The Dutch want to ban the burqa. It's as good as a declaration of war on the 800,000 Muslims living in the Netherlands - and this is yet another conflict that Britain should not get embroiled in.

Yet there are plenty of signs that this country is going Dutch. Britain's believers have recently had to fight for the right to wear symbols of their faith, whether that be a burqa or a crucifix.

They have been accused publicly by Richard Dawkins, a leading light of the secular intelligentsia, of 'child abuse' for sending their children to faith schools.

They hear terms such as 'fundamentalist', 'fanatic' and 'fascist' constantly levelled against their co-religionists.

As if this were not enough to drive home the point that Britain is now tolerant only if you belong to the secular majority, the government is urging lecturers on campuses to spy on students who gravitate towards 'extremist preachers'. In the past, proselytisers of the most outrageous political causes were allowed to talk their talk without fear of reprisal: IRA sympathisers who organised collections for the 'boys', student Tories whose posters read 'Hang Nelson Mandela', Trotskyists who preached the destruction of the state.

You might keep an eye on the young hotheads with their mad philosophies and fads, but you didn't ask their lecturers to spy on them. If you did, the lecturers would send you packing.

Treating young Muslims as if they were a danger on campus guarantees only one thing: they will become dangerous - and not just on campus.

Is it any wonder that Muslims principally, but other believers too, are getting a persecution complex? And is there any way we can prevent the inevitable backlash? Liberty and the British Muslim Initiative believe there is. Together with representatives of the main faiths, they are calling for supporters of religious tolerance to rally in Westminster Hall tomorrow night. Ken Livingstone will speak at the event, as will the director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, and veteran peace campaigner Bruce Kent.

I, too, am speaking at the rally; like the other participants, I fear the Dutch example.

Like them, I believe that if instead of acting as the oppressor, the mocker and the bully, Britain would present itself as a land of tolerance where all faiths are treated with respect and all believers allowed to practise their faith, the most disenfranchised and disenchanted extremists will find themselves wishing to copy, rather than kill, Britons.

Lavatorial humour

At a mutual friend's birthday party last week, I met Barbara Daly, the make-up guru, and her husband and business partner Laurence Tarlo. The Daly-Tarlo partnership has managed to turn Barbara's eye for colours and textures into a multimillion pound industry, selling her range of cosmetics through Tesco .

Daly, best known for having made up Princess Diana on the day of her wedding, has also polished the looks of high-profile women as different as Faye Dunaway and Norma Major. She remembers the former Prime Minister's wife as an easy-going, charming client and husband as warm and humorous. When the then PM invited Barbara and Laurence to Chequers, their dog rushed out of the car after the long journey, cocked his leg and watered the front steps of the PM's weekend residence.

'Don't worry,' John Major told his embarrassed guests. 'Lots of people want to do that.'

Source: guardian.co.uk 

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