Whilst running  the bar at the cricket cricket centre last night, I got chatting to an Asian chap about the demise of Test Match cricket and the rise, particularly in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, of the one day and 20/20 forms of the game.

Stay with me please, this isn’t a cricket blog.

He then informed me that he was originally from Islamabad in Pakistan, so, before the conversation about cricket could develop any further, a colleague and I pulled the bastard in to the cellar, water boarded him and asked him what he knew about the terror attacks in Paris.

We didn’t of course, but if we had done, we could have potentially been the new voices of reason on the Sean Hannity Show for Fox News. Failing that I am sure Steven Emerson, also with Fox, who thinks Birmingham is a ‘totally Muslim’ city, would give us airtime.

I have met some other Muslims as well, some through cricket and others through work, so I have to say I have been extremely lucky, because none of them have tried to kill me by blowing up my car or walking into the Oakley cricket pavilion and detonating themselves.

My luck doesn’t end their either, as on Thursday evenings I play in a cricket league that features a team called St Mary’s which is made up entirely of practicing Christians. Whisper it quietly because you will be surprised to hear that, as yet, none of them have asked me to fill out membership forms for the Klu Klux Klan.

Sometimes they play another team that features 2-3 Asians but somehow they manage to keep a lid on their simmering resentment for each other, disguising hatred by laughing, joking and sharing a drink after the game finishes. One might even argue that they like each other, which would be enough to make Hannity vomit so copiously, he would turn transparent.

When there is a an extremist terrorist attack, the tragedy always ends up with Social Media and Right Wing news organisations coming out with the old, “I’m not racist but…” line and I have to say, I find it a bit tedious to be honest, as it doesn’t stop the never ending cycle of terror, the opposite in fact.

Instead of trying to understand why Western foreign policy is at least, partly culpable for the breeding of these maniacs who slaughter innocents, all that we seem to do (our Governments that is) is use it as an excuse to gain more control over our civil liberties, or at least, what remains of them.

The French are are more protective of civil liberties than us, the revolution sorted that out, but whilst we are not yet a right wing Police State like many of the nut job states in America, we need to stand up and not allow ourselves to become one. It was already being suggested today by David Cameron.

French unity disguises the rise in the National Front

Fear of attack is power, Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebells taught us that, so as civilians we should stand up for the so called do gooders who represent campaign groups for civil liberties, because without these campaigners (who the likes of Sean Hannity would describe as terrorist sympathisers) there would be no middle ground and the thought police would move in on the masses.

If you have read George Orwell’s 1984 you will get my point. I started watching the film last night but turned off as it started scaring me nearly as much as the book did. When it comes to liberty the left need to fight the right to sustain a middle ground, because there are some loons who don’t want any freedom of speech or opinion; it would be an awful existence to live like that.

A friend of mine said to me the other day that our current problems stem from a modern fear of the word liberal. It means what it says, freedom of thought, forming your own opinions, fair elections, equality and press freedom. How on earth did liberal become such a toxic word?

Anyway, trying to understand the thought process behind men (and a woman) who carry out the brutal slaughter of cartoonists at a satirical magazine, will serve only to give you a headache, but the fact is, whether we like it or not, these attacks have increased massively since the Iraq and Afghan wars and the continued American support in Gaza.

These highly trained assassins will have no doubt, been shown videos of civilian slaughter, torturing of suspects at Guantanamo Bay and a Western policy that has seen the uprooting and annihilation of their towns and cities throughout the middle eastern region.

If you view it that way, you can see how farcical, some would say, illegal wars, have destabilised regions, disenfranchised individuals and have left disaffected young men vulnerable to volatile preachers who have got plenty of propaganda to fill their souls with the kind of extremist hatred that is beyond our comprehension, but is simmering and erupting within them like a volatile volcano.

Result? Innocent journalists dead, Muslims dead, Jews dead, Christians dead. No political leaders or their families are dead though and there is a horrible and twisted irony that the death of the Charlie cartoonists who spoke (or drew) their mind, will probably result in a restriction of being allowed to do just that.

We are told that people go in to politics to make our world a better place and I want to believe them, I really do, but we seem to go on making the same mistakes time and again. It’s like we are punching ourselves in the face then forgetting it hurts. It surely makes sense that a right wing anti-Muslim agenda will create more isolation and more hatred?

If we in the West aren’t brave enough to try to take a different approach to some sort of world peace, we will go on seeing innocent people killed and we will go on seeing our rights to privacy and freedom of expression stripped away.

Or are we going to stand without a voice, amongst the blood, death and destruction, chanting “War is Peace” as chillingly predicted by George Orwell?

I have to go now, as tonight I am water boarding my girlfriend who was brought up in Dubai (Muslim/terrorist) by catholic parents from India who were of Portuguese and Irish (Catholic IRA terrorists) descent.

This basically means one thing in Sean Hannity’s book for the evangelist righteous.

I am on borrowed time.