On September 30 2000, two days after Ariel Sharon, then the leader of Israel's opposition Likud Party, went for a walk on Temple Mount, Palestinians mounted a demonstration at Gaza's Netzarim Junction. A 55-second piece of video footage of that demonstration, transmitted that day by the French TV station France 2, was to cause unprecedented violence in the Middle East and throughout the world.

The footage, with a voice-over by France 2's Jerusalem correspondent, Charles Enderlin, showed what was said to be the killing of 12-year-old Mohammed al-Dura by Israeli marksmen. Viewers saw the child crouching in terror behind his father, Jamal, as they sheltered next to a barrel under what Enderlin said was Israeli gunfire, and then slumping to the ground as Enderlin pronounced that he was dead.

To the happy congregation in Barack Obama’s church of fervid believers, the presumptive Democratic nominee for US President is like none that has ever come before him. The soaring oratory, delivered at vast rallies that can seem unsettlingly fascistic at times, hails a new dawn in American politics.

“We are the change we have been waiting for!” he cries. To which the multitudes respond repeatedly with idolatrous passion, if not much of an ear for grammar: “Yes We Can!”

Being something of an old China hand, I have done my bit in getting China wrong. As an over-enthused young diplomat in Beijing during the early Cultural Revolution (1966-69), I sent a report based on a Red Guard pamphlet I had scavenged, detailing the death by hara-kiri of the “renegade capitalist-roader” Deng Xiaoping. Meeting him 12 years later took the edge off my scoop, though at least the Red Guards were right about the capitalist road.

Secularisation is far more of a challenge to Christianity in England than is Islam, and yet by seemingly strengthening the case for secularism, the issue of Islam has moved centre-stage. I believe that England, or more widely the United Kingdom, has to decide between three possible responses to the growth of the Islamic community not only in numbers but also in self-confidence.

The first of these is communitarianism, which allows each faith community (or non-faith community for that matter) its own version of public space. This seems to be the road along which — at least in the judgment of some of his more careful interpreters — Archbishop -Rowan Williams would wish to travel. But communitarianism means the further disintegration of the cultural system of the nation as a whole. The phrase “the community” must signify first and foremost the national community, which is the form humanity has taken under Providence in this piece of earth.

The great cultural change of the modern world has been the meteoric rise of music to pole position among both the creative and performing arts, in terms of status, influence and material reward. One of the clearest indicators has been the response of politicians. As New Labour starts to look rather old, one of the most poignant images of its palmy days is the much much-reproduced photograph of Tony Blair greeting Noel Gallagher of the rock group at 10 Downing Street shortly after the 1997 general election. Also at the party was Alan McGee, owner o the Creation Records who was appointed by Blair to the Creative Task Force.