When Fox News linked to a Methodist Preacher's blog

I was working away from home most of this week and unable to post anything of significance. I expected that visits would drop off with little new to read.

However as I offer some companies and organisations professional help in handling hostile blogging I keep a watchful eye each day on what search engine referrals, links and key words bring in "hits" and which don't.

From about three on Thursday afternoon I had a surge of referrals, over 1500 in 24 hours, from the blog of an American Fox News presenter Michelle Malakin. Ms Malakin had picked up on a story I ran last week about Muslims in Birmingham near where I live expressing concern about pictures of women in scanty swimwear on advertising hoardings.

I must admit I thought the tone of my article was actually sympathetic to objections of our Muslim neighbours, as have other posts comparing Lent and Ramadam and an item about broadcasting the call to prayer. Living in close quarters with people of another faith, especially when they take it seriously, provides an interesting and refreshing contrast to the dying faith of many Christian people in the UK.

Unfortunately I found Ms Malakin's coverage and many of the subsequent comments verging on the offensive. She had decided to start a series of items headed "Stuff that Muslims don't like", and had used my item as a starting point. She invited readers to view the images on my blog, which I must admit I was unsure whether to post or not.

I notice that Ms Malakin is based in Los Angelos, California which has barely 100,000 Muslims in 48 congregations amongst its 10,000,000 population, so I suspect she has little experience of living near to, and working with, any Muslims.

Had she such experience she may have realised that Muslims don't come in handy packages that be easily held up to ridicule. They are people. They vary. Some are extreme, many are more liberal. In many Muslim countries or community there are a range of views, much like there are amongst Christians, Jews, Atheists or any other aggregation of beliefs.

What has really appalled me has been the ignorance of the comments made to the post. This was small town America at its worse. People from places like Pelham in Alabama, Pineview in Georgia and Canton, Ohio.

The comments reveal a shallowness of thought and understanding that I feel sullied that my blog has been associated with Ms Malakin's post. There are some exceptions, but they are the exceptions. Yet these are the people who are providing the money, personnel and political support for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

I think that the British and Americans have a real cultural difference in how we approach the issue of religious faith, particularly those with beliefs we don't share.

Part of it comes from the American culture derived from the days when it encouraged migration from Europe. They were welcome on one condition - that they wanted to be American, which is precisely what many wanted. This formed a view of foreigners which determines American foreign policy to this day - that what the world really wants is to be Americanised.

The British had a very different encounter with the world, particularly people of other faiths. We spent much of the eighteenth and nineteenth century colonising about a third of the world's land surface. Sometimes local populations could be easily brushed aside with technological superiority, as were the indigenous peoples of Australia. But in other countries we had to come to an accommodation which implied respect for other people's religious beliefs. There were exceptions, such the practice of suttee in parts of India, but overall our attitude was "live and let live".

I well remember my grandfather, who served as a non-commissioned officer in India, during the 1920s explaining to me that it is unacceptable to insult or ridicule other people's religious beliefs no matter how much you disagreed with them.

My main concern with Islam is that it does not recognise the Lordship of our saviour Jesus Christ. Nor does it offer the opportunity of eternal life. When I discuss faith with Muslims I don't start by insulting their faith. I often have to unpack their understanding of what Christianity is (do we really believe it is "Christian" to post hoardings of near naked women in public places?) and then we speak of Jesus. I know that my efforts are puny, but I'm certain they are more productive than many of the offensive comments posted on the Fox News blog.

Just one final point: I'd like to think that this blog was, in part, a way of spreading the Good News. Alas the visitors from Fox News were one page wonders - few read other posts or even the comments. They just wanted to see the pictures and were off. All that glitters - even links to a celebrity's blog - is not gold.