De Omnibus Dubitandum Est.

I really hurt for our Anglican brothers and sisters this morning as, listening to Today on Radio Four I heard the former Bishop of Oxford, explain how he feels that readings from the Qur'an should feature in the next Coronation, when Prince Charles succeeds to the Throne. No seriously, he did. In a debate on the role of religion in British public life, Lord Harries, now an independent peer, praised what he called 'the hospitality' shown in a service last year at Bristol Cathedral. How desperately disappointing that someone who has dedicated his life (one assumes) to the preaching of the Gospel has so little belief in the objective truth of his religion that he feels it necessary to capitulate to another ideology. Can you imagine Muslims reading passages from the Bible at the installation of a Kalif? It is unthinkable, simply because these are competing ideologies. It is one thing for scholars and intellectuals to argue about the relative merits, the commo...

I have long held a fascination with Islam; the people, the culture, the Kaba, the texts. This has led to a lot of reading. Reading Al Qur'an , commentaries, histories and polemics. Trying to understand the complicated interplay of Islamic culture and philosophy. What Islam preserved and gave us; Averoes, the Alhambra, Avicenna, Aristotle even. What it represented to us in the West; wresting the Holy Land away from us in the Muslim conquests of the Levant (632–661), Al-Andalas and the Caliphate of Cordoba (711), the fall of the Byzantine Empire (1471),  Reconquista in 1492,  the Great Seige of Malta (1565),   the Battle of Lepanto (1571). Does that seem like a lot of war? Today, Islam is still deeply controversial throughout the world. Islamic countries are restless. The Arab spring seems to be disintegrating into anarchic violence. In this country, on the 22nd May, we had the horrific incident where a British Soldier was knocked down in the street, in broad dayli...