Who’s afraid of the Voice of the Caliphate? Presumably the intention behind Al Qaeda’s new Internet TV channel is to send shivers down our spine. A masked anchorman with a Koran at his elbow tells viewers how “the wrath of Allah [Hurricane Katrina] visited the city of homosexuals [New Orleans]” and “the entire Islamic world overflowed with joy.”

Actually, quite a lot of non-Muslims, too, were disappointed last Saturday when Hurricane Rita failed to live up to its billing in the liberal press as the second, lethal blow of a divine double whammy that would give the Bush presidency its comeuppance. Strange how secular Europeans join forces with atavistic Islamists in their attribution of human purposes to natural disasters. They give a new meaning to the phrase “pathetic fallacy.”

What is scary about the Voice of the Caliphate, however, is not the theatrical props and bloodcurdling rhetoric, but the possibility that Al Qaeda’s claim to speak for ordinary Muslims, at least when it denounces Jews and Crusaders, may not be wholly unjustified.

Here in Britain, we are slowly waking up to the fact that many young British Muslims do not merely expect their own dress code and other customs to be respected, but try to impose them on their contemporaries.

Last week, I listened to a young woman who had recently graduated from Queen Mary College, London University – where, two decades ago, I taught history. She told me that on her first day there, as a timid freshman looking for books in the library, she had asked for help from a female Muslim student. She was aggressively rebuffed, and understandably upset. Other Muslims treated her similarly, so she sought advice from an older non-Muslim student. “It’s because you aren’t wearing a headscarf,” she replied.

My acquaintance, a spirited lass, refused to be intimidated by her Muslim contemporaries. Then she told me she felt uncomfortable traveling on the subway sitting in the same carriage as bearded Muslim youths carrying backpacks. She had been in one of the trains that was blown up by terrorists on July 7 and still found it hard to hold back the tears at the memory. Was she a racist? Or Islamophobic? The thought troubled her. I reassured her that she was neither. But would a Muslim have given her the same reassurance?

Even luminaries of the liberal establishment, such as Trevor Phillips, the black chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, are worried about Muslim schools. Many of these “faith schools” are likely to be granted the coveted “voluntary-aided” status enjoyed by thousands of Anglican, Catholic church schools.

Historically, most British schools were owned and run by the churches, charging modest fees to those who could afford them, until the late 19th century, when the state in effect mounted a takeover bid by offering free education for all. The compromise that was then reached gave these schools the right to teach their faith and to select pupils accordingly, while the state paid most of the running costs.

It was uncontroversial when a handful of Jewish schools also became voluntary-aided. But Muslim schools pose different problems. Catholic, and to a lesser extent, Anglican schools are better at integrating different races and cultures than ordinary state schools. But, as Mr. Phillips tactfully puts it, Muslim schools “set the faith hurdle a lot higher. “A British Muslim identity “does not have to translate as a Pakistani or a Saudi Arabian society here.”

Meanwhile, in a BBC documentary on “God and the politicians” broadcast last night, the archbishop of Westminster, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, plucked up courage to admit that he would not be happy to see large numbers of Catholics educated in the “atmosphere” of Muslim schools, because the two creeds are “totally diverse.” He was instantly criticized for his alleged hypocrisy by Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the leader of the Muslim Council, who had himself, like many Muslims, been content to attend a Catholic school.

But there is no hypocrisy because – alas – there is no symmetry between Christian and Islamic attitudes to religious tolerance. Last Sunday, I heard a sermon preached by Cardinal Gabriel Zubeir Wako, the archbishop of Khartoum. Sitting beside me were visiting friends from New York, New Criterion managing editor Roger Kimball and his wife Alexandra, and they were equally impressed by this remarkable, gentle, and saintly man.

Cardinal Zubeir gave us only an inkling of the ordeal of Sudanese Christians at the hands of the Islamic government, but they make up a substantial proportion of nearly three million people who have died in the 23-year civil war. Many of the clergy in his diocese have been martyred and his own life is in danger. Yet he has set up church schools for 70,000 children, and his flock has grown from less than one million in 1960 to four million today.

It is a fact that Christian or Jewish minorities under Islamist governments, among which Sudan is by no means unique, regularly suffer discrimination, persecution or even genocide. By contrast, Muslims who live in societies based on Judaeo-Christian civilization are free to profess their faith. When the Voice of the Caliphate summons them to “martyrdom,” it wants them to sacrifice their lives to deprive others of the freedom of conscience they already enjoy.