Banning any discussion about the nature of the Koran just plays into the hands of bigots and demagogues, argues Janet Daley.
I had just taken part in a television discussion on the coverage of the Gaza conflict and was now paired up with the driver provided by BBC Transport to take me home. Clearly identifiable from his beard and clothing as a practising Muslim, he led me courteously to his car. On the way back, we chatted about the traffic and the weather, before we got onto the problems of minicab drivers in the recession. I sympathised with the fact that he was finding it harder and harder to make a living: even coming into central London from where he lived (he mentioned a town well known for its fundamentalist Islamic community) was no solution because it used so much petrol. Cab drivers were, I said, always among the first to suffer in financial hard times.
At various points in our exchanges, he expressed curiosity about what I had been debating on the programme and I avoided answering, sensing that the subject might be inflammatory. But finally there was a direct question: what subject had I been discussing? So I told him. And what had I said about it, he asked.
So, as tactfully as I could, I told him. Which opened the floodgates. The problem could never be resolved, he said, because it was a battle between Muslims and Jews which meant that it was between, as he put it, "good and evil". The Jews in Israel, he said, did not follow the faith of Judaism, but of another religion called "Zionism". At this point, I intervened to point out, very gently, that I was Jewish and to suggest that Judaism and Zionism were not actually mutually exclusive. The More We Discuss Religious Differences the Safer We Will Be >>> Janet Daley | Sunday, February 15, 2009
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