A · Muslim · Thinktank

Further to my posts of yesterday and the previous weeks, I read with interest today that some of my ideas on "unity" and "transparency" are being proposed at the highest level now.

The BBC reports that the Department for Education and Skills is now thinking of proposing that faith schools should take up to 25% of their pupils from outside their faith community.

The issue in question is the Education and Inspections Bill, which is currently wending its way through Parliament, and appears to have got as far as the Committee Stage in the House of Lords. As Labour ministers know full well, this is a lair of knowledgeable people and Conservatives - people that do not exist in the Commons - and so extra consensual measures have to be taken in such places.

As always, the precise deliberations in Parliament are opaque and it's difficult to pin down what exactly is going on. The Bill seems to be extremely technical and murky, and mostly deal with forcing schools to become "foundation-status" (ie drop out of local authority control) and to beef up the inspections regime for all schools, foundation or not.

A late add-on is a discussion of how schools choose their parents, erm, pupils. As anyone jostling for good schools in London knows, this is a deadly serious business requiring parents to resort to most devious strategies. Some of the worst deviousness derives from the fact that schools interview parents, to test to see how religious they are, which of course is an (excellent/irrelevant and discriminatory - delete as you feel appropriate) way to class how well their tiny infants will "fit in", or not.

Reform of this deviousness is well overdue, because devious parents self-select their children to success, leaving poorer children (whose parents are less pushy) to languish in the poorer schools.

It seems to have been spun in a different manner - witness the Conservative spokesman Lord Lucas, who said "allowing faith schools is one thing, but allowing them to select pupils who are only of that faith is something very different. Faith schools are an extremely constructive concept, but when they are allowed to become ghettos and to separate pupils in one way or another from the rest of the surrounding community, they can be very destructive." <1)

It doesn't take much of a brain to see that this little comment was aimed at Muslims - even though there actually aren't any more than a handful of Muslim schools - who popular stereotype suggests are the only community in Britain guilty of ghettoisation.

If the government does decide to play with the spin, the result will be heavier restrictions on faith schools, to open up their admission arrangements. Even now, its response is to "require faith-sponsored schools to consult an appropriate body or person on their proposed admission arrangements" - with the question of who an "appropriate body or person" is to be settled at a later date. If the final outcome is that faith schools will have to reserve a quota of places for for non-believers or other faith groups, then much of the selfish attraction of a faith school will disappear.

Predictably, Muslim groups have raised howls of protest, correctly seeing in this a way to break down their "right" to have single-faith Muslim schools that teach Quran and Sunnah and little else. How short-sighted they are. Muslim children are likely to be the winners from fresh choices, not dragged back.

The real outcome of any such breaking in down of barriers is that more Muslims will go to good schools, and more good pupils will remain in schools where Muslims are. Given the Muslim community's lamentable educational record, this is a gain for Muslim children, who are less likely to be fully dragged down by low expectations and narrow horizons.

And if Muslim-led schools are as good as they think they are, they should benefit from having an influx of good pupils with broader experience.

Welcome to the first blow in the battle for "transparency" and "unity". I think it could really be a winner for Muslim children, if we're not so constantly sour about it all.

Yet more stories in today's papers about women in black niqabs and Ministers falling over themselves to use the words "Muslims, take off, veils, integration, fairness and equality" together in the same sentence without appearing racist. But the less able ones have thrown themselves at a bandwagon, found that the horse had already bolted, and fell directly into muddy quagmires.

It's strange to think that the last general election was only a year ago, because all of this has the distinct ring of what Betty Boothroyd, the former Speaker of the House of Commons, described accurately as "pre-electoral tension". I get the impression that we're now witnessing the rumblings of a post-Blair Labour Party, and a return to the politics of flag-waving.

None of this can be directly attributed to Gordon Brown, of course, though his speech in January on "embracing the Union flag" shows where he thinks politics is heading. The media is usefully reminding people that when Brown becomes Labour leader, there'll be a fight for deputy-leader not uncoincidentally involving Jack Straw.

What Jack Straw and Gordon Brown know, followed by their sheep-like colleagues, is that Labour is perceived as "soft" on fair-play (viz asylum-seekers, tax-dodges and foreign-looking brown people). They also know that they've already lost as many votes from sheep-like Muslim voters as they're going to lose, so it's a good place to launch a first battle in a new battle (sorry, "debate") to reimpose "fair-play" and "British culture".

There will be plenty more of this in future. Plenty of politicians are now setting out a vision of future community relations, and one which attacks the "gains" which the Muslim community has been amassing over the last two decades. Its key words will be "transparency" and "unity".

Unity

"Unity" will refer to a concentrated effort that the government will try to pursue, to bridge over the centrifugal forces that are already spinning this country apart from itself. Its key points will be the common education system, the public-sponsored media and employment policy. At its heart will be a programme for ensuring a common culture across the country, a framework into which people from a variety of backgrounds will be able to shape their lives and interact with each other. We've already seen a start in this direction under David Blunkett, with English-language requirements for immigrants and new "citizenship tests" for prospective passport-holders. If you haven't seen one of these citizenship tests, they're quite good entertainment, and undoubtedly do provide an insight into what makes British people tick and act in the bizarre way (by international standards) that we do.

Stage two in this process will be to implement "unity" into the main curriculum in a much more structured way. The core components of "Britishness" will sooner or later be a requirement for all schools, public or private. Including, of course, Islamic schools, which have been the focus for so much ill-informed discussion in recent years. I have no doubt that most Islamic schools are well-intentioned towards wider society, and want to ensure their pupils get the best out of multicultural lives. I also have no doubt that many of them are academically useless, and deserve a serious shake-up. When the Government gets its hands on them, they'll have it.

Stage three will be when there is a further political programme of doing away with all sorts of other positive and negative practices in schools or the workplace which end up being discriminatory. Like perhaps having two local faith-schools (say a CoE and a Muslim one) form a "partnership" to deliver joint teaching and thereby compelling mixing of cultures. Or perhaps by beefing up the team to check whether private employers are fulfilling their obligations to avoid discrimination in hiring new staff.

"Transparency"

"Transparency" will be the second half of this strategy. In areas where there is acceptance of difference - for example in specialist schools or faith-based welfare - there will be a much stronger imperative to be accountable to wider society. For example, a selective school will probably have to publish its selection criteria much more carefully, and maybe even its accounts. Welfare providers (including mosques) will have to show that they are really casting the net wider. For example, the welfare programmes at East London mosque are currently (and inevitably) focused on needy Muslims - but why is this inevitable? I reckon there would be real benefits in having normal East London community services provided in a variety of locations such as churches, civic centres, synagogues and mosques - and without any requirement to belong to a particular faith community.

Plenty of small Islamic schools have been slurred unfairly by the media for being "Taliban-style", "indoctrinating" and "jihadi", and are then found completely innocent by the authorities. If these institutions had signed up to an equal opportunities mission statement, for example, that guided their procedures, many of their problems would simply go away.

It remains to be seen whether this kind o future pans out. But I believe it will do, sooner or later. Politics in this country is hardening against some of the more egregious and visible signs of difference in our streets. The Conservatives, while looking soft and cuddly on global warming and youth crime, are never going to go soft on Unionism, which remains a key foundation of their beliefs. Even yesterday, the Conservative home affairs spokesman David Davis wrote an article in the Sunday Telegraph entitled "Do Muslims really want apartheid here?" that said "It is by daily contact that we overcome our differences. Habitual contact enables us to fight the underlying problems of poverty, bad housing and lack of opportunity, which blight too many of our cities"

Muslims are going to have to learn to play this new game. Visible separatism in the form of the veil and exclusive mosque-linked lifestyles are the prime symptoms of what many politicians believe is a much deeper problem. We are living in an atomised society, where people watch hundreds of different channels, have different pastimes, and often have more in common with people on the other side of the world than those next door. Politicians have a responsibility to speak up on these things, and British Muslims need to respect their attentions.
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Much of the last two weeks in Britain has been taken up with yet another round of the whole veils dispute. This comes round again and again with a saddening regularity, for the very simply fact that it's never solved.

I generally leave the rights and wrongs of this debate to the ladies, since ultimately it's they who are responsible for their clothing decisions. One of the things I have learned since marriage is that men's dress sense is generally wholly inferior to their wives, and that husbands are generally an obstacle to shopping. I often accompany my wife when she goes to the shops; I get consulted for my opinion; I then get rebuffed when it is clear that my opinion is incorrect; then I get whines of indecision until we eventually leave the shop empty-handed, my wife having decided that the garment wasn't nice after all.

This being generally the case, I repeat that men are mostly an obstacle to any discussion about women's clothing.

But men, it seems, simply cannot keep themselves out of the debate about the hijab and veil - whether they are for or against.

Let's not be in any doubt about this. The reason why Muslim women want to wear the hijab and niqab is because of men. Very few hijabis really believe that a piece of cloth will keep Satan out, will send them good thoughts or will keep them out of trouble. Instead, the pious Muslim woman refers back to the verse in the Qur'an that enjoins the true believers to draw their veils over them: "that is more proper, so that they may be distinguished and not be harassed." (Surah 33:58 - al-Ahzab the Confederates). This verse confirms that the divine injunction on women is for a specific reason: namely to discourage men who would abuse them.

I've heard so, so many speeches about the veil from Muslims, both women and men - and most if not all of them fall back on the quantity of lewdness in men's eyes being why they have decided to wear the scarf.

Even more masculine influence can be detected if the woman in question is married. This even happens if the person is a complete stranger - such as the many times an old man has told me in the mosque that I should get married asap, and make sure that my wife wears the scarf. It's the social statement that counts, rather than any interest in the woman's opinions.

What I've heard a lot less of, is earnest discussion among Muslims for why it is that our men-folk are so unruly that a command about hijab became necessary in the first place. Plenty of Muslim women despairingly justify hijab by pointing out that the the Qur'an specifically says "tell believing men to restrain their eyes and guard their private parts. That is purer for them. And Allah is well aware of what you do." (Surah 24:27 - al-Nur the Light).

But there is no action on it. Worse still, many Muslim men seem to be unable to avoid ogling women who don't wear the hijab. I've lost count of the number of non-Muslim women who absolutely hate Muslim men (particularly Arabs in France), because of outright aggression and harrassment - aggression and harrassment that all parties know would be simply unthinkable on hijabis. Many people draw the lesson that it's women's fault for not protecting themselves, rather than that men are abusing the spirit of their faith to the limit and beyond. Islam should lead to safety and tranquillity of heart, not lecherous comments and sexual harrassment

Today is the day that Jews celebrate their most sacred festival, that of Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement. I was alerted to this by the fact that my boss told us he would be taking the day off today, as well as the fact that a friend of mine cried off a dinner engagement.

I have maximum respect for Jews in this society. When I was at school in central London, at least a quarter of my classmates were Jewish, and I got to know some of the more intricate details of Jewish faith and practice, including the dilemmas of living in the 21st century with them.

And although I have never quite understood the point of many of the traditional festivals – there seem far too many of them for detailed comments – Yom Kippur has always seemed to me a particularly good festival.

The central theme of the festival is atonement, repentance and serious consideration of one’s personal failings before God. The Scriptures are read in the morning and the evening, during collective religious services in the synagogue that concentrate on admitting and taking responsibility for the sins Jews have committed, and seeking forgiveness for them. In some communities, the faithful supplement the collective prayers and repentance with individual prayers that last from morning right up until nightfall.

Furthermore, the central importance of God in the festival is underlined by a long fast – and as every religious person knows, there is nothing like a feeling of hunger to reduce pride, induce humility and atune the mind to God’s presence.

As a Muslim now, I respect this festival even more. Especially when it falls in Ramadan. Muslims have been fasting now for a week or so, and we have been braced to feel hunger for God’s pleasure – and indeed Allah is inevitably at the forefront of the fasting Muslim’s day. Every moment, and our stomachs remind us of our commitment to Allah, and the imperative on humans to keep their promises to Him. Muslims in Ramadan fully understand the discipline and rigour that God demands of us during holy periods.

And I think Ramadan also teaches Muslims the importance of seeking forgiveness from God for the sins we have committed. It’s not so explicit in the message of Ramadan – since the Qur’an talks about “self-restraint”, “patience” and “discipline” rather than atonement. The “day of atonement” for Muslims, if there is such a thing, is the key day during the hajj pilgrimage, when believers climb the mountain on the Plain of Arafat and plead for their lives. For Arafat is the place where the Prophet said that all mankind will be raised from the dead and gathered, in order to proceed to their Last Judgement. I have not been on the pilgrimage myself yet – may God allow me to do so soon – but the television pictures tell the whole story. Pilgrims crying and ceaselessly praying the whole day, as they overlook the place where they will be brought on the Day of Judgement, and will face certain damnation if God does not accept their prayers and grant them forgiveness.

But the theme of atonement is also present during Ramadan. You just have to look around you in the mosque at the end of the tarawih prayers, when you see the remorseful, imploring forgiveness from a sin they dare not vocalise to any other, when you see the old men, standing in front of their Lord desperately in case they never see another Ramadan, and the imams whose recitation of the witr supplementary prayer is marred by tears falling down their cheeks.

We don’t have a festival quite so rooted in the search for forgiveness as do our Jewish cousins. We don’t have a day when individuals and communities seek forgiveness and mercy from God and from other believers around them.

In some ways this is a loss. While Muslims seek forgiveness on a constant basis from God for their misdeeds, they don't put such an effort on seeking forgiveness from their fellow humans.

Muslims are required to forgive their fellow human beings, as the Qur’an makes clear

” Let not those among you who are endued with grace and amplitude of means resolve by oath against helping their kinsmen, those in want, and those who have left their homes in Allah's cause: let them forgive and overlook, do you not wish that Allah should forgive you? For Allah is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful” (Surah 24:22 – Al-Nur the Light)

As this example shows, forgiveness of other people is a means to attaining greater mercy from God, who remains the overall judge and master of cases. As in so many cases in Islam, the Man-God relationship is given the most prominent place, ahead of the Man-Fellow Men relationship. Success in Islamic theology comes from forgiveness by God, not necessarily from forgiveness by other men for actions committed against them. Certainly, certainly the action of forgiving each other is highly praiseworthy. Indeed the Hadith Qudsi makes it clear that every servant of Allah will be forgiven except for the man who has a grudge against his brother, and he will delayed from the Gates of Paradise until they are reconciled. But this is not the same as the emphasis placed in the Christian Lord's Prayer, that of "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us."

In Judaism, the Day of Atonement gives a formal opportunity for such reconciliations to take place, amid an atmosphere of burying the hatchet between men in order to gain God’s favour.

Perhaps Islam is more free in the means by which people should repent of their social misdeeds, and seek forgiveness. It is the responsibility of each individual to find time and humility to seek forgiveness.

Many do this, but many do not. Certainly, people in the Islamic world are motivated to no small amount by pride and honour, the desire never to be humiliated in the eyes of others.
I believe on balance that the lack of a formal day of repentance towards other people is a contributory factor to many of the social problems we Muslims have created for ourselves.

But if Muslims take advantage of the discipline and humility of Ramadan, its message of peace and the time when the Gates of Paradise really are opened, then our Day of Atonement is actually a month of atonement.

It's the first day in the office again, now that the month of Ramadan has started. As every year, the first few days are the hardest - it's when you haven't got used to being hungry in the afternoon, when you're dying for a coffee to keep you marginally interested in your work, and when you're still wondering what you can do in an evening so completely disrupted by the two hours of tarawih prayer. As time goes on, the peculiar rhythm of Ramadan takes over - you come to love the wait as the evening gets darker and darker, you come to love the sounds of the recited Qur'an, and most importantly you start to feel really connected to the realities of this world.

The feeling of peace and happiness is the best, the feeling of participating in something real, significant, pure and good. It reminds me of two sayings, both of which are fundamentally about the same feeling.

Firstly, there is the hadith of the Prophet, recounted in Sahih Muslim (Book 4, no.1410), in which he explains

"Can any dirt remain on the body of any one of you, if there were a river at his door in which he washed himself five times daily? They, said: Nothing of his filthiness will remain. He said: That is like the five prayers by which Allah obliterates sins."

I heard a slightly more 21st century version of this a few years back from the mouth of the evangelist Abu Muntasir, when he said "If you had a phone or something, would it ever run out of battery if you plugged it into the wall five times a day? This is the way of Islam, the believer plugs himself into something even more powerful than electricity, he plugs himself into the grid of reality itself, and five times every day."

So, having got to my desk, and feeling hyper-connected, hyper-focused on God, I find the depressing news that I might be alone in feeling calm and in tune with the world.

How is it possible therefore that the first reports of Ramadan around the world are not about how good and holy all Muslims are becoming, but rather that across the Muslim world, the month of Ramadan marks a high-spot for violence, killings and general crime and criminality.

In Iraq, we get the story that 35 people died in a car-bomb next to a market, amid the tragic but truthful comment that "In recent years there has been a spike in violence in Iraq throughout the holy month and US officials are predicting that it will be much the same this year".

In Somalia, the Islamic Courts used the first day of Ramadan to invade one of the few ports left outside their control - and then fired at demonstrators.

I remember when the civil war was still on in Algeria, there were annual cycles of killing which always peaked in Ramadan.

Why is this? Why is it that a holy month, in which the gates of Paradise are open is the time so many people decide to commit actions that will surely forfeit their place in Heaven? Why, in the month when the gates of Hell are closed, do some people try to reopen them again?

I can't explain it myself. Frankly, not a great deal should happen in Ramadan in most of the world anyway, given how hungry and tired the people should be during the daytime.

The only good answer I can come up with is that zealous people are fasting so hard that they lose sight of what "God's will" actually is. Instead of the patience that is at the heart of the Ramadan message (or, in the precise words of the Qur'an, "O ye who believe! Fasting is prescribed to you as it was prescribed to those before you, that ye may (learn) self-restraint" (Surah 2:183 - al-Baqara the Cow) some people see it as a time for action. And foolishness.

If that's correct, then Ramadan criminals must have they plugged themselves so firmly into the electricity that the shock fries their brains.

But God is the justest of the judges, the most merciful of those who show mercy, the kindest of the kind, the all-Hearer, all-Seer, all-Knower. Allah promises that no soul shall have a burden heavier than it can bear, and we remain, as always, entirely accountable for our own actions.

Yesterday, I finally got around to reading a book I’d heard quite a bit about, called Freakonomics, written by an American economics professor from Chicago called Stephen Levitt, who appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Start the Week a little while ago. As the book’s subtitle explains, it’s about how “a rogue economist explores the hidden side of everything,” such as why teachers cheat in exams to make their students look smarter, why most drug-dealers still live with their parents and why private doctors suggest unnecessary treatments to their patients.

There’s been a lot of gushing praise for this book, mainly due to its ability to “reveal” mysterious economic causes for key sociological trends. And indeed it does reveal one or two eye-opening facts, such as the statistical certainty that successful sumo-wrestlers throw matches against lower-ranked opponents, and that the availability of abortion since the 1970s has had a major impact on crime levels in the 1990s. But most of the “revelations” in the book are quite obvious given a moment’s thought. Everyone knows that most crack-dealers earn less than the minimum wage – and that the profits go not to the foot-soldiers but to the high-ups in the trafficking network. Everyone knows that estate agents frighten buyers with stories about the “booming market” and sellers with the “bubble market” in order to speed up sales. And everyone (or at least most people) know that more children die through drowning in their own swimming pool than from playing with guns.

Now I’m not entirely against this. I buy the premise of the book that an awful lot of human behaviour can be traced back to economic incentives. If I wanted to reduce this book to a handful of economic concepts, it would be pretty simple to do so:
• Most people act honestly due to moral incentives, like social approval, a sense of “fair-play” and fear of disgrace
• But where they feel they can get away, a substantial percentage of people – but not all - will cheat in order to promote their own interests
• Information asymmetries – where one person knows something and another one doesn’t – are a rich source of profit for the knowledgeable
• “Conventional wisdom” often confuses correlation with causality
• Economic incentives do change people’s behaviour, but moral incentives are generally more powerful than economic incentives

I don’t believe any of this is rocket-science, and in many ways it is amazing that most people think economics is divorced from the essence of the human condition.

What makes economics hard is that it – like statistics in general – is an inexact science. Even if you have correctly waded through the mish-mash of possible “explanations” for a phenomenon and found some really salient facts, it’s unwise to predict the outcomes of individual cases. People are individuals, and even if numbers point to a high probability of a certain action, the individual is quite able to run counter to it.

It’s even more so if you think that that the “economics” part of human behaviour – in other words the quasi-financial part of weighing costs and benefits – is secondary to the cultural. Do you believe that a person with a decision to make will act as a “rational” economic actor, calculating his options, or will he simply act as his culture and upbringing have taught him.

On this issue, my wife and I stand on opposite sides of the divide. She believes people are largely culturally-ingrained – particularly by religion – and that this prevents religious people from taking independent or indeed rational decisions. Whereas I believe that people derive personal benefits from their religious practice, benefits which they bring into economic decision-making.

For example, why do Muslim families have so many more children than other sections of the population? There are pure economic costs from children – such as clothes, food, toys, decorating a room for them etc, healthcare & tuition costs and all manner of serious financial outgoings. There are costs from the time needed to devote to childcare, which often stunts the caregiver’s career (usually the mother), if not ends it completely. There are further costs from emotional distress when the child fails to do well, or breaks things or becomes delinquent or all manner of other troubles. Some of these costs – alright, maybe only the last category – are compensated for by emotional joy at seeing a child that does do well, achieve and not become delinquent. Maybe.

Muslims – as the statistics bear out – are not the highest-achievers in the UK population. Therefore by a rational economic test, Muslims should be among the least able to afford the financial costs and penalties associated with children, of any part of the population. But the birth rate for Muslims is much higher than others, despite the clear evidence that these children will be much more likely to be brought up in poverty, fail to succeed at school and become unemployed as young adults.

So why do they do it? Are they simply expecting the British welfare state to come to their rescue? Or is it a cultural set-up, by which young un-achievers are culturally programmed to marry and conceive even though they have scarcely enough income to support themselves? Do they take literally the words of the Qur’an, “Verily thy Lord doth provide sustenance in abundance for whom He pleaseth, and He provideth in a just measure. For He doth know and regard all His servants” (Surah 17:30 - al-Isra the Night-Journey)? Or indeed are they discouraged from using birth control and abortion, and so cannot avoid having large families?

My wife points to the fact that many of the Muslims in the UK were born overseas and have brought cultural practices of large families with them. And that other poor communities in the UK – particularly whites – don’t have such high birth rates. From this she concludes that it’s all about culture, and that Islam is at the root.

My stance on this is that it’s not a purely religious issue, but a socio-economic one in which religion is a factor among many. Without doubt, Islamic teaching in this country does encourage young families. It does encourage women to become housewives, and thereby sacrifice a career. It does encourage a larger structure for the family-unit, across which the financial and social costs of children are spread. But I believe this is still fundamentally a question about poverty and deprivation.

Firstly, there is very good evidence that poor-education and poverty go hand in hand. There is also good evidence that poorly-educated girls across the country are more likely to have children than their richer sisters, who have considerable disincentives to falling pregnant. Furthermore, women who struggle to get jobs at the best of times – because of poorly-educated background – would feel much less opportunity cost through caring for children instead of going out to work. Once you factor out education from the equation, the fertility rate of Muslim women is not so far away from married women in any UK community.

Furthermore, there are statistics on Muslims which suggest – unsurprisingly – that fertility is linked to social class. In other words, a richer Muslim family will have less children than a poorer one, and that settled 2nd generation girls have less children than their mothers did. This is a normal demographic trend proven across the world, as it is in the UK

This is all very well, but when I think of friends of mine, who have jacked in promising careers as doctors, scientists and teachers in order to have “good Muslim children”, I can’t help but wonder whether my wife is right. Are Muslims so concerned with having large families that we’re actually impeding our own impact on wider society? Do we really benefit so much from increasing demographically, if the result is a failure to pull ourselves out of poverty? What is the best way to anchor Islam as a constituent part of a better Britain?

I understand and appreciate the phrase in the Qur’an which tells Muslims, “Kill not your children for fear of want: We shall provide sustenance for them as well as for you. Verily the killing of them is a great sin.” (Surah 17:31 – al-Isra the Night-Journey) This is a clear warning against infanticide – and maybe some sorts of abortion as well. But I can’t help but think that given our lowly position in the economic tables, perhaps we as a community might actually benefit from a slower birth rate. Perhaps we need a little pause to allow our talented young people the time to get the careers and social position that would better embed the Muslim community in British society?

Misunderstandings are always unfortunate, mostly innocent mistakes, and sometimes deliberate foolishness.

I got an email from a friend of mine today, enclosing a link to an article protesting against speech given by the current Pope, Benedict XVI. As the email made clear, all Muslims should protest at the great insult to Islam. I mean, the Pakistani parliament, the leader of India’s Muslims, the head of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, Sheikh Qaradawi and others all thought the pope has been needlessly provocative, and should apologise.

Well really!

Of course, the protests are not actually against the message contained within the pope’s speech itself , since almost nobody has actually read it. Instead, we’re in the realms of selective quoting, quoting out of context and general misinformation and misunderstandings.

This I will not participate in. It’s a disgrace that serious leaders in places where no Catholics actually live try to dramatise their own identity politics. It’s a disgrace that deprived and poor parts of the world can become ungovernable because of a petty semantic dispute.

As for an informed theological discussion on the meaning of the Pope’s message, well that’s another matter.

The Pope’s aim in his lecture to Regensburg University was to talk about some of his favourite themes: the difficult relations between faith and reason in the modern world. As is always the case in such speeches, the Pope had as his audience the modern European Catholic, asked to doubt the place of God in his life, and even God’s very existence. In particular, should a person follow unswerving belief in God rather than use their reason and intelligence to come up with an answer that may be right, but is not mandated.

Benedict XVI chose as his centre-piece an old text of a debate between the cultured Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus and a cultured Persian, on all matters theological. The debate itself is, by the way, a very interesting piece of inter-faith theological discussion which does not do discredit to the cultured Persian at all. While it inevitably casts Paleologus in a better light than his opponent – after all, he commissioned it in the first place – the discussion of Islamic theology is not universally unfair, and the Persian did not end it in humiliating defeat. Certainly, it does not deserve the opprobrium poured on it by Muslim “leaders”, who I do not believe could be anywhere near as convincing as the cultured Persian should their places have been swapped.

The heart of the matter is the question of whether God could allow His true religion to be spread by force, or whether it should be obvious to non-believers. Paleologus describes this by saying: “"God is not pleased by blood - and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats... To convince a reasonable soul, one does not need a strong arm, or weapons of any kind, or any other means of threatening a person with death..."

The Pope and Paleologus then compared this “Christian position” to a “Muslim position” which holds that Allah is so transcendent above humans that He is not bound by this rationality, and no-one could reproach Him for any decisions that He may choose to make. If Allah chose to force mankind to worship idols, and then punished them for it, then none could stop Him. Likewise, if He chose to make men convert to Islam at the point of the sword, so be it.

There is truth in this division, but there is also supreme misunderstanding.

Again and again, the Qur’an speaks of the supreme transcendence of God above his creations and certainly above all human understanding. For example, Ayat al-Kursi, one of the most famous verses in the Qur’an, says:

“Allah! There is no god but He,-the Living, the Self-subsisting, Eternal. No slumber can seize Him nor sleep. His are all things in the heavens and on earth. Who is there can intercede in His presence except as He permitteth? He knoweth what appeareth to His creatures before or after or behind them. Nor shall they compass aught of His knowledge except as He willeth. His Throne doth extend over the heavens and the earth, and He feeleth no fatigue in guarding and preserving them for He is the Most High, the Supreme” (Surah 2:255 – Al-Baqara the Cow).

Later, the Qur’an says “If there were, in the heavens and the earth, other gods besides Allah, there would have been confusion in both! but glory to Allah, the Lord of the Throne: (High is He) above what they attribute to Him! He cannot be questioned for His acts, but they will be questioned.” (Surah 21:022 – Al-Anbiya the Prophets).

But this irresistibility and transcendence does not prevent God from making a covenant with mankind that limits His power to act arbitrarily. The convenant between a transcendent God and mortal men is that Allah imposes on himself justice and mercy, linked to the precise actions of mortal men.

The determination of the fate of such mortal men depends on their own actions, as can be seen from Allah saying:

”O Children of Israel! call to mind the favour which I bestowed upon you, and fulfil your covenant with Me as I fulfil My Covenant with you, and fear none but Me.” (Surah 2:40 – Al-Baqara the Cow)

and

“But those who believe and do deeds of righteousness,- we shall soon admit them to gardens, with rivers flowing beneath,-to dwell therein for ever. Allah's promise is the truth, and whose word can be truer than Allah's.” (Surah 4:122 - An-Nisa the Women)

Given that justice and mercy are qualities that Allah has imposed on himself, how could it be doubted that Allah asks each individual to decide to believe or not to believe on an individual basis.

“There is no compulsion in religion; truly the right way has become clearly distinct from error; therefore, whoever disbelieves in the Shaitan and believes in Allah he indeed has laid hold on the firmest handle, which shall not break off, and Allah is Hearing, Knowing.” (Surah 2:256 – Al-Baqara the Cow).

There is no place in the Qur’an where this basic message is contradicted. While there are many occasions where Muhammad is admonished for grieving over those who do not believe – nowhere is there a message to compel belief by violence.

Muslims should reflect on the Pope’s message properly, because there should be no contradiction in the position set out by Manuel II Paleologus and the correct interpretation of Islamic doctrine. There should be no forced conversion in Islam – and yet we cannot deny that Muslims after the Prophet’s time did precisely this.

We shouldn’t castigate the Pope therefore for correctly quoting a general belief about Muslim practice. At the time of Paleologus, Muslims believed that the verses in the Qur’an on holy war allowed forced conversion. And they still do now, it appears, though without good justification. The shariah and the Qur’an are clearly in opposition on this point.

This is the central problem that Muslims need to concentrate on, rather than waste everyone’s time, blood and nerves on trivia. I don’t care whether the Pakistani parliament thinks the Pope is provocative – but I’d like to hear a decent theological argument rebutting the Pope’s message, and preferably an argument that is as well-put as the Persian seven centuries ago.

Tony Blair appears to be in the doldrums of his career. I doubt that many Muslims in this country are crying too hard about this. After all, it’s his government that has presided over two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a whole raft of anti-terrorist Acts of Parliament, and a massive burst of immigration resulting in a general worsening in the climate of community relations.

But if you put aside these most public of disputes with the Muslim community, it’s amazing to look back at how much attention Blair’s government has given to Islam, and how much responsibility he’s hoping to place on Muslim shoulders.

In the first place, never have we seen a Labour government more willing to let non-state actors do things for themselves. Socialists traditionally viewed the world as a fundamentally unjust place which only the State could restore to decency. Witness therefore higher taxes, a controlled economy and state-run welfare and social programmes. But since the 1980s, the State’s influence has been rolled back even in areas it had previously ruled completely. This has been a great benefit to the nascent sense of Muslim self-identity. If you go down to the local mosque today, you see a whole variety of services being provided by the local community, with cash from the government. Take East London Mosque, for instance, where they have an “Improving School Attendance in Partnership” programme, a health promotion programme (specialities include the “Ramadan stop smoking campaign”) and JobCentrePlus weeklyError running style: Style code didn't finish running in a timely fashion. Possible causes:

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