WHEN we go abroad for our summer holidays we want a rest, away from the madding crowd.

But anyone spotting me on a lounger on the beach will have been surprised by my summer reading.

I confess. I read the odd airport novel; but basically, I like "improving works", from which I might learn something.

So for the first week of my summer holiday I was stuck into "Inquisition - The Reign of Fear".

I had long wanted to know how a wonderful religion - mine, Christianity - had been outrageously used to justify ritual burnings of hundreds of thousands of "heretics" over three centuries and a half in Spain between 1478 and 1808, and what it was about the Spanish that allowed such state violence to continue over such a period.

For those who don't know it, the story itself is breathtaking.

Visit the south of Spain, and you will see much evidence of the influence of the "Moors" - Muslim Arabs from north Africa who captured the area in 711 and ruled it for over 500 years.

But overall this was a period when the Muslims, the indigenous Christians, and a large Jewish community were all able to co-exist; and the area saw a great intellectual flowering in the arts, architecture, and the sciences, led by the Moors.

In the 13th Century Christians recaptured large parts of Spain.

To consolidate their power, the terror began.

The Jews were progressively expelled, and so were as many Muslims as possible.

Then, with Papal authority, the killing began, with ritual "auto-da-fe" - trials of faith - which ended for most victims in a verdict that they be "relaxed", the euphemism for being burnt at the stake.

Because we in the West instinctively know a great deal about the true message of Christ, whether we are currently believers or not, no one then or now has damned the whole of Roman Catholicism because of the perverted way in which it was abused in Spain during the Inquisition.

Nor, to make a more topical point, did anyone claim the IRA terrorists who killed and injured scores should be labelled "Catholic terrorists".

We are not quite so careful however, when today it comes to labelling terrorist suspects and their sympathisers of Asian heritage.

I'm well aware that they seek to justify their appalling violence by reference to their religion.

But their creed of hatred is as far removed from the message of the Holy Koran as the Inquisition's was from the Holy Bible.

Nor is it right to label one very large Islamic denomination an "extremist sect".

But this was the term recently used for the "deobandi" school of thought in Islam.

Deoband itself is simply a place, a seat of Islamic learning in India founded in 1867.

Its aim has been to revive classical Islam, in much the same way that theologians like Luther, Calvin, Wesley campaigned to bring Christianity back to what they saw as its true message.

Extremists or worse among "Deobandi" Muslims should of course be exposed and brought to justice like any other criminals or terrorists.

But about two thirds of East Lancashire's Muslim population follow this school of thought.

It's no more a "sect" than is the Baptists or the Methodists.

And just as we of the Christian faith would deeply resent the idea that we were fellow travellers with extremists or murderers who have claimed our faith, it's about time we accorded the same respect for those of other faiths, including Islam.