogsite, John’s Labour Blog, often adds lots to the partisan political prattle but little to the serious discussion of issues. Amongst other things the blogger, John, has got the ‘ump with me over my opposition to the mega-mosque proposed by Islamic sect Tablighi Jamaat at West Ham, close to the site of the 2012 Olympics

So recently I promised him I’d blog the mega-mosque issue.

The topic is too big for one post so I’ll write more in due course dv. Meanwhile there are half a dozen videos up on YouTube (such as this and this) explaining my position, as well as our website www.megamosquenothanks.com - although they could all now do with refreshing.

But as the Labour Party rules the borough with an iron fist, it is instructive to look at their response to the huge mosque project at local level before it moves up onto the national stage and into the clunking fist of their party colleagues in government – in the unlikely event of course that Gordon and crew are still in power at the time.

Newham Mayor’s executive adviser, Cllr Clive Furness, and more recently the Labour MP for West Ham, Lyn Brown, have actively joined the charm offensive orchestrated by Tablighi Jamaat’s Mayfair-based PR agents, Indigo. Last year Cllr Furness instructed Council officers to invite some 150 Newham voluntary sector leaders to the mega-mosque’s ‘Indigo Consultation’. (I attended, and you can see on my YouTube video what a farce it was.) And earlier this year Lyn Brown invited Newham community and church leaders to the House of Commons to hear Tablighi Jamaat elders promote their project.

It’s extraordinary that Labour politicians should enthusiastically encourage the project. Are they simply clueless about the neo-fundamentalist ideology that would be promoted and gain credibility from this national landmark mosque? Tablighi Jamaat’s fierce Islamic separatism runs directly contrary to all government policy on social inclusion and community cohesion (‘scuse the Whitehall jargon). And their treatment of women is repressive, ugly and unacceptable in 21st century Britain, as I demonstrated in a recent guest post on Harry’s Place blogsite.

Of course some say that Labour is not clueless but cynically courting the Muslim vote Livingstone-style. However, I’ve been encouraged by the strength of opposition to Tablighi Jamaat’s proposals within the wider Muslim community. They are not all as articulate as the irrepressible Taj Hargey from the Muslim Educational Council at Oxford, but he has spelt out in stark terms in a letter to The Times what progressive and reasonable Muslims are thinking.

(It is interesting that there are also reports of opposition even within the sect itself. A Lapido Media report last week claims that the Indian leadership of Tablighi Jamaat at their global headquarters in Nizamuddin, Delhi, is against the mega-mosque project promoted by the UK’s primarily Pakistani leadership.)

East London is reckoned to be the prime territory in Britain for belligerent benighted Wahhabi/Jamaat Islami activists, and a Counter Terrorism Command officer from New Scotland Yard told me eighteen months ago that Newham is at the top of UK hot-spots for militants and terror suspects. But nonetheless there are courageous Muslims in the borough who object to fundamentalist Islam in all its forms.

It’s a pity Newham Labour Party doesn’t show the same discernment and courage.

Winston Churchill suffered from regular bouts of depression – he called it his ‘black dog’. In the 2002 BBC television film “The Gathering Storm”, director Richard Loncraine seats actor Albert Finney in Churchill’s Chartwell pig-sty, surrounded by snorting swine, rotting veg and mud, in order to vividly portray the hero’s deepest of black dogs.

By 1938 Churchill’s extraordinary roller-coaster career had run into the buffers. He – almost alone – had seen with penetrating insight the danger to Europe of German re-armament and Nazi military ambition. Yet his warnings in Parliament were ignored or mocked and he had been actively sidelined by the Chamberlain government. He was in the pits of despair.

Seven years later Churchill stood alongside King George VI on the Buckingham Palace balcony receiving the nation’s rapturous applause from huge crowds in The Mall. They were celebrating victory and he had been reborn as arguably Britain’s most successful Prime Minister and certainly Britain’s most glorious wartime leader.

Recently I’ve been enjoying another sort of rebirth. Two months ago West Ham Park was covered with the heaviest snowfall for eighteen years and we were in the dead of winter. Now, as I take my daughters to their primary school that overlooks the park, the daffodils have flowered, the magnolias are magnificent and the blossom on the trees is as full and fragile as ever. Nature is responding to the tilt of the earth’s axis and the spring sunshine is warming our hearts as well as our faces.

Today, 9th April, is Maundy Thursday and we are about to celebrate yet another rebirth, only this one is of a different order and foundational to all others. As the Creed says, “Jesus Christ… was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate. He suffered and was buried. And the third day he rose again according to the Scriptures.”

What are the implications of this simple statement? They are profound and stunning. Here are three:

First, truth. Jesus is the root Truth of the universe upon whose shoulders all other truths stand; the fact that He died and came back to life becomes the key, most significant event in all history for all people. Truth proved indestructible, so thereby He sustains and emboldens all truth and undermines all falsehood wherever they are found.

Second, love. “Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Jesus’ willing self-sacrifice shines a warm generous spiritual light into the cold shadowy corners of our human existence. He embodies love and confronts hate.

And third, life. Jesus’ defeat of death by coming back to life following his judicial murder means that potentially all death is defeated. Death, which casts a long dark disturbing shadow over every person’s life, need no longer be a fearful termination of life but rather an open doorway to light and love. We can now laugh freely and repeat with St Paul, “O death, where is your sting?”

It is a resurrection that is radical as it gets to the heart of our human existence. So much of our day-to-day life is crippled by guilt, selfishness, fear and deceit that the only effective solution is to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. Sticking plasters won’t do. A re-birth and a re-start is the truly relevant solution, and that’s what Christ’s resurrection offers.

It’s individual and personal; it’s also collective and cultural. Our cynical, materialistic and selfish society needs a death and a resurrection. It needs Christ.

And that’s why overt Christian politics is so vital to the UK. The renewal of our Christian roots and promotion of timeless compassionate Christian values is the only way forward for our complex, hardened, bewildered Britain.

Er, as party leader I should now say, Vote Christian Peoples Alliance.

But for the moment and even better, Have a blessed Eastertide!