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For our beloveds, we have successfully personalised, internalised and secularised our faith. “Who are you to judge?” we demand, whenever public sins are acknowledged in public. “Let him without sin cast the first stone,” we retort, whenever confronted by our misdeeds. “Have you never sinned?” we ask, whenever charged with holding our beloveds to account for their actions. In this new realm, the one who is mugged must never reproach the thief. The one who is wronged must never demand redress. All deeds, however they impact others, become personal, between the individual and his Lord alone, never to be tried or condemned.

Bizarrely, our activists — who claim to be despised because they speak the truth to power — are foremost in promoting this new dichotomy. Such is our spectacular failure to inculcate a morality that affects us in any meaningful way. Instead we have a generation that preaches forgiveness for the oppressor and demands the oppressed turns the other cheek. It is all back to front. We are supposed to be harshest on ourselves: as individuals, to forgive those that wrong us, not to forgive ourselves for wronging others. But in this age of identity politics, such a demand is impossible. Thus the one who has been wronged is told today: only the sinless has any right to complain. What a strange morality, indeed.