Religion

When the contestants were lining up for last night’s sensational 5,000 metre race, both of the American contestants waited until the cameras were on them, then crossed themselves and held their hands in prayer. It’s quite some sight to secular Brits, where religious language (even ‘God bless’) and mannerisms have dropped out of our national life and vocabulary. But to quite a few of the Olympians, their faith is of crucial importance, which we have seen this year through their Twitter feeds. Mo Farah, a Muslim, prayed on the track after winning both of his Golds. After Usain Bolt broke the Olympic record for the 100 metres, he did likewise.

To be a racist in Britain, you do not need to cover yourself in tattoos and join a neo-Nazi party. You can wear well-made shirts, open at the neck, appreciate fine wines and vote Left at election time. Odd though it may seem to older readers, the Crown Prosecution Service now regards itself as a liberal organ of the state. This week it is making a great play of its success in deterring violence against women. Its lawyers brought 91,000 domestic violence prosecutions last year and secured 67,000 convictions. As I have mentioned in this space before, many criminologists believe that the willingness, not just of prosecutors and the police

It’s always nice when a married couple are able to share a hobby – even if it is, in the case of Shasta and Mohammed Khan, trying to blow up Jewish people. These two imbeciles, from Oldham, have now been convicted of planning terrorist attacks which they intended to effect with hairdressing chemicals and chapatti flour. Apparently they would drive to Manchester and look at synagogues, seething with rage. “We must kill of them,” Mo told his loving wife on one of these strange trysts. Previously they had been less than radical, preferring to stay at home and watch Coronation Street and Emmerdale on their widescreen HD infidel television. I

I’ve just received email notification of a debate I sadly missed at the East London Mosque entitled ‘Was Jesus a Muslim Prophet or a Christian God?’ The email came from a thoughtful chap called Abdullah Al Andalusi who informs me that the speakers tended towards the former, rather than latter proposition. Indeed, there was a ‘powerful refutation’ of Christian dogma on the subject. I am genuinely saddened to have missed this debate, as it’s the sort of thing which is always fun to chew over. As a consequence I have it in mind to arrange a similar sort of intellectual pow-wow — a debate which asks the question: ‘Was Mohammed

Imbecilic leftie authoritarians are whining again about being called nasty names by people with less power than them. Exhibit A is the fabulously stupid Islamist Mehdi Hasan, once of the New Statesman and now of the Huffington PostUK, whatever that is. Here’s the emetic opening sentence of his article in today’s Guardian (under the headline ‘We Mustn’t Allow Muslims In Public Life To Be Silenced.’ Yes, he means himself): ‘Have you ever been called an Islamist? How about a jihadist or a terrorist?? Extremist maybe? Welcome to my world.’ The abuse he gets, he whines, is ‘as relentless as it is vicious’. He complains about being called a dangerous Muslim

The notorious splitters in the Free Presbyterian Church are at it again. The Wee Wee Frees (who should not be confused with the more numerous Wee Frees) warn that Scottish independence is a risky ploy since the Act of Union copper-bottomed the protestant faith and any change to that, however well-intentioned, risks wrath and much else besides. It could be ‘a provocation to God’, no less. It might be, you know. Though the SNP has devoted much time and effort to wooing the Catholic hierarchy, the fact remains that modern Scottish nationalism is an almost exclusively secular business. Indeed one could go further and suggest that though the nationalist revival

Today is the last day of the Government’s consultation about its gay marriage proposals. But as an editorial in the Telegraph points out, this is a more limited exercise than it sounds…you’re not being asked whether it’s a good idea for gay people to marry so much as how you think the Government should implement its proposals. Consultation, not. But since the opportunity is there, I’m all for sounding off about whether gay people should marry in the first place, as the Church of England has done, with uncharacteristic robustness, in its official response to the proposals. I can’t myself, see why marriage, as a status and a concept and

Even for people on the same side of an argument, opinion is often wildly divided. Among those of us who believe government should support civil marriage equality, this morning’s papers (£), and specifically Church of England fears that the religious will be ‘forced’ to carry out same-sex weddings, re-opens a fundamental division of opinion.   The coalition’s proposals rightly only relate to civil marriage equality (that the state should make civil marriage between same-sex couples equal to civil marriage between opposite-sex couples). It has always seemed obvious to me that if the government pushes ahead with same-sex civil marriage then it should do so only if it can ensure that

What a strange place Britain has become. You sometimes need some time away to realise quite how strange. Take yesterday’s main story: the latest paedophile rape-gang case from the north of England. The judge in the trial told the men, during sentencing, that they had selected their victims ‘because they were not part of your community or religion’. But that is the sort of fact which causes the most terrible contortions in modern Britain. The perpetrators were all Muslim men of Pakistani origin and the victims all underage, white girls. We know exactly how we should think, how loud would be our proclamations and our desire to analyse the ‘root-causes’

It was pretty well apparent at the outset that the Equality Act 2010 – the so-called Socialism in a Single Clause law – spelt trouble and now it is the Catholic Church that may run foul of Harriet Harman’s pet project. The Catholic Education Service in England and Wales has written to Catholic secondary schools to get them to encourage pupils and staff to sign the online petition against the Government’s gay marriage proposals. Today, on BBC Radio 4, the Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, Andrew Copson warned that the Church may be breaking two laws: the one that prohibits partisan political activity in school, the other, more

Does Boris not care for poor Londoners? A new question in today’s Evening Standard polling reveals that 40 per cent of voters believe that Boris is the candidate to aid rich Londoners. Ken has also carved his own niche, successfully winning over many Muslin voters — around 20 per cent state he is particularly keen to help them. Here are the full numbers: But such perceptions have made little difference to either candidate’s chances. The headline voting figures remain steady at 53 per cent for Boris and 47 per cent for Ken, despite the above and also the recent tax saga.

In celebration of the feast of Easter, we’ve dug out this profound leader from March 1975, which looks at the ever-evolving relationship of church and state.  The Church, the State and the decline of the spirit, The Spectator, 29 March 1975 Spring is a time of rebirth; yet it is also the time of the death of Christ. It is the time when “Jesus knew that his hour would come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end” (John 13.i). In the Spring and Easter of 1975 there is much evidence of