But you can also see Liddle’s point. If “radicals” are excluded from the public conversation, how are they ever to be drawn into dialogue – that apparently magical crucible in which hate and suspicion is transformed into understanding. Yet isn’t that precisely the promise held out by interfaith encounter?

The murder of Sir David Amess, a committed Roman Catholic, apparently by an Islamic radical, once again raises the question of whether the interfaith encounter works.

For centuries human beings of different faith perspectives have met together to try and … well, try and what exactly? When Nachmanides met with Dominican and Franciscan theologians in 1263 for a formal disputation on the fundamentals of faith, the purpose seemed to be to persuade the “other side” that they were wrong. Accounts of the famous Disputation of Barcelona vary, but both sides did their polemical best to say why the other was mistaken. It was tense — of course it was. And the Christian account tells of Nachmanides fleeing from the scene.

These days, interfaith dialogue — on the ground at least — rarely allows itself to visit areas of controversy. In primary school, religious studies classes are, more often than not, existentially anaemic encounters. Different faith traditions are presented alongside each other without the tension created by wondering which one may be true. Lesson plans emphasise things like food traditions among religions, where you liking Halal lamb curry and me liking Jollof rice (definitely a religious tradition in my parish) describes differences without the need to introduce conflict over who is right. After all, what is more subjective than our taste buds. It’s all perfectly understandable. Who wants to import the tensions of the world into a classroom?

But that’s the dilemma: either interfaith discussion directly addresses the issues that divide people of faith, including the more conservative ones (who globally speaking, are in the majority) and accepts that quite a lot of friction and heat will be created — offence, shouting, walk outs — or it avoids the real tensions between people of faith, in which case it is deathly dull and, therefore, useless.

Most people don’t want to give up their precious evenings for shouting matches in an atmosphere of extreme tension. Who would? Most religious conservatives already think they’re right anyway. They don’t want to open up an audience to potentially liberalising speakers either. So interfaith groups tend to be dominated by those who don’t really need them: well-meaning people; keen to stress the common denominators amongst people of faith.

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God save us from trendy vicars

By Giles Fraser

There’s a view that suggests secularism uses these meetings between the faiths to muscle into their territory. Not as an impartial umpire, but something more. One way of describing the rise of a secular society is that it was driven by the need to provide a public space free from religious sectarianism — open to all, not dominated by any.

But secularism is itself divided on a continuum between those who want to offer a level playing field for all — including religious people — to flourish, and those who, frankly, seek the elimination of the religious perspective from public life entirely. (This is the difference between American and French secularism.)

The involvement of secularists within interfaith discussion is doubly complicated by the suspicion that secularism has an interest in keeping religious tension going. Historically speaking at least, religious tension is the reason that secularism has justified its existence.

Ironically perhaps, secularism also unites those of faith. Especially the conservatives. They see a common enemy, who they regard as seeking to silence them.

The former Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks of blessed memory, who went to a Church of England primary school, was of the view that one of the vocations of the Church of England was to provide all people of faith with a platform in the public realm. He also thought that this required something sacrificial from the Church of England, downplaying its proselytising instincts in favour of this more inclusive mission. All people in my parish, regardless of faith, are somehow my spiritual responsibility. It is also true that the current mood in the Church of England for mission and evangelism does create a certain tension with Sacks’s way of understanding its role.

I wonder if interfaith dialogue can be truly revived. Disagreement, even full-blown dispute, will have to be part of any resurrection of this great tradition. Breaking bread and making friends is one — important — aspect of such talks. But we must beware of such groups avoiding the difficult points of disagreement between us and indeed limiting themselves to liberal believers. This means that interfaith groups must accept that they will always be poised in an uncomfortable place between solidarity and disagreement, the greater the former always allowing for more of the latter.

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The Church is acting like the police

By Giles Fraser

It can happen. Last week, I addressed a local meeting of the Council for Christians and Jews (CCJ). That night, as trust was  established, more difficult questions could be asked — about the Messiah (same issue in Barcelona in the 13^th century), about Christian anti-Semitism, about Zionism.

This fragile dynamic between trust and challenge is easily damaged. My own feeling is that we are still not there in our conversations between Christianity and Islam, or between Judaism and Islam for that matter. There continue to be many perils in such encounters. Danger one is subjectivism: your truth is just as good as my truth. No one really thinks that anyway, it’s just a convenient way of not coming to blows. Danger two is coming to blows, or the verbal equivalent with encounters collapsing into acrimony and insult.

I called up Rod Liddle to confirm the story about Thought for the Day. It’s true. He explains that when he said he wanted Abu Hamza doing the slot it was a joke. But he did think it was a real problem “having people from very different faith traditions constantly saying the same thing.” — as if there was no real disagreement.

I totally agree. We need to be braver in exploring our divisions. And dig deeper into our resources of kindness and patient listening to one another as we do so. I suspect that people who are confident in their own faith are better able to achieve this. Which is why we need to be less frightened of division if we seek to become more united in our understanding. Even if it means we all end up running away like Nachmanides did.

Yet the social media platform does have an ability to highlight at fast speed some problems that are only noticeable at a slower rpm in the real world — one of which is the uncomfortable, ever-vanishing line between comment and journalism. While this blurring is not a completely new phenomenon, Twitter does have an ability to highlight as well as speed along cultural shifts.

Earlier this week there was a fine example of this trend. As news of Boris Johnson’s successful Conservative Party election victory broke, Lewis Goodall – Sky’s Political Correspondent – tweeted a photo of a television autocue with the caption “So great to share a set with Black Mirror today”.

So great to share a set with Black Mirror today. pic.twitter.com/lhQYQjhjqO

— Lewis Goodall (@lewis_goodall) July 23, 2019

For those unfamiliar with it, Black Mirror is a Netflix series created by the former Guardian journalist Charlie Brooker featuring various dystopian fantasy futures. There is not very much for Goodall or anyone else to gain from this observation. It is possible that some people saw it and gave a snort of appreciation. Perhaps somebody somewhere actually laughed. But it is unlikely that anyone is still roaring, days later, at the brilliance and perceptiveness of the observation. So, like most things on social media, the short-term gain is not worth the cost. For a cost there is, paid in public trust even if not by the individual tweeter.

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Unplug the outrage machine

By Douglas Murray

If broadcasters still cared about the editorial independence of their employees, then comments like this would not be made by their journalists. For they further reveal what most of the public have come to suspect – that broadcasters presenting themselves as non-partisan in fact hold very clear political views and that these usually veer in a particular direction. Most, for instance, tend not to be enthusiastic Leave voters who secretly admire Prime Minister Boris Johnson and occasionally let this truth slip.

Of course, people have always harboured their suspicions, but not until journalists began to freely give away their thoughts on social media was such a smorgasbord of evidence presented.

For years, Gavin Esler was the apparently impartial presenter of many leading BBC political shows, including Newsnight, holding people to account whatever his own views. This was back when we viewers did not have access to a presenter’s opinions. Instead we would have to guess from throwaway remarks or the way they might interview one person compared with another.

After the Brexit vote, however, it became clear that Esler had exceptionally strong views about British membership of the EU, and then, in April, of this year he announced his membership and candidacy for the pro-Remain “Change UK” Party. In a speech at its launch and in subsequent media appearances, the man who had only recently been presented as impartial on our television screens turned out to be as partial as it was possible to be. Indeed, some of his political interventions could legitimately be described as “foam-flecked”.

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The dangers of post-truth journalism

By Douglas Murray

Are the public to pretend that Gavin Esler pre-2019 was a different beast from the Gavin Esler of this year? Or do we presume that he always held certain views and only really broke out when there was a chance to express them while standing – unsuccessfully, as it turned out – as a candidate for the European Parliament?

Esler may have broken cover, but by following a number of broadcasters on Twitter, particularly BBC and Sky broadcasters, it is now clear that the barrier is eroding for everyone. When Goodall sent his Black Mirror tweet, the journalist Tim Montgomerie (formerly of this parish) tweeted “Throughout Sky News we have pundits posing as reporters. Neither Sky execs or OfCom seem to give a damn.”

In response, Goodall’s Sky News colleague Kay Burley went for Montgomerie herself: “You’re an absolute disgrace to our profession,” she tweeted. “Seriously.” It was, as Montgomerie went on to say, a pretty unprofessional response in itself, but he was right – there is something strange about this whole game.

Partly it is so eroding to public trust because it all goes in one direction. On one single occasion in recent years has a television presenter let slip a view that did not fall into lock-step with the narrow orthodoxies of the broadcasting class. When Politics Live presenter Andrew Neil sent out one tweet last year mocking the increasingly conspiratorial Observer writer Carole Cadwalladr, he not only deleted the tweet but himself immediately became a news story. There were swift calls for his sacking, and the BBC felt compelled to publicly chastise Neil. As it happens, despite being almost uncontested as the country’s leading political interviewer, Neil no longer has a regular slot on the BBC.

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On Brexit, Auntie just can't help herself

By Robin Aitken

The incident stands out partly because it is so unusual for a broadcaster not to go in one predictable direction, but also because it was clear that a price must only be paid when the opinions are the “wrong” ones. And yet the breaking of the “fourth wall”, the one which meant impartial broadcasters once refrained from veering into personal political expression, has had a damaging effect on broadcast journalism.

Just observing what a broadcaster like Emily Maitlis chooses to retweet tells me more than I want to know about her own political views. Of course, these retweets go in the usual direction, and, of course, it bothers me not a jot where those views differ from my own – the trouble is that they begin to colour the rest of the work.

So, when Rod Liddle appeared on Newsnight last week and was roundly harangued (indeed rather basely insulted) by Maitlis I did not think “What a tough interview”. I had seen the sort of things Maitlis tweeted and retweeted in recent months and then – in the Newsnight studio – simply saw the same set of views played out in another form. There was no mystery anymore, no separation between the impartial interviewer and the opinionated tweeter.

Will this have an impact? My guess is that it already has, and when the media complain about disappearing levels of trust in our profession, it is worth remembering that we only have ourselves to blame.