How does one account for the cruelties of faith? Will Durant provides an answer in his book The age of faith: “Intolerance is the natural concomitant of a strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous.”

I shall not dwell on the murderous certainties of Islam in Brunei, Pakistan, Bangladesh and elsewhere in the Islamic world. One can read about them in the daily news. A few examples from “Christendom” before it became de-Christianised will suffice.

Antisemitism figured prominently in the history of Christianity. Thousands of Jews were massacred by Christians during the First and Second Crusades and during the Black Death. In The age of faith, Durant wrote that in medieval Europe no Jew dared to venture out of his home during the Christian “holy week”.

In his novel Ivanhoe, Sir Walter Scott wrote a vivid description of the relentless persecution that Jews faced in medieval England: “Upon the slightest and most unreasonable pretences, as well as upon accusations the most absurd and groundless, their persons and property were exposed to every turn of popular fury. Norman, Saxon, Dane and Briton contended which should look with greatest detestation upon a people whom it was accounted a point of religion to hate, to revile, to despise, to plunder and to persecute.”

Christians behaved almost just as badly towards each other. During the Revolt of the Netherlands (1555-1648) against Catholic Spain, the ferocity and savagery of rival Christian creeds were unprecedented.

Michel de Montaigne (1533-92) begged his fellow Christians to moderate their certainties this side of murder.

In 1598, King Henry IV of France issued the historic Edict of Nantes, authorising freedom of worship for the Huguenots. Pope Clement VIII condemned it as “the most accursed that can be imagined, whereby liberty of conscience is granted to everybody, which is the worst thing in the world”.