History > 2007 > UK > Religion, sects (II)

Leading article:

Bloodshed and toleration

Published: 24 December 2007
The Independent

The revelation that Britain now has more practising Roman Catholics than Anglicans will be met with concern, perhaps even alarm, in some quarters. There is a historic reflex at work here. The modern British state was founded on Protestantism. Centuries of civil bloodshed, martyrdom and regime change over religion have shaped the British national consciousness. To this day the head of state cannot be a Catholic. It is telling, too, that Tony Blair felt the need to wait until leaving office before converting, despite the fact that there is no constitutional barrier to the Prime Minister being Catholic. It seems Mr Blair understood that there is a lingering sensitivity in Britain about Catholics holding high political office.

But not all the concerns are of a conservative nature. Liberals have long been nervous of the notoriously emotive and uncompromising Catholic activism on abortion. In May this year, the head of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, compared abortion to the massacre of schoolchildren in Dunblane and urged Catholic MPs to attempt to reform the law. This has stoked concern that the resurgence of UK Catholicism will mean the importing of an illiberal religiosity into British political life.

However, we would argue that Britain can afford to be more relaxed. There is another historic tradition in this country (albeit one that is younger than anti-Catholicism): toleration. The discriminatory laws against Catholics began to be repealed in the late 18th century, culminating in the 1829 Catholic Emancipation Act. Since then, freedom of conscience has been one of the pillars of our society.

Incidentally, another virtue of our society is the openness of our economy. One of the reasons why Catholics are now in a majority is the number of predominantly Catholic Poles who have come to work in the UK in recent years. It would be hard for even the most staunchly anti-Catholic zealot to portray this as some kind of spiritual invasion. The reality is that the force which governs most of our lives is no longer religion, but economics. And these tens of thousands of industrious Poles have been a considerable economic blessing.

Concern over the reactionary tendencies of hard-line Catholic activists is more well-founded. But Britain is still, mercifully, very far from being like the US, where issues such as abortion and stem-cell research are a staple of political debate. For all the brimstone sermons of the Catholic Church, Britain remains a country resistant to dogmatism.

The way to respond to any assaults – religious or otherwise – on medical or scientific freedom is through cool and reasoned debate, not panic.

    Leading article: Bloodshed and toleration, I, 24.12.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/article3280465.ece

Archbishop of Canterbury,

Dr Rowan Williams,

warns American church leaders

to curb their pro-gay agenda

December 15, 2007
From The Times
Ruth Gledhill, Religion Correspondent

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, asserted his authority over Anglican leaders yesterday in a document sent to all archbishops that said that those who went against the “mind” of the Church risked being excluded from its councils.

The warning, spelt out in his long-awaited Advent Letter to the Church’s 38 Primates and other leaders, could lead to The Episcopal Church of the US and the Anglican Church of Canada forfeiting their seats at the top tables of the Anglican Church if they do not curtail their liberal pro-gay agenda.

The admonition applies equally to conservative bishops and archbishops who have been carrying out “irregular” ordinations. Dr Williams condemns this as illicit interference in other provinces and says these newly ordained conservative bishops will under no circumstances be invited to next year’s Lambeth Conference, the ten-yearly meeting of all Anglican bishops.

Dr Williams is to set up a small group of archbishops and other leading clergy “to consider whether in the present circumstances it is possible for provinces or individual bishops at odds with the expressed mind of the Communion to participate fully in representative Communion agencies, including ecumenical bodies.” He is also to arrange “professionally facilitated conversations” between the leaders of The Episcopal Church and those with whom “they are most in dispute”.

The letter is the clearest indication yet from Dr Williams that he will not be taken hostage by either the liberals or conservatives in the dispute, which has taken the Anglican Communion to the brink of schism. It represents Dr Williams’s determination to reclaim the Anglican middle ground, the “via media” outlined in the mid-19th century by Cardinal Newman, who converted to Roman Catholicism. This is the doctrinal territory that is occupied still by the majority of the 75 million Anglicans worldwide.

Liberals immediately criticised Dr Williams for behaving like “an Anglican Pope” while conservatives condemned him for failing to demand repentance from the US Church over its consecration of the openly gay Gene Robinson as the Bishop of New Hampshire in 2003.

The Archbishop said he was writing out of a “profound conviction” that the Anglican Communion was a gift of God and that everyone in it would be “seriously wounded and diminished” if the Church fractured any further.

Showing clear leadership skills he set down boundaries regarding Scripture and “ecclesiology” beyond which even Anglicans, with their historical tradition of broad fuzziness, should not stray. “Our obedience to the call of Christ the Word Incarnate is drawn out first and foremost by our listening to the Bible and conforming our lives to what God both offers and requires of us through the words and narratives of the Bible,” he said. “Radical change in the way we read cannot be determined by one group or tradition alone.”

Arguing that the debates about sexuality were “symptoms” of Anglican confusion, Dr Williams said that it was far too easy to make the debate a stand-off between those who were “for” and those who were “against” homosexual people in the church.

The Rev Ian Douglas, Professor of Mission and World Christianity at the Episcopal Divinity School in the US, described the letter as “a significant statement” but declined to comment on the apparent warning to Episcopal leaders about their seats at the councils of the Church.

The Rev Giles Fraser, Vicar of St Mary’s, Putney, and founder of the liberal Inclusive Church, criticised Dr Williams for planning yet more meetings and bureaucracy in an attempt to resolve the crisis. “We do not want an Anglican Pope,” he said.

A broad Church
 

77m people in the worldwide Anglican Communion

26m Anglicans in England

1m Attended Sunday services by the Church of England in 2004

Sources: Anglican Communion and the Church of England

    Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, warns American church leaders to curb their pro-gay agenda, Ts, 15.12.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3054277.ece

5.45pm GMT update

Teddy row teacher on her way home


Monday December 3, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Robert Booth in Khartoum, Mark Tran and agencies

Gillian Gibbons, the British teacher jailed for allowing her pupils to name a teddy bear Muhammad, left Sudan tonight hours after receiving a presidential pardon.

The two British Muslim peers, Lord Nazir Ahmed and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, who secured her release after meeting Omar Hassan al-Bashir, Sudan's president, accompanied her amid tight security.

This morning, Gibbons was handed over to the British embassy after more than a week in custody, ending what threatened to turn into a full-scale diplomatic row between Britain and Sudan.

Just after 5pm GMT, a British embassy spokesman said Gibbons had left Sudan on a flight home.

Reacting to his first piece of good news in weeks, Gordon Brown said that "common sense" had prevailed in the dispute.

"I was delighted and relieved to hear the news that Gillian Gibbons is to be freed," the prime minister said in a statement.

"She will be released into the care of our embassy in Khartoum after what must have been a difficult ordeal."

He added: "Through the course of Ms Gibbons's detention I was glad to see Muslim groups across the UK express strong support for her case.

"I applaud the particular efforts of Lord Ahmed and Baroness Warsi in securing her freedom. I am also grateful to our officials for all their work behind the scenes."

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, praised Gibbons's fortitude and described the successful campaign to free her as a "team effort".

Miliband, who spoke to Gibbons, 54, this afternoon, told reporters: "She has shown very good British grit in very difficult circumstances but I know that the most important thing for her is to get home as soon as possible and return to her family."

In a statement, Gibbons said she was "fine" and thanked those who had worked to win her release.

"I have been in Sudan for over four months but I have enjoyed myself immensely," she said. "I have encountered nothing but kindness from the Sudanese people. I have great respect for the Islamic religion and would not knowingly offend anyone and I'm sorry if I have caused any distress."

Warsi read out the statement after meeting the Sudanese president. In it Gibbons paid tribute to her pupils and said she would miss them terribly. "I am sad to think they have been distressed by this incident," she said.

Her son, John Gibbons, 25, said: "Obviously we're very pleased. We've just got to contain our excitement until she's on the plane.

"I'd like to thank the government for all they have done, the hard work behind the scenes, especially the two peers who went out there."

Asked if he had spoken to his mother since her release, he said no, but added: "I'm sure she'll be very pleased although quite embarrassed to be on the news permanently.

"It's been a strange old week, very stressful and particularly bad for the family but now she's coming home, fingers crossed. "If this week has taught me anything it is that anything can happen."

When asked what the key factor was in securing the teacher's release, Ahmed said: "As British Muslim parliamentarians we had better understanding."

A Sudanese government spokesman said he hoped the decision to release Gibbons would improve relations between Britain and Sudan.

But he said: "There was a political risk in this decision. Although the pardon is a presidential prerogative, because of the rising feeling and tensions that have been generated many Sudanese will see it as unfair to them and that it might encourage others to do the same. "The president considered the intentions behind [her] actions when he made this decision [to pardon]."

Gibbons's pardon prompted a small protest outside the British embassy, which ended peacefully.

Reacting to the pardon, Khalid al-Mubarak, of the Sudanese embassy in London, said: "Congratulations. I am overjoyed. She is a teacher who went to teach our children English and she has helped a great deal and I am very grateful. What has happened was a cultural misunderstanding, a minor one, and I hope she, her family and the British people won't be affected by what happened."

In Dundee, Scotland, however, police said they were investigating racially motivated vandalism linked to the Gibbons case.

Three vehicles in Dundee had the words "teddy bear" scratched on them, Tayside police said. The victims are believed to be of Asian origin and run an Indian restaurant in the city.

Gibbons was arrested last Sunday over a classroom exercise in September in which she allowed seven-year-old pupils to name a teddy bear. A school assistant complained after the pupils chose the name Muhammad.

Gibbons was jailed for 15 days on Thursday. She was held at an undisclosed location in Khartoum for her own safety after angry protesters gathered on Friday, many of whom called for her to be executed.

Massing in Martyrs Square some chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance: execution", and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad." Mubarak played down Friday's protests, saying: "The demonstrations were an argument from the fringe. I hope for the best relationship with Britain in the months ahead."

In Liverpool, Gibbons's former teaching colleagues said they were thrilled by her release.

Rick Widdowson, headteacher of Garston primary school, where Gibbons worked for 12 years, said: "Everyone is very relieved and very pleased.

"We feel it should never have come to this but it's a good ending.

"One or two of the staff see Gill socially and I am sure they will be meeting up to celebrate with her."

    Teddy row teacher on her way home, G, 3.12.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,2221020,00.html

Church joins row

over Sunday shopping hours

Opposition mounts to stores' Christmas plea

Sunday December 2 2007
The Observer
Tim Webb and David Smith

Church and union leaders have condemned attempts by big stores to extend their opening times by four hours on the Sunday before Christmas.

Retailers fear deepening economic gloom and a slowing housing market will spell disaster during their most important trading period of the year. They want the government to relax the law that restricts opening hours to six hours on Sundays.

This year Christmas falls on a Tuesday, which retailers say makes the previous Sunday the most important shopping day of the year. Consumers tend to do their last-minute present shopping two days before 25 December, leaving Christmas Eve free to buy food.

Unions and other campaigners - who successfully fought off attempts to relax Sunday trading laws during a government review two years ago - oppose any move for a rethink.

Martyn Eden, of the Keep Sunday Special campaign, said: 'Using Christmas, which is not supposed to be a materialistic event, as an excuse for making people work even longer is unacceptable.'

A spokesman for Usdaw, the union that represents 260,000 store workers, said: 'In 2006 the government decided not to push ahead with changing Sunday trading legislation without exception. Usdaw does not believe any extension to existing hours on the Sunday before Christmas is necessary.'

The Reverend Joel Edwards, head of the Evangelical Alliance, said: 'We affirm the need to challenge our society to avoid the excessive commercialism which can so often push us to work at a pace where family life can become eroded.'

Some major retailers are understood to be planning to lobby John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, on the issue. But yesterday a spokeswoman said: 'Sunday trading hours are fixed in law and the act contains no provision for special dispensation.'

Experts say retailers are desperately trying to boost sales and clear stocks by starting sales and offering discounts earlier than usual. Gavin George, head of retail at accountants Ernst & Young, said the prevalence of 20 per cent off 'for friends and family' offers is a worrying sign. Waterstone's is offering 30 per cent off on some books, while Boots has a 'three for two' offer on toys and gifts.

Richard Hyman, director of research firm Verdict, said retailers were hoping for a late spending rush. 'Christmas will come even later this year. We are busier and have less time and everything gets pushed to the last moment.' While Christmas was unlikely to be a 'bonanza' for retailers it wouldn't be a disaster either. But analysts warn that the period after Christmas is likely to be bleak as the economic slowdown bites. Online shopping is one bright spot. Today sees the start of the busiest 48 hours in internet shopping history, fuelling a predicted record spend of £1.8bn on Christmas goods online this year.

The auction website eBay predicts that it will see its highest ever traffic today with an expected 35 million searches and 2.65 million bids by midnight. Apacs, the UK bank payments association, predicts that Monday is likely to be the busiest day for online shopping as people tend to do research at home but delay making a purchase until they are at work.

Just over half of consumers will do some of their Christmas shopping online this year, according to the British Retail Consortium. It estimates that Christmas goods worth £1.8bn will be bought online, around 15 per cent of the £12bn expected to be spent overall.

The BRC estimates each online shopper will spend an average of £70, compared with an average spend per head of £365 in stores. The most popular categories on eBay are PCs and video games, mobile phones, clothes, jewellery and watches and, unusually, dolls' houses.

Sunday rules

In 1994 the government passed the Sunday Trading Act, allowing shops to trade on a Sunday. In general, smaller shops can choose their own opening hours and larger shops can only open between 10am and 6pm. Large shops must remain closed on Christmas Day. Staff can refuse to work on a Sunday. Shops in Scotland have the right to open at any time, but Scottish workers can also refuse to work on a Sunday.

    Church joins row over Sunday shopping hours, O, 2.12.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/dec/02/retail.religion/print

7pm GMT update

'Blasphemy' teacher found guilty

Thursday November 29, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
David Batty and agencies

A British primary school teacher was jailed for 15 days tonight by a Sudanese court after being convicted of inciting religious hatred for allowing children in her class to name a teddy bear Muhammad.

Gillian Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, will be jailed and then deported from the country after being found guilty, one of her defence lawyers said.

"The judge found Gillian Gibbons guilty and sentenced her to 15 days jail and deportation," said Ali Mohammed Hajab.

The foreign secretary immediately summoned the Sudanese ambassador for an explanation.

"We are extremely disappointed with the sentence and foreign secretary David Miliband has summoned the Sudanese ambassador to explain what has happened," a Foreign office spokeswoman said.

Gibbons has been held by police in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, since Sunday, accused of insulting the prophet Muhammad.

The foreign secretary, David Miliband, who met the Sudanese ambassador, Omer Mohamed Ahmed, in London today to discuss Gibbons's case, said British diplomats would "do everything" to avoid Gibbons being given 40 lashes, one possible sentence.

He said: "The Sudanese legal system has to take its course but common sense has to prevail.

"It's not about disrespect for Sudan, it's about being absolutely clear this is an innocent misunderstanding."

Miliband said that, despite tensions over the Darfur region, there was no "political dispute" over the case.

"This was a person making a contribution to Sudanese society."

Before the verdict, the Sudanese prosecutor general, Salah Eddin Abu Zaid, said he had met Gibbons yesterday and that "the lady was fine". She had been provided with a team of lawyers and translators as well as a bed and mattress in her cell, he said.

A spokesman for the prime minister, Gordon Brown, said the government would consider what further steps might be necessary in the light of the meeting with the ambassador today.

He said: "We need to understand the rationale for why Mrs Gibbons has been charged and get a clearer understanding of what the circumstances are ... before we move to the next stage." Full consular assistance would continue to be made available, he said.

Despite Gibbons's colleagues insisting she had made an innocent mistake, Sudan's deputy justice minister confirmed yesterday that she had been charged.

"The investigation has been completed and the Briton Gillian was charged under article 125 of the penal code," said Abdel Daim Zamrawi, speaking to the official Sudan news agency in Khartoum.

"The punishment for this is jail, a fine and lashes. It is up to the judge to determine the sentence," he said.

Several British Islamic organisations today voiced support for Gibbons. Muhammad Abdul Bari, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the decision to charge the teacher was "a disgraceful decision" that "defies common sense".

"The children in Ms Gibbons's class and their parents have all testified as to her innocence in this matter. We call upon the Sudanese president, Umar al-Bashir, to intervene in this case without delay to ensure Ms Gibbons is freed from this quite shameful ordeal."

Khalid al-Mubarak, a spokesman for the Sudanese embassy in London, said today it was "unlikely" Gibbons would be convicted.

She had one of the best solicitors in Sudan - Tijani al-Karib - and could appeal if found guilty, he said.

Mubarak said naming the teddy bear Muhammad seemed to have been an "honest mistake". He told BBC Breakfast News: "It should have been discussed at school level but there was a complaint from some irate parents who pressed the case and it went to the ministry of education."

Asked if he thought Gibbons would be able to return to Britain soon, he said: "This is my hope and my prayer."

A British embassy spokesman, Omar Daair, said the school had provided Gibbons's legal defence and translators.

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, told GMTV: "We are pretty shocked and surprised about the way the Sudanese have behaved in these circumstances. That's why David Miliband, the foreign secretary, has urgently demanded to meet the Sudanese ambassador so we can make clear our views and hopefully get Mrs Gibbons freed as soon as possible."

Gibbons arrived in Sudan in August to take up a post at the exclusive Unity high school, which follows a British-style curriculum. In September, during a class on animals and their habitats, she asked her seven-year-old pupils to give a teddy bear a name. They chose Muhammad, the name of one of the boys in the class and a popular name in Sudan.

Last week the education ministry informed the school that a few Muslim parents had complained about the name, and police arrested Gibbons at her home in the school grounds.

Sudan's top clerics, known as the assembly of the Ulemas, said in a statement on Wednesday that parents had handed them a book the teacher was assembling about the bear. "She, in a very abusive manner, used the name of Prophet Muhammad, may Allah shame her," the statement said.

Unity's directors have shut the school to avoid protests like those that greeted the publication of notorious cartoons of the Muslim prophet in a Danish newspaper last year.

    'Blasphemy' teacher found guilty, G, 29.11.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,2218871,00.html

4.30pm GMT update

Sudan teacher

charged with insulting religion

Wednesday November 28, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
James Orr and agencies

A British teacher in Sudan accused of blasphemy for naming a teddy bear Muhammad has been charged with inciting hatred and insulting religion, prompting an immediate reaction from the Foreign Office.

Police arrested Gillian Gibbons on Sunday after complaints by parents that she had acted in a way to insult Islam.

A prosecution team in Khartoum "has completed its investigation and has charged the Briton Gillian [Gibbons] under article 125 of the criminal code", the Suna news agency said, quoting a justice ministry official.

The matter will go before a court tomorrow and Gibbons is expected to appear, Reuters reported.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the foreign secretary, David Miliband, would summon the Sudanese ambassador "as a matter of urgency".

"I can confirm Gillian Gibbons has been charged under article 125 of the Sudanese Criminal Code," said the spokesman. "The charges are insulting religion and inciting hatred."

Gibbons, 54, who taught at the exclusive British-style Unity high school in Khartoum, had asked her pupils to name the bear as part of a project to teach them about animals.

But officials from the country's education ministry took action after critics claimed that her choice of name for the bear contravened religious laws.

Lawyers say the teacher, who is from Liverpool, could face 40 lashes, a fine or six months in jail if convicted.

Earlier today, three British embassy officials and a teaching colleague from Unity school were allowed to visit Gibbons for more than 90 minutes.

"I can confirm that we have met Ms Gibbons and she said she is being treated well," said the British consul, Russell Phillips. "We remain in close contact with the Sudanese authorities on this case," he said, declining to give further details.

The teddy bear incident occurred in September this year, a month after Gibbons first arrived in Sudan. It was not until last week, however, that Unity's director was informed that a few parents had complained to the Ministry of Education that their religion had been insulted.

For devout Muslims, any depiction of the prophet Muhammad is regarded as blasphemous. As a result the school closed until January, for fear of reprisals.

The feeling among most teachers and parents at Unity - Muslim and non-Muslim - is that the Sudanese authorities have overreacted.

One English mother, who had a child in one of the other classes in Unity, said: "I was just gobsmacked. And when I talked about it to colleagues who were Muslims, they felt the same.

"When I first heard about the teddy bear I thought 'Oh no, don't go down that road. That's a really bad idea.' But she had just arrived in Sudan. She must have been idealistic, full of new ideas. She just didn't realise that it was such a problem."

Yesterday, even the Sudanese embassy in London called the controversy a "storm in a teacup". Khalid al-Mubarak, the embassy spokesman, told the BBC he expected the case would be treated as a "minute complaint", and that cultural differences had caused the problem.

    Sudan teacher charged with insulting religion, G, 28.11.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,2218420,00.html

Briton Charged

in Religious Hatred Case

November 28, 2007
Filed at 10:58 a.m. ET
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
The New York Times

KHARTOUM, Sudan (AP) -- Sudan charged a British teacher Wednesday with inciting religious hatred after she allowed her students to name a teddy bear Muhammad, seen as referring to Islam's prophet, the country's official news agency reported.

The case against Gillian Gibbons would be referred to the court on Thursday, the SUNA agency quoted Prosecutor General Salah Addin Abuzeit as saying.

Gibbons, 54, was arrested Sunday in Khartoum after she allowed her students -- mostly around age 7 -- to name the teddy bear Muhammad.

    Briton Charged in Religious Hatred Case, NYT, 28.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/world/AP-Sudan-British-Teacher.html

The Church vs the cinema:

Philip Pullman's blasphemous materials?

The Golden Compass, which premiered in London last night, has angered the Catholic Church, which regards it as a pernicious attack by a militant atheist. Ciar Byrne investigates

Published: 28 November 2007
The Independent

Last night, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig took to the red carpet for the premiere in London's Leicester Square of their new film, The Golden Compass. The $150m (£75m) movie adaptation of Philip Pullman's fantasy novel has all the ingredients of a runaway blockbuster hit in the mould of Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

It boasts a glittering cast – Craig is reunited with the Bond girl Eva Green – as well as a new child star, 13-year-old Dakota Blue Richards, and magnificent special effects, from a magical re-imagining of Oxford's gleaming spires to talking animals, including Iorek Byrnison, a bear voiced by Sir Ian McKellen.

But there is one formidable obstacle in the path of the film, which opens to the public on 5 December: the intense antipathy of the American Catholic Church, which has turned its wrath on the production for promoting what it deems a viciously sacrilegious message that boils down to nothing less than "atheism for kids".

In recent years, the Church has looked to Hollywood with renewed interest as a string of films seen as portraying Christianity in a favourable light were embraced as useful recruiting weapons among a younger, trendier demographic. No less a figure than the late Pope John Paul II approved Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, prompting church groups to embark on a sophisticated new marketing strategy in which free tickets were distributed, entire cinemas booked out, and blogs crammed full of positive reviews exhorting the public to follow suit.

So too with the film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, for which Catholic publishing companies brought out companion guides and Church representatives arrived in their busloads for specially arranged advanced screenings.

Now, though, the Church is mobilising those resources against The Golden Compass with the same vigour. Catholic organisations have called on followers to boycott the film, which they accuse of denigrating their faith and of pursuing an unambiguously anti-Catholic agenda.

Published in Britain as Northern Lights, the book on which the film is based is the first installment of Pullman's trilogy, His Dark Materials, which also includes The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass and bears echoes of John Milton's Paradise Lost and William Blake. It tells the story of 12-year-old Lyra Belacqua, who lives in a parallel universe which resembles our own in many ways, with some crucial differences. The most important of these is that human beings are physically separated from their souls, which live outside them as animals, or "daemons". The daemons of children slip from one animal form to another, only taking on a permanent appearance when their human counterpart reaches adulthood.

Lyra has been left by her Uncle Asriel, played by Craig, to be raised by the fellows of Jordan College, Oxford, but when a mysterious and beautiful woman by the name of Mrs Coulter (Kidman) arrives and offers to take her north in the footsteps of her uncle, she is swift to accept. Too late, she realises that Mrs Coulter is not what she seems, but is connected to a sinister organisation called the Magisterium.

Some people have interpreted the Magisterium to be a representation of the Roman Catholic Church. While there is little doubt that Pullman intended to portray a theocracy wielding dangerous power, nowhere in the novels is the Catholic Church overtly criticised. Rather, Pullman's supporters contend, the books attempt to show the dangers inherent in all organised religion when political power rather than spirituality becomes its driving focus.

This is an argument which has been lost on the Catholic League in the US, whose president, Bill Donohue, has accused the film of acting as "bait" to lure young people to read Pullman's novels, where he claims they will find a "pernicious atheist agenda".

The Catholic League claims: "[The film's] objective is to bash Catholicism and promote atheism," although it admits the movie version of The Golden Compass has been "toned down so that Catholics, as well as Protestants, are not enraged". The League has gone so far as to produce a booklet entitled: The Golden Compass: Agenda Unmasked, which is made up of comments from reviewers as well as "revealing comments" made by Pullman himself. It said: "Pullman represents the new face of atheism: it is aggressive, dogmatic and unrelenting. It is also fuelled by hate – by a crusading hatred of all religions, but most especially ours. His side is counting on our side to lie down and die. He may have experienced little resistance in England, but it's a different story here."

Pullman has defended himself in typically robust style against these charges, saying in an interview with Newsweek magazine: "Oh, it causes me to shake my head with sorrow that such nitwits could be loose in the world." He added: "To regard it as this Donohue man has said – that I'm a militant atheist, and my intention is to convert people – how the hell does he know that? Why don't we trust readers? Why don't we trust filmgoers?"

In Canada, the Catholic Schoolboard in Halton, Ontario, has removed The Golden Compass from its library shelves, although students can still ask the librarian to give it to them from behind the counter. The board claimed pulling the book was standard procedure following a complaint, but critics have linked the move to the Catholic League's campaign. In the US, the Catholic archdiocese of Philadelphia has urged parents not to take their offspring to see the film.

The saga has distinct echoes of past attempts by the Church to condemn films it believes are insulting to its faith. In 1988, Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ, based on the 1951 novel of the same name by Nikos Kazantzakis and starring Willem Dafoe, sparked outrage for scenes in which Jesus imagines himself engaged in sexual activity. In the US, preachers railed against the film, but the most dramatic protest happened in Paris, where arsonists connected to an extreme right-wing organisation started a fire at a midnight screening of the film at the Saint Michel cinema, leaving 13 people hospitalised.

More recently, the film version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code starring Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou was condemned by some Catholics for its controversial depiction of the real-life organisation Opus Dei and for claims made about the Holy Family, including the suggestion that Mary Magdelene was not a prostitute, but the wife of Christ. The Catholic League sprung into action, requesting a disclaimer from the movie's director, Ron Howard, informing the audience that what they were about to see was based on fiction, not fact. In India, the film was not shown in several states after protests from the country's Catholic community.

Ironically, Chris Weitz, the director of The Golden Compass accused of peddling an anti-Catholic line, has also been accused of watering down Pullman's criticism of organised religion. The director of the comedies American Pie and About A Boy has described the Magisterium of the books as "a version of the Catholic Church gone wildly astray from its roots," but added: "If that's what you want in the film, you'll be disappointed."

In an interview with the Pullman fan website bridgetothestars.net, Weitz said that from his discussions with the author, the "authority" in his books "could represent any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual, whether it be religious, political, totalitarian, fundamentalist, communist, what have you". But, he confessed: "New Line is a company that makes films for economic concerns. You would hardly expect them to be anything else. They have expressed worry about the possibility of HDMs' [His Dark Materials'] perceived antireligiosity making it an unviable project financially... All my best efforts will be directed towards keeping HDM as liberating and iconoclastic an experience as I can. But there may be some modification of terms. You will probably not hear of the 'Church', but you will hear of the Magisterium."

Fans of the books were incensed and, fearful that he would go down in history as the man who ruined The Golden Compass, Weitz resigned and was only persuaded to return to the film by a handwritten letter from Pullman.

The film's stars have also done their best to dampen the controversy surrounding the movie. Kidman told Australian journalists: "I was raised Catholic, the Catholic Church is part of my essence. I wouldn't be able to do this film if I thought it were at all anti-Catholic." Craig insisted: "These books are not anti-religious. I think that mainly they're anti-misuse of power – whether it's religious or political."

Pullman himself has refused to be pigeonholed as to his beliefs and how they appear in his fiction. In an interview with the Christian magazine Third Way, he said: "I'm not making an argument, or preaching a sermon, or setting out a political tract: I'm telling a story." He added: "I don't know whether I'm an atheist or an agnostic. I'm both, depending on where the standpoint is."

Making clear his disdain for C S Lewis, he added: "I loathe the Narnia novels... The values depicted in the Narnia stories are certainly not the values I read in the Gospels. Hatred of the flesh? Condemning children for growing up?"

In Britain, religious backlashes and cheerleading alike have tended to be more muted, although the potential for protest was ably demonstrated when the BBC2 controller, Roly Keating, and his family were forced into hiding after Christian extremists made death threats over the decision to screen the controversial musical Jerry Springer: The Opera.

Displaying a more moderate approach, at the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales yesterday, a polite young woman explained: "We can't comment on a film we haven't seen yet."

    The Church vs the cinema: Philip Pullman's blasphemous materials?, I, 28.11.2007, http://arts.independent.co.uk/film/news/article3201577.ece

Joan Smith: Islam and the modern world don't mix

Published: 28 November 2007
The Independent

Gillian Gibbons sounds like a nice woman. She is in her 50s, a teacher from Liverpool with grown-up children, and earlier this year she decided to put her experience to use in one of the most troubled parts of Africa. In August, she started teaching at an independent primary school in Sudan, where she seems to have been popular with her young pupils; she followed a national curriculum course designed to teach them about animals and asked a seven-year-old girl to bring her teddy bear into class.

Everything seemed to be going well until last weekend, when Ms Gibbons was arrested and found herself in prison in Khartoum, accused of a crime so horrendous that it carries a penalty of up to six months in jail or 40 lashes. Her "offence" was to name the teddy bear after the Prophet, even though the name was chosen by her young charges themselves. According to the school's director, Robert Boulos, the children came up with eight names and voted overwhelmingly for Mohamed.

Several parents promptly complained to the authorities, leading to Ms Gibbons' arrest on Sunday. The state-controlled media centre in Sudan reported that charges were being prepared under article 125 of the criminal code, which covers insults against faith and religion.

Once again, secular people around the world are left reeling at the capacity of Islam to discern "insult" in the most innocuous behaviour. At one level, this sequence of events is preposterous; I'm sure there are plenty of genuine crimes to worry about in Sudan without wasting time pursuing a woman whose good intentions are manifest.

But the significance of the case goes beyond the individuals concerned, highlighting aspects of Islam as it is currently practised in countries such as Sudan and Saudi Arabia – and promoted in some European mosques – which are incompatible with the modern world. One is the role of honour, which has repeatedly been used to legitimise furious over-reactions to everything from the naming of a toy to instances of women and gay people demanding autonomy over their bodies.

Ever since the outcry over The Satanic Verses nearly two decades ago, I have watched Muslim men (they almost always are men) use the claim that their honour has been insulted as an excuse for disgraceful and frequently criminal behaviour. Salman Rushdie "insults" the Prophet: burn his books. Danish cartoonists display a lack of respect for Islam: attack Danish embassies. A British Muslim girl wants to marry the "wrong" man: kill her for shaming the family. A Saudi rape victim complains that her attackers got off too lightly: increase her sentence (for being in a car with a man who wasn't her husband) to 200 lashes.

In the latter instance, Saudi officials have responded to an international outcry by claiming that the woman has admitted an extra-marital affair and therefore the sentence is fully justified. She has "confessed to doing what God has forbidden", according to a statement on Monday from the Saudi justice ministry, which also attacked "foreign interference" in the case. The Saudis have not been driven to use such punishments by the Iraq war, and they are not untypical of sentences passed in other countries under Islamic law.

The stark fact is that the notion of "honour" and the violence linked to it cannot co-exist with the modern idea of universal human rights. It encourages men to create oppressive laws which do not recognise individual liberties, and to break the law in states where those liberties have been acknowledged.

I have never claimed that Islam is the only religion that does this, and there are anomalies in British law – the archaic offence of blasphemy is an example – which reminds us of a time when Christians reacted just as violently to what they perceived as "insults". In the past, Catholics and Protestants took turns to slaughter each other as Sunni and Shia are doing now, but Christianity has to a large extent been secularised. Not as much as I'd like – there's still a way to go on homosexuality and abortion – but there is no doubt that the influence of Christian churches has dramatically declined.

At the heart of this process is an alteration in the status of religious texts. The Old Testament is full of hair-raising injunctions and barbaric punishments but I don't know anyone, apart from a few extremists on the Christian right, who takes it seriously. The idea that a single book written centuries ago has unique authority – in effect, a veto over all other ideas – makes no sense in societies where intellectual curiosity is valued and encouraged.

Yesterday Inayat Bunglawala, assistant general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, criticised the arrest of Ms Gibbons in Sudan and described it as a "quite horrible misunderstanding". But during a public debate in London two weeks ago, he refused my invitation to condemn unequivocally the practice of stoning women to death for adultery. It had happened during the lifetime of the Prophet, he said, "so you are asking me to condemn my Prophet".

This is a very clear example of the pre-modern and modern sensibilities clashing head-on. No book or person has a monopoly on truth, and I certainly don't regard Muhammad, Jesus or Marx as beyond criticism. But while Muslim scholars are prepared to argue about interpretation, they have this in common: they all agree on the primacy of the Qu'ran and the hadith.

Even the suggestion that the text needs to be reformed, which she has denied making, was sufficient to force Taslima Nasreen to flee her home country, Bangladesh, and seek refuge in Sweden. She recently moved to India, hoping to find more tolerant attitudes among Indian Muslims, and is now being hounded from one city to another by angry mobs.

It is not enough in these circumstances to claim that Islam is a religion of peace, and dismiss all the things non-Muslims don't like – honour killings, relentless assaults on free speech, and now an accusation of blasphemy related to a teddy bear – as aberrations. The mores of the seventh century have no relevance in modern life, especially in the arena of sex where decisions about who to sleep with are widely regarded as a personal matter.

The damage that is being inflicted daily on the image of Islam doesn't come from people like me, who are constantly accused of Islamophobia, but practices such as forced marriage, honour killings and heated denunciations of "Western" values. I can't think of any secular country where a rape victim or a well-meaning British teacher would find themselves threatened with flogging.

    Joan Smith: Islam and the modern world don't mix, I, 28.11.2007, http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/joan_smith/article3201543.ece

US is‘worst’ imperialist: archbishop


November 25, 2007
From The Sunday Times
Abul Taher

THE Archbishop of Canterbury has said that the United States wields its power in a way that is worse than Britain during its imperial heyday.

Rowan Williams claimed that America’s attempt to intervene overseas by “clearing the decks” with a “quick burst of violent action” had led to “the worst of all worlds”.

In a wide-ranging interview with a British Muslim magazine, the Anglican leader linked criticism of the United States to one of his most pessimistic declarations about the state of western civilisation.

He said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission. He poured scorn on the “chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity”.

Williams went beyond his previous critique of the conduct of the war on terror, saying the United States had lost the moral high ground since September 11. He urged it to launch a “generous and intelligent programme of aid directed to the societies that have been ravaged; a check on the economic exploitation of defeated territories; a demilitarisation of their presence”.

He went on to suggest that the West was fundamentally adrift: “Our modern western definition of humanity is clearly not working very well. There is something about western modernity which really does eat away at the soul.”

Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”

He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.

“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.”

In the interview in Emel, a Muslim lifestyle magazine, Williams makes only mild criticisms of the Islamic world. He said the Muslim world must acknowledge that its “political solutions were not the most impressive”.

He commends the Muslim practice of praying five times a day, which he says allows the remembrance of God to be “built in deeply in their daily rhythm”.

    US is‘worst’ imperialist: archbishop, STs, 25.11.2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article2937068.ece
 

12.15pm (GMT)

Jehovah's Witness mother dies after refusing blood transfusion

Monday November 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
Fred Attewill

A 22-year-old mother died just hours after giving birth to twins because doctors were forbidden from giving her a blood transfusion as a Jehovah's Witness.

Emma Gough's family, including her Jehovah's Witness husband, Anthony, 24, refused to overrule her wishes and she died after losing blood.

Mr Gough was reported to be looking after the couple's twin boy and girl at his home in Telford, Shropshire, following the tragedy at the Royal Hospital in Shrewsbury on October 25.

Jehovah's Witnesses believe the bible explicitly bans its followers from receiving blood, even in an emergency.

Peter Welsh, the couple's best man when they married two years ago, told the Sun: "Everybody is devastated by what has happened.

"We can't believe she died in childbirth in this day and age, with all the technology there is. What makes it even more said is Emma had time to hold and start to bond with her twins before complications set in."

He added: "Anthony is in pieces."

Terry Lovejoy, a spokesman for Jehovah's Witnesses in Telford, said today that the local religious community had offered support to the bereaved family.

He said: "We are supporting the family - they are going through a very difficult time and we understand their grief."

The hospital had refused to discuss the case and it is not yet known why Mrs Gough died.

An inquest into the death has been opened and adjourned, according to the coroner's department in Shrewsbury.

    Jehovah's Witness mother dies after refusing blood transfusion, G, 5.11.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2205581,00.html

A Battle Rages in London Over a Mega-Mosque Plan

November 4, 2007
The New York Times
By JANE PERLEZ

LONDON — Disputes over mosques have broken out across Europe. Residents from Belgium to France to Germany have expressed unease at minarets competing in the urban landscape with the spires and stones of centuries-old cathedrals.

But the fight raging over an abandoned lot in London’s East End is of an altogether grander scale. A large and secretive Islamic sect proposed building what would have been the largest mosque in Europe, smack at the gateway to the 2012 Olympic Games, and within sight of London’s financial district.

That plan was sent back to the drawing board to be scaled down, but not before raising a furor of equal size and discomforting questions about the right of Britain’s Muslims to take up a public space commensurate with their growing numbers.

This summer on the Web site of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, more than 250,000 critics of the proposed mosque supported a petition initiated by a backer of the conservative British National Party. Some of them said a large mosque had no right to exist in such a prominent place in a Christian country.

When, around the same time, Karen Armstrong, a historian of religion, wrote an article in the liberal Guardian newspaper commenting favorably about the mosque, the paper’s Web site was deluged with complaints.

In Newham, the borough where the mosque would stand, Alan Craig, the leader of the Christian Peoples Alliance Party in the East End, started a one-man campaign against the mosque a year ago that has grown and gained national prominence.

He began by emphasizing the size of the mosque. But now he focuses on its sponsor, Tablighi Jamaat, a worldwide evangelical Islamic group based in Pakistan with millions of followers that professes to encourage Muslims to be more loyal to their faith.

American and European law enforcement officials say Tablighi Jamaat’s simple message masks a fertile recruiting ground for terrorists. Two of the suicide bombers who attacked the London transit system in July 2005 had attended Tablighi Jamaat gatherings, British security officials said.

Tablighi Jamaat “is a separatist organization,” Mr. Craig said in an interview in his living room where a picture of the crucifixion of Christ hung on a wall, a cross rested on a bookshelf, and a Bible lay on the coffee table.

“They refer to us as kafir,” a term of contempt, he added. “That’s not what we need. We don’t want this mosque in East London. It will be disastrous.”

That Mr. Craig’s immediate neighbors include a Pakistani family on one side of his row house, and immigrants up and down the block, speaks to the changes in the East End, where South Asian Muslims are among the latest wave of immigrants.

The area has welcomed newcomers to London over the ages, starting with the French Huguenots and including Jews in the 19th century. Now nearly 30 mosques, most of them small, are crowded during Friday Prayer.

The 2001 census shows 34.2 percent of the Newham borough population is white. South Asians and blacks predominate. Christianity remains dominant at 46.8 percent and Muslims make up 24.3 percent.

The driving force behind the plan to build a grander mosque has been Abdul Khaliq Mian, 55, a British businessman born in Pakistan and a longtime follower of Tablighi Jamaat.

In an interview, Mr. Mian explained how in 1996 he helped raise £1.6 million, or about $2.9 million at the time, from the Tablighi community to buy an abandoned lot that was once the site of a sulfuric acid plant.

Mr. Mian, who came to Britain at age 11, said that in the late 1990s officials on the Newham Borough Council, which includes Muslims, encouraged Tablighi Jamaat to build a grand mosque befitting the scale of the land.

“I was told it was a very, very strategic site,” Mr. Mian said. “They said, ‘Get a planner and the best architect you can and build the biggest mosque you can.’”

An up and coming architect, Ali Mangara, 40, a Muslim born in South Africa, produced a design that envisioned wind turbines instead of minarets, and generous use of gardens, courtyards and restaurants. In all, with the use of awnings as cover, about 70,000 worshipers would be accommodated, Mr. Mangara said.

“It was intended to reach out and bring new people into the complex,” he said, showing off a model of his futuristic design.

The size of the congregation and avant garde nature of Mr. Mangara’s plans fueled Mr. Craig’s opposition. He accused Tablighi Jamaat of seeking financing from Saudi Arabia, though there is debate about this.

After raising money for the land, Mr. Mangara said, the group never provided additional financing for permits to build his design. Several months ago, his plan that had created the furor was dropped, and Tablighi Jamaat pushed Mr. Mian aside, though he remains a follower.

In Mr. Mangara’s place, an establishment London architectural firm, Allies & Morrison, known for projects like refurbishing Royal Festival Hall, has been hired to build a smaller version, which would hold about 12,000.

A developer, Sohail Sarbuland, a Muslim but not a member of Tablighi Jamaat, has pledged the money for the building permits.

Mr. Mangara and others say any breaking of ground will be delayed until after the 2012 Olympics. The issue will be finessed by a slow design process, and delays in the planning process, he said.

On the 10 Downing Street Web site, the prime minister’s office notes that no planning application has been made, and makes clear that the government has taken no position.

A London public relations firm, Indigo, which has put up a Web site about the mosque, abbeymillsmosque.com, has been hired by Tablighi Jamaat to speak for it.

An Indigo spokesman, Nick Kilby, said Tablighi Jamaat trustees would not talk to the news media. Phone calls to Tablighi Jamaat drew no response.

Mr. Kilby, whose job is to stem the controversy, said the final design by Allies & Morrison would not be done soon. “The Olympics are not the deadline,” he said.

    A Battle Rages in London Over a Mega-Mosque Plan, NYT, 4.11.2007, http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/world/europe/04megamosque.html

British women treat abortion as the easy option, claims angry Archbishop

Sunday October 21, 2007
The Observer
Jamie Doward and Denis Campbell

The British public is in danger of losing its 'moral focus' on abortion and treating the procedure as normal, rather than a last resort, says the Archbishop of Canterbury.

With the 40th anniversary of the 1967 Abortion Act less than a week away, Dr Rowan Williams uses an article in today's Observer to claim that people are close to slipping to a new 'default position' on the issue.

'There has been an obvious weakening of the feeling that abortion is a last resort in cases of extreme danger or distress,' Williams writes, noting that 'nearly 200,000 abortions a year in England and Wales tell their own story'. Instead, the leader of the Church of England claims the growing belief that 'abortion is essentially a matter of individual decision' means it is no longer 'the kind of major moral choice that should involve a sharing of perspective and judgment'.

As a result, Williams argues the spirit of the Abortion Act is in danger of being lost. While many of the Act's supporters took for granted 'the wrongness of ending an unborn life', according to Williams, he questions whether this is still the case, especially given recent discussions on making it simpler for women to take abortion-inducing drugs at home.

'The pregnant woman who smokes or drinks heavily is widely regarded as guilty of infringing the rights of her unborn child,' Williams argues. 'Yet at the same time, with no apparent sense of incongruity, there is discussion of the possibility of the liberty of the pregnant woman herself to perform the actions that will terminate a pregnancy.'

He also suggests that the present 24-week limit for abortions should be reviewed. 'This issue needs attention, if only because of the fact that the existing law assumes a rather less developed state of medical science than is now the case.'

The Archbishop also notes the way the anti-abortion movement is becoming increasingly vocal. 'Paradoxically, the language of "foetal rights" has strengthened over the past few decades, leading to a real tension with this growing normalisation of abortion,' Williams writes.

His comments come as the row over abortion threatens to dominate the political agenda. Pro-life campaigners plan a rally outside Parliament next Saturday, followed by a service at Westminster Cathedral to 'commemorate' the 6.7 million terminations carried out since 1967. Meanwhile, more militant pro-life groups are gearing up for battle. Last Friday, Veronica Connolly, a wheelchair user, Catholic grandmother and member of the militant anti-abortion group the UK LifeLeague was sentenced to 14 days in prison for refusing to pay a court fine for showing graphic abortion photos.

The LifeLeague says it plans to distribute thousands of DVDs across the UK showing a full abortion. James Dowson, the group's leader, told The Observer that the nine-minute footage, documenting the removal of a 12-week-old foetus, will initially be sent to all MPs and peers, before being uploaded on to the internet.

On Wednesday, the government will come under pressure to back rival attempts to tighten or liberalise the law when Dawn Primarolo, the Public Health Minister, is questioned by the Commons science and technology select committee.

Members are expected to press her on whether ministers would back a cut in the 24-week limit, support plans to allow nurses to perform abortions up to 13 weeks and back the ending of the requirement that two doctors must give written approval for any abortion.

However, a senior Whitehall source said the government would not get drawn into the forthcoming political battle over abortion. 'Our position has been, is and will continue to be that it's a matter for Parliament,' the source said.

Recent votes on three 10-minute rule bills on various aspects of abortion suggest that pro-choice MPs outnumber pro-life colleagues by about 100.

    British women treat abortion as the easy option, claims angry Archbishop, O, 21.10.2007, http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2196030,00.html

Amis launches scathing response to accusations of Islamophobia

Published: 12 October 2007
The Independent
By Jonathan Brown
 

Martin Amis defended himself yesterday against allegations of Islamophobia, insisting it was necessary to "build all the bridges we can" with moderate Muslims, who he said constituted the majority within the faith.

Outlining his views in a letter to The Independent columnist Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, who on Monday wrote in an article that the author was "with the beasts" when it came to dealing with Islam, Amis denied the accusations, insisting the remarks from which she had drawn her conclusions had been "distorted" in an article written by his colleague Professor Terry Eagleton.

"It is a dull business, correcting Eagleton's distortions, but this is the work he is obliging me to do," wrote Amis in the letter, published below in full.

"The anti-Muslim measures he says I 'advocated' I merely adumbrated, not 'in an essay' ('he wrote', 'wrote Amis'– each of these is a little lie), but in a long interview with the press."

In the interview, Amis said: "The Muslim community will have to suffer until it gets its house in order. What sort of suffering? Not let them travel. Deportation – further down the road. Curtailing of freedoms. Strip-searching people who look like they're from the Middle East or from Pakistan... Discriminatory stuff, until it hurts the whole community and they start getting tough with their children..."

The remarks, originally published in August 2006, resurfaced this month when Eagleton, professor of English literature at Manchester University, where Amis has recently accepted a position teaching creative writing, used the interview as the basis for an article attacking Amis's alleged argument as a means of "hounding and humiliating [Muslims] as a whole [so] they would return home and teach their children to be obedient to the White Man's law". Eagleton, one of Britain's leading Marxist academics, concluded: "There seems something mildly defective about his logic."

The academic's disdain for Amis and his ideas had an earlier airing in a new introduction to his book Ideology: An Introduction in which he described the writer's father, Kingsley, as a "racist, anti-Semitic boor, a drink-sodden, self-hating reviler of women, gays and liberals" – adding :"Amis fils has clearly learnt more from him than how to turn a shapely phrase."

Amis's decision yesterday to write to Alibhai-Brown follows her intervention in the bitter academic spat in her weekly column. Under the headline "Expel the Muslim fanatics who want conflict", Alibhai-Brown recalled sharing a drink with the writer at last year's Cheltenham Festival – when, she said, on the face of it they should have agreed on ways of tackling Islamic terrorism in the UK. "He has pitched himself against demonic Muslims and is at war with them too," she wrote.

However, Alibhai-Brown said, having read the remarks quoted in Eagleton's essay, farfrom occupying common ground on the issue, Amis was "with the beasts" when it came to dealing with Islam, with "the Muslim-baiters and haters, these days as likely to come from the Groucho and Garrick clubs as the nasty, secret venues used by neo-fascists." She said Amis was "another kind of threat to society".

THE LETTER...

Dear Yasmin,

Yes, I remember those drinks we had at the Cheltenham Festival last year – just the four of us, you and Mr Brown, me and Ms Fonseca. (You enjoyed a Ribena, as I recall, while I addressed myself to a powerful scotch.) That night you revealed, inter alia, that you were Shia; and, as far as I understand it, the Shia minority speaks for the more dreamy and poetic face of Islam, the more lax and capacious (tolerant, for example, of representations of the human form), the more spiritual (in the general sense of that word), as opposed to the Sunnis, whose approach is known to be stricter and more legalistic. Your Shia identity endeared you to me, and made me feel protective, because Islamism, in most of its manifestations, not only wants to kill me – it wants to kill you.

When you write that I am "with the beasts" on Islamic questions, it is because you've been listening, rather dreamily perhaps, to Professor Terry Eagleton. Now Eagleton, Yasmin, has a chair at Manchester University, where I have recently taken up an enjoyable post, and he is a man of a redundant but familiar type: an ideological relict, unable to get out of bed in the morning without the dual guidance of God and Karl Marx. More remarkably, he combines a cruising hostility with an almost neurotic indifference to truth; on the matter of checking his facts, he is, to be frank, an embarrassment to the academic profession. But his human need is simple enough: he wants attention to be paid to his self-righteousness – righteousness being his particular brand of vanity.

It is a dull business, correcting Eagleton's distortions, but this is the work he is obliging me to do. The anti-Muslim measures he says I "advocated" I merely adumbrated, not "in an essay" ("he wrote", "wrote Amis" – each of these is an untruth), but in a long interview with the press. It was a thought experiment, or a mood experiment, and the remarks were preceded by the following: "There's a definite urge – don't you have it? – to say... [etc, etc]." I felt that urge, for a day or two. My mood, I admit, was bleak – how I longed, Yasmin, for your soothing hand on my brow! It was, in its way, one of the bitterest moments, one of the moments of wormwood, in the strange tale that began five years earlier, in September 2001.

The press interview took place in the immediate aftermath of the foiled plot (August 2006) to obliterate 10 commercial jets with explosives put together in transit. Which would have resulted in the deaths of another 3,000 random Westerners, the majority of them women and children (these were summer flights across the North Atlantic). Human beings, born of women, caressed such thoughts in their minds.

There were two additional depressants. At least one of the alleged would-be mass murderers had taken the trouble to convert to Islam, suggesting that the exterminatory virus was about to mutate, like bird flu. And I'm sure you remember, Yasmin, that passengers on this route were suddenly forbidden to take books on the eight-hour flight – a resonant symbolic victory for the forces of ignorance, humourlessness, literalism, boredom and misery.

Anyway, the mood, the retaliatory "urge" soon evaporated, and I went back to feeling that we must, of course, build all the bridges we can between ourselves and the Muslim majority, which we know to be moderate. Moderate, and mute. The quietism is perhaps no mystery. In 15th-century Spain, not many people, I imagine, were proclaiming that the Inquisition had gone too far. The extremists, for now, have the monopoly of violence, intimidation, and self-righteousness. Meanwhile, I don't want to stripsearch you, Yasmin, or do anything else that would trouble or even momentarily surprise your dignity, or that of any other eirenic Muslim.

People like Eagleton are the nearest thing we have to the "iron mullahs": he is, in other words, a deluded flailer and stirrer. He recently did a similar job on my old mucker Sir Salman Rushdie; and the rigged-up spat ended with a helpless apology from Manchester. I don't know, or can't remember, how you felt about the knighthood. My father (also lazily and cornily defamed by Eagleton) said of his KBE: "It's not too little, but it is too late." An anachronistic award, perhaps – though one fully deserved by the author of the triumphant Shalimar the Clown. The "storm" that followed the announcement was unforeseen by everybody, including the Fourth Estate (which then hollered on about how "inevitable" it was). You see, time had advanced, in the West, since 1989. Time moves more slowly in Iran and Pakistan. As I don't need to tell you, Yasmin, there is something the matter with the Islamic clock.

You wrong your own intelligence when you write that atheism is another form of fanaticism. This notion is a philosophical non-starter. Adherence, however "moderate", to a holy book that recommends (for instance) the murder of apostates and the beating of women (on suspicion of disobedience) carries certain consequences. Whereas nothing follows from atheism. With atheism, there is no what-next.

I am off to Cheltenham tomorrow afternoon. And I hope to see you at the bar. With all best wishes to you and your husband,

Martin

    Amis launches scathing response to accusations of Islamophobia, I, 12.10.2007, http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3052346.ece

Archbishop: Parents as bad as gangs in pressurising children

Saturday September 15, 2007
Guardian
Martin Hodgson

Middle class children made by their parents to rack up academic and sporting achievements are under pressure similar to young people caught up in gang culture, the Archbishop of Canterbury has said.

In an interview published today, Dr Rowan Williams said: "Children live crowded lives. We're not making their lives easy by pressurising them, whether it's the claustrophobia of gang culture or the claustrophobia of intense achievement in middle class areas."

Children were not given the opportunity to grow up at their own pace, said Dr Williams. "What is lacking in children's lives is space. They are pressed into a testing culture, or even into a gang culture; they are bullied and manipulated until they fit in, they never have any time to develop in their own space," he told the Daily Telegraph.

Describing Britain as a "broken" and polarised society, Dr Williams said gangs provided excluded youngsters with a sense of belonging: "A lot of it is yearning for love; they want to fit in. If their families are as chaotic as some of them are, gangs give them a sense of belonging.

"There is a level of desolation and dysfunctionality which many people have very little concept of. If you sense that the world you live in is absolutely closed, that for all sorts of reasons you are unable to move outside, if nothing gives you aspirations, there is an imprisonment in that, there is a kind of resentment that comes with that - and a frustration that can boil over in violence and street crime."

Dr Williams also accused TV producers of "sadism" and said "gladiatorial" reality shows such as The X Factor exploited the weaknesses of contestants: "We are too celebrity obsessed. We have got into a dangerous cycle where fame is an objective in itself."

A day after meeting Gordon Brown for the first time since he became prime minister, Dr Williams signalled that the church intended to take a more active part in public debate. He praised Mr Brown for changing tack on Tony Blair's plan for super casinos and for agreeing a review of the 24-hour drinking laws. He expressed hope that Mr Brown would reduce the legal time limit on abortions. "The nation generally is getting more unhappy about the high level of abortions in this country. People are not happy about abortion as a backstop to contraception." And he added: "It's not like having a tooth out."

On Iraq, Dr Williams said the war had made it easier for Islamist extremists to rally support. "It has shored up this huge victim identity among Muslims, the sense that all over the world there are places that we are being attacked. An unscrupulous or fanatical preacher can very easily present this as a single picture."

But he disagreed with justice secretary Jack Straw that Muslim women should remove their veils. "If the question is can you choose to be British and wear the veil, of course you can."

    Archbishop: Parents as bad as gangs in pressurising children, G, 15.9.2007, http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,2169879,00.html