Islam unreformed...

We - Britain, Europe or ‘the west’ - have made many mistakes over recent centuries; our own record on human rights is, at best, chequered. Two hundred years ago we were still profiting from the slave trade. But times change, and we no longer buy and sell people like farm equipment. In Britain, until 1861, homosexuality was a crime which could be punishable by the death penalty. It was still a crime - though no longer a capital crime - a century later. Now it's a source of rainbow-hued "pride".

Qatar, as a Muslim country, does not have the same opportunities to instigate societal change. Because there is no tradition, in Islam, of subjecting the tenets of their faith to a critical review, the morals and mores of 7th century Arabia have been imported, unreformed, into the 21st. Muslim attitudes towards women and homosexuals are embedded as securely and non-negotiably into their holy book as the ten commandments in the Bible. These attitudes aren’t going to change any time soon. Why? Because under a theocracy, God’s law is paramount, not man’s. And, by dictating every single word in the Quran, God has already spoken. This is what it means to embrace the “last” religion and to own the “perfect” book…