People should recycle extra gifts during the 12 days of Christmas, says the head of the Presbyterian Church of Wales. The Rev John Owen said: “Unwanted presents can be recycled through, for example, charity shops and freecycle schemes.”

A “small but growing band of secular fundamentalists” are portraying faith as “delusional” and religion as “some kind of ‘virus' which needs to be extirpated”, according to the Bishop of London. The Right Rev Richard Chartres added: “The most dangerous ‘god delusion' of all is to make gods of human beings by ignoring the dark perversity in human life and our own propensity to evil.”

A Christian church and a newspaper are trying to sue the Malaysian Government for banning the use of the word ‘Allah'. Although in Malay, Allah means God, the Government has restricted its use to Muslims only. Jerry Dusing, the pastor of Sabah Evangelical Church, in Borneo, which has been forbidden to import Christian books containing the word ‘Allah', explained: “The Christian usage of ‘Allah' predates Islam. ‘Allah' is the name of God in the old and in the modern Arabic Bible.”

East Oxford residents are claiming that plans to broadcast Islamic calls

to prayer thrice-daily risk turning part of the city into “a Muslim ghetto”. A resident attending an Oxford City Council meeting to discuss the proposal said: “If an evangelical Christian preacher proposed issuing sermons three times a day at full volume there would be an outcry... Cowley Road could become a ghetto, which is contrary to what we want in a multicultural society.” A spokesman for Oxford's Central Mosque, said: “We must get the same right as everybody else. When they ring the bells in church, we respect it, but that is also a call to prayer.”