Well, I don't know how fast it's changing in London, but the last I heard Glasgow Police had at least one Asian Muslim Woman that I know of on the force, and I imagine that they are desperately trying to get more. And the Test Board long ago decided that they'd better select a few people with a darker shade of skin if they were ever going to win anything. So it may be slow, but it's progress.

I suppose you might expect the inhabitants of Wisden to be centuries out of touch with the real world, longing for an all white England team when most of their countrymen would prefer them to be searching out English relatives of Brian Lara or Courtney Walsh, but it's hard to believe that Sir Paul Condon could be so isolated from the world that he thought he could get away with his recent statements, explaining that most muggers are black (at least in the inner-city areas with largely black populations they studied)? Would he be surprised that in Glasgow they're usually white, like most of our population?

Did he consider what black citizens would think of their  Police Commissioner talking of street crime as though it might be a genetically inherited tendency, recognizable by a characteristically dark skin-pigmentation? It's scary when the men with the muscle think of you as part of their problem (and perhaps a way of finding their place in the Sun), but in times of political storm, xenophobia tends to arise. It's Us and Them, a question of identity.

How do I qualify to be One of Us, as opposed to Them, the lesser people, whose intrinsic inferiority justifies their enslavement. At best paternalistic, at worst it excludes some from our human family, and justifies actions we consider inappropriate amidst those we care for. The dehumanisation of the enemy is a first requirement of warfare.

Before Muhammad, Arabia was the most factional, tribal, family-feuding bloody collision of people you could ever hope to keep out of the way of. Yet, within a few years these former enemies were peacefully united under his leadership, their formerly self-destructive urges channeled towards the only thing truly worth killing and dying for? Freedom of thought - the right to believe.

The help and support previously reserved for family expanded to encompass the greater community, and that basis for societal justice and caring rapidly spread around the world under the muslim banner.

What held that community together was the importance given not to wealth but to Taqwa , God consciousness. That `Fear of none other than God', which comes from knowing where power really resides.