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I think Barry that we will have to agree to disagree, for, as Hamlet observes, “there is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

Etymologically, the word religion derives from the Latin verb religio, meaning to bind together – which is what most laws do, whether it be like a back supporting corset or a body restraining straightjacket.

At the stage, not so long ago, when the English legal system was based on the Judeo-Christian tradition, the legal definition of religion referred to belief in and worship of the Supreme Being.

I would argue that a belief in secularism falls well within the ambit of section 10 of the Equality Act 2010 which provides our current 21st century secular definition of religion or belief.

The main difference between any of the revealed Shari’as and any of the secular systems of law is that the Shari’a recognises that in real time God, the Supreme Being, directs human affairs, not humans.

The foundations of human rights law are based on the denial of the right to life of one strata in society, the French aristocracy of the 18th century – and subsequently millions of people have been destroyed in the name of establishing democracy.

As far as I can see, the brave new world secular order is in terminal decay, suffering as it is from the advanced stages of the cancer of usury – which the Shari’a prohibits and which secular law has institutionalised.

I am sure that Matthew Arnold would not mind my adapting his lines slightly, in observing that we find ourselves “between two worlds, one dying, the other powerless to be born”.

“Que sera, sera.”