For all its faults, the moral certainty of the Empire made the transmission of British principles possible. Modern equivocation offers no such hope.
The bombing is personal for me. I used to live in Peshawar and counted many Pakistani Christians as my friends.
Martin Parsons has a PhD in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and has written a major academic book on this subject. Fifteen years ago, I had to negotiate with senior members of the Taliban. I was an aid worker in Afghanistan and needed their permission to set up a development project in a remote area they […]
Martin Parsons has a PhD in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and has written a major academic book on this subject. Since the decline of Socialism, the major ideological fault line in British politics, insofar as there has been one, has been between, on the one hand, conservativism and, on the other, various forms of liberalism […]
By Martin Parsons. A year ago it was clear that, despite the widely presumed promise of the Arab spring, 2011 had been a year in which sharia enforcement has both spread and intensified both in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world. This is part of a longer term pattern of increasing Islamisation that has […]
The Daily Telegraph has today published a rare interview with Afghan warlord Gulbaddin Hekmatyar. This interview potentially represents one of the most significant recent developments in Afghanistan. For several years I have argued that Hekmatyar and his Hezb-i-Islami faction represent a greater danger to peace in Afghanistan than the Taliban (see here and here). It […]
Martin Parsons is currently director of faculty of Britain’s newest sixth form college in Lowestoft, Suffolk. He has a PhD in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and has written a major academic book on this subject. He is currently writing a further book on Conservativism and Christianity and is a member of the parliamentary candidates list. […]
Martin Parsons is currently director of faculty of Britain’s newest sixth form college in Lowestoft, Suffolk. He has a PhD in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and has written a major academic book on this subject. He is currently writing a further book on Conservativism and Christianity and is a member of the parliamentary candidates list. […]
Martin Parsons is currently director of faculty of the UK’s newest sixth form college in Lowestoft, Suffolk. He has a PhD in Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations and has written a major academic book on this subject. He is currently writing a further book on Conservativism and Christianity and is a member of the parliamentary candidates […]
By Martin Parsons. 200 years ago, just after 5pm on 11th May, Prime Minister Spencer Percival was assassinated in the House of Commons. He was a Tory Prime Minister, little heard of today. Yet there are important lessons from his life that are highly relevant today in a similar age of austerity. Life and career […]
I first began teaching A level 25 years ago. What we taught then was far broader and deeper than any A level syllabus now. After returning to UK teaching six years ago after more than a decade overseas my overwhelming impression has been that A level standards have fallen significantly, I was until recently an […]
Yesterday, as Paul Goodman has outlined on Tory Diary, Trevor Phillips, Chairman of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) compared Christians who object to the erosion of freedom of conscience in recent equalities legislation to Muslims trying to impose sharia on Britain. Mr Phillips who has made a career in promoting equality and diversity […]
By Martin Parsons In the days following Christmas the Christian church has traditionally remembered the visit of the wise men to Jesus. The word magi is in fact a Persian loan word indicating their origin in either what is now Iran or western Afghanistan. The whole story reminds us that Christianity far from being a […]
By Martin Parsons The anniversary of 9/11 has come and gone, the world has moved on, perhaps too quickly. But two other anniversaries loom that should give us pause to reflect again on what has happened as a direct response to 9/11. The first is the start of initially small scale western military intervention in […]
You can certainly get away with saying things about us that would be a sacking offence if aimed at things like religious beliefs.