There is an emerging trend in British universities towards gender apartheid. This has no foundation in Islam. Indeed, the Koran explicitly sanctions the concept of legitimate social intermingling in Chapter 24:61. The distorted dogma of sexual segregation is an archaic pre-Islamic patriarchal throwback that is now in vogue in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. This non-Koranic custom is currently gaining traction in the UK because of uncontested Wahhabi-Salafi propaganda. Religious zealots are imposing their contagious sexist doctrines, financed by Saudi petrodollars, to recreate a mythical seventh century Utopia. But this anachronistic male chauvinism is not what pristine Islam teaches. Indeed, Koranic Islam actively champions an erudite, enlightened and egalitarian way of life that embraces dignity, justice and parity for everyone. This is a primitive blight. Right-thinking Muslims must not allow a foreign-inspired ideology and local fundamentalists to poison the content and character of British Islam. (Adapted from a letter to the Independent from Dr T Hargey, Director and Imam, Muslim Educational Centre of Oxford).

How refreshing to see an imam standing up for common sense and opposing the medieval views of desert camel drovers! Epicureans might not share Dr. Hargey’s devotion to Islam, but certainly applaud these reasonable and decent views. Britain has welcomed immigrants from all over the world in huge numbers. There has to be a limit to how a small number of them are allowed to bully and cajole their fellow citizens into practices antithetical to the prevailing culture of freedom and equality (which begs a question, but it approximates the truth!).