Jack Straw has been talking to Muslim leaders at home and abroad about me and the gunpowder plot. The foreign secretary tells Arab leaders that the British have endured a long history of religious-based terrorism.

Mr Straw says he talks to Islamic leaders about the Catholic plot to blow up parliament in 1605, and the struggle to give non-Protestants civic rights in the 19th and 20th centuries – because it is important for Muslims to realise that religion-based terrorism is not a flaw unique to Islam.

In 1605 Catholics were being arbitarily killed and tortured by an unjust theocratic dictatorship, their properties were being confiscated without recourse to law under a regime determined to deny Catholics basic rights. To this day we live not in a constitutional republic but a monarchy where the ruler heads the established state religion. To this day Catholics are excluded, by legal statute, from being head of state.

The mad mullahs are fighting to impose an Islamic caliphate on us, Guido Fawkes was fighting to free us from religious bigots. Its not an exact analogy Mr Straw.