If I went home tonight, got drunk, set fire to my sofa in my quiet suburban street and threw bottles and bricks at any police officer that turned up to quell the situation, I would be arrested and would no doubt have the law book thrown at me.

Any protestations of police provocation or heavy-handedness would be laughed at, as would any calls for leniency.

So why should there be different behavioural standards for uni students?

My wife, who is from Europe, is always dumfounded that we are so lenient on drunken, irreverent, privileged kids.

If political violence is a crime, POINTLESS violence is surely a worse crime!

Fair call Che. Nor can it be said that the United States is entirely secular. It will be a long time before a self declared non-christian will ever be elected to the white house.

And for that reason 'End of faith' draws no distinction. At present we don't subject any religions to the 'rationality' test.

The issue of where you sit on conservative Islam is too often equated to your position on the political spectrum ie, radical Christian Islam-haters on the right, and liberal Islam-sympathisers on the left. But this crude assumption does not hold true. It is possible to vote Labour, refute the justification for the war in Iraq yet still be critical of the extreme liberal-minded people in our own society that suggest any religion, even one that calls for the killing of non-believers, must be respected and is beyond moral scrutiny and discussion.

Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, does not go as far as D'Souza in saying that liberals in America have brought it upon themselves, but does say that liberals and religious moderates, are the ones that stop us from looking at the REAL problem, which is that this religion was dreamed up by a bunch of guys in the desert thousands of years ago, and has not evolved, been scrutinised or questioned one little bit due to the fact that any belief is seen to be beyond scrutiny. I’m as liberal as they come on issues of sexuality, freedoms of expression etc, but find myself agreeing with Sam Harris that at some point we’ve got to look at the beliefs we are preserving here, and subject them to the same moral and rational scrutiny that has been applied to primitive ideas such as the world being flat and the medieval belief that headaches could be alleviated by trepanning to allow the demons to escape! Have a read. The message is as relevant to left-wingers as it is to the right.