Battle against terror must start in school Teach religion AND tolerance

ANTI-monarchists Republic want to stop new MPs swearing oaths of allegiance to the Queen. I’ll swear an oath too. Eff off.

IF you really put your mind to it there are a multitude of inventive ways to kill someone.

Which is why crime writers such as Val McDermid are never likely t o run out of murderous material.

Val used to be a Sunday People reporter, and I never guessed, as she went about her business in her kindly, bouncy Scottish fashion, she might be dreaming up exotic THERE was a huge response when I ridiculed the stupid British citizenship test for migrants last week.

Questions on whether dogs must wear Wellington boots or sunglasses in public made me howl. Immigration expert techniques for doing me in. Since then she’s shown a remarkable aptitude for poisoning, mutilation, serial killing, feeding slaughtered bodies to pigs, and death by medieval torture instruments.

So if Sunday People reporters come knocking on your door be nice to them. You never know when there’s another Val yearning to get out.

Val’s novels have sold 10 million worldwide, but no one expects readers to suddenly turn into criminals after picking one up.

Which is why blaming terrorism on the horrors and hate preachers found on Professor Thom Brooks, of Durham University, also thinks the test not fit for purpose.

He directed me to a House of Lords debate in which Lib Dem peer Lord Roberts said a Commons versus Lords Google and Facebook is too simplistic.

Henry VIII lopped heads off anyone who displeased him, including spouses, but he wasn’t radicalised by watching beheading videos on the internet.

That doesn’t mean bomb making manuals shouldn’t be taken down. Or foul and offensive content should stay up. But it’s no answer in itself.

The average age of an Islamist terrorist is 22. Had mainstream Islam done more to educate them about their faith 20 years ago they might not have grown up wishing to kill themselves and others.

Curb

The Koran, like the Bible, is contradictory. It can mean whatever you choose it to mean.

One passage condemns suicide, another appears to condone it.

But then too often Christians have misinterpreted an “eye for an eye” as justification for bloody r evenge. It r eally means proportionate response – one eye, not two.

Improving religious education in schools to teach the true meaning of religions would give kids the right message at their most impressionable age and instil respect for other faiths.

Not only are they less likely to become extremists. But by teaching moderation in all things religious it might curb another danger.

That of Islamaphobia becoming the last acceptable type of racism left. competition would show it’s just a bad pub quiz.

Better still, turn that into a TV game show and call it Pointless. Or Universally Challenged, because none of the peers had a good word to say about it.