Islam

There are many ways to do nothing. One is to sit on your hands; another is to call for ‘a conversation’. I have noticed quite a lot of calls for ‘a conversation’ since the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green last week. Some politicians and pundits have even been bold enough to call for a ‘national conversation’. This is when you can tell people are pulling out the big guns. One reason I say it is also a variant on doing nothing is because this has happened so many times before. I remember Theresa May standing near the site of the London Bridge attacks in 2017, surrounded by various leaders, insisting that we need to tackle ‘extremism’. The results were a real stunner – even for connoisseurs of inertia.

If, as Donald Trump had threatened, “a whole civilization” had died earlier this month, the whole civilization concerned would have been that of the United States, not of Iran. If an American president had deliberately ordered the death of a civilization – whether or not such a thing is achievable – America’s claim to world leadership would have collapsed. Like, I suspect, many, however, I did not go to bed that night thinking that Trump would carry out his threat. I remember my parents telling me that, during the Cuban missile crisis, people truly believed there might be nuclear conflagration at any moment. It did not feel like that this time. It felt as if Trump had said something frightening and horrible to claim mastery over whatever was going to happen next.

Following my appointment as shadow justice secretary, I was moved to a bigger office in parliament. Where once I enjoyed a tiny room directly above the chamber (perfect for rushing to votes), now I have a plush room much further away. It is directly above the irksome Steve Bray, who continues his noisy campaign against Brexit. Of course his anti-social behaviour should mean he is moved on by the police, but these days officers balance the public interest against Bray’s ‘rights’. I recently relied on some Anglo-Saxon vernacular to tell Bray what I thought of his protest, and realised afterwards in today’s upside-down world the police would probably finger my collar – not his. Opponents of Labour’s ‘Islamophobia’ definition warned it would stop us debating religious ideas.

I am glad that BBC Radio 4 is producing a series called How Reading Made Us, presented by the subtle, super-literate Times of London columnist James Marriott. I must declare an interest. Roughly 98 percent of my earnings over 45 years have depended on the fact that plenty of people like reading. Now we are thinking harder, however, about the fact that form affects substance. The idea of an encyclopedia, for example, as developed (from classical roots) in the 18th century, was that all needful knowledge on a particular subject could be assembled and consulted in a book or series of books. With AI, there is little need for this form. The form of a book, which often seemed so compendious, can now seem cumbersome. Fiction, too, is affected by form.

Twenty minutes into what seemed a routine softball literary interview for Bloomberg TV in London last month, the conversation took a prickly turn. My interviewer had tripped across some remark in one of my podcast appearances that set her off. So much for talking about my new novel. For the following 20 minutes, leaning over the table and poking at the air between us, she proceeded to hector me about why I seemed to discuss Muslims in general terms rather than as individuals. I objected that she was being disingenuous. Journalists regularly address issues involving groups of people in general terms. (For an opinion piece, I’m to interview all two billion Muslims individually and cite each in turn?

Rough justice Sir: The Church Commissioners’ plan to establish a £100 million (rising to £1 billion) fund for ‘reparative justice’ is indeed ‘the most egregious example of lanyard Anglicanism’ as your leading article says (‘Laud’s prayer’, 11 October). It is deeply flawed in conception, substance and process – and is especially ill-judged when parish clergy are atrociously paid and many parishes face an existential crisis. The critique made by the Policy Exchange paper ‘The Case Against Reparations’, written by Professor Lord Biggar, Dr Alka Sehgal Cuthbert and me, is reasonably well known.

I didn’t remotely expect to go viral when I walked into the city council meeting here in Dearborn, Michigan, last week. But I’m glad I did. I say that not out of ill will towards the honorable mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, who called me an “islamophobe” for objecting to the name chosen for two intersections. I say it because the incident makes me think of much more serious experiences of prejudice against fellow Christians in so many Islamic countries around the world – and now also in western countries. This problem urgently needs to be counteracted with the type of peace (please, not hostility) and freedom that we have often enjoyed in Christian-influenced countries.