It was a very interesting programme even if the presenter Nicky Campbell didn't let anyone finish what they were saying and the acoustics in the school's sports hall were appalling!

That aside, this is a big question, and one that deserves greater attention. I've been interested and troubled by the politics of religion since being a teenager and, as you might've noticed, the subject has become all the more dangerous in recent years.

Undoubtedly, in my aetheist mind, it is not the religion which is intolerant, but extremists within it who are fighting for political control.

It was interesting to note that every panel member on The Big Questions said the same: Ann Cryer MP, Douglas Murray, Maajid Nawaz, and Dame Tanni Grey-Thompson.

As did Haras Rafiq of the Sufi Muslim Council and a number of other people in the audience.

I noticed how Haras kept being interrupted by Anjum Chowdhry. Chowdhry showed himself clearly to be a very intolerant individual and a danger to our society. He threw abuse at other members of the audience and the panel. We must all, and British Muslims in particular, stop people like Chowdhry from attempting to become the mouthpiece for Islam.

Political extremists fighting for supremacy within Islamic structures in Britain are the real problem and ordinary white non-Muslim Brits need to understand that and make a distinction.

Haras Rafiq and his Sufi Muslim Council deserves our support because it is sensible, moderate, and shows Islam to be a private spiritual matter not a political treatise. Even I, as an aetheist, can subscribe to that view of religion.

Ordinary Muslims, like ordinary Christians, Jews, Hindus or aethiests, are just people trying to get on with their lives. However, there are people on the extremist fringes of all religions who would ruin that for everyone. We do need to be vigilant against Chowdhry and Omar Bakri (who I urged the police to arrest in the early 1980s and before the Thatcher Government gave him British Citizenship!) but at the same time retain our 'British' values of freedom, justice, fair-play.

I fear that the Blair Government has taken an Authoritarian line against all its citizens and we are more threatened and divided as a result. What hope that the nice Mr Brown will repeal the so-called anti-terror laws (which give much encouragement to the extremists)? Will he ditch the Draconian and ludicrously expensive plans for ID Cards (the British Pass Laws)? Or is it written that we are destined to career over the precipice?