Methodists compared with Muslims in The Times

John Sutherland an academic writes in The Times about the damage to the reputation of University College London following the news that  Abdulmutallab the would be Detroit bomber was a student there. At one point in the article he compares modern Islam (based an the reported complaint about the words of one individual) with Methodism in our heyday:

A couple of years ago (when Abdulmutallab was around the place), UCL allowed the Islamic Society to put on a show of Islamic art. A friend of mine, an eminent scientist, strolled in to take a look. Was he a believer, asked an obviously Muslim student. No, replied my friend, he didn’t believe in any god, as it happened. “Then,” the young man confidently informed him, “we shall have to execute you.” He wasn’t joking; he was predicting. He wasn’t going to draw a scimitar that minute and lop off the godless one’s head, but he implied that at some future point such things would happen. My friend laughed it off after lodging a mild complaint. It could, of course, have been Abdulmutallab who made the threat.

A hundred years ago, in that same gallery, a fervent Methodist might have told an unbelieving professor that he would, for a certainty, spend eternity roasting in the fires of Hell. That would have been something to laugh off as well. Not a reason to exclude Methodists from UCL. Nor even to keep a close eye on them.

There is, however, a difference. Death threats are different from damnation prophecies. Methodists may proclaim themselves Christian soldiers, marching as to war, but the fact is, they aren’t. It’s a metaphor. They have hymn books, not Semtex at the chapel door. Demonstrably, some Muslim students do now see themselves in a real war — not with a foreign foe, but with the society in which they are living. It’s not (always) metaphorical, as the Abdulmutallab event bears out.