THE BBC has been much criticised for its poor coverage of religion.

Well, this week's output must surely go a long way to answering those criticisms as TV viewers are being treated to daily programmes about Islam. This is a good thing. The Pope himself has said that our new millennium should be the age of co-operation among the world's great religious faiths which, he says, have much in common. World religions share a concern for the poor and the outcast, they preach forgiveness and renewal of life. Most importantly, all the world religions seek a sense of the sacredness of life without which morality is impossible.

But religious groups are like all other groups: they often fall short of the very ideals and doctrines they preach. I wonder whether these programmes will show the faults of Muslims as well as their considerable virtues? The BBC has a long history of subjecting Christianity to severe criticism. Will Islam receive the same treatment? I doubt it - because the BBC has an even longer history of defending ethnic and religious minorities against what it regards as the prejudiced majority.

Everyone is terrified of being damned as "racist", and so criticisms of ethnic minorities tend to get suppressed out of an entirely understandable fear of being condemned or even brought before the law. The BBC won't say a word this week against some of those who practise Islam. This is a pity because certain criticisms need to be made. Why, for example, are the Muslim Taliban in Afghanistan threatening to execute foreign aid workers whom they accuse of preaching Christianity? Why, even as I write, has the government of Pakistan expelled eight aid workers for the same alleged "crime"? Imagine the outcry from the BBC if this sort of religious prejudice were ever to be perpetrated by Christians in England.

On the Northern Ireland agreement on Good Friday 1998, Mr Blair said: "Representatives of parties intimately linked to paramilitary groups can only be in a future Northern Ireland government if it is clear there will be no more violence and that threat of violence has gone."

Three years on, not an ounce of semtex or a single weapon has been surrendered by the IRA. Their recruitment drive is successful as never before among the young. The punishment beatings and the large scale racketeering continue. Yet, despite all these crimes and Mr Blair's clear words of condemnation, there sit Sinn Fein-IRA in the Northern Ireland Assembly. A prominent former member of the IRA, Martin McGuinness is Education Minister.

The sickening presence of terrorists in government is explained by the one Great Truth of politics: on every truly big issue of the day, the front benches of government and opposition are always in agreement. This goes for the policy, pursued by every British government since Ted Heath's, of handing Northern Ireland to the republicans. That is why every concession is made to the men of violence. And it is why so many eminent and prosperous Loyalists are choosing to emigrate from the province. The policy is called Appeasement.

Published: Tuesday, August 14, 2001