A time for us Brits to keep calm and carry on

Nothing stirs the soul like the call to prayer. That shrill voice five times a day summoning Muslims to the Mosque for mandatory worship is both haunting and beautiful.

You don’t need to be a follower of Islam to appreciate the call.

I was christened as a Lutheran (and still have the certificate) but now, more than half a century later, I’m a fully paid-up non-card-bearing unbeliever. It’s not that I don’t have beliefs but they are not along any traditional religious lines.

But having lived within earshot of the local mosque in the UAE for many years, the call to prayer still sends tingles down my spine.

Mind you, I have also been known to go a bit wobbly in a CoE cathedral - and don’t even get me started on St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome or the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in Muscat.

There’s definitely something about these places and we would be very foolish to dismiss out of hand the people who worship in them – they all have their believers so there has to be something to it, right?

Now before you think I’ve gone a bit soft, let me explain the reason for the preamble.

A Muslim has apparently killed nearly 40 people in an attack on a beach in the Tunisian resort town of Sousse, the majority of them British.

I say apparently as, to my mind, he was not so much a Muslim as a plain, simple terrorist.

Islamic State’s ruthlessness is terrorism on a scale rarely seen before – I’d like to say never seen before but feel certain my reader would correct me.

In the face of such barbarism, people need to keep the faith. If you are not religious, then you must value freedom of speech, education for all, equality for all, freedom of religion and democracy.

And the best way to do this is by showing that we will not be intimidated.

So, in true British style, we must all Keep Calm and Carry On.