But many gay Muslims live in a largely invisible world, one which can be fraught with conflicts between two aspects of their identities. A study of gay British Pakistani Muslims, published earlier this year in the British Journal of Social Psychology, found that some saw their homosexuality as a test from Allah, some believed the religious texts had been misunderstood, others blamed their British upbringing, but most of them expressed guilt, the desire to stop and the hope to marry women. Said one of the participants (who, again, were all given anonymity): "I'm gay 'cos I was brought up here (in Britain) but I reckon if I'd been brought up in Pakistan, then I would have turned out straight because this doesn't happen that much there." 

Multiculturalist white liberals, whose belief in the virtue of "celebrating diversity" has taken on the characteristics of some sort of fetish, could probably not bring themselves to point out the ridiculousness of that statement. And this in turn exposes the contradictions which were always there, bubbling away, in multiculturalism: how or why should you celebrate a culture which sees you as morally unacceptable? Why should you try to "understand" and adapt?   Could we, quite soon, be in a position where certain areas of our cities are off-limits for gay men? And, hobbled by the requirement above all to be "sensitive", will we simply go along with it? The last word goes to Bruce Bawer, who also wrote Surrender: Appeasing Islam, Sacrificing Freedom (Doubleday, 2009). "Open your eyes," he says, "stop being cowed by political correctness, and speak up."