I FEAR we are being thrust backwards into a new Dark Ages of intolerance and superstition if young British men can be convinced that they are doing good by blowing themselves up in Central London.

By the 1960s I was hoping that we had put religion of all sorts in its place, by creating a rational secular society that tolerated religions, but refused to let them turn their followers into 'soldiers for Christ' or suicide bombers acting under the obscene delusion that killing others would propel them to glory and immortality.

Sadly, we allowed that secular society to degenerate into an empty money and celebrity worshipping shell of a 'culture' in which the worst sins were 'intolerance' and disapproval of 'ethnic' ideas - which are often quite ridiculous and irrational - for fear of 'upsetting' one religious, racial, national or other interest group.

We were told that to do so could be racist, xenophobic fascist and so on and, so insidiously, barbarism, intolerance and superstition have taken hold again in Britain.

It was our failure of that which killed those four young Muslim men in London and, in consequence, we have their victims on our consciences, too. We have allowed the soppy liberals of New Labour and the BBC to bully us into silence as one daft 'multi-cultural' idea after another has been dragged from the Dark Ages and once again allowed to dominate the minds of young British people whom we should have educated into healthy scepticism, rather than slavish obedience to superstitious nonsense.

We should not blame so-called Muslims - they have fled prehistoric cultures in order to come to Britain but have instead found themselves in a morally bankrupt laissez faire Liberal nightmare in which anything goes so long as its 'multi-cultural'. It's not their fault - it's ours.

JIM EVANS,

Worcester.