There is a character in a Janice Galloway short story who gets his child to jump off a high surface into his arms, only to step to one side and let him fall. What he says then is purported to be a Glasgow saying 'Never trust anybody'. I think that's all he says in that short story, but I know of a longer version from a tradition that goes back centuries. A traditional teaching of Sufi sheikhs has always been 'never trust anyone - especially me'. Don't just blindly follow, make up your own mind. 

So the war with Saddam Hussein, hot or cold, lurches on, along with the commonly held suspicion on many people’s parts, that this is just one battle in a greater war between Islam and the West, Saddam seen as symbol, figurehead and representative, of the muslims of the world.

It’s as well to think about who we see as representative of the muslim community these days, what with the Lord Chancellor suggesting that a number of bishops in the Lords make way for representatives of other faiths. As Baroness Jay told the Independent on Sunday “the heads of other faiths should also be given a role in the Upper Chamber”.

Except that Islam doesn’t have a “head” like the Church of England. Islam has no clergy entitled to speak with authority over others. It’s not a church, it’s a way of life. Of course the muslim world has distinctive structures of law and order, but such socially determined expressions of Islam can make no ultimate claims to religious authority. When the Qur’an says “there’s no compulsion in the Islamic Way of Life” it rules out any form of religious structure with a capacity to enforce a centralised view.

But the power mongers of Western commerce and empire always looked to local ‘representatives’ who could guarantee local control by whatever means necessary. ‘People with whom we could do business’, in South America, Africa and Asia (not just the muslim world), “representatives of the people” until they bite the Western hand that’s feeding them.

Any selected, unelected muslim representation in the House of Lords is a minefield, so I pray that those discussing the small print tread most warily. The muslim community can do without a repeat of the disastrous tragi-farce of Westminster’s attempts to include muslim representation within its remit.

By all means promote muslims to some honorary executive lordly position. And let them represent knowledge and wisdom, and a sensitivity to society, and compassion and honesty, and diligence and trustworthiness, all good muslim qualities. But please be very careful before accepting any muslim individual, however opinionated, as speaking on behalf of Islam or the muslim community. And that includes me.