Dave Hill's Big Britain

Blogging The Qur'an

A strange and rather lovely coincidence has just happened to me. I was reading Cif editor Georgina Henry's introduction to a new Guardian project called Blogging The Qur'an, in which Ziauddin Sardar, author of Desperately Seeking Paradise: Journeys Of A Sceptical Muslim, will, over the course of this year, re-read the the whole of Islam's holy book and blog about it as he goes. I then began reading the first of Ziauddin's three introductory articles. He describes his infancy in Pakistan where his mother read Qur'an verses aloud to him and he received further instruction at his madrassa. This though, did not last for long. Why? Because, in the early Sixties...

"When I was nine, my family moved to Clapton Pond in Hackney."

Ziauddin's link, not mine! But enough parochial self-indulgence. Blogging The Qur'an is a brilliant idea. Read the whole of Zia's fascinating first piece.

Eagleton On Jesus

Love this:

"Christianity is...considerably more pessimistic than secular humanism, as well as immeasurably more optimistic. On the one hand, it is grimly realistic about the recalcitrance of the human condition - the perversity of human desire, the prevalence of idolatry and illusion, the scandal of suffering, the dull persistence of oppression and injustice, the scarcity of public virtue, the insolence of power, the fragility of goodness and the formidable power of appetite and self-interest. On the other hand, it holds out not only that the redemption of this dire condition is possible, but that, astonishingly, it has in some sense already happened. Not even the most mechanistic of Marxists would claim these days that socialism is inevitable, let alone that it has already come about without our noticing. For Christian faith, however, the advent of the kingdom is assured, since Jesus's rising from the dead has already founded it."

Why do I love it? Well, because it's fascinating and because I bet the Reverend Grayling is breathing brimstone in front of his mirror already.

On The Liberal-Left & Religion

Here's something I wrote for Guardian Comment earlier this week.

Even by writing this piece I risk perpetuating what I seek to end: arguments about religion that generate more heat than light. I'll take that risk, though, because recent diatribes here by AC Grayling and Polly Toynbee have confirmed me in my view that too many liberal-and-left atheists - of which I am one - take an approach to the subject that is unsubtle, unproductive, sometimes narrowly obsessive and often at odds with liberal-left goals. There are many aspects to this and I can't cover them all here. But let's begin with attitude.

A virtue of a liberal-left perspective is that it views society through the frames of history and social justice. We know that the things we dislike about the world cannot be changed unless we comprehend the long-term forces that helped bring them about, and why those disliked things seemed to others to have been a good idea (it's become fashionable to deride this as "relativism"; actually, it's just using your brain). As for social justice, our moral priority is to respect and assist the poorest and least powerful in society as a key part of fostering the common good.

Methodism In Action

In Midsomer Norton High Street, last Sunday. What's Methodism? Ask the shrinking BBC.

It's Eid

My little daughter made this card at school yesterday. Last night, a full moon rose in - according to one of my Muslim neighbours - Morocco. In Britain, Eid has begun.