BRITAIN is in danger of sleepwalking into a new era of religious intolerance after the July 7 bombings, The Times Cheltenham Literature Festival was told last night.

Dr David Starkey said that the religious intolerance of previous centuries could be repeated unless society reconsiders its attitute to Church and State. Direct parallels could be drawn between the present and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when a common enemy was defined by religious belief, culminating in civil war.

The historian voiced alarm at the trend towards “thought crimes” encapsulated in anti-terrorism legislation and what he saw as new Labour’s political correctness. The same trends could be seen, he said, when Henry VIII fused Church and State by declaring himself head of the Church of England.

What today might be described as thought crimes, such as expressing any sympathy for suicide bombers, would in previous eras have been termed heresy.

Speaking to The Times about his second in a trilogy of books about the British monarchy he said: “The period I’ve been looking at is hugely topical. What we learnt in the summer this year is how deadly a combination the fusing of religion and politics is.”

Then as now, he argued, thought crimes were heresy. “Unbelievers are enemies, those who believe differently. There are very, very uncomfortable parallels. We have a politico-religious enemy. Then it was Roman Catholicism. Now it is Islam making precisely the same type of claims. Islam takes it for granted that politics and religion are coterminous, just as we did once. That’s a huge danger.

“There’s the justification of terrorism and assassination. There’s a native fifth column. Then it was English people paid by Spain, now we see suicide bombers who are born in Britain.” While arguing that there is a danger that historic mistakes may be repeated, he is equally confident that answers to current problems can be found by studying the past.

The key to present-day threats, he said, was tolerance. In the same way that a multitude of religious sects were allowed to continue without threat of being burnt at the stake after the Restoration, Britain today should tolerate Islam.

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