Civitas Blog

2008 is European Year of Intercultural Dialogue. I bet you didn’t know that.

According to its own dedicated website, the purpose of the year is ‘to encourage all those living in Europe to explore the benefits of our rich cultural heritage and to learn from different cultural traditions’.

A flavour of the sort of thing being aimed at can be gathered from the list of those whom the European Commission describes on its own website as “personalities from the cultural scene from across Europe and beyond who have offered their services as ‘European Ambassadors for Intercultural Dialogue’”.

continued on the Centre for Social Cohesion blog.

The DfES ought to be proud: they’ve cracked the child psyche and come up with the best way to encourage good behaviour in formerly wayward and wild pupils, namely, for schools and teachers to offer ‘prizes’ and increase their use of ‘encouraging language and gestures’. This is some of the guidance offered by the Elton Report (something commissioned 18 years ago – which, incidentally, is a longer time than I’ve been alive!), that the government has just brought in.

The guidance also states that ‘a rewards/sanctions ratio of at least 5:1 is an indication of a school with an effective rewards and sanctions system’ - which makes me wonder exactly what constitutes an ‘effective system’ in today’s society. Though I’m all for teachers being encouraging and supportive, I’d like to point out that whilst we may be children, we’re not ‘dense’. It is painfully obvious when a teacher is being genuine in their praise and when false praise is used. Words may be cheap, but they are more ‘effective’ when used sparingly.

Today’s Times carries an interview with Ken Livingstone, spread across two pages, that is designed to reveal to Londoners what a dynamic and entrepreneurial friend of capitalism their once-ultra left-leaning mayor has become.

Continued at the Centre For Social Cohesion blog.

Today’s Spectator contains an article by John Gray, criticising, as doomed to failure or, even worse, as being liable to be counter-productive, the government’s recently announced strategy against the growth of domestic Islamic extremism by encouraging local initiatives to foster closer integration of Britain’s Muslims and encourage the moderates to stand up to and speak up against the extremists.

Globalisation, Gray argues, has caused Britain to become so culturally diverse that it is folly to think we could or should seek any value consensus beyond the need for mutual tolerance in a social arrangement he calls 'modus vivendi'. To demand any more of Britain's Muslims, he argues, is to ‘single them out for deviating from a national consensus that is now largely mythical’ and positively fosters their radicalisation.

Today’s Times reports that Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly announced yesterday that, as part of a wider government strategy to combat Muslim extremism, it has just created a new central government fund of £5 million with which to make grants to local councils for specific projects aimed at this objective.

According to the report, the kinds of project for which local authorities will receive money include those designed to work with young Muslims excluded from schools and mosques to prevent their becoming ‘groomed’ by extremists; assertiveness training for imams and Muslim women so they can ‘face down’ extremists [good luck on that one!]; new local forums for moderation with strong local leaders and role models; inter-faith school twinning programmes; and extra-training and information for local institutions such as mosques on how to spot and prevent extremist activity.

As potentially worthwhile as all such kind of local initiative might be, on the very same page as this news story is a second news report that suggests none of these initiatives is likely to have much effect in combating Islamic extremism until all government bodies, central and local, are willing to act on the powers that are already at their disposal to combat all forms of Islamic activity that promote hostility among Muslims towards non-Muslims which serves as the general seed-bed within which Islamist extremism flourishes.

I wasn’t immediately enamoured with the DfES’s new plan, based on an independent report by Sir Keith Ajegbo, to ensure every lesson on the national curriculum teaches the values of diversity, race relations and multiculturalism. There are the natural anxieties that the extra requirements would just get in the way of teaching core subjects properly and involve teachers having to push the latest government propaganda that wouldn’t make it past the class clown without being brutally mocked. However, my mind changed as soon as I heard that a similar, and already highly successful, scheme is already in full swing at the London School of Economics.

The findings of a Populus poll of just over a 1,000 British Muslims make for disturbing, if not entirely unexpected, reading. Commissioned for a report published by Policy Exchange today, entitled Living Apart Together, young British Muslims revealed themselves far more extreme in outlook than their parents’ generation. According to today’s Daily Telegraph, the poll found the following contrasts in the outlook of 16-24 year old and those aged over 55:

* 40% of 16-24 year olds would prefer to live under Sharia law as against 17% of over 55s.

* 12.5% of 16-24 year olds admire al Qa-aeda as against 3% of over 55s.

* 30% of 16-24 year olds favour the killing of apostates from Islam as against 19% of over 55s.

* 75% of 16-24 year olds prefer Muslim women to wear a veil as against 25% of over 55s.

* 40% of 16-24 year olds prefer Muslim schools for Muslim children as against 20% of over 55s.

These figures are truly disturbing, especially given 84% of the Muslims polled believed they had been treated fairly in Britain. They raise the question as to what exactly has brought about the radicalisation of young British Muslims.

A DfES report out today will recommend citizenship classes in schools place more focus on what it means to be British, rather than teach solely about such values as tolerance and justice.

According to a news item trailing today’s report in yesterday’s Times , schools will be recommended to do so because all their recent emphasis on minorities and diversity has left many white working-class children with ‘negative perceptions of their British identity’.

To illustrate this all too prevalent negative self-image, the Times cites one white teenage girl, whose case is featured in the report, who, after hearing in a lesson that others in her class originally came from the Congo, Portugal, Trinidad and Poland, remarked that she “came from nowhere”.

In honour of that poor successfully deracinated young girl, I offer the following lament (with apologies to the Beatles):

She’s a real nowhere Lass,
Living in a Multicultural Morass
Making all her nowhere plans
for nobody.

Doesn’t have a point of view,
Knows not where she’s going to,
Isn’t she a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Lass, please listen,
Citizenship lessons will supply what you’re missing,
They're designed to make you think the world’s at your command.

She’s as blind as she can be,
Just sees what’s shown on t.v.
Nowhere Lass, do you think that way you can be free at all?
Nowhere Lass, don’t worry,
You’ll never be made to read Charles Murray,
Leave it all till somebody else
Hands out your free bus pass.

Doesn’t have a point of view
Knows not where she’s going to.
Isn’t she a bit like you and me?

A Muslim employee working at the till of the Cambridge branch of W.H.Smith will not face dismissal, nor even, apparently, redeployment, despite her persistently refusing to sell packs of cigarettes to customers requesting them on the grounds that doing so would be contrary to her religion.

If a miracle is a breach of known laws of nature, and if the adage there can be no smoke without fire derives from our understanding of what some of these laws are, this Cambridgeshire Muslim has shown herself able to work miracles at will. For, by doing what she has without suffering dismissal, she has shown there can be no smoke without fire!

According to a report by Newsnight, which can be watched on the BBC website, and which has subsequently been covered by The Times, a senior member of Hizb-ut-Tahrir is working at the Home Office's Immigration and Nationality Directorate in Croydon.

Now, Hizb-ut-Tahrir has been recognised for some time as a militant Islamic organisation propounding extremist ideas. It seeks the reestablishment of the Caliphate, among other things, under which system all non-Muslims would be dhimmi and we would be subject to shari’a law. Hizb-ut-Tahrir has always maintained that it seeks to proselytise through peaceful intellectual channels, such as the New Civilization magazine and university campus campaigns, but Newsnight uncovered evidence of more radical, terrorist activities.

Shortly after the July 7 bombing attacks, the Prime Minister included the group in a list of those he planned to proscribe, but it has not been among those banned. Now one of his own offices is employing someone from that organisation. This is a disgraceful indictment on the selection process; but it is not that surprising. Indeed, it serves as a reminder of an even worse phenomenon in government, which is the reliance upon extremists as advisors and consultants in the policymaking process, as Martin Bright thankfully showed in a book earlier this year.

Well, I never. What’s going on?-- to borrow the title of Marvin Gaye’s illustrious soul ballad.

You wait forever for a New Labour minister to say something moderately critical about the intransigence of some British Muslims, and then, blow me, in the space of a week no fewer than three of them show up doing so.

The first was Jack Straw who last week-end publicly expressed his preference for Muslim women in Britain not to wear the niqab, especially when visiting his parliamentary surgery. The niqab is that particular form of veil favoured by some Muslim women which conceals all but the eyes of its wearer. Straw said he preferred they didn’t because he claimed their doing so placed a barrier between them and whichever non-Muslims wth whom they happened to be having dealings at the time that prevented communication and so was not conducive to social harmony and cohesion.

The response of some British Muslims to Straw's remarks has been predictably negative: ‘The Muslim community feels angry and let down’ one Labour-party Muslim activist in Straw’s Blackburn constituency is reported to have said. ‘We want him to apologise and will keep on protesting until he does. I feel outraged and want him out of his job. The majority of Muslim women want him out’ another Muslim woman reportedly said at a protest held in Blackburn against Straw.

Judged by the tone of these comments you would have thought Straw had asked Muslim women to disrobe completely before entering his surgery.

Pope Benedict XVl delivered his controversial lecture at the University of Regensburg on Friday 15th September. His lecture was controversial because it included a quotation from a 14th century text that was highly critical of Islam.

The inclusion of that passage ignited massive protests around the world from Muslims who claimed that it had insulted their religion and its founding prophet. In the Middle East, churches were burnt in protest, and, in one north African country, a nun murdered in apparent retaliation for what the Pope had said.

Where there have been demonstrations against the Pope, some have merely demanded that he apologise for having insulted their religion. Others have gone further, calling for the Pope to be killed by way of punishment. Demonstrations of this latter sort arguably verge on incitement.

On the Sunday following the lecture, a widely reported demonstration against the Pope took place outside Westminster Cathedral at which various placards were displayed and slogans chanted that bordered on calling on Muslims to kill the Pope in revenge for including the quotation in his lecture.

This demonstration was well-attended by police who received a score of complaints from those attending the Cathedral service that morning who claimed to have been upset and intimidated by what they witnessed upon leaving it.

Although a spokesman for the CPS is reported to have not ruled out that some prosecutions may result from what was said at the demonstration, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair is today reported as being satisfied none were.

He is reported as having said of the demonstration: ‘We are living in an angry time. It is the job of the Metropolitan Police to hold the line of free speech and it is a difficult line to hold. But in this particular case I am satisfied there were no offences committed by anybody.’

On the Sunday of the demonstration, a Catholic medical student living in London who keeps a blog attended the service in the Cathedral. This is what he posted about the demonstration that same day:

‘My family decided this Sunday to make the trip to Westminster Cathedral together. As we came out about 100 Islamists were chanting slogans such as "Pope Benedict go to Hell", "Pope Benedict you will pay, the Muja Hadeen are coming your way", "Pope Benedict watch your back", and other pretty hateful things.

‘There were about 100 police around and about keeping an eye on things and video recording the protestors. I asked if they'd be prosecuted, and the policeman sounded edgey. He said they'd been warned about their behaviour already but arresting any of them might just fuel them up ever more.’

In light of this personal testimony, backed up by several photographs taken at the time by him and posted along with his account, presumably Sir Ian Blair’s denial that any offences were committed at the demonstration illustrates what sort of policing he had in mind for the capital on appointment when he introduced a new logo for the force which runs: ‘Working Together for a Safer London’.

That this form of policing may result in Rome or elswhere in the world becoming less safe is presumably of no concern to the Met.

Today’s Times reports senior members of the German government to be critical of the decision by the German national opera to cancel its planned run of a Mozart opera for fear that a recently added coda in which the hero appears brandishing the severed heads of several religious leaders, among whose is that of Mohammed's, and then announces the gods are dead, might so offend Muslims that they decide to bring the house down in an altogether novel way of registering audience disapproval of a show.

Of course, this kind of self-censorship is deeply regrettable. But under present circumstances, it is hardly unwarranted. Even if the opera went ahead with ‘Caveat Emptor’ warnings stuck on all billboards and tickets, it would still risk exacting reprisals that a theatre company is perfectly entitled to think are not worth taking, even for artistic reasons.

That is just a sign of how badly under threat Europe is now.

Today’s Times contains a report about a former University of Cambridge Chaplain and ordained Anglican priest whom the Church of England has apparently given license to continue to officiate at its services, despite his having converted to Hinduism, having changed his name to Ananda, and his having gone in for blessing daily a Hindu congregation daily in a Hindu ritual using fire connected with its snake god Nagar.

A photograph accompanying the report shows the Anglican priest praying before a statue of the Hindu elephant god, Ganesh.

When I read the story, the word ‘IDIOT’ immediately sprang to mind, but not quite for the reasons you might think.

As an impoverished undergraduate I made the easiest money I ever have, as I recall what back then was the princely sum of a fiver, by submitting the winning entry in a weekly competition run by the long since defunct journal Punch which invited readers to explain for what the acronym IDIOT stood.

I explained it stood for an organisation whose full title was 'Inter-Deic Integrator of Original Theisms'. This body, I explained, had been created with the aim of persuading the deities held sacred by each of the world's main religions of their respective individual excellences. It hoped thereby, I wrote, that these various deities would eventually unite to create GOD that is, a Greater Ontological Deity, which consortium would be a sort of UN of all-powerful powers.

In having thought as I did upon reading today’s story, it should not be supposed I considered dimly of the Anglican priest for having converted to Hinduism. This is a religion, or more strictly an assortment of religions, for which, like him, I too have the highest regard.

I do think silly, however, the justification for his form of religious synchretism which he is eported to have given in his book Trading Faith: Global Religion in an Age of Rapid Change which is that ‘Hinduism accepts the divinity of Jesus and is an especially tolerant and open faith’.

Doubtless, what the good reverend says about Hinduism is true. But, that no more shows Christians can or should acknowledge and worship Hindu deities than does the fact that Jesus recognised the divinity of the God whom Jews believe in and worship means that Jews can and should return the compliment and recognise the divinity of Jesus and pray to him, or that Christians and Jews and Christians both can and should admit Muhammed to be a prophet and accept is teachings simply because he recognised Moses and Jesus to have been divinely inspired.

Ah well, each to his own, I suppose were matters of faith are concerned.

I remain deeply sceptical, however, that the reverend's regular prayers to Ganesh, traditionally, the Hindu god of good fortune, will indefinitely spare him being debarred from practising as an Anglican priest, given that the office of his diocese is also reported as having denied any knowledge of his conversion to Hinduism until this week.

Every night at this time of year, Channel Four broadcasts an episode of its seemingly interminable and tedious Big Brother programme. Friday night episodes reveal the identity of whichever housemate viewers have voted to be evicted that week from the house in which they are incarcerated together for the duration of the series.

At 7.30pm tonight, an hour before the screening of that weekly episode, Channel Four is due to broadcast a current affairs programme that promises to be of far greater public interest and importance.

Paradoxically, and regrettably, rather than about an eviction carried out by an authority resembling far more closely than Channel Four’s reality-tv series that for which George Orwell famously coined that programme's title, tonight’s Channel Four current affairs programme, which goes out as part of its 30 Minutes series of documentaries, tells of the failure of our own government to act against a clear and present threat to the safety of the realm.

In drawing attention to Samaira Nazir, a twenty-five-year-old graduate who was brutally stabbed to death for wanting to marry a lower caste Afghan man rather than a suitor in Pakistan, Allison Pearson uses her Daily Mail column this week to make a robust case for outlawing forced marriages in Britain. It’s curious that the argument even needs to be advanced, that there could possibly not be a consensus, but as Pearson points out, our government is scared.

‘To find the real reason for this shameful abandonment of vulnerable young people, we need only look at the government consultation paper. It suggested a criminal offence of forced marriage “would disproportionately impact on black and ethnic communities and might be misinterpreted as an attack on those communities.” Misinterpreted? I don’t think so. You would be absolutely right if you saw a law against forced marriage as an attack on practices among certain groups which the majority culture finds cruel, offensive and plain wrong.’

‘Slavery? Under-age sex? We can live with that, just as long as we don’t offend fanatical Muslims and potentially trigger another wave of attacks. Yet it is precisely because authorities have allowed communities, living according to their own laws and speaking their own languages, to get away without integrating into mainstream society that we found ourselves in this mess in the first place. It’s a bitter irony, but in the quest for tolerance our country has found itself in the bizarre position of being able to value every point of view except our own.’

Well said. It’s as good a reason for picking up a copy of the Daily Mail as you’re ever likely to get: a defence of liberty and tolerance, a defence of the individual against cruelty, a defence against the exploitation of women, a defence of our values. If we cannot distinguish between right and wrong, if we say that all cultures are of an equivalent value, if we cannot make ethical judgements because of the dictatorship of relativism, then how can we provide a safe haven for the oppressed? Why would people be beating on our doors if they didn’t think they could receive asylum here?

Today’s Times carries a report about Abdul Rahman, the 41 year-old Afghani facing trial in his home country for what still remains there the capital offence of having converted from Islam to Christianity, something he did some fourteen years ago whilst residing in Pakistan. Apparently, it is reported, he might be able to avoid the death penalty by pleading being unfit to stand trial by virtue of insanity.

One need not be a follower of the libertarian anti-psychiatrist, Thomas Szasz, who rejected the very notion of mental illness, to be disinclined to pin one's hopes for this poor man’s future on faith in any such a sanity clause.

The reason the man should not be having to face trial or the death penalty for having done what he is alleged to is not that he is unfit to plead by virtue of insanity. It is, rather, that he has no case to answer, having done nothing for which he deserves to stand trial or be punished in having left his previous faith for another.

After all the whining about the House of Lords, how it’s unfair and unelected, and a club for atrophying gerontiacs, it’s great to see the House reaffirming its importance as a legislative check in British politics. Throughout the current PM’s regime the House of Lords has attempted to be a check and balance against the more authoritarian and autarkic impulses of New Labour. Now it has struck a blow against the PM’s wife, the lawyer for Shabina Begum. You’ll remember that last year a court ruled that teenager Shabina Begum's human rights were violated when she was banned from wearing full Islamic dress at school. Now that ruling has been overturned. As the Guardian reports, Lord Bingham said the school was fully justified in acting as it did:

If proof were needed that, on occasion at least, the pen can be a match for the sword, it has been more than amply provided by the recent spectacle of widespread disturbances within the Muslim world over the publication by a small Danish newspaper of cartoons of the prophet, Mohammed.

Ostensibly, what has affronted the protestors has been the cartoons violating an injunction of their religion forbidding pictorial representations of him. Since drawings of Mohammed have long existed in both the Muslim world as well in the West without occasioning comparable protests, their true cause must lie elsewhere.

In February 1945, as the last War was ending, that most acute observer and critic of English manners and mores, George Orwell, wrote a paper, published in April of that same year, on the subject of ‘Antisemitism in Britain’.

I took down from my bookshelf earlier this week the volume containing Orwell's essay in light of what the Mayor of London Ken Livingstone said in response to Monday's decision that he be suspended from office for four weeks after a complaint against him was upheld that had been lodged by the British Board of Deputies of Jews.

‘There should always be charity and goodwill between different beliefs; toleration must be the norm, but even toleration has its limits. Locke would not have believed in insulting publications….’

Thus writes William Rees Mogg in an op-ed in last Monday’s Times entitled ‘Tolerating the Intolerable: Even Locke, our greatest prophet of liberty, would never have defended those offensive cartoons’.

In seeking to recruit the great British seventeenth century philosopher to the cause of those who, whether by government edict or self-censorship, would suppress publication of the cartoons, critical of Islam, that have lately become the epicentre of a firestorm of frenzied Muslim protest throughout the world, Rees-Mogg -- normally a voice of comparative sanity in an otherwise turbulent sea of media madness -- has erred very badly indeed.

So there we have it: the collision of the two great British characteristics of decency and freedom of speech. On the one hand there is politeness, the wish not to hurt anyone’s feelings or cause offence; on the other hand there is the inviolable right to say almost anything. Generally the two act as checks on each other, encouraging us not to be, on the one hand, wimps, while preventing us, on the other hand, from being thugs. While many felt that the decision of the British newspapers not to publish the Danish cartoons represented an abandonment of their responsibility to exercise free speech, a majority felt that printing them months after their first appearance would've been gratuitous. Offence is good - and it's good to be free to offend - if offence is necessary. The worry, if it's not, is that acts of provocation end up being used to provoke more provocation. Then we're back in the playground again.

Despite 9/11, Madrid and July 7, as well as myriad other instances, it seems that we have constantly to be reminded that there are rogue elements in western society that seek to destroy both the tolerance of others and the right to speak out. The pandemonium surrounding the Danish cartoons - the savage vandalism and killing around the globe and the incitements to it in our own country - are only the latest instance. The government and its police force to whom, under the terms of the Hobbesian contract, we look to protect our safety, are going to have to get a whole lot better at protecting legitimate free speech - few things make people want to be rude as much as being told they’re not allowed to be rude - and punishing those who refuse to live by the laws of the land.

‘Muslims up in arms over all over the world at irreverent Danish newspaper cartoons of Mohammed’, ‘Death threats received by Danish and Norwegian newspapers for publishing cartoons of the Prophet', ’ ‘Middle eastern Muslim countries boycott Danish goods’, ‘Armed Fatah militia surround EU offices in Gaza after EU defends Danish Prime Minister for refusing to condemn or prosecute editor of Danish newspaper’ etc, etc, scream newspaper headlines around the world.

These headlines, or words to their effect. report the latest twists and turns in the long-running and still on-going saga of the widespread outrage that has been provoked within the Muslim world by the publication of irreverent cartoons of Mohammed in a Danish newspaper last September and since in other European newspapers.

Time was when I would have been appalled by how out of all proportion to its ostensible cause was the scale of this latest outburst of Muslim outrage and indignation. But if there is such a thing as jihad-fatigue, I am beginning to suffer from it.

By this I do not mean to imply that the death threats and boycott threats should not be taken seriously by those at whom they have been directed, as well as by the authorities whose job it is to protect their recipients. I mean that it has become all to sickeningly clear that the numerous Muslims throughout the world who have responded so disproportionately to this latest perceived failure by non-Muslims to extend towards their religion the deference that they consider it due are no longer worthy of being taken seriously, intellectually or morally.

The disproportion of their sound and fury to what they claim has been its cause reveals that there is simply no other way in which to respond to them, save to say:

It’s been an ongoing saga for years, but finally the farce has come to an end. No, Harold Bishop hasn’t died, and it pains me to tell you that Barbi’s still alive too; but on the upside the Home Office’s Bill for the incitement to religious hatred was last night defeated in the Commons. As the BBC reports, the narrow defeat means that the Bill will become law with a series of amendments passed by the Lords designed to safeguard freedom of speech and meet the concerns of campaigners such as the comedian Rowan Atkinson. Our reasons for opposing the Bill are well documented elsewhere on the website, but the wider spectrum of resistance has also been revealing, with an unexpected alliance forged between the National Secular Society, the British Humanist Association, the Christian Institute, the Evangelical Alliance, the Muslim Parliament and the Muslim Forum. This represents a triumph for the Voltairian principle of disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it.

The cup of human kindness is not always what it seems -- at least not in France.

According to a report posted yesterday on the website of BBC News, soup kitchens in that lately much benighted land have been forbidden by the authorities there from distributing free helpings of their traditional native cuisine to their poor and hungry compatriots, because the pork contained in such forms of cuisine has been judged to render its free distribution n public a form of discrimination against Jews and Muslims whose respective religion forbids them to eat such meat.

Known as ‘Identity Soup’, the French authorities ordered the meaty broth be removed from offer outside central railway stations because they judged it would be liable to result in public disorder.

Presumably, when such broth is offered in a French restaurant, its accompanying price tag prevents it from being discriminatory because it renders the soup equally unavailable to all without means to pay for it, regardless of their race, creed or colour.

On the other hand, surely in strict consistency, if the free distribution of such soup is deeemed inflammatory because not equally available to all regardless of their race, creed or colour, why should not its sale be judged equally as discriminatory and hence inflammatory?

More seriously: why on earth should not right-wing groups, if they wish, be at liberty to offer in public free food only acceptable to those whom these groups find acceptable?

If these groups are thereby making a political statement through that gesture less generous in spirit than we might like, so what? It is not as if they are saying by it: ‘Non-Jews and non-Muslims only’. It is the Jews and Muslims who freely choose to abstain from eating pork who are here choosing not to consume the broth on offer. They are not being forbidden from consuming the soup by the groups placing it on offer.

One wonders, though, whether the price of European countries trying not to allow any offence to be caused to any of their minorities might not one day end up being their imposing on all a prescribed uniform cultural identity from which all traces of historic individuality have been carefully removed by fiat in the supposed interests of ethnic and racial harmony, and, if so, whether the price of such artificially-induced harmony might not have been too high to be worth paying.

Anthony Browne argues in The Retreat of Reason that political correctness, which classifies certain groups of people as victims in need of protection from criticism and allows no dissent to be expressed, is poisoning the wells of debate in modern Britain. Click here to read the press release.

'Members of the public, academics, journalists and politicians are afraid of thinking certain thoughts'. Political correctness started in academia, but it now dominates schools, hospitals, local authorities, the civil service, the media, companies, the police and the army. Since 1997 Britain has been ruled by political correctness for the first time. 'The Labour government was the first UK government not to stand up to political correctness, but to try and enact its dictates when they are not too electorally unpopular or seriously mugged by reality, and even sometimes when they are'.

Anthony Browne describes political correctness as a 'heresy of liberalism' under which 'a reliance on reason has been replaced with a reliance on the emotional appeal of an argument'. Adopting certain positions makes the politically correct feel virtuous, even more so when they are preventing the expression of an opinion that conflicts with their own: 'political correctness is the dictatorship of virtue'.

Whether an argument is true or not is a secondary consideration to whether it fits with the PC view of the world:

'In the topsy-turvy politically correct world, truth comes in two forms: the politically correct, and the factually correct. The politically correct truth is publicly proclaimed correct by politicians, celebrities and the BBC even if it is wrong, while the factually correct truth is publicly condemned as wrong even when it is right. Factually correct truths suffer the disadvantage that they don't have to be shown to be wrong, merely stated that they are politically incorrect. To the politically correct, truth is no defence; to the politically incorrect, truth is the ultimate defence.'

Shortly after the London underground suicide-bombings in July, the government undertook a consultation exercise, primarily with representatives of the British Muslim community, to ascertain what special additional measures needed to be taken to combat further acts of terror by disaffected Muslims living in the UK.

One being mooted by the government was its acquiring the power, as a last resort after self-regulation by the relevant local Muslim community had failed, to order the closure of mosques known to have encouraged terrorism or to have expressed support for proscribed organisations under the Terrorism Act.

Last week, the Home Office announced that, in face of much opposition to that measure from Muslim groups and others whom it had consulted, it had decided not to press forward with it.

Needless to say Muslims groups who, during the consultation exercise, had voiced their opposition to the proposed measure responded with jubiliation to the government's announcement, none more so than the Muslim Council of Britain.

On the day of the announcement, December 15, it issued a press release, welcoming the government’s climb-down over the measure, which stated:

‘In our formal submission to the Home Office consultation… we made it clear that the government’s original proposals had aroused a great deal of concern and even anxiety among many British Muslims. Mosques are and remain entirely peaceful centres of worship. … We believe that the police already have sufficient powers to deal with any potential problems so we are delighted that the government has today listened to these concerns and opened the way for mosques to be seen as partners against extremism and not as incubators of extremism.’

To demonstrate the government’s ability, without need of this further power, to deal with any potentially problematic mosques, the Muslim Council cited in its press release the temporary closure of the one in Finsbury Park, London, after it fallen under the control of the notoriously pro-terrorism cleric Abu Hamza, whilst control of it was being wrested from him.

In its original submission during the consultation exercise, the Muslim Council expressed full agreement with a claim that had been made by the Bishop of Southwark as part of his own submission. The claim was that ‘there seems to be only one case in the public domain, where any potential link between a place of worship and terrorist activity has been suggested’.

From the Bishop’s quoted claim, the Muslim Council drew the inference in its own submission that ‘mosques are being misidentified as incubators of violent extremism, while the social reality is that they serve as centres of moderation;… the notion of influential “back-door” mosques is a figment of the imagination’.

In its view, what had done more to radicalise young British Muslims than any form of indoctrination they might have received in any British mosques was the present government’s ‘foreign policy and the double standards … in its dealings in the Middle East in partnership with the government of the US.’

Of that view the Muslim Council went on to say in its submission: ‘This view has received support from the Task Groups convened by the Home Office. We urge you to accept this fact. We ask you to take urgent remedial action so that our citizens, here as well as in the rest of the world, do not become targets of… terrorists’

The somewhat oblique phraseology to which the Muslim Council resorted here suggests it believes Blair’s support for, and involvement in the current US led military action in Iraq -- and, perhaps beyond that, the more long-standing support of Britain for the State of Israel, has been fundamentally to blame for the mayhem visited on London commuters on July 7 and narrowly spared them again on the 21st of that same month.

It is clear the present government has not acceded, nor is likely to in the immediate future at least, to the Muslim Council’s plea that it radically alters its current foreign policy in the Middle East.

It is equally clear, however, the government has decided to accede to the plea of the Muslim Council and of others not to risk further alienating the Muslim community by assuming additional powers to close mosques found to have supported terrorism.

Clearly, the government accepted the assurance of the Muslim Council, and of other like-minded representative bodies whom it consulted, that, with the sole exception of the one in Finsbury Park, no other mosques here have been a source of the radicalisation of young British Muslims.

The Muslim Council's credibility on this matter, however, is surely thrown seriously into question by the following two facts:

France, Australia, Denmark, Sweden.…the number of western countries which have started to become plagued by violent clashes between Muslim and non-Muslim citizens is steadily growing.

Today, five months on from the July London undergound bombings, the Times reports police have still yet to identify all of the young British-born Muslims who attended the make-shift gymnasium housed in a mosque in Beeton where Mohammad Sidique Khan, the believed ring-leader of the London bombings, is thought to have recruited his accomplices in terror.

‘Youngsters who attended … Khan’s youth club remain hostile to police’, the Times reports in explanation of the lack of police intelligence.

‘For me, the vital issue facing … the nation is the loss of this country’s long tradition of Christian wisdom which brought to birth the English nation…. [T]he Church in England must once again be a beacon by which the people of England can orient themselves…. Having shed an empire and lost a missionary zeal, has this great nation, and mother of parliamentary democracy, also lost a noble vision for the future? We are getting richer and richer as a nation, but less and less happy. The Church in England must rediscover her self-confidence and self-esteem that united and energised the English people…. The Venerable Bede in his Ecclesiastical History tells not only of how the English were converted, but how that corporate-discipleship, the Church, played a major socialising and civilising role by uniting the English and conferring nationhood on them…. Christians, our priority is amongst the 72% who in the last census said they were Christians. That’s where our task lies.’

This is an extract from yesterday’s inaugural sermon by the Most Rev Dr John Sentamu, the new Archbishop of York. It suggests his ministry might bring to the Anglican church a better understanding of its historic role and purpose than that which some other leading Anglicans have displayed of late.

Rather than forever seeking to concede ground to secularists and fundamentalist followers of faiths other than Christianity whose adherents would seek its replacement by theirs, the Church of England should reassert its historic function of being the most important civilising and acculturating force in the nation.

Secularists and fundamentalists of other creeds like to claim the empty pews in so many churches throughout the land today shows it has become a post-Christian nation. The self-identification of English in the census suggests otherwise.

One of the most distinctive features of this Anglican nation was its tolerance of those of other creeds and denominations, particularly, those seeking to immigrate to Britain to escape persecution or seek economic advancement, provided they were prepared to be loyal and law-abiding.

Dr Sentamu opened his sermon by alluding to the Judaic sources of Christianity before ending it with a prayer adapted, without acknowledgement, from the Jewish liturgy. That prayer, the most sacred in the Jewish liturgy, calls on Jews to acknowledge God as their one and only Lord, before exhorting them to love God with all their hearts, souls and might.

In his adaption of this prayer, Dr Sentamu extended its scope beyond Jews to the 71% of his compatriots still prepared to classify themselves as Christian. Clearly, its scope could also be extended to include British Muslims too who worship the same God as Jews and Christians.

Rather than excluding religion from the public square, or else going even further down the multicultural route that requires England’s Christian majority to relinquish ever-more of its Christian roots and heritage, perhaps the best way for the country to increase cohesion and become a more united as a nation than it has of late become would be, as Dr Sentamu suggests, for its Christian majority to regain touch with their historic faith and traditions from which so many of them have of late become estranged, often by a deliberate strategy on the part of those with an animus against it, be they humanists or zealots of some other faith.

Recognition by all those whose own creed does not preclude them from so doing of their shared belief in the same God might be a better way to foster social cohesion and unity in England than ever further multiculturally- motivated attrition of its Christian heritage and culture.

Those young British Muslims who in recent times have seemingly become ever more reluctant to integrate and correspondingly ever more drawn towards extremist forms of their creed might be less inclined towards self-segregation and less drawn asa result towards incendiary versions of their faith were England’s majority to become more appreciative and proud of its Christian heritage and character.

Some serious questions about rules of evidence, or the judgement of some judges who apply them, are raised by the acquittal at the Old Bailey yesterday of the brother and sister of one of the two British Muslim suicide bombers of a Tel Aviv bar Aviv on 29th April 2003.

Among the alleged offences of which the pair of siblings were found not guilty was their failing to inform the authorities of their brother’s intention to commit an act of terror, an offence under section 38 of the amended Terrorism Act of 2000.

The prosecution case rested, for the most part, on an exchange of emails between them and their brother that took place immediately before the suicide bombing in which he took part. These emails, so the prosecution alleged, showed the two defendants had prior knowledge of what he was about to do.

One, sent by the bomber to his brother a week before the bombing, warned: ‘Difficult times may lay ahead for you and the family in the next few weeks or months. Plan now and get rid of any material you may consider problematic. Please give a copy of the following message to my wife: “After reaching our destination Allah guided us to his friends who … said they needed our help very much.… Know that everything is just a test.… Look after [… their children] and bring them up well. We did not spend a long time together in this world but I hope through Allah’s mercy and your patience we can spend an eternity together”’.

Another, sent by the bomber's sister to him the following day by way of reply, went: ‘We are happy that you are focused. … We all have to be firm and focused with reality as time is slipping away. There is really no time to be weak and emotional…. When we see you again it will be like only half a day has passed. You have no time for emotions.’

The defence denied the emails showed the two defendants had prior knowledge of the imminent bombing in Israel, and the jury accepted there was reasonable doubt.

What is problematic about their acquittal is that the jury were obliged by the judge to come to a decision on the matter in ignorance of some further circumstantial evidence the prosecution had wished to submit but which the judge ruled inadmissible.

That evidence was the testimony of former pupils of two different Derbyshire primary schools at which the sister of the bomber briefly taught as a supply-teacher in the immediate aftermath of September 11th 2001.
Children at both schools, apparently, had independently reported the woman had voicedto them praise of the attack on the Trade Towers, and, more importantly in this context, had claimed, according to one of them aged 10 at the time, that she was ‘on bin Laden’s team’.

The judge ruled the childfren's testimony inadmissible on the grounds that they 'were unreliable witnesses whose statements could not be corroborated’.

What makes the judge's ruling problematic is two-fold. First, it seems there was corroboration of what the children said their teacher had told them in the form of a tacit admission by her made shortly afterwards. Apparently, soon after the children made their claims about what the teacher had said, she was brought before the educational employment agency which had placed her in their schools. According to it, she ‘accepted that the comments were inappropriate and undertook not to repeat them’.

If this is not corroboration by the defendant that she had made the statements the children claimed she had , what then is?

Second, the police apparently discovered in the home of this defendant literature of the now banned Al-Muhajiroun, a break-away splinter- group of Hizb ut-Tahir to which her fellow-accused is also reported to have belonged.

Whatever difference between them, both these groups are on record as supporting suicide bombings in Israel.

Al-Muhajiroun (AM) was set up by Omar Bakri Mohammed in 1996 . A report on this organisation was published in May 2003 written by Michael Whine, Communications Director of the Community Security Trust Division of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. A paragraph of this report runs:

‘From their head office in the Lee Valley Techno Park in north London, AM claim to provide physical support, including finance and recruitment to overseas Islamist groups, including Hamas, Egyptian Islamic Jihad and Hizbollah…. and to encourage British volunteers to train and fight abroad’.

In the context of the trial, surely these facts about the ideological proclivities of the accused amount to further circumstantial corroboration of what the schoolchildren had claimed they had been told by one of them after September 11, and combined with what the teaching agency claimed should have rendered their testimony admissible.

Had the judge allowed the prosecution to make the children's testimony known to the jury, it is possible it may still have decided to acquit the two defendants.

Even if it had, that testimony plus the reported filiation of one and source of literature found at the home of the other make it impossible to believe the complete incredulity they expressed upon their acquittal at what their brother had done.

Said the bomber's sister of him, ‘I cannot believe he would have contemplated such a thing – that he could think of planting a bomb and killing innocent people. It is beyond me.’

Her brother added on their joint behalf: ‘’We want to make it clear we did not know what our brother was going to do. It shocked us as everyone else.’

Since their brother did no more than that which Al-Muhajiroun and Hizb ut-Tahrir consider to be perfectly legitimate and commendable, I feel like saying: go tell it to the Marines!

British culture is undergoing quite a make-over at present in the interests of its becoming more friendly to British Muslims, or, at least, less liable to arouse their wrath.

Where will the process end? Should it even be beginning?

Today’s Times reports that the director of a just-ended London run of Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great removed from his production a scene in which Tamburlaine burns the Koran for fear it might offend Muslims. Its inclusion, he is reported to have claimed, ‘would have been unnecessarily inflammatory’.

Across the page is a report that a Muslim insurance salesman from Bristol is suing his employer for racial and religious discrimination after it offered him and his fellow employees as a reward for their good performance bottles of wine. Because consumption of alcohol is forbidden in Islam, he accuses the employer of having subjected him to ‘exclusion’.

The insurance salesman is not the only British Muslim who complains of social exclusion because of his compatriots fondness for drink.

Monday’s Guardian carries a report of a meeting of young British Muslims the paper had organised in London the previous week to enable it to find out about their current thinking. Apart from holding Tony Blair largely responsible for the July suicide bombings, the most noteworthy finding of the paper was its discovery of how excluded the young British Muslims complained of feeling as a result of their compatriots fondness for a tipple.

‘Non-Muslim Britain hasn’t begun to grasp how big an obstacle alcohol is to Muslims’ participation…. Alcohol is probably now one of the most effective and unquestioned forms of exclusion practised in the UK, affecting every kind of social network.’ Such was the ‘new insight’ the paper claimed to have come away from the meeting having acquired.

Meanwhile on the other side of the globe, today’s Daily Telegraph reports Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, recently delivered a lecture at the Islamic University of Islamabad in which he came close to offering an apology on behalf of his coreligionists for the Crusades.

‘Most Christians would now say that the history of the crusades … w[as] a serious betrayal of many of the central beliefs of Christian faith’, he is quoted as saying

In view of the Archbishop’s statement, one wonders for how much longer the St George’s Cross will remain England’s national flag. According to a report by CNN last month, calls for its replacement by a more ‘inclusive’ symbol have already begun to be voiced. Chris Doyle, director of the Council for the Advancement of Arab-British Understanding, is quoted as having claimed it was now time for England to find a new flag and a patron saint who is ‘not associated with our bloody past and one we can all identify with’.

The white flag might be thought a suitable replacement. But there is one minority that might have difficulty identifying with such a pacific symbol.

Despite making light of it in a leader that parodies the diary he might currently be keeping in some remote cave dwelling in a far off land, the report in today’s Daily Telegraph that Verso Books has just brought out, in a specially commissioned new English translation, a collection of all statements made by Osama bin Laden between 1994 and 2004 is no laughing matter.

For the same week has also seen reports, not only that the Queen is now an Al Qaeda target, but that Islamic web-sites have recently been showing a video made by the British-born July suicide-bomber, Mohammed Siddique Khan, shortly before he blew himself up along with fellow passengers on the London Underground, in which he calls on his fellow British Muslim brothers and sisters to join him in the jihad that the Saudi Sheikh declared on the West some years ago, whose text Verso Books has now so responsibly and obligingly brought to the nearest bookshop of every university campus in the country, where, doubtless, many an impressionable confused and alienated young man and woman will have ample opportunity to read it at leisure, doubtless impressed by the apparent veneer of legitimacy the new imprint has given his views.

The publishers are quick to claim that, in publishing them, they are not implying their agreement with them. Rather, they claim on their web-site that they have decided to published bin Laden's statements to ‘demythologise the terrorist network’.

‘The idea is to have an annotated, scholarly collection of bin Laden’s words. Until now, his words have only been available in poor translations or sound-bites’, so one of Verso’s editors is reported to have explained.

According to the report in the Telegraph , one of the things the book makes clear is that, among the terms of surrender on which the Sheikh is apparently insisting before being willing to call off his war against the West, is that it discontinues ‘alcohol and gambling’ as well as displaying adverts that contain photographs of women who, apparently, are also required to step down from all jobs in which they serve ‘passengers, visitors, and strangers’.

While being, therefore, most unlikely to attract to his cause any chavs or Essex boys and girls, the views of bin Laden contained in the book are unlikely to be nearly as off-puting to any disaffected young British Muslims who might stumble upon the book, many of whom seem especially vulnerable at the ,moment to being drawn into the more fundamentalist and intolerant versions of their faith such as that which are espoused in it.

In light of this undoubted fact, it was arguably the height of cynical irresponsibility on Verso’s part to decide to commission and publish the book.

After having seen Parliament emasculate the Anti-Terrorism Bill by reducing the maximum period terror suspects can be detained without trial from 90 to 28 days, its remaining provisions are now under assault from the Muslim groups created by the government after 7/7 to give advice on how it should go about improving relations between Muslims and non-Muslims.

Today’s Guardian reports these groups are claiming such provisions of the bill as that proscribing the glorification of terrorism will only serve still further to alienate young British Muslims, thereby increasing their likelihood of ending up recruited in the ranks of Al Qaeda's suicide-bombers.

They claim these clauses will antagonise these young Muslims if enacted because they will then no longer feel able to engage lawfully in what they consider to be perfectly legitimate support of ‘self-determination struggles around the world’. For example, these groups are reported to have claimed, “the extremely fine line” between empathising with the Palestinian cause and justifying the actions of suicide bombers could no longer be drawn with any legal certainty.

Similarly, they claim, any list compiled by the Home Office of extremist websites, bookshops and organisations judged of concern will be seen as ‘censorship of all those who might criticise British foreign policy or call for political unity among Muslims.’

Instead of anti-terror legislation, what should begin, the Muslim advisory groups claim, is a ‘dialogue’ between British Muslims and others.

There are several puzzling things about these expressed concerns and proposals.

First, the Muslim groups opposed to the anti-terror bill for the reasons rehearsed above also tend to favour a Religious Hatred Law proscribing incitement of hatred towards those of their faith. They are apparently unconcerned about the repeatedly expressed concerns critics of this bill have voiced that it is bound to inhibit legitimate of criticism of religions, Islamic or otherwise.

How can there be open dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims, something for which the Muslims advisory groups are calling, if non-Muslims are to be inhibited from openly voicing critical opinion about aspects of their reigion through fear of thereby exposing themselves to prosecution for incitement to religious hatred?

Muslim critics of the anti-terror bill must abandon either support for the Religious Hatred Bill or opposition to the proposed anti-glorification of terror clause of the Anti-Terrorism Bill. They cannot expect to be able to have it both ways.

Secondly, and far more importantly, ...

Although portrayed as the spontaneous outpourings of justifiably alienated Muslim youth, the current disturbances occurring nightly in France, but also lately in Denmark, are not isolated incidents. They form part of a wider clash between two ways of life. One is secular, liberal and tolerant. It is the western way, although it has not always been so. The other is closed, illiberal, and fundamentalist. It is the way Islam is currently practised in so many places today and is long overdue for the same kind of modernisation and liberalisation as Christianity started to undergo at the time of the Reformation.

At that time, Europe was riven by similar kinds of religious strife as we are seeing there today. Indeed, tomorrow marks nothing less than the 400th anniversary of what, arguably, Was London's first successfully foiled religiously motivated planned suicide-bombing.

There are striking parallels between, on the one hand, the current conflict in Europe between disaffected and radicalised young Muslims, typically of non-European extraction, and earlier conflicts there between its various different Christian denominations.

One might, therefore, have supposed that those called on today to deal with these problems would have been tempted to see how similar problems were successfully addressed in earlier times. But so close-minded is our present government towards anything and everything that happened before about 1960, that, despite the best endeavours of those within it, like Tony Blair and Charles Clarke, who at least take the Islamist threat seriously, they simply cannot see how so many of the current measures they are proposng to resolve the current problems simply play into the hands of those behind religiously-motivated disorder.

Two classic instances illustrate this folly. The first is the government’s appallingly short-sighted Religious Hatred Bill. The other its cooption of to all appearances extremely immoderate Muslims onto the very advisory bodies it has created for suggestions as to how it should deal with these problems.

As far as the bill is concerned, while called for by Muslims ostensibly so they may gain the same legal protection from hatred being stirred up against them as Sikhs and Jews currently enjoy under the Race Relations Act, in reality the bill seems unneeded to secure such protection, since they already enjoy it. Nor does concern to gain such protection seem the real reason they are calling for it which rather seems to be a desire to insulate any aspect of their religion from criticism.

However honourable might be the motives of Muslims calling for it, this truly is going to be the tragic effect of this bill when enacted. Its effect will be tragic because, like all other creeds, religious or secular, Islam stands in permanent need of being able to be openly criticised, even ridiculed, so that the respective and prospective adherents of its various forms be able to be liberated from any intellectual or moral errors to which their adherence might otherwise have led them. This is important, not just for those who may have become subject to these errors, but for others.

No one saw more clearly than Adam Smith how crucial for the stability and cohesion of any society was the need for its members to be able to criticise and even ridicule each others’ most dearly held beliefs, especially their religious ones. Writing in 1776 in his Wealth of Nations, Smith observed ...

Last Monday, Culture Minister, David Lammy, took part in a debate at the British Museum organised by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The subject of the debate was ‘Where Now for Black and Minority Ethnic Heritage?’. In his speech, Mr Lammy succeeded in enunciating one important truth. Unfortunately, it was obscured by many more falsehoods and specious arguments which led, predictably, to some depressing policy proposals.

The truth Mr Lammy stated was one concerning the profound challenge that the events of July 7th pose for the prospects for social cohesion and inter-ethnic harmony. He said:

‘What came under attack that terrible day was … the dream of a nation we might one day become.... Germaine Lindsey, a 19 year old-old black man, [was] driven by a hatred so strong he blew himself up, killing many others in the process: if there is a more blunt challenge to our aspirations for a vibrant multi-ethnic Britain to which all Britons feel they belong, I have yet to hear it.’

Too true, but it is worth observing that the hatred that drove Germaine Lindsey to butcher his fellow-citizens in such an indiscriminate manner had nothing to do with his colour and everything to do with another differentiating attribute of his that somehow Mr Lammy omitted to mention.

In response to that challenge, Mr Lammy went on to issue a challenge of his own to the heritage sector, mimicking George Bush’s response to September 11. He said: ‘If you are not part of the solution to this crisis of Britishness, you are part of the problem.’

In so far as the events of July 7 signify ‘a crisis of Britishness’ , that crisis consists in the presence within Britain of a sub-section of one of its religious minorities, distinguished from everyone else -- including many, and one assumes and ardenlty hopes the vast majoirity, of their own co-religionists -- by such strong antipathy towards current British military action in Iraq on the alleged grounds, spurious in my view, of it being insufficiently respectful of their co-religionists, as well as antipathy to all in Britain supportive of or acquiescent in this action of their government, that they are willing to resort to acts of terror in an attempt to force the government to discontinue that military action.

If my analysis is correct of what the current crisis of Britishness is, then it is difficult to see how the heritage sector might be implicated in it one way or the other.

But if you want to push the heritage sector in a certain multicultural direction, then you will be inclined to analyse the crisis differently. For you will not want to miss an opportunity to suggest, quite fallaciously, that anyone in the heritage sector who might see no need to move in that same direction too is complicit in causing whatever bred the alienation and animus of a section of the populace that led to the events of July 7th.

This year has witnessed more important national anniversaries than most. Among those already celebrated have been the sixtieth anniversary of Britain’s defeat of Nazism and the two hundredth anniversary of Nelson’s decisive naval victory at Trafalgar.

Next week marks the four hundredth anniversary of no less important an event in this country’s epic march towards freedom. This was, of course the uncovering of the plot by a group of disgruntled Catholics to blow up James 1, together with his family and senior advisers, at the state opening of Parliament, as prelude to their effecting a re-Catholicising of the country.

What is multiculturalism? I only ask because yesterday in the Guardian the mayor of London’s director of policing and equalities, Lee Jasper, launched into a ti