Some years later than this, prior to forming its policy,the Scottish Parliament was holding a grand consultation on Social Welfare. Everyone was invited, local councils, business leaders, economists, social workers themselves, and charitable organisations large and small. There was one organisation that seemed so insignificant, however, that they failed to get noticed and weren't invited. It never occurred to anyone that the Church of Scotland had a bigger social welfare budget than anyone outside of Glasgow District Council. Religion - apparently not just irrelevant but invisible.

As the Labour Party Conference draws to a close, more than one commentator has likened the speeches from the platform to a religious revival rally. All the talk of “community”, an “us not me” society, “idealism” and “values”.

Now, the western world is traditionally terrified by the Islamic ideal of no distinction between religion and politics, but as the secular machinery of government and society tries to deal with the most crucial questions of all our lives, the language of politics inevitably sounds more and more like the language of preachers.

In fact, the language could have been lifted wholesale from the Islamic vision of the world, an understanding of a greater global community overarching the individual tastes and preferences of local tribes. A vision which accepts the human urge to acquire wealth and power, but sets it in a context of the wider needs of society as a whole, with the stress on what you give, not what you get, and with the health of an individual not seen as something unrelated to the health of a society.

That Islamic vision includes education, a religious duty in Islam, and welfare - Muhammad said “He’s not a believer who eats his fill while his neighbour remains hungry by his side” - plus all the other current interests of Governments, like sport, law and order, and the environment.

But it’s often been suggested that my belief in that Islamic vision somehow compromises my “Britishness”. And I fear that New Europe, for all its multicultural ideals, is defining itself less in terms of “being” anything than simply in terms of “not being” muslim? Would we have been quite so passive during the years of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and Kosovo, had it been muslims butchering Christians on the borders of the Community, not the other way around?

In the western world, where secular democracy is usually seen as an unquestionable goal, it’s considered OK to subsume religious values under the umbrella of politics, with the ultimate sin being to suggest that politics be subservient to religion. Religion as a personal belief system, OK - but never suggest that it could be relevant to the way that we run our society.