ABSTRACT
This book started with the puzzles and problems I encountered in my life as a professional development manager and “Democracy Promoter”. It has taken me a long time to understand what I was involved in in that other life. We began with the bombings in London on 7 July 2005. The narrative we have become used to hearing is the one offered by Tony Blair and the other G8 leaders that these bombers were opposed to democratic values, civilisation, development, progress and women’s rights. Although they were British, they had espoused a foreign, violent, barbaric ideology characterised by its hyper-masculine refusal of women’s rights and which advocated a return to a medieval past. This version of the terrorist ideology re-emerged in responses to the then Archbishop of Canterbury’s lecture on shari’ah law. The mainstream media turned on the Archbishop in fury because in defending shari’ah law, they believed he was an apologist for this very anti-democratic, out-dated and terrorist ideology.
